60 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [March, 1909, 
being which gets accidentally shus up in water jars and 
does not recognize its proper body should that body be ever 
so little disfigured in its absence during sleep. Such are the 
Malay’s ideas about the rih, which is said to be peculiar to man. 
The nyawa is little more than the life breath of a man or 
animal; the bdédi is an evil ghost or influence (quite defi- 
nitely a ghost in the more primitive, less definitely individua 
in the more civilized districts) which originates from men and 
certain animals at or after an unlucky or violent death. . It 
assumed primitive meanings. Differing from them very clearly 
is the semingit, which keeps a man, an animal, a crop, a 
mineral, a house, or a treasure-chest sane and healthy and 
preserves the body with which it is associated from rapid dis- 
organization or decay. 
very man and every animal is believed to be pervaded 
by a seméngat; every field of rice is similarly animated, the 
ore of every tin mine also has its ‘‘ soul,’ and even houses and 
treasure-chests, as their different parts are fitted together into 
a perfect organism, develop an essence or pervading spirit of 
the kind. It is when the semdngit is ousted that ‘‘ possession ” 
occurs. 
sticks become animate by the infusion of a temporary and 
evanescent life’; so to-day in Malaya men talk seriously of the 
1 For a ‘philosophical’? ex i ie’ ; 
: planation see Mackenzie’s Treatise on 
Witchcraft (1678), section xix. “It ma I confess, that spirits 
nd immaterial substances cannot touch things material, and conse- 
