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
"Many Malays refuse to eat the fresh-water fish called ikan belidah,
[518] on the plea that it was originally a cat. They declare that it
squalls like a cat when harpooned, and that its bones are white and
fine like a cat's hairs. Similarly the ikan tumuli is believed to be
a human being who has been drowned in the river, and the ikan kalul
to be a monkey transformed. Some specially favoured observers have
seen monkeys half through the process of metamorphosis--half-monkey
and half-fish." [519]
Similarly, the Dugong (Malay duyong) is asserted by some Malays to
have sprung from the remains of a pig, which Muhammad himself dined
off before he pronounced pork to be the accursed thing. Being cast by
the Prophet into the sea, it revived and took the shape of the dugong,
in which shape it is still to be found off the coast of Lukut and Port
Dickson, where it feeds upon sea-grass (rumput setul), in common with
a species of small tripang or bêche-de-mer. [520]
The origin of the Eel (ikan b'lut) is derived from a stem of the
g'li-g'li plant; the "white-fish" (ikan puteh) from splinters, or
rather shavings of wood (tatal kayu or tarahan kayu); the senunggang
fish from the long-tailed monkey (k'ra); the aruan fish from a frog
(katak) or lizard (mengkarong); the bujok fish from charred fire-logs
(puntong api); the telan fish from the creeping roots of the yam (sulur
k'ladi); and so on. There is even the leaf of a certain tree which is
sometimes said to turn into a fish (the ikan belidah), [521] while the
following story is held to account for the origin of the Porpoise:--
Once upon a time there was a fishing-wizard (Pawang Pukat) who had
encountered nothing but misfortune from first to last, and who at
length determined to put forth all his skill in magic in one last
desperate effort to repay the burden of debt which threatened to crush
him. One day, therefore, having tried his luck for the last time,
and still caught nothing, he requested his comrades to collect an
immense quantity of mangrove leaves in their boat. Having carried
these leaves out to the fishing-ground, he scattered them on the
surface of the water, together with a few handfuls of parched and
saffron-stained rice, repeating a series of most powerful spells as he
did so. The next time they fished, the leaves had turned into fish of
all shapes and sizes, and an immense haul of fish was the result. The
wizard then gave directions for the payment in full of all his debts
and the division of the balance among his children, and then without
further warning plunged into the sea only to reappear as a porpoise.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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