92 
FASCICULI MALATENSES 
that this religion has reached the Peninsula from two sources, direct from 
Ceylon and Southern India, and through Siam, whose king regarded the 
Sultan of Malacca as a rebellious vassal 1 2 at the time of the Portuguese 
conquest ( 1 5 1 1 a.d.) 1 The votive offerings 3 found in caves in the State of 
Trang on the west coast differ from those found in Jalor and Pahang, on the 
other side of the main range, in that they must have been the work of Indian 
artists, being Hindu in almost all respects but that of the inscriptions upon 
them, while those from Jalor and Pahang are purely Buddhistic and Indo- 
Chinese ; but it is practically certain that these east coast offerings are of very 
much later date than the ones from Trang. Chinese immigrants, with their 
multiform creed and their power of absorbing all religions sufficiently super- 
stitious, appear to have had little influence 4 on the beliefs of the Peninsula. 
Primitive Religion of the Malays 
There can be little doubt that the primitive religion of the Malays 
resembled that 5 of the wild tribes at present inhabiting the Peninsula, in 
consisting of a dread of dead men’s ghosts and other malicious spirits, which 
might be forced to do good, or cheated out of doing harm. It would be 
impossible at the present date to separate the details of this primitive belief 
from the foreign excrescences that have grown upon it, that is, without a very 
lengthy and exhaustive study, not only of orthodox Mahommedanism, 
Buddhism, and Hinduism, but also of the popular superstitions of Arabia, 
Persia, India, Siam, Sumatra, and the further isles of the Malay Archipelago, 
for all of these regions have had an influence on Malay thought. I do not 
propose to undertake any such task in the present paper, but merely to set 
forth what I believe to be the main outlines of the popular religion of the 
Malays of the Patani States. Before proceeding to do this, I may mention 
that my notes were derived from conversations with peasants, few of whom 
were either professional medicine-men or learned Mahommedans. I avoided 
the former class for several reasons : they are generally more cunning than 
1. Crawfurd, loc. cit., p. 404. 
2. For evidence of an earlier Siamese domination in the Peninsula, cf. Groeneveldt, ‘Notes on the Malay 
Archipelago and Malacca, compiled from Chinese sources,’ translated in Miscellaneous Papers relating to Indo-China. 
3. A. Steffen and N. Annandale, Man , Dec., 1902, Plate M. 
4. Ninachetuan, who was put at the head of the Pagan natives of Malacca by Albuquerque, being deprived 
of his office unjustly, ‘ publicly sacrificed himself on a funeral pile — a solemn ceremony, comformable, it seems, to 
the religion he professed.’ (Crawfurd, loc. cit., p. 403). This is a purely Chinese custom, still occasionally put into 
practice by immigrants in the Peninsula who cannot force their debtors to pay what they owe them. A great fire is 
said to have occurred a few years ago in the town of Trengganu, owing to a Chinaman setting fire to himself for 
this reason, having first spilt several tins of kerosine in his house. 
5. W. W. Skeat, Journ. Anthrop. Inst., 1902, pp. 136-138. I do not understand Mr. Skeat’s objection, in 
the published discussion that followed the reading of his paper, to a suggestion that certain less primitive Semang 
beliefs may have been derived from intercourse with Malays. 
