FASCICULI MALATENSES 
45 
In the first place, the Patani Malays, in many instances, draw no clear line 
between an elemental force and a spirit, or rather they so often personify, one 
might almost say materialize, the former in their minds that it becomes 
indistinguishable from a spirit Thus they believe that the magnetic needle of 
the compass is actually animated by a spirit, while they conceive of the energy by 
means of which a telephonic message is transmitted as a being of the same order, 
for they are no more able to understand so abstract an idea as a form of energy 
than is the Englishman who talks of the 4 electric fluid.’ 
Again, we often find, side by side in the same ceremony or formula, an 
attempt to propitiate and an attempt to deceive or coerce spirits. Take, for 
example, the simple formula, already given, by means of which a Jalor robber 
summoned his six familiars ; it commences with an invitation to a sacrifice 
and a prayer for the safety of the offerer and his family, but it ends with a 
threat to revolutionize the universe if the prayer is not granted, this threat 
being used as a means of coercing the very beings to whom the prayer and 
sacrifice have just been made. 
By medicine I mean no more than the theory and practice of doctoring 
material bodies, whether by means of material drugs or through spiritualistic 
agencies. I use the word practically as a translation of the Malay ubai^ a 
term which is usually translated ( drug * or * drugs/ but which is applied 
equally, at any rate in the Patani States, to all remedies, poisons, and witch- 
craft. As we have seen in the first part of the paper, the Patani Malays make no 
fundamental distinction between men and animals, or, indeed, between animals 
and highly organized inanimate objects, and I think, therefore, that it 
gives a truer idea of the theories which underlie the religious and magical 
ceremonies by means of which these Malays attempt to rectify what is wrong, 
or to injure and disorganize what is right, in the different kinds of organized 
bodies, if we do not attempt to make distinctions which, however obvious and 
necessary they may appear to us, do not at all appeal to primitive Malay 
minds. The fact must not be forgotten that the 4 medicine-man/ as I have 
translated the Malay Minot* and the Siamese mtr , whatever may be his know¬ 
ledge of herbs and other simples, is primarily a person who has learnt how to 
control spirits without their injuring himself or working extraneous mischief 
when he summons them ; he is greater than one who keeps familiars, because 
his control is not confined to a few individuals, but to a whole species or a 
whole class, as the case may be ; his remedies, however efficacious as a matter 
of practice they may chance to be, depend for their efficacy, according to ibis 
theories , not upon the material constitution of the drugs he uses, or the material 
results of such simple operations as he performs, but on symbolical or suggestive 
i. In the Patani States the word pnwaitgt which tl more common in the Federated Malay States, is barely 
known. 
