FASCICULI MALATENSES 
3 T 
many conical hills, produces the most powerful medicine-men 1 in the Malay 
Peninsula ; it is for this reason that charms and amulets from Patalung enjoy 
a great reputation in the Siamese Malay States. Caves, too, are often said to 
be kramaiy as the residence of the Hantu Parai or Peris, which the Patani 
Malays regard as spirits of the rocks ; and when a cave has been made into a 
rock temple by the Siamese it has always been regarded as a true shrine by 
the Mahommedans of the neighbourhood, for they believe that the Siamese 
idols are not mere images but actually * have a spirit ’*—an evil spirit, of 
course, but one of which use can be made. In a cavern near Biserata Siamese, 
or, more probably, a Chinese governor of Senggora, who made a tour through 
the Patani States at the beginning of the nineteenth century, caused a gigantic 
recumbent statue of Buddha to be made, and other persons, since his day, have 
surrounded it with many others of a smaller size, two of which are said to 
represent the mother and father of Gotama, This cavern is frequented by 
Buddhists, Mahommedans and Chinese, all of whom regard it as sacred, 
bringing their sick to be cured by lying for a night on a shelf of rock just 
outside, and casting lots in the cave to find out whether any undertaking they 
may have in hand will prosper. This they do by means of a pear-shaped 
bamboo or rattan root, which has been split longitudinally into two equal halves 
and generally lies on the altar. They clasp it between two palms, and 
after doing reverence to the great statue and muttering a formula, separate their 
hands in such a way that the two halves of the root fall to the ground separately ; 
the omen is favourable or the reverse according as they fall on the rounded or 
the flat side, and the ceremony is always repeated three times. 
In that part of Upper Perak which was formerly under the rajas of 
Rhaman, the Perak river is beset with rapids, at the upper end of which there 
is, in several instances, an upright rock in which some natural resemblance to 
a human figure can just be traced. These rocks* are kramat, being called 
berbala y or idols of the Malays, who always make an offering to them before 
shooting the rapids, addressing the spirit which lives in them as Datob . The 
steersman, or one of the other raftsmen, stands up in front of the raft with a 
banana and a chew of betel or a cigarette in his hand, and after a speech, in which 
he explains to the spirit of whom the party consists and what is their business, 
asking leave at the same time for them to pass, throws the offering at the * idol 1 
], Attiea } part i, p. 60, 
a. On our journey from Senggora to Kedah a Patani Malay pointed out to me a Buddhist monastery, where, 
on a former occasion, he said that he had seen the ‘spirits of the idol*' {hantu herhala). They had hovered over the 
temple in form like the images on the altar, but of monstrous liee, The roan was subject to fits or seizures of 
some kind. 
j. These upright rocks may be compared with the broken stalactites before which the birds’-neiten on the 
islands of the Taleh Sap do reverence on starting to their work in the caves (See Scot. Gcograph. Mag. 1900, p. 520 j 
and Mati f 1903, No. 79}. 
