FOLK-LORE AND POPULAR RELIGION OF THE MALAYS. II 



service, and offers curious analogies with the sacrificial cere- 

 monials of some of the wild aboriginal tribes of Central India, 

 who have not been converted to Hinduism or Islam. That 

 it should exist in a Malay community within twenty miles of 

 the town of Malacca, where Muhammadanism has been 

 established for about six centuries, is certainly strange. Its 

 obvious inconsistency wnth his professed religion does not 

 strike the average Malay peasant at all. It is, however, the 

 fact that these observances are not regarded with much 

 favour by the more strictly Muhammadan Malays of the 

 towns and especially by those that are partially of Arab des- 

 cent. These latter have not very much influence in country 

 districts, but privately I have heard some of them express 

 disapproval of such rites and even of the ceremonies perform- 

 ed at kramats. According to them, the latter might be 

 consistent with Muhammadan orthodoxy on the understand- 

 ing that prayers were addressed solely to the Deity : but the 

 invocation of spirits or deceased saints and their propitiation 

 by offerings could not be regarded as otherwise than poly- 

 theistic idolatry. Of course such a delicate distinction — almost 

 as subtle as that between dulia arid latria in the Christian 

 worship of saints^-is entirely beyond the average Malay 

 mind ; and everything is sanctioned by immemorial custom, 

 which in an agricultural population is more deeply rooted 

 than any book-learning; so these rites are likely to continue 

 for some time and will only yield gradually to the spread of 

 education. Such as they are, they seem to be interesting 

 relics of an old-w^orld superstition. 



I have mentioned only a few such points and only such as 

 have been brought directly to my knowledge: there are hosts 

 of other quaint notions, such as the theory of lucky and 

 unlucky days and hours, on which whole treatises have been 

 written, and which regulate every movement of those who 

 believe in them ; the belief in amulets and charms for averting 

 all manner of evils, supernatural and natural ; the practice 

 during epidemics of sending out to sea small elaborately con- 

 structed vessels which are supposed tc carry off the malig- 

 nant spirits responsible for the disease (of which I remember 



