A Curious Kelantan Charm. 



BY J. D. GrIMLETTE. 



Last year Chief Inspector Jackson gave me a rudely fashioned 

 belt which had been found by the .Kelantan Police on the body 

 of a Malay robber, stabbed to death in 1917, in the district of 

 Bacho'. It was tied round the dead man's waist concealed in the 

 folds of his sarong. I am indebted to Captain H. A., Anderson, 

 the Chief Police Officer of Kelantan, for access to the case file. The 

 history is briefly as follows. Enehe' Mah binti Enehe' Mun heard 

 a noise about 1.30 a.m., on 26.5.1917, as if a robber was breaking 

 through the wall of her house (orang buka buchu dinding). She 

 was frightened and roused her husband Awang Tanda bin Salleh. 

 He seized a spear and stabbed a man who was about to enter their 

 bed room. The robber ran a short distance and fell dead; he was 

 a Kelantan Malay unknown to anyone in the seaside district of 

 Bacho' or to anyone in the village of Pauh where the trajedy occur- 

 red. Awang Tanda Jiad stabbed him between the ribs. 



Photograph (A), recently taken in Kota Baharu, shows the 

 general appearance of the robber's belt before it was taken to pieces. 

 It was a girdle made of two stout cords about four feet long, twist- 

 ed together and knitted in the centre, to make a small pouch which 

 seems to have originally contained a white stone. The pouch had 

 been cut open before the belt came into my possession and was 

 empty ; the cord on either side of it was strengthened by an extra 

 strand of twisted cord, to the extent of about five inches on each 

 side. This part • of the girdle was worn behind and a strip of 

 orange coloured calico, such as that worn by Siamese priests, dyed 

 by means of a decoction of the heart of the Jack-tree (Artocarpus 

 integrifolia, Linn., Urticaceae), Was twisted round this central part 

 of the belt making a. kind of bundle. 



Inside this yellow bundle were a wild boar's tusk; a smooth, 

 round, slate-coloured stone, about as large as a small coin (pitis) ; 

 a tuft of hair (chemara babi) said to have come from the neck of a 

 wild boar, and one small oval-shaped, dark-speckled stone. The 

 pig's tusk w T as originally wrapped in the cloth, not projecting as 

 shown in the photograph: both it and the other talismans were 

 made secure by means of twine bound round the cloth wherever 

 necessary. An outer covering of dirty white calico about five feet 

 in length and half a foot in breadth, strengthened at regular in- 

 tervals by means of bindings of string, was wrapped round the 

 whole belt except for a length of cord, free on either side, to tie 

 in front. 



A small fragment of bright metal, not heavy enough to be of 

 value, and closelv resembling on fracture a spur of copper pyrites, 

 was found carefully wrapped in a scrap of plain white cloth, as 



Jour. Straits Branch 



