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
(3) Porok, which consists in kicking (with the side of the foot)
a small cocoa-nut shell, with the object of hitting a similar shell
a few yards off.
This game appears to be identical with what is called main gayau in
Selangor, in which, however, a fruit or seed called buah gandu is
substituted for the cocoa-nut shell and propelled by the big toe of
the player's foot.
(4) Main seremban, which is played with cockle-shells by two girls at a
time, each player taking twenty cockle-shells (kulit k'rang) into her
lap. Each player in turn has to toss up one of the cockle-shells and
catch, simultaneously snatching a fresh shell from the heap. If the
girl who is playing fails in either task, she loses to her opponent.
10. THEATRICAL EXHIBITIONS
The Malay Drama, taking the word in its widest sense as comprising
every kind of theatrical exhibition, includes performances of several
different types, which derive their origin from various distinct
sources. Most of them bear some traces of their foreign extraction,
and though they have been much modified by the Malays, and are now
quite "naturalised" in the Peninsula, it is pretty clear that the
greater part have been borrowed from India, Siam, China, and possibly
other countries. It is noteworthy that many, perhaps most, of the
plots represented in these performances owe their origin to the old
classical Indian Epics, and especially to the story of the Ramayana,
which has been handed down traditionally, much modified by local
colouring, in Java and Siam as well as in the Malay Peninsula.
It is not within the scope of this work to give anything like a full
description of these different kinds of dramatic representations, but
it is desirable to give some account of the ritual which accompanies
them, and the ideas and superstitions which they seem to involve.
The most important of the ceremonies which relate to the Malay theatre
is that of inaugurating or "opening" (as it is called) a site for
the performance. The following is an account (by Mr. Hugh Clifford)
of the performance of this ceremony:--
"When one of these companies arrives at a place where it intends to
'open,' it erects a small, square shed, open at all four sides, but
carefully roofed in, and with a hand-rail running round it about two
feet from the ground. This shed is called a Bangsal, and the space
which its sides enclose is termed Panggong. Before the play begins,
the ceremony called Bûka Panggong, which has for its object the
invocation and propitiation of certain spirits, is gone through....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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