28 FOLKLORE OF THE MALAYS. 



a baby, and a Malay will employ some purely nonsensical word, 

 or convey his meaning in a roundabout form, rather than incur 

 possible misfortune by using the actual word "fat." "Ai bukan 

 -uiajiolt-jjoh gental budah ini" ("Isn't this child nice and round?") 

 is the sort of phrase which is permissible. 



If a woman dies in child-birth, either before delivery, or after 

 the birth of a child and before the foiiy days of uncleanness have 

 expired, she is popularly supposed to become a langsuyar, a flying- 

 demon of the nature of the "white lady" or "banshee." To pre- 

 vent this, the following precautions are sometimes taken in Perak : 

 a quantity of glass beads are put in the mouth of the corpse, a hen's 

 ^gg is put under each arm-pit and needles are placed in the palms 

 of the hands. It is believed that if this is done the dead woman 

 cannot become a langsuyar, as she cannot open her mouth to 

 shriek (ngilai), or wave her arms as wings, or open and shut her 

 hands to assist her flight. 



Bujang ("single," "solitary," and hence in a secondary sense 

 " un-married") is the Sanskrit word bhujangga "a dragon"". 

 " Bujang Malaka," a mountain in Perak, is said by the Malays of 

 that State to have been so called because it stands alone, and could 

 be seen from the sea by traders who plied in old days between the 

 the Perak river and the once-flourishing port of Malacca. But it 

 is just as likely to have been named from some forgotten legend in 

 which a dragon played a part. Dragons and mountains are gene- 

 rally connected in Malay ideas. The caves in the limestone hill, Gu- 

 nong Pondok, in Perak, are said to be haunted by a genius loci in 

 the form of a snake who is popularly called Si Bujang. This seems 

 to prove beyond doubt the identity of bujang with bhujangga. The 

 snake- spirit of Gunong Pondok is sometimes as small as a viper 

 and sometimes as large as a python, but he may always be identi- 

 fied by his spotted neck, which resembles that of the wood-pigeon 

 (tekukur ). Landslips on the mountains, which are tolerably fre- 

 quent during very heavy rains, and which, being produced by the 

 same cause, are often simultaneous with the flooding of rivers and 

 the destruction of property, are attributed by the natives to the 

 sudden breaking forth of dragons (naga) which have been perform- 

 ing religious penance {bcr-tapa) * in the mountains, and which are 

 making their way to the sea. 

 * Sanskrit tapasya. 



