FASCICULI MALATENSES 
95 
happened to take off the cover of the jar, and the rob escaped and returned to 
its owner, who revived immediately. Malays are always unwilling to awake 
a sleeping person, lest his rob should not have time to come back to him, and 
it is natural that this disinclination should be most marked in the case of rajas 
and other important people. I have cause to believe, though I cannot state 
it as an ascertained fact, that the reason why they are so particular to hold up 
a hand in front of the face when yawning or sneezing is that they are afraid 
of the rob escaping, though they may very possibly also fear the entrance of a 
wandering spirit, and though the action has become, among them as among 
ourselves, part of the courtesy of daily life. I have not been able to discover 
any instances of either the nydwa or the rob becoming visible or assuming a 
corporeal form of any kind. 
Semangat. Though the word semangat may be of Sanscrit origin, yet 
the idea it conveys would seem to be more primitive among the Malays 
than that of the rob or the nydwa , judging from the extensive cultus that has 
grown up around it. It is true that many individuals, even in the Patani 
States, confuse these three kinds of soul, and that two imam of the district 
agreed in assuring me that the rob , the nydwa , and the semangat were all one, 
or, at any rate, all went to heaven or hell together after a man’s death — always 
and only to the former in the case of Mahommedans, after they had success- 
fully crossed the traditional narrow bridge over the flaming gulf of hell ; 
though politeness may invent another heaven for the benefit of white men. 
But among the more ignorant peasants these three — rob , nydwa , and semangat — 
are considered quite distinct, the third in the series being the one with regard 
to which their ideas are the least indefinite. Ambil semangat does not, and 
cannot mean, ‘to kill,’ it means to ‘steal away the senses,’ to ‘bewitch.’ 
That this is the case, not only in the Patani States, but also in other parts of 
the Peninsula, is clearly shown in a charm headed ‘ ambil semangat,' quoted 
in the original by Mr. Skeat, to whom we owe the compilation of practically 
all that is known of the religion of the Malays of the Federated Malay States 
and the Straits Settlements. In this charm, to translate it quite literally, the 
person whose semangat is to be taken from him is bidden to become ‘ mad by 
daylight, mad by night, mad seven times a day, mad seven times by night.’ 
In the Patani States it is commonly said that a man whose semangat has been 
stolen ‘does not remember, his speech is uncertain, he does not recognize his 
father or his mother ’ ; the same phrase being used concerning a person who is 
berhantu, or possessed by evil spirits. In fact, all witchcraft and all devilment 
1. Cf. Burmese beliefs regarding the ‘butterfly’ ( leikpya ) that goes out of a man when he sleeps. Nisbet, 
Burmah under British Rule and Before , vol. ii, pp. 175-6, London, 1901. 
2. Cf. Skeat (lot. cit., p. 336), who describes how the Malays of Langat cheat the Evil One by daubing a 
newly born child and its mother with clay. A Semang cure for fever ( antea , p. 4) is perhaps analogous. 
