Vol. V, No. 3.] The Theory of Souls among the Malays. 65 
[N.8S.] 
soul is not the life. It is true that when the soul has forsaken 
a treasure-chest, that chest is said to have ‘‘ become a dead 
thing’; but a treasure-chest, even with its soul, would never 
be called a ‘living thing,” ‘though t the phrase would be quite 
possible in Malay as applied to an object really animate. 
man does not die when his soul is taken from him 
One ‘of the chief difficulties in the investigations on which 
= ig a is based has been “ae poverty of the Malay 
lan as ards general and abstract terms and th 
dislike felt by all Malays for direct sbecoh. Malay is a language 
terms. No attempt to get from a Malay anything of the nature 
of a lens definition, even on a point on which his min 
is absolutely clear, is therefore possible, and it is chiefly by 
means of the illustrations in which his conversation is often 
rich that a definite conception of his ideas can be obtained. 
The richness of the language in specific terms, however, limits 
the application of each, and I ee I am ‘justified in saying that 
two things called by the same name are e always regarded as 
being at least ne, fein related to one another. Name 
and form may not have played quite the same part in the 
conceptions of sind Malays as has been the case in some orien- 
tal systems of philosophy, but certainly the names of thin 
well as their forms, are regarded as being almost sreentiil 
qualities. A Malay (as I have often noted when as ing ques- 
tions about different animals) sees nothing ridiculous in the 
assertion that, say, two different breeds of cattle are different, 
because their names are not the same. We may assume that 
the semdngit of a house has certain qualities in common with 
the semdngit of a man, while the fact that the boat-soul is 
selves, that is to say differing from those of their compatriots 
who do not leave dry land. The boat-soul has the capacity 
(which the house-soul apparently poy of rendering itself 
visible, and in a form whi ch has no ea a very case 
whom he deems it possible to hold intercourse of any kind. 
Among the Patani Malays the soul of a canoe manifests itself in. 
the likeness of a glow-worm, while the spirit of the sea sits on 
the mast-head as a flame of fire. ‘A larger boat has a soul like a 
snake, that is to say more like the boat itself. It is worthy of 
note that on the coast of Kelantan, which marches with the 
