34 
FASCICULI MALATENSES 
characteristically Mahommedan, there is reason to believe that here, as in 
so many other countries, the system itself is a primitive one, and that just as in 
our own university towns ali stories of some particular type become periodically 
fathered on some personage notorious for wit or the reverse, so it is probable 
that among semi-civilized tribes like the Patani Malays all stories of super¬ 
natural power that may be floating in popular tradition periodically settle 
round the name of some great magician like ’Toh Ni, until a greater than 
*Toh Ni shall arise. 
Independent Spirits 
The Malay word that I have translated * independent spirits ’ is bantu , 
Many beliefs regarding these beings have been mentioned already, but it will 
be necessary, before dealing with the genera and species into which they are 
divided by the Patani Malays, to consider what conception these people have 
of a spirit in the abstract, and to enquire what, in their opinion, is the origin 
of spirits. To the majority of the persons I questioned, most of whom were 
men, a spirit was evidently an individual, possessed of certain powers to which 
it was quite conceivable that a living man might attain ; the chief of these being 
the power to remain invisible to human eyes, the ‘great science/ as it is frequently 
called, and the power of change of form and size. Though my informants said 
that a spirit had no body, yet they regarded it as material thing, which, 
even when they could not see it, might be detected by the ear or by the nose, 
or even by the sense of touch ; they declared that the passage of a spirit 
could he heard, that it brushed aside the foliage through which it made its 
way, that contact with it caused a shiver to pass through the limbs, that it 
* stunk like a civet-cat ’—no empty metaphor, seeing that the half putrid, half 
aromatic odours which frequently assail the sense of smell in the Malay 
jungle are actually regarded as evidence of the presence of a hantu. If a 
visible spirit is wounded it bleeds profusely, but both it and the blood disappear 
immediately ; it can be actually killed by being stabbed with a dagger made 
from the midrib of the leaf of a nipa palm, in w r hich case a stick or a stone 
remains/ A spirit, moreover, except in respect of its peculiar powers, is not 
superior to a human being, but inferior; it is less * lucky,’ more akin to a wild 
beast, nearest akin, perhaps, to a member of one ot the aboriginal tribes, 
which, as I have already pointed out, are hardly considered human. Yet, in 
a way, it is lower still than even a Semang, who is colloquially reckoned as a 
4 person ’ ( prang ), and frequently names himself 4 the man/ It is well known 
that the use of numeral co-efficients is far more extensive in the Malay 
i Ti« [a iJca is probably Arabic, Cf* the stories of Jinn in the Arabian Ntghtt . 
