Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalof283018951897roya).pdf/143

 the Pawang was duly called upon to exorcize it, and under his superintendence the tree was cut down, after which there was no more trouble. But it is certain that it would have been excessively dangerous for an ordinary layman to do so.

This point may be illustrated by a case which was reported. to me soon after it occurred and which again shows the intimate connection of spirits with trees. A Javanese coolie, on the main road near Ayer Panas, cut down a tree which was known to be occupied by a hantu. He was thereupon seized with what from the description appears to have been an epileptic fit and showed all the traditional symptoms of demoniac possession. He did not recover till his friends had carried out the directions of the spirit (speaking through the sufferer's mouth, it seems), viz., to burn incense, offer rice and release a fowl. After which the hantu left him.

In many places there are trees which are pretty generally believed to be the abodes of spirits, and not one Malay in ten would venture to cut one down, while most people would hardly dare to go near one after dark. On one occasion an exceptionally intelligent Malay, with whom I was discussing the terms on which he proposed to take up a contract for clearing the banks of a river, made it an absolute condition that he should not be compelled to cut down a particular tree which overhung the stream, on the ground that it was a "spirit" tree. That tree had to be excluded from the contract.

The accredited intermediary between men and spirits is the person who has already been referred to several times as the Pawang: the Pawang is a functionary of great and traditional importance in a Malay village, though in places near towns the office is falling into abeyance. In the inland districts, however, the Pawang is still a power, and is regarded as part of the constituted order of society, without whom no village community would be complete. It must be clearly understood. that he has nothing whatever to do with the official Muham- madan religion of the Mosque: the village has its regular staff of elders—the Imam, Khatib and Bilal—for the Mosque service. But the Pawang is quite outside this system, and belongs to a different and much older order of ideas; he may