10 MANTRA GAJAH. 



from the one supplied by my father in the second number 

 of the Notes and Queries of this society. It will be seen 

 that the words of commend used in Perak differ from those in 

 [Cedah, and that they certainly are not Malay words. 



Lastly, is these any similarity between the Malay and the 

 Siamese system of the medical treatment of elephants ? In an 

 appendix: I give a list of the plants mentioned in the Malay 

 text, and Mr. H. N. Ridley has been kind enough to supply 

 their scientific names with a brief description. 



It will be noticed that many of the remedies are symboli- 

 cal. The use of three or five limes, that grow on a single stem, 

 mixed with the love grass, that clings to every thing, is given 

 in section 47 as a devise to make a wild male elephant remain 

 with a herd of females. The medicine to prevent an elephant 

 from swinging its tail is the rubbish that collects round posts 

 that stand in a stream and shake to and fro with the force of 

 the current, (section 57). To make an elephant return to its 

 master's house of its own accord from the forest the remedy 

 is to take the cooking place, ladder and threshold beam of an 

 abandoned house and to give fragments of them to the ele- 

 phant with its food (section 80). To make an elephant fat 

 one remedy must be given during the full moon and while the 

 elephant is standing in water above the swelling of its belly, 

 and another remedy must be given when the moon is rising, 

 (section 78). 



The remedies include such extraordinary articles of diet 

 for a herbivorous animal, as rhinoceros' navel (section 78), 

 fish (78) prawns (75) and oxhide. 



The use of arrack (section 62) is hardly orthodox perhaps 

 among Muhammadans even as a medicament for an elephant, 

 but the prescription in section 83 of water from a pig's wallow 

 is most extraordinary, for it would be difficult to imagine any- 

 thing more abhorrent to the average Malay. 



Many of the plants mentioned such as kunyit trus, leng- 

 kuas, jenjuang, galenggang, gandarusa, from part of the ordin- 

 ary pharmacopeia of the Malays, but it will be interesting 

 to know to what extent the remedies have been borrowed 

 from, or are common to, Siam. 



.four. Straits Branch 



