Of the greater deities or gods, Batara Guru is unquestionably the greatest. "In the Hikayat Sang Samba (the Malay version of the Bhaumakavya), Batara Guru appears as a supreme God, with Brahma and Vishnu as subordinate deities. It is Batara Guru who alone has the water of life (ayer utama (atama) jiwa) which brings the slaughtered heroes to life." [156] So to this day the Malay magician declares that 'Toh Batara Guru (under any one of the many corruptions which his name now bears [157]) was "the all-powerful spirit who held the place of Allah before the advent of Muhammadanism, a spirit so powerful that he could restore the dead to life; and to him all prayers were addressed." Mr. Wilkinson, in the article from which we have already quoted, deals with another point of interest, the expression sang-yang, or batara, which is prefixed to guru. After pointing out that yang in this case is not the ordinary Malay pronoun (yang, who), but an old word meaning a "deity," he remarks, that so far as he has been able to discover, it is only used of the greater Hindu divinities, and not of inferior deities or demi-gods. Thus we find it applied to Shiva and Vishnu, but never to the monkey-god Hanuman, or a deity of secondary importance like Dermadewa. Such inferior divinities have only the lesser honorific "sang" prefixed to their names, and in this respect fare no better than mere mortals (such as Sang Sapurba and Sang Ranjuna Tapa) and animals (such as, in fables, Sang Kanchil, Mr. Mousedeer; and Sang Tikus, Mr. Rat). "The expression batara is also limited to the greater Hindu divinities (except when used as a royal title), e.g. Batara Guru, Batara Kala, Batara Indra, Batara Bisnu, etc. Thus the expressions sang-yang and batara are fairly coincident in their application. [158] But there are a few deities of whom the honorific sang-yang is used, but not batara, e.g. sang-yang tunggal, 'the only God,' sang-yang sokma, etc. "Thus batara would seem to be limited in use to the actual names of Hindu deities as distinct from epithets describing those deities. "Batara Guru" would seem to be an exception--the only one--to this rule, and to point to the fact that the original meaning of guru had been lost sight of, and that the expression had come to be regarded only as a proper name." Occasionally, as is only to be expected, the Malays get mixed in their mythology, and of this Mr. Wilkinson gives two examples, one of the identification of Batara Guru (Shiva) with Brahma (Berahmana), and another of the drawing of a distinction between "Guru" (Shiva) and "Mahadewa," which latter is only another name for the same divinity. Such slips are inevitable among an illiterate people, and should always be criticised by comparison with the original Hindu tenets, from which these ideas may be presumed to have proceeded.