THE WOBK OF THE BOMOR 



17 



in practising a pagan faith, but his lapse from Islam 

 is sanctioned by the devout but not very orthodox 

 Malay as consistent with conflict between the ancient 

 Law of Custom, which Islam recognises everywhere 

 {Hukum Adat), and the strict Law of the Prophet 

 {Hukutri Shara), As a concession many old pagan 

 charms are prefaced with a prayer, ** In the name of 

 Allah, the All-Compassionate and All-Merciful," and 

 concluded with the pious termination, " There is but 

 one God, and Muhammad is His Apostle " (Ref. 8). 



The folklore of Malaya is so abundant and so varied 

 that the ** medicine-man " must of necessity be an 

 expert specialist. The sea, with all the lore of naviga- 

 tion and deep-sea fishing, is the department of a 

 speciahst in magic called the pawang-di-laut ; the land, 

 on the other hand, is the domain of the pawang~di- 

 darat: one an expert in the folklore of hunting and 

 trapping, another in procuring camphor wood, others 

 in finding eagle-wood, in secm-ing good luck for newly 

 opened tin or gold mines, in the many strange customs 

 surrounding the cultivation of rice, in propitiating the 

 spn-its of a district, and so on. They perform magical 

 rites in order to secure good catches of fish, to find 

 alluvial tin, to ensure good crops, etc. 



Li Kelantan, a fawang whose vocation is clinical 

 medicine is commonly known as a homoTj Le,, a person 

 who practises the healing art by utilising the magic art. 

 there are ])hysicians of this kind of either sex ; ihey 

 are generally crafty old Malays, but there is no reason 

 why a hmmr should not be a Siamese, a Turk, or even 

 a Tamil. The origin of the bo'tnor is told in a quaint 

 Kelantan legend. As narrated by To' Bomor Enehe* 

 Harun it is as follows : '' In olden days a son was born 

 to Abdul Kutok and Siti Ajam in a country called San 

 in Arabia. The father Avas the chief of aU the Saints- 



