Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalof283018951897roya).pdf/144

 be regarded as the legitimate representative of the primitive "medicine-man" or "village sorcerer" and his very existence in these days is an anomaly, though it does not strike Malays as such.

Very often the office is hereditary, or at least the appointment is practically confined to the members of one family. Sometimes it is endowed with certain "properties" handed down from one Pawang to his successor, known as the kaběsâran, or, as it were, regalia. On one occasion I was nearly called upon to decide whether these adjuncts—which consisted, in this particular case, of a peculiar kind of head-dress—were the personal property of the person then in possession of them (who had got them from his father, a deceased Pawang) or were to be regarded as official insignia descending with the office in the event of the natural heir declining to serve! Fortunately I was spared the difficult task of deciding this delicate point of law, as I managed to persuade the owner to take up the appointment.

But quite apart from such external marks of dignity, the Pawang is a person of very real significance. In all agricultural operations, such as sowing, reaping, irrigation works, and the clearing of jungle for planting, in fishing at sea, in prospecting for minerals, and in cases of sickness, his assistance is invoked. He is entitled by custom to certain small fees: thus, after a good harvest, he is allowed, in some villages, five gantangs of padi, one gantang of rice (běras) and two chupaks of ĕmping (a preparation of rice and coco-nut made into a sort of sweetmeat) from each householder. After recovery from sickness, his remuneration is the very modest amount of tiga wang baharu, that is, 7 1/2 cents.

It is generally believed that a good harvest can only be secured by complying with his instructions, which are of a peculiar and comprehensive character.

They consist largely of prohibitions, which are known as pantang. Thus, for instance, it is pantang in some places to work in the rice-field on the 14th and 15th days of the lunar month; and this rule of enforced idleness being very congenial to the Malay character is, I believe, pretty strictly observed.