Malay Magic: Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay PeninsulaSkeat, Walter William
Religion
Malay Magic: Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay Peninsula
Skeat, Walter William
Magic -- Malay Peninsula; Malays (Asian people) -- Folklore; Malays (Asian people) -- Social life and customs
"There was once a Selangor man named Haji Batu, or the Petrified
Pilgrim, who got this name from the fact that the first joints of all
the fingers of one hand had been turned into stone. This happened in
the following manner. In the old days when men went voyaging in sailing
vessels, he determined to visit Mecca, and accordingly set sail. After
sailing for about two months they drifted out of their course for some
ten or fifteen days, and then came to a part of the sea where there
were floating trunks of trees, together with rice-straw (batang padi)
and all manner of flotsam. Yet again they drifted for seven days,
and upon the seventh night Haji Batu dreamed a dream. In this dream
one who wore the pilgrim's garb appeared to him, and warned him to
carry on his person a hammer and seven nails, and when he came to
a tree which would be the Pauh Janggi he was to drive the first of
the nails into its stem and cling thereto. Next day the ship reached
the great whirlpool which is called the Navel of the Seas, [14] and
while the ship was being sucked into the eddy close to the tree and
engulfed, Haji Batu managed to drive the first nail home, and clung
to it as the ship went down. After a brief interval he endeavoured to
drive in the second nail, somewhat higher up the stem than the first
(why Haji Batu could not climb without the aid of nails history does
not relate), and drawing himself up by it, drove in the third. Thus
progressing, by the time he had driven in all the seven nails he had
reached the top of the tree, when he discovered among the branches
a nest of young rocs. Here he rested, and having again been advised
in a dream, he waited. On the following day, when the parent roc had
returned and was engaged in feeding its young with an elephant which
it had brought for the purpose, he bound himself to its feathers with
his girdle, and was carried in this manner many hundreds of miles
to the westward, where, upon the roc's nearing the ground, he let
himself go, and thus dropping to the earth, fell into a swoon. On
recovering consciousness he walked on till he came to a house, where
he asked for and obtained some refreshment. On his departure he was
advised to go westward, and so proceeded for a long distance until he
arrived at a beautifully clear pool in an open plain, around which
were to be seen many stone figures of human beings. The appearance
of these stone figures rendering him suspicious, he refrained from
drinking the water, and dipped into it merely the tips of his fingers,
which became immediately petrified. Proceeding he met a vast number of
wild animals--pigs, deer, and elephants--which were fleeing from the
pursuit of a beast of no great size indeed, but with fiery red fur. He
therefore prudently climbed into a tree to allow it to pass. The
beast, however, pursued him and commenced to climb the tree, but as
it climbed he drove the point of his poniard (badik) into its skull,
and killed it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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