Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/92

78 which in their view pervades all things inert as well as animate, will not remain when its counterpart is marred; for we must think of the semangat as a diminutive model or counterpart of the object which it inhabits. Thus, when the substantive jar or urn is chipped or broken, it no longer agrees identically with its spiritual archetype, (which appears to be something quasi-material or more nearly approaching what we should call one of the Platonic ideas); hence the spirit or soul, which the Malays call semangat, consequently flies. It is for this reason that the clay models of bullocks and other animals, which are offered at shrines, as I have seen in the Malay Peninsula, are broken before being offered. For the least fracture expels or destroys their semangat.

I will conclude with an account of "lightning" which I myself took down in 1899 from the Malays in Ulu Pahang, which, taken together with Mr. Scrivenor's account of the thunderbolt, I think should be sufficient to show that Malay ideas on the subject of storm phenomena are quite different in character to our own. The gist of the whole matter is, (as I hope immediately to show), that the thunderbolt or jar or other inert object, so long as it is uninjured, possesses a vitality of some sort; on the other hand, the Malay ideas about lightning suggest electricity.

"Lightning ascends from creatures on earth. All living creatures possess this lightning (which is so powerful that), if we are merely startled, our own lightning can be perceived by our foes. Lightning is of several different kinds:—

1. The elephants'-herd flash or elephants'-crowd flash, which has a very broad appearance [i.e. sheet lightning]; this is the kind of flash that ascends from a herd of elephants.

2. Bison lightning, which is greenish.

3. Tiger lightning, which is yellow.

All the foregoing are silent and have no thunder.