Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalof283018951897roya).pdf/149

 service, and offers curious analogies with the sacrificial ceremonials of some of the wild aboriginal tribes of Central India, who have not been converted to Hinduism or Islam. That it should exist in a Malay community within twenty miles of the town of Malacca, where Muhammadanism has been established for about six centuries, is certainly strange. Its obvious inconsistency with his professed religion does not strike the average Malay peasant at all. It is, however, the fact that these observances are not regarded with much favour by the more strictly Muhammadan Malays of the towns and especially by those that are partially of Arab descent. These latter have not very much influence in country districts, but privately I have heard some of them express disapproval of such rites and even of the ceremonies performed at kramats. According to them, the latter might be consistent with Muhammadan orthodoxy on the understand- ing that prayers were addressed solely to the Deity: but the invocation of spirits or deceased saints and their propitiation by offerings could not be regarded as otherwise than polytheistic idolatry. Of course such a delicate distinction—almost as subtle as that between dulia and latria in the Christian worship of saints-is entirely beyond the average Malay mind; and everything is sanctioned by immemorial custom, which in an agricultural population is more deeply rooted than any book-learning; so these rites are likely to continue. for some time and will only yield gradually to the spread of education. Such as they are, they seem to be interesting relics of an old-world superstition.

I have mentioned only a few such points and only such as have been brought directly to my knowledge: there are hosts of other quaint notions, such as the theory of lucky and unlucky days and hours, on which whole treatises have been written, and which regulate every movement of those who believe in them; the belief in amulets and charms for averting all manner of evils, supernatural and natural; the practice during epidemics of sending out to sea small elaborately constructed vessels which are supposed to carry off the malignant spirits responsible for the disease (of which I remember