APPENDIX. 305 



Offices, one may find such names as Pawang Duhamat or 

 Pawang Glam. 



Only a small percentage of the pawangs attempt spirit- 

 raising. The majority confine themselves to the mantras, 

 offerings, and medicaments. They specialise very consider- 

 ably. One man will devote himself to the lore regarding 

 the spirits and influences connected with tin-mines ; another 

 to those attendant on rubber-collecting or camphor-hunt- 

 ing expeditions ; while a third, in whose special care the 

 rice-fields or fishing-stakes may be, will probably be en- 

 tirely ignorant of the charms and spells used by the other 

 two men. 



The pawangs are dying out. It is not that the civilisa- 

 tion of British rule exercises a direct influence upon the 

 native belief in this respect, but that this civilisation is 

 making the inhabitant of the Peninsula more of a Muham- 

 madan and less of a Malay. The more he learns of his 

 religion the more he realises how impossible is the com- 

 promise that has been allowed to exist for the last four or 

 five centuries between his pre-Muhammadan beliefs and 

 the precepts of the Prophet. 



He has only to open his Koran, and turn to the seventy- 

 second chapter, which is entitled the Genii, to find a severe 

 condemnation of those who, in fear of any spirits or in 

 the hope of propitiating them or of appeasing their wrath, 

 make any application or petition to such spirits instead of 

 making their prayer to Allah, who alone is God, and to 

 whom all things in heaven and earth are subject. No 

 hair-splitting, no quibble of the wiliest of pawangs, can 

 evade this uncompromising denunciation ; and the alien 

 Muhammadans, whom the rapid development of the Malay 

 Peninsula has brought into the country within the last 

 ten or fifteen years, are not slow to press home the charge 

 of apostasy against the pawang. The Javanese and 

 Sumatra -men, earnest, narrow-minded followers of the 

 law, the Indians, who are even more strict, and the 

 Arabs, who are the sternest of bigots, have no sympathy 

 for the pawang ; they have nothing in their blood that 



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