36 MALAY POISONS AND CHABM CURES 



This tahoo is of value to Government in preventing the 

 spread of epidemic disease, more especially Asiatic 

 cholera ; the bomor generally agrees to extend the period 

 of quarantine from three to five days. The idea of 

 magic in the use of a pupoh line is apparently taken from 

 Hindu mythology. To' Bomor Enche' Harun said, 

 when referring to the great epic poem Eamayana/' 

 where the hero Eama is described as protecting his 

 bride Sita from Eauana, that they fled with 

 Laksamana into the jmigle and hid there in a hut. 

 Sita asked her husband to gather some fruit, but begged 

 him not to stay away a long time. As he did not 

 return quickly, she asked Laksamana to search for liim ; 

 Laksamana drew lines in the form of a square round the 

 hut, in order to prevent any harm coming to Sita during 

 his absence." The magic encirchng line drawn by 

 magicians is gerxerally called baris laksamana ; but the 

 Kelantan bomor uses the word tali (a line) for baris, 



Br. Charles Smger, in an address on '* Early EngUsh 

 Magic and Medicine " read before the British Academy, 

 w^hen referring to the doctrine of elf -shot, says : " The 

 Anglo-Saxon tribes placed these mahcious elves every- 

 where, but especially in the wild uncultivated wastes 

 where they loved to shoot at the passer-by. There 

 were w^ater-elves, too, perhaps identical with the 

 nixies of whom we learn so much from Celtic sources. 

 Such creatures were perhaps personations of the deadly 

 powers of marshes and waterlogged land." It is 

 therefore of great interest to find that the Malay bormr 

 attributes ague to the evil spirits of water, and not to 

 those of bad air. In a pagan myth recorded by Skeat 

 and Blagden concerning the attempted creation of 

 man from seven leaves, one of the seven demons who 

 subsequently tried to overthrow the seven guai'dians 

 of a mountain formed himself mto a band of mosquitoes 



