BLACK ART IN MALAY MEDICINE 85 



The detailed description of Mam Pet^ -which has 

 been given above was related to me by word of mouth in 

 1921 by To' Bomor EncJie' D^ranuin bin Muhmnad Ali of 

 Pasir Mas, a well'kuo\vn bomor pet^ri who had been 

 employed by the late Sultan of Kelantan. He was a 

 Malay sergeant of police, but now enjoys a Government 

 pension. The incantations were tUctated by him from 

 memory to the chief clerk of the medical department, an 

 educated Singapore Malay who is hia son-in-law, and 

 who wrote them down at the time in romanised Malay. 

 To* Bomor Deraman knows no Enghsh ; with simple 

 gravity he said that he was ready to defend in Malay the 

 doctrine of the introductoiy songs, but requested that 

 the To' Imam (President of the Mosque) should not be 

 told that he had divulged the bangJdtan which is hixS final 

 song in the performance of Main Bet&rL In this curious 

 incantation which I have refeiTed to as an exorcism 

 ideas as to embryology are mentioned : these occur in 

 the incantations of other Malay sorcerers ; three 

 separate elements {di, man% and wqBa) of the spermatic 

 fluid {manicam) are supposed to create an embryo with- 

 out the need of an ovum, 



I am not quahfied to deal efficiently with the exceed- 

 ingly difficult translation of the Main FMri incanta- 

 tions. The simple and hteral rendering that has been 

 attempted with the help of To' Deraman himself and of 

 one of my brother officers has been further revised by 

 the kindness of Dr. R. 0. Winstedt and Mr. C. Otto 

 Blagden. A very curious dialect is spoken in Kelantan 

 which differs considerably from the Malay spoken in the 

 western and southern States of the Peninsula — ^.gf., 

 sangkah becomes sakokt and pangkak, bakok. Moreover, 

 Malay charms always contain many corrupt or obsolete 

 words handed down from pre-Muhammadan daya 

 through the memories of illiterate peasants. 



