FASCICULI MALA TENSES 
Si 
There can be no doubt that the royal attire and the name of the prophet with 
which his picture are embellished have their purpose, viz., to terrify the soul, 
which had probably been weakened in other ways, and so to render it easy of 
dislodgment. If this be so, it would appear that the soul, alarmed and weak, 
would be unable to distinguish between the body it inhabited and the picture 
of itself, and would forsake the body, being powerfully attracted to the 
magician, who was represented as a powerful personage. 
Black magic, however, only deals with known individuals, and it is not con¬ 
sidered wrong to protect one’s goods against thieves on a similar principle. This 
may be done in several ways, of which I have come across three ; but in each 
case the charm depends for its proper working on the representation in a 
symbolical manner of some part of a man’s anatomy injured or diseased in 
some particular, and it is believed that the injury thus pictorially rendered 
will be transferred to the corresponding part of the thief who eats of the fruit 
or other food with which the image is connected. Objects used in this way 
are usually suspended from fruit trees or at the edge of plantations. Their 
position is always conspicuous, so that they act, practically, as a protection 
against marauders, no one doubting that their magical action will be effective. 
The headman at Kampong Jalor, indeed, told us that they did not always 
succeed from a magical point of view, but the instance he gave proved 
that he really had a very strong faith in them, even from this point of 
view. He said that he had once gone into a melon field, and, not noticing 
that there was a charm suspended in it, had eaten a melon. After the deed 
was done, and only then, he saw It. In great fear he went home, 
took a strong dose of purgative medicine, to rid him of the remains of the 
melon, and summoned a magician to recite over him counter-charms to those 
with which the dread object had been rendered potent. The object in this 
case was a bamboo cylinder, into the surface of which a large number of 
splinters of bamboo had been stuck and on which magic symbols, chiefly the 
sign* (& ), had been scrawled in white lime. The cylinder was held to represent 
a man’s alimentary canal (j>rui orang\ and was believed to have the effect of 
causing a thief’s stomach or intestines to rupture. 
This form of charm is usually employed with reference to cachew nuts or 
melons ; another form, very commonly hung up on orange trees and the like, 
consists either of a half cocoanut-shell or of an old water-bucket made of areca 
flower-spathe (upik)* The effect of this on a thief is to make his abdomen 
swell out until it takes the form of a half cocoanut-shell or bucket. The lime 
marks upon it are different from those on the bamboo ; but I hope to describe 
the objects in more detail on a future occasion and can only deal with their 
I. Called ali hk at Jalor. Charmi of the kind are called paehah. 
