Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalof283018951897roya).pdf/139

 NOTES ON THE FOLK-LORE AND POPULAR RELIGION OF THE MALAYS.

HE folk-lore and the popular religious beliefs and practices of any race form a wide subject which it is hardly possible to compress within the limits of a short paper. I do not propose here to give a complete survey of the subject, but merely to offer a few notes illustrating the general character of Malay ideas and customs under this head so far as they have come within my own personal observation.

A good deal has been written on these matters, and amongst other papers I would refer particularly to that by Mr. W. E. MAXWELL, which appeared in the seventh number of the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, in 1881. The chief point made in that paper is the thoroughly non-Muhammadan character of many of the common Malay beliefs and practices. That characteristic is also perhaps the only one that I can claim to illustrate.

Malays in the country districts are in fact only superficially Muhammadan. It is true they often carry out all the ritual precepts of that religion: many of them pray the required number of times daily, most attend the Mosque with decent regularity on Fridays, and a fair proportion (but by no means all) keep the fast of Ramadhan. But to their Muhammadan observances they superadd a good many practices which, from the Muhammadan point of view, are at least unorthodox, in fact almost pagan, and which can often be traced to a heathen origin.

For instance, although officially the religious centre of the village community is the Mosque, there is usually in every