62 MALAY POISONS AND CHARM CUBES 



The little piince easily dragged the two cannon from 

 the cave by himself and placed them in front of the king. 

 The king then told Radin Sekar to make one of the 

 cannon go off by itself, and so the little boy went to the 

 one that was formerly his father and asked according to 

 the king's command : the caimon fired and frightened 

 half the countryside ; all the ministers fell into con- 

 vulsions, and half the earth itself trembled. When 

 the distm-bance had subsided the king gave the sanio 

 order for the other camion and the same thing happened 

 again." 



A more modem printed charm circulated in the early 

 part of the last century^ is given by William Marsden in 

 Ins account of the inland Malays of Korinchi : " They 

 commonly carry charms about their persons to preserve 

 them from accidents ; one of which was shown to us, 

 printed (at Batavia or Semarang, in Java) in Dutch, 

 Portuguese and French. It pm-ported that the writer 

 was acquainted with the occult sciences, and that 

 whoever possessed one of the papers impressed with his 

 mark (which was the figure of a hand with the thumb 

 and fingers extended) was invulnerable and free from 

 all kinds of harm. It desired the people to be very 

 cautious of taking any such, printed in London (where 

 certainly none were ever pruited), as the English would 

 endeavour to counterfeit them and to impose on the 

 purchasers, being all cheats." A collector would be 

 poor withal without any love charms made by the pagaiis 

 or other peoples of Malaya. The rarest and most potent 

 of the pagan charms is the chitidurai love charm. It is 

 a rootlet with a fragrance which is said to be stronger 

 than that of the dm'ian, and is usually carried in a 

 pouch attached to the girdle. 



But the Kelantan hovwr who is a specialist in love 

 charms can supply many strange things : Arabic 



