4 FOLK-LORE AND POPULAR RELIGION OF THE MALAYS. 



offering of nasi kunyet (yellow rice) and the killing of 

 goats ; but I also noticed a number of live pigeons there which 

 illustrate the practice, common in Buddhist countries, of 

 releasing an animal in order to gain " merit" thereby. 



To return to the elemental spirits : it was explained to me 

 by a Malay, with whom I discussed the subject at leisure, 

 that apart from the spirits which are an object of reverence 

 and which when treated with proper deference are usually bene- 

 ficent, there are a variety of others. To begin with, spirits 

 (the word used on this occasion ^2iS hantu) are of at least two 

 kinds — wild ones, whose normal habitat is the jungle, and 

 those that are, so to say, domesticated. The latter, which 

 seem to correspond to what in Western magic are called 

 " familiars," vary in character with their owners or the persons 

 to whom they are attached. Thus in this particular village 

 of Bukit Senggeh, a few years ago, there was a good deal of 

 alarm on account of the arrival of two or three strangers 

 believed to be of bad character, who were supposed to keep 

 a familiar spirit of a particularly malignant disposition which 

 was in the habit of attacking people in their sleep by throttling 

 them. One or two cases of this kind occurred, and it was 

 seriously suggested that I should make the matter the subject 

 of a magisterial enquiry, which, however, I did not find it 

 necessary to do. But familiar spirits are by no means 

 necessarily evil : indeed the Pawang (a functionary of w^hom 

 more will be said later on) keeps a familiar spirit, which in 

 his case is a hantu pusdka, that is, an hereditary spirit which 

 runs in the family, in virtue of which he is able to deal sum- 

 marily with the Vk^ild spirits of an obnoxious character. The 

 chief point of importance is to keep these wild spirits in their 

 proper place, viz. the jungle, and to prevent them taking up 

 their abode in the villages. For this reason charms are hung 

 up at the borders of the villages, and whenever a wild spirit 

 breaks bounds and encroaches on human habitations it is 

 necessary to get him turned out. Some time ago, one of 

 these objectionable hantus had settled down in a kerayong 

 tree in the middle of this same village of Bukit Senggeh, and 

 used to frighten people who passed that way in the dusk : so 



