2 FOLK-LORE AND POPULAR RF:L1GI0N OF THE MALAYS. 



small district a holy place known as a kramat, at which vows 

 are paid on special occasions, and which is invested with a 

 very high degree of reverence and sanctity. 



\ hese kramats abound in Malacca territory ; there is hardly 

 a village but can boast some two or three in its immediate 

 neighbourhood, and they are perfectly well known to all the 

 inhabitants. 



Theoretically, kramats are supposed to be the graves of 

 deceased holy men, the early apostles of the Muhammadan 

 faith, the first founders of the village who cleared the primeval 

 jungle, or other persons of local notoriety in a former age ; and 

 there is no doubt that many of them are that and nothing 

 more. But even so the reverence paid to them and the 

 ceremonies that are performed at them savour a good deal 

 too much of ancestor- worship to be attributable to an orthodox 

 Muhammadan origin. 



It is certain, however, that many of these kramats are not 

 graves at all : many of them are in the jungle, on hills and in 

 groves, like the high places of the Old Testament idolatries ; 

 they contain no trace of a grave (while those that are found in 

 villages usually have grave-stones) and they appear to be really 

 ancient sites of a primitive nature-worship or the adoration of 

 the spirits of natural objects. 



Malays, when asked to account for them, often have recourse 

 to the explanation that they are kramat jin, that is, "spirit"- 

 places ; and if a Malay is pressed on the point and thinks 

 that the orthodoxy of these practices is being impugned, he 

 will sometimes add that the yV;? in question is a //;« islam, a 

 Muhammadan and quite orthodox spirit! 



Thus on Bukit Nyalas, near the Johol frontier, there is a 

 kramat consisting of a group of granite boulders on a ledge 

 of rock overhanging a sheer descent of a good many feet ; 

 bamboo clumps grow on the place, and there were traces of 

 religious rites having been performed there, but no grave 

 whatever. This place was explained to me to be the kramat 

 of one Nakhoda HUSSIN described as 2i jin (of the orthodox 

 variety) who presides over the water, rain and streams. 

 People occasionally burned incense there to avert drought 



