SPELLS AND SOOTHSAYING 



99 



Indian and Malay. Such charms are always hedged 

 around with profound secrecy, not merely to enhance 

 their monetary value, but to avoid attacks by the 

 orthodox for the doctrines of the Muhammadan 

 mystics known as Sufis were often heretical. Here 

 it may be remarked that the famous heterodox 

 pantheist, Hamzah of Barus, in Sumatra (floruit 

 A.D. 1600), relates that he visited Pahang. Students of 

 Malay pantheism should, however, read^ in Enghsh, 

 Snouck Hurgi'onje*s " The Aehehnese " and Nicholson's 

 ** Studies in Islamic Mysticism," and, in Dutch, D. A. 

 Binkes' Abdoerraof van Singkel," B. J. 0. Sclnieke^a 

 " Het Boek van Bonang," and H, Kraemer's ** Een 

 Javansche Primbon " (privately corummiicated by 

 Dr. Winstedt). Sufi mysticism teaches that the soul 

 is the subject of ecstasies of Divine inspiration in virtue 

 of its direct emanation from the Deity, a notion asso- 

 ciated with the idea that the soul is imprisoned in the 

 body and that death is the return to its original home. 

 And among interesting items contained in the manu- 

 script under review is the idea of a " pre-natal ** 

 language. This oecm^ in two protective formulas. 

 One of them, intended to protect the owner from being 

 stabbed, runs as follows : ak mak snian taptal mak nak 

 aak ak kakja pak nal ak tik ak kakjemak nak ak tak aa 

 ak. An mtelhgent and well-educated Kelantan Malay 

 told Mr. Worthington that these words belong to the 

 language we speak before birth, and gave him, in 

 explanation, a cmuously literal equivalent in Malay of 

 a verse in Wordsworth's ode " Intimations of Immor- 

 tahty from Recollections of Early Childhood " : — 



Our birth ia but a sleep and a forgetting ; 

 The Soul that rises with us, our life's star, 

 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 

 And cometL from afar ; 



7—2 



