The new-born Malay child: a multiple identity being
J.L. Massard, a French ethnographer based in Paris, published this article in 1985 in the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, drawing on fieldwork conducted in Pahang State, West Malaysia, during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The article argues that the Malay newborn is not a miniature adult or a social blank slate but a “multiple identity being” whose human identity is a product of active cultural work, achieved only after a prolonged period of ontological vulnerability. Massard contends that Western researchers have systematically excluded the child from studies of Malay childbirth, treating the infant as an incomplete version of the adult, when in fact the child possesses a specificity rooted in its simultaneous affiliation with the human, supernatural, animal, and in-utero sibling domains.
Summary
The article challenges the prevailing anthropological focus on the mother during Malay childbirth and redirects attention to the child as an agent in his own right. Massard draws on ethnographic data from two contrasting settings in Pahang—a traditional riverside village combining subsistence agriculture and rubber tapping, and a government land-development scheme organized for plantation agriculture—to demonstrate that both groups share a coherent cosmological framework in which the child’s identity is undetermined at birth. The central analytical move is the distinction between nyawa (soul, specifically human, acquired at the third month of gestation) and sumangat (life-principle, shared by all beings, human or otherwise). This ontological duality explains why the newborn remains pervious to influences from the supernatural world, the animal kingdom, and the in-utero sibling group: having a soul is a necessary condition for being human but does not, by itself, fix the child’s identity or insulate him from the rest of the universe.
The article traces the child’s trajectory from conception through birth and into early infancy, showing how each stage is governed by a logic of transposition and receptivity. During gestation, the foetus can be marked by violence committed against animals (kenan), can acquire characteristics from the mother’s diet or associations, and is subject to the father’s heroic obligations to satisfy the child’s cravings (idam). At birth, the placenta is not discarded as waste but recognized as the child’s elder sibling, buried with elaborate precautions and attended nightly by the father for forty days. In the first months and years of life, the child remains in contact with spirits (hantu sawan) who may attempt to seize him, and his vulnerability is managed through rituals such as the “opening of the mouth” (membelah mulut), which links the infant to a bird that will learn to speak in parallel with the child.
Massard’s overarching argument is that the rituals and care practices of primary infancy constitute a process of progressive “homogenisation”—a deliberate weakening of the child’s innate heterogeneity to anchor him securely in the human world. The moment of liberation is identified as the child’s ability to bathe independently (curah), typically around age three or four, at which point the threat of spirit possession and the influence of the placenta-sibling are considered to have passed. The article thus positions the Malay newborn as a being whose identity is actively negotiated through ritual, care, and socialization rather than simply inherited at birth.
Key Findings
- The placenta is treated as the child’s elder sibling (kakak), wrapped in a white cloth (evoking a shroud), placed in a halved coconut shell with a bamboo chimney to allow it to “breathe,” and buried near the house; the father must light a small fire at its tomb every evening at sunset (masa maghrib) for the full forty days of ritual seclusion (pp. 76–77).
- The concept of kenan (congenital malformation from ante-natal suggestion) is illustrated by specific cases: a woman who buried a live cat during pregnancy gave birth to a child with a human face but a cat’s body (kenan kucing); a woman whose husband killed a toad had a child with batracian legs unable to walk (kenan katak) (p. 73).
- The “opening of the mouth” ritual (membelah mulut) involves dipping a gold ring in salt, tamarind, and holy water (air zam zam), applying it to the baby’s lips, then passing it over the tongue of a tiong or jungle myna; the bird will learn to speak when the child does but will die within two to three months (p. 81).
- Abortion is considered impossible from the third month of gestation onwards because the foetus acquires a soul (nyawa) at that point and would curse the guilty mother, uttering a nightly moan (niip, niip, niip); before the third month the foetus is merely a seed soaking in fluid (sudah seduh) and has no capacity for desire or frustration (p. 72).
- Twin births are culturally denied as simultaneous events: the first twin born is designated the younger, and the placenta(s) must be divided and buried separately at different locations (one near the father’s house, one near a relative’s house several kilometres away) to prevent the twins from becoming pathologically fused and unable to live apart (pp. 75–77).
- The child is considered free from the threat of spirit seizure only when able to bathe independently (curah), typically at age three or four; before this, the child sleeps on the parents’ couch, is never left alone in a separate room at night, and is not put to bed until it is quite dark to avoid the danger of twilight (cacing attacks) (pp. 80–81).
Conclusion
Massard’s definitive historical takeaway is that the Malay newborn occupies a liminal ontological position in which human identity is not given but made. The coexistence of Islamic and pre-Islamic cosmological systems means that the acquisition of a soul elevates the child above the rest of creation but does not render him impervious to it; the first years of life constitute a period of active negotiation in which the child’s perviousness to multiple worlds—supernatural, animal, in-utero—is gradually closed off through ritual, parental care, and the slow process of socialization. The child emerges as a stable human person not by nature but by cultural achievement.
Context
- Fieldwork was conducted across three periods (March 1978–March 1979; May–August 1980; July–August 1982) in two contrasting settings in Pahang State: a traditional riverside village and a government land-development scheme, both fully integrated into Malay society with cognatic kinship, nuclear family residence, and Islam as the organizing religion (p. 71, n. 1).
- The article extends the work of Carol Laderman (1981, 1982a, 1982b) on Malay childbirth by shifting the analytical focus from the mother to the child, and contributes to the broader Southeast Asian ethnographic debate on the ontological construction of the person, building on Cuisinier’s (1951) foundational study of sumangat and Skeat’s (1900) early documentation of Malay life-cycle beliefs.