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Pawangs on the Frontier: Miracles, prophets, and divinities in the ricefields of modern Malaya

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 February 2019

TEREN SEVEA
TEREN SEVEA*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania Email: tsevea@sas.upenn.edu
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Abstract

This article unearths two Jawi manuscripts pertaining to Muslim miracle-workers, or pawangs, who were key intermediaries of agrarian change in the interior of modern Malaya. These compendia of frontier patois are analysed to recount a history of rice worlds and environments wherein forest clearing and rice cultivation were directly associated with the Islamic esoteric science (ilmu) of pawangs. As professional miracle-workers, pawangs were employed to spearhead a broad range of socio-economic activities in western Malaya. As pivots of cults joined by Malay peasants, pawangs were venerated as heirs of agrarian prophets and saints from earlier Islamic periods, and esteemed for their fertility rituals and miracles in contemporary forests and ricefields. This article analyses the elaborate Islamic genealogies of pawangs and popular historical traditions that were recorded in these texts, and investigates how these documents were informative about the religio-economic sensibilities of cultivators. This article also pays particular attention to how pawangs negotiated with a variety of Islamic and African spirits in Malayan forests, to lead forest clearing and rice production and to mobilize labourers. It further presents explorations into the social and spiritual cosmopolitanism of pawangs and peasants upon the modern Malay frontier, whose labour and connected histories are yet to be written.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , July 2019 , pp. 1106 - 1143
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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Footnotes

I would like to thank Barbara W. Andaya, Nile Green, Michael Laffan, Ronit Ricci, Samira Sheikh, and Tony K. Stewart, as well as anonymous reviewers of MAS, for their invaluable comments on drafts of this article.

References

1 For instance, a Malaccan imam Abdullah Al-Aydarus's 1892 epistle referred to the pawang as a male or female possessor of ilmu and the berkat (transferrable ‘blessing’ and power) of God, prophets, and divinities, and a key agent of penetrating porous, spiritual forests. Abdullah Al-Aydarus, Inilah Surat Imam Abdullah Al-Aydarus (Malacca, 1892). Manuscript housed at the Muhammad Hashim Collection, Kampung Kallang, Singapore.

2 Cited from Hale, Abraham, ‘On Mines and Miners in Kinta, Perak’, Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, JSBRAS, 16, 1885, pp. 303–304Google Scholar.

3 For instance, refer to Bottoms, J. C., ‘Malay Historical Works’ in Tregonning, K. G. (ed.) Malaysian Historical Sources, Dept. of History, University of Singapore, Singapore, 1962, pp. 36–38Google Scholar; Hussein, Ismail, The Study of Traditional Malay Literature, Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, Kementerian Pelajaran Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, 1974, p. 18Google Scholar; cited from Skinner, Cyril, ‘Transitional Malay Literature: Part 1 –Ahmad Rijaluddin and Munshi Abdullah’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde, 1978, pp. 470, 480–481Google Scholar; Skinner, C., Prosa Melayu baharu: An Anthology of Modern Malay and Indonesian Prose, Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1959Google Scholar.

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7 Cited from Hill, Rice in Malayac, pp. 94–95.

8 Maxwell was the Assistant Resident of Perak in 1876, and from 1878 to 1882, and was the most prolific contributor to the JSBRAS in the late nineteenth century. In an 1878 article on two Perak manuscripts, he stressed the urgency of obtaining information on ‘local traditions . . . customs and ceremonies’; see Maxwell, W., ‘Notes on Two Perak Manuscripts’ in Winstedt, R. O. and Wilkinson, R. J. (eds) A History of Perak, Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Singapore, 1934, p. 193Google Scholar.

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17 Ginzburg, Carlo, Threads and Traces: True False Fictive, trans. Tedeschi, Anne and Tedeschi, John, University of California Press, Berkley and Los Angeles, 2012, pp. 202, 213, 218, 222–223Google Scholar.

18 Ginzburg, Carlo, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller, trans. Tedeschi, Anne and Tedeschi, John, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1980, p. xxGoogle Scholar.

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21 Adas, Michael, The Burma Delta: Economic Development and Social Change on an Asian Rice Frontier, 1852–1941, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1964, p. 5Google Scholar.

22 I am also influenced here by the work of Quataert, Donald, Miners and the State in the Ottoman Empire: The Zonguldak Coalfield, 1822–1920, Berghahn Books, New York and Oxford, 2006, p. 18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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24 Eaton, ‘Who Are the Bengal Muslims?’, p. 271.

25 Ibid., p. 266.

26 Abdullah Pilleh, Darihal Pawang.

27 Skeat suggested instead that ‘hantu’ and ‘shetan’ were generic terms for ‘evil spirits’, Malay Magic, p. 101.

28 The analysed Malay materials mention ladang production and dry rice, and cultivation in marshes and sawah rice (wet rice). For a critique of this ‘dual typology’ that ‘remains entrenched in the literature’, see Hill, Rice in Malaya, p. 37.

29 For the association of prophets with agriculture in Bengali ‘mytho-historical’ literature, see Eaton, The Rise of Islam, p. 194; Ayesha Irani, ‘Sacred Biography, Translation, and Conversion: The “Nabivamsa” of Saiyad Sultan and the Making of Bengali Islam, 1600–present’, unpublished dissertation, UPenn, 2011, pp. 283–284.

30 The conversion of a marsh to wet ricefields (sawah) typically took three years. See C. H. A. Turney's 30 December 1891 ‘Report by the Senior District Officer, Klang, on Padi Cultivation’, Reports Furnished by Order of His Excellency the Governor upon the Best Means of Encouraging the Cultivation of Rice, p. 32.

31 Newbold, Thomas J., Political and Statistical Account of the British Settlements in the Straits of Malacca, Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur; Singapore, 1971, p. 61Google Scholar; Peletz, Michael G., A Share of the Harvest: Kinship, Property and Social History Among the Malays of Rembau, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988, pp. 15–18Google Scholar; Parr, C. W. C. and Mackray, W. H., ‘Rembau: One of the Nine States’, JSBRAS, 56, 1910, pp. 2–6Google Scholar; Hervey, Dudley F. A., ‘Rembau’, JSBRAS, 13, 1884, pp. 241–258Google Scholar.

32 For a discussion of the berpuar ceremony, see Winstedt, Richard O., ‘A Rice Ceremony’, JSBRAS, 77, December 1917, p. 249Google Scholar; Skeat, Malay Magic, p. 250; Abdullah, Dato Sedia Raja, ‘The Origin of the Pawang and Berpuar Ceremony’, JSBRAS, 2, November 1927, pp. 310–313Google Scholar. Also see Ibrahim, Norhalim, Adat Berpuar dan Pertahunan, Lembaga Muzium Negeri Sembilan, Seremban, 2007Google Scholar.

33 Andaya and Andaya, A History of Malaysia, pp. 40–41, 109–110.

34 Bankoff, Greg and Boomgaard, Peter, ‘Introduction: Natural Resources and the Shape of Asian History 1500–2000’ in Bankoff, Greg and Boomgaard, Peter (eds) A History of Natural Resources in Asia, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2007, pp. xv, 1–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Boomgaard, Peter and Henley, David, ‘Agricultural and Livestock Histories of Southeast Asia’ in Boomgaard, Peter and Henley, David (eds) Smallholders and Stockbreeders: Histories of Foodcrop and Livestock Farming in Southeast Asia, KITLV Press, Leiden, 2004, p. 5Google Scholar; Hill, R. D., ‘Towards a Model of the History of “Traditional” Agriculture in Southeast Asia’ in Boomgaard and Henley, Smallholders and Stockbreeders: Histories of Foodcrop and Livestock Farming in Southeast Asia, pp. 19–46Google Scholar; William G. Clarence-Smith, ‘Horse Breeding in Mainland Southeast Asia and Its Borderlands’ in Boomgaard and Henley, Smallholders and Stockbreeders, p. 203. Also see Clarence-Smith, William G., ‘Elephants, Horses, and the Coming of Islam to Northern Sumatra’, Indonesia and the Malay World, 32:93, July 2004, pp. 271–272CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 280–281.

35 See, for example, W. E. Maxwell, ‘Encouragement of Rice-Cultivation in the Malay Peninsula’ in Reports Furnished by Order of His Excellency, 1893, pp. 60–61; 1892 ‘Report on Padi Cultivation in the District of Kuala Langat, during 1891 [—] District Office Kuala Langat, Selangor’, Reports Furnished by Order of His Excellency the Governor, pp. 31–33.

36 Also cited from the 1888 Annual Report; refer to Gullick, ‘The Negri Sembilan Economy of the 1890s’, p. 46.

37 Newbold, Political and Statistical Account of the British Settlements, pp. 117–118; Newbold, Thomas J., ‘Account of Rumbowe, One of the States in the Interior of Malacca’ in Moor, J. H. (ed.) Notices of the Indian Archipelago and Adjacent Countries Being a Collection of Papers Relating to Borneo, Celebes, Bali, Java, Sumatra, Nias, the Philippine Islands, Sulus, Siam, Cochin China, Malayan Peninsula, etc., Singapore, 1937, pp. 62, 66Google Scholar; Hervey, ‘Rembau’, pp. 256–258; Hill, Rice in Malaya, p. 133. In the Minangkabau lands of Negri Sembilan, changkuls were in fact wielded by women. Also refer to Gullick, ‘The Negri Sembilan Economy of the 1890s’, p. 46.

38 Cited from Newbold, Political and Statistical Account of the British Settlements, pp. 1, 263; Marsden, William, The History of Sumatra, Longman, London, 1811, p. 66Google Scholar; Raffles, Thomas S., The History of Java, London, 1817, pp. 1, 118Google Scholar.

39 For instance, see sections related to the ilmu of massacring bees, hulat (caterpillar-like rice pest), and rats in Book of Charms Formerly Belonging to a Sultan Muda of Perak and Given to R. O. Winstedt by Raja Haji Yahya of Chendriang; manuscript housed at the School of Oriental and African Studies Library, 25027/2.

40 Abdullah Pilleh, Darihal Pawang, ‘Descent of the Pawang of Provenance’.

41 These keramats include the upstream ‘Dato Palong’, midstream ‘Dato Hulu Chembong’, and downstream ‘Menggam’. For a brief discussion of the pawang Idris of Sepri, see Winstedt, R. O., ‘Karamat: Sacred Places and People in Malaya’, JSBRAS, 2:3, December 1924Google Scholar.

42 Abdullah Pilleh's ‘origins’ are mentioned in the 1922 epistle and elaborated upon in a twentieth-century Tamil-Malay hagiography, Ghani, Abdul Kadir, Sepintas Riwayat Hidup Toh Abdullah Pilleh, Rembau, 1986. Also see Winstedt, ‘Karamat’, p. 277Google Scholar.

43 Materials include an 1887 manual of physiological and erotic instructions for the rice-producing mualad (creole, patrilineal descendants of the Prophet Muhammad), a manuscript housed at the Royal Asiatic Society, Malay 120; the unpublished 1892 and 1893 ethnographic notes of Blagden; and select late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Singapore Free Press articles. For records of Christian missionaries, see C. Leech's (State Commissioner of Lands) 28 April 1892 memo to ‘The Secretary to Government. Taiping’, Edward Gasnier's (Bishop of Malacca) 14 December 1891 memo to ‘Mr [H. C.] Belfield’ (Bishop House, Singapore), W. H. Treacher's 23 June 1892 memo to ‘The Hon. The Colonial Secretary, Straits Settlements’, Maxwell's ‘Encouragement of Rice-Cultivation in the Malay Peninsula’, W. H. Treacher's 1 April 1892 memo, L. P. Beaufort's (British Governor) 5 December 1891 memo to ‘W. H. Treacher, ESQ. C.M.G.’, and A. B. Stephens's (Assistant Indian Immigration Agent) 6 February 1892 memo to ‘The Secretary to Government, Taiping’, in Reports Furnished by Order of His Excellency the Governor upon the Best Means of Encouraging the Cultivation of Rice, pp. 5, 13–15, 19–20, 24–26, 65. Also see the 1889 autobiographical epistle of the Missions Etrangeres de Paris priest of a Tamil Roman Catholic wet rice colony in Krian (Perak), Fee, Fr., ‘Kampong Padre: A Tamil Settlement Near Bagan Serai, Perak’, trans. Fr Manikam, JSBRAS, 36:1, May 1963Google Scholar; Perak Government Gazette, Taiping [Perak], 1894, p. 38.

44 Hervey, ‘Rembau’, p. 256; Hill, Rice in Malaya, p. 127.

45 Eaton, ‘Who Are the Bengal Muslims’, p. 266.

46 The 1893 collection of Rice Reports comprises multiple mentions of Rembauan fields being ‘much better kept’ than Malaccan ones, and Rembauan land being ‘so thoroughly cultivated’; for instance, see Martin Lister (British Resident), ‘Report on the Promotion of Rice and Other Grain Seeds in the Confederated States of the Negri Sembilan’, Reports Furnished by Order of His Excellency the Governor upon the Best Means of Encouraging the Cultivation of Rice, p. 39. Also see Hervey, ‘Rembau’, p. 256.

47 Peletz, A Share of the Harvest, pp. 159, 320.

48 Abdullah, Dato Sedia Raja, ‘The Leading Saints in Rembau’, JSBRAS, 3:3, December 1925, p. 104Google Scholar; Abdullah, ‘The Origin of the Pawang and the Berpuar’, p. 313.

49 Abdullah, ‘The Origin of the Pawang and Berpuar Ceremony’, pp. 310–312.

50 Kitab Perintah Pawang. See ‘bab ini kata pada kemenyan tetkala akan memulakan menebas membuat ladang atau barang sebagainya’ and ‘Ini tangkal hujan panas atau pemadam panas’.

51 Khazeni, Arash, ‘Across the Black Sands and the Red: Travel Writing, Nature and the Reclamation of the Eurasian Steppe Circa 1850’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 42:04, November 2010, pp. 593–600Google Scholar.

52 Mikhail, Alan, Water on Sand: Environmental Histories of the Middle East and North Africa, Oxford University Press, New York, 2013, p. 9Google Scholar.

53 Kitab Perintah Pawang. See ‘bab ini kata pada kemenyan tetkala akan memulakan menebas membuat ladang atau barang sebagainya’.

54 ‘Order in [the Perak] Council No. 6 of 1890: Discouragement of Ladang Cultivation’, in Reports Furnished by Order of His Excellency (1893), pp. 22–23.

55 Ibid.; Kratoska, ‘Rice Cultivation and the Ethnic Division of Labor’, pp. 282, 292.

56 Hill, Rice in Malaya, p. 105.

57 ‘Order in [the Perak] Council No. 6 of 1890: Discouragement of Ladang Cultivation’, in Reports Furnished by Order of His Excellency (1893), pp. 22–23; Yah, Lim Chong, Economic Development of Modern Malaya, Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur, 1967, pp. 153–154Google Scholar; Hill, Rice in Malaya, p. 105. See Maxwell, W. E., ‘The Law and Customs of the Malays with Reference to the Tenure of Land’, JSBRAS, 13, 1884, pp. 75–78, 103–104Google Scholar.

58 Hill has excellently discussed ‘shifting cultivation’ in the Malay world by introducing Marsden's writings. As Hill highlighted, nineteenth-century European writings established ‘clearly the salient characteristics of rice cultivation, first in Sumatra, then in Java and the islands to the eastwards then, partly by implication, in the Peninsula’, Rice in Malaya, pp. 36–38; Marsden, The History of Sumatra, pp. 68–71.

59 Kitab Perintah Pawang. ‘bab ini kata pada kemenyan tetkala akan memulakan menebas membuat ladang atau barang sebagainya’, ‘bab ini kata kepada parang yang takukkan pada tanah tepung’, ‘bab ini kata kepada kemenyan tetkala akan membakar’, ‘ini kata tetkala membakar’, and ‘bab ini kata tetkala akal menugal’.

60 Shaw, G. E., ‘Malay Industries: Part 3: Rice Planting’, Papers on Malay Subjects, Federal Malay States Government Press, 1926, pp. 20–21Google Scholar. Maxwell refers to the semangat padi as the ‘Malayan Ceres’, ‘Encouragement of Rice-Cultivation in the Malay Peninsula’, Reports Furnished by Order of His Excellency the Governor upon the Best Means of Encouraging the Cultivation of Rice, p. 53.

61 Kitab Perintah Pawang. ‘Salasilah daripada Tengku Puan Jambi [. . .] menyatakan Asal Kejadian Pawang’.

62 Ibid.

63 The trope of gifting and inheritance of the mantle of to’ sheikh belantrawan appears to be evocative of Sufi literature pertaining to sheikhs handing over khirqas to appointed successors.

64 Kitab Perintah Pawang. For instance, see ‘Salasilah daripada Tengku Puan Jambi’, ‘bab ini jampi hantu kayu’, ‘bab ini kata tetkala menebang kayu anak pintu itu’, ‘ini kata kepada kemenyan akan penebat’, and ‘ini tangkal harimau’.

65 Kitab Perintah Pawang. For example, see ‘Ini tangkal hujan panas atau pemadam panas’, ‘Salasilah [transmitted by] Ngah Johor Andong’, and ‘bab ini jampi sakit kepala panah Ranjuna’. For the specific association of Adam with agriculture in Bengali ‘mytho-historical’ literature, see Eaton, The Rise of Islam, p. 194; Irani, ‘Sacred Biography’, pp. 283–284.

66 Shaw, ‘Malay Industries: Part 3: Rice Planting’, pp. 20–21. The trope of rice plants emerging from corpses and ‘bloody and murderous sacrifices’ is also evident in Sumatran, Javanese, and Rembong mytho-historical traditions; see Erb, Maribeth, ‘Cuddling the Rice: Myth and Ritual in the Agricultural Year of the Rembong of Northern Manggarai, Indonesia’, Contributions to Southeast Asian Ethnography, 10, 1994, p. 180Google Scholar; de Josselin de Jong, P. E., ‘An Interpretation of Agricultural Rites in Southeast Asia, with a Demonstration of Use of Data from Both Continental and Insular Areas’, The Journal of Asian Studies, 24:2, February 1965, pp. 284–285Google Scholar; Rappoport, Dana, ‘To Sing the Rice in Tanjung Bunga (Eastern Flores), Indonesia’, Austronesian Soundscapes: Performing Arts in Oceania and Southeast Asia, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2011, p. 110Google Scholar.

67 Maxwell, W. E., ‘Two Malay Myths: The Princess of the Foam, and the Raja of the Bamboo’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 13:4, October 1881, pp. 521–523CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68 Kitab Perintah Pawang. See Maxwell's note ‘Still in remote hamlets [. . .]’ attached to Kitab Perintah Pawang.

69 Maxwell, ‘Two Malay Myths’, p. 521.

70 Cited from Hill, Rice in Malaya, pp. 94–95.

71 For instance, refer to Dew, A. T., ‘Exploring Expedition from Selama, Perak, over the Mountains’, JSBRAS, 19, 1887, pp. 111–112Google Scholar, 114, 118, 121; Wray, Leonard, ‘Journal of a Collecting Expedition to the Mountain of Batang Padang’, JSBRAS, 21, June 1890, pp. 124Google Scholar, 126, 130, 137, 156; W. H. Treacher's 5 April 1892 memo to ‘The Colonial Secretary’, Reports Furnished by Order of His Excellency the Governor upon the Best Means of Encouraging the Cultivation of Rice, pp. 5–6.

72 James Rigby, ‘Law: Part II—The 99 Laws of Perak’ in Papers on Malay Subjects, Federal Malay States Government Press, Kuala Lumpur, 1908. Also see Untitled [Peraturan Resam Pawang Melayu] (Perak, Undated); manuscript housed at the School of Oriental and African Studies Library, London, MS40334. Moreover, refer to Winstedt, Richard, Shaman, Saiva and Sufi: A Study of the Evolution of Malay Magic, Constable, London, 1925, p. 143Google Scholar; Winstedt, Richard eventually romanized the Peraturan Resam Pawang Melayu and published it as ‘The Ritual of the Rice-Field’, JMBRAS, 7:3, October 1929Google Scholar.

73 Refer to the 12th, 29th, 59th, and 80th babs of Rigby, ‘Law: Part II—The 99 Laws of Perak’. The Straits Times articles suggest that this was a period when pawangs were remunerated in gantangs in comparison to cash by the mid-twentieth century; see ‘Editorial’, The Straits Times, 17 October 1954.

74 Peraturan Resam Pawang Melayu; Winstedt, ‘The Ritual of the Rice-Field’, p. 437.

75 Kitab Perintah Pawang. ‘bab ini kata kepada beras’.

76 Kitab Perintah Pawang. ‘bab ini kata kepada bertih’.

77 Kitab Perintah Pawang. ‘bab ini kata tetkala akan memula menebang ladang’ and ‘bab ini kata kepada tepung tawar’.

78 Kitab Perintah Pawang. ‘bab ini kata kepada parang yang takukkan pada tanah tepung’ and ‘ini kata tetkala akan mengayun beliong’.

79 Ibid.

80 See Skeat, Malay Magic, p. 256.

81 Kitab Perintah Pawang. See ‘bab ini sandaran dijampikan kepada kemenyan-kemenyan itu dibakar usapkan diri kita yang jadi pawang’ and ‘bab ini kata tetkala menarik tudung’.

82 Kitab Perintah Pawang. See ‘fasal ini menyatakan perintah genggulang’, ‘bab ini sandaran dijampikan kepada kemenyan-kemenyan itu dibakar usapkan diri kita yang jadi pawang’, and ‘bab ini kata tetkala akan mengisi genggulang’. The ‘Salasilah daripada Tengku Puan Jambi’ mentions the tradition of historical pawangs such as Chulan, Rambaian, and Jamuna to ‘appease’ the ‘hovering’ great-great grandchildren of Noah via genggulangs. For the chronicle of Chulan, see ‘Alqisah [2]’ and ‘Alqisah [3]’ Text of Raffles Ms. No. 18, romanized by Abdul Rahman Haji Ismail, compiled by Cheah Boon Keng, in Sejarah Melayu: The Malay Annals—MBRAS Reprint 17, Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Kuala Lumpur, circa 1998.

83 See Diana Espírito Santo and Ruy Blanes's ‘Introduction: On the Agency of Intangibles’, Grégory Delaplace's ‘What the Invisible Looks Like: Ghosts, Perceptual Faith, and Mongolian Regimes of Communication’, Florencia C. Tola's ‘The Materiality of “Spiritual Presences” and the Notion of Person in an Amerindian Society’, Harris, Mark’s ‘Enchanted Entities and Disenchanted Lives along the Amazon Rivers, Brazil’ in Blanes, Ruy and Santo, Diana Espírito (eds) The Social Life of Spirits, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2014, pp. 6, 25, 67, 71, 83Google Scholar.

84 Andaya and Andaya, A History of Malaysia, pp. 12, 48, 136–137.

85 Cited from Swettenham, F. A., ‘Journey . . . from Durien Sebatang on the Perak River to Slim, and Down the Slim and Bernam Rivers to the Sea’, JSBRAS, 5, June 1880, pp. 65–66Google Scholar.

86 Cited from ibid., pp. 65–66; Maxwell, W. E., ‘A Journey on Foot to the Patani Frontier in 1876: Being a Journal Kept During an Expedition Undertaken to Capture Datoh Maharaja Lela of Perak’, JSBRAS, 9, June 1882, p. 26Google Scholar.

87 For instance, the ‘Descent of the Pawang of Provenance’ highlights that Pawang Dris, in the ninth year of office, made an oath to the ‘ghaib [unseeable] people’ to not discard the berpuar ceremony; see Darihal Pawang. For a concise account of pawangs’ ‘spirit friends’ in the Peninsula, see Abidin, Zainal, ‘The Akuan or Spirit Friends’, JSBRAS, 86, November 1922, pp. 378–384Google Scholar.

88 Unnamed Perak headmen, Peraturan Resam.

89 These included Earth jinns, bhutas (gigantic fire beings), Earth gnomes (jembalang bumi), and female banshees (langsuyir). Unnamed Perak headmen, Peraturan Resam. Also see Maxwell, W. E., ‘Folklore of the Malays’, JSBRAS, 7, June 1881, p. 28Google Scholar.

90 Perham, Rev. J., ‘Petara, or Sea Dyak Gods’, JSBRAS, 8, December 1881, pp. 134–136, 138, 141–147, 149Google Scholar; also see Wilkinson, R. J., ‘Batara Guru’, JSBRAS, 30, July 1897, p. 307Google Scholar.

91 Kitab Perintah Pawang. Refer to ‘Salih daripada Ngah Johor Andong’ and ‘ini kelaminnya [the supplement the Salih]’.

92 This section elaborated upon how the primodial pawangs’ act of ‘breaking the cylinder of essence’ (baluh dzat) to create the Earth had a side effect—the ‘beginning of the hantu shetan’s roaming of the earth’.

93 Kitab Perintah Pawang. Refer to ‘Salih daripada Ngah Johor Andong’ and ‘ini kelaminnya’. According to Skeat, Siva had ‘numerous manifestations and titles attributed to him by the Malays’ including Batara Guru and Batara Kala (Skeat translates the epithet of Siva, Kala, as ‘Black’ instead of ‘Time’, perhaps inaccurately); see Malay Magic, pp. 85–92. The ‘main deity of Perak’, Batara Guru, along with the Muslim armies of Batara Kala and Batara Sakti (seemingly confused by ethnographers including Skeat as both the divinity Brahma and divinity Sakti) are often indistinguishable in the Kitab as bataras and as the ‘historical pawangs of the land’ produced through the loins of the dry rice pioneer, Noah; see ‘Salasilah daripada Tengku Puan Jambi’.

94 This was done through summoning the spiritual ‘rajas of the great virgin forests [—] recently felled forests and ricefields’. Kitab Perintah Pawang. See ‘Salih daripada Ngah Johor Andong’.

95 Kitab Perintah Pawang. See ‘bab ini kata kepada parang yang takukkan pada tanah tepung’ and ‘ini katakan kepada Parang Penako’ itu’.

96 Kitab Perintah Pawang. The ‘bab ini kata tetkala akan menugal dikatakan kepada kemenyan’, the ‘bab ini kata kepada bertih’, the ‘ini kata kepada beneh’, the ‘kataan kepada kemenyan’, and the ‘Perintah semangat teriak Itam Dembut . . . ini kata mengambil semangat’.

97 These peasants were regularly described as the ‘anak chuchu raiat tentera’.

98 Kitab Perintah Pawang. ‘bab ini kata tetkala akan menugal dikatakan kepada kemenyan’ and ‘ini kata kepada beras’.

99 Kitab Perintah Pawang. ‘bab ini kata tetkala akan menugal dikatakan kepada kemenyan’ and ‘ini kata kepada beras’.

100 Kitab Perintah Pawang. See ‘ini kata kepada beneh’; Crawfurd, John, History of the Indian Archipelago: Containing an Account of the Manners, Arts, Languages, Religions, Institutions, and Commerce of its Inhabitants, A. Constable and Co., Edinburgh, 1820, pp. 360–363Google Scholar.

101 Kitab Perintah Pawang. ‘Perintah semangat teriak Itam Dembut . . . ini kata mengambil semangat’. The collective of pawangs collaborate to return the semangat to the ‘storage womb of the kalimah’ (lailahalilallah muhammadrasulallah) and to ‘Sadia Kala’. Such semangat-friendly methods included clipping rice with the tuai (tiny reaping knife concealable in the palm of a hand) instead of sickle-harvesting.

102 ‘Alqisah [5]’ Text of Raffles Ms. No. 18, in Cheah, Sejarah Melayu, pp. 96–104.

103 These included the residents of ravine valleys, the forest polong, and the red snake-appearing resident of timber, penanggalan. Jinns, fairies, mambangs (lesser divinities), dewas, Chandra, and Indra are also described in portions of the Kitab as descendants of the historical ‘Imam Jamala’ vis-à-vis the rebellious Jan, the predecessor of Iblis. See Kitab Perintah Pawang. ‘Salasilah daripada Tengku Puan Jambi’.

104 This ghaib letter of agreement was a surat muapakat. Kitab Perintah Pawang. See ‘bab ini kata pada kemenyan tetkala akan memulakan menebas membuat ladang atau barang sebagainya’.

105 Kitab Perintah Pawang. See ‘bab ini dikata dahulu daripada berlaung’. This disruptive image of spiritual anak rajas is accentuated in sections of the Kitab, and is similar to the image of ‘actual’ anak rajas in late nineteenth-century Perak that we find in historiography. For instance, see Andaya, B. W., Perak, the Abode of Grace: A Study of an Eighteenth Century Malay State, Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur, 1979, p. 31Google Scholar. Also refer to the British Resident, Birch, J. W. W.’s ‘Report on Perak, 2 April 1875’ in Burns, P. L. (ed.) The Journals of J. W. W. Birch, First British Resident to Perak, 1874–1875, Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur and New York, 1976, pp. 390–391Google Scholar.

106 Kitab Perintah Pawang. See ‘bab ini dikata dahulu daripada berlaung’.

107 Kitab Perintah Pawang. ‘bab ini kata tetkala akan menugal dikatakan kepada kemenyan’. Also see ‘bab ini kata tetkala akan mengisi genggulang’ and ‘bab ini kata kepada parang yang takukkan pada tanah tepung’. I am grateful to the pawangs, Muhammad Hashim, M. A. Ridhwan, and Abas Ali Al-Aydarus, for sharing demonologies of the Sumatran-African spirit.

108 Kitab Perintah Pawang. ‘bab ini kata kepada kemenyan tetkala akan membakar’, ‘bab ini kata tetkala akan menugal dikatakan kepada kemenyan’, ‘bab ini kata tetkala akan mengisi genggulang’, and ‘bab ini kata kepada parang yang takukkan pada tanah tepung’. The rice ‘child’ is called the Seri mani (a reference to the Ceres-like divinity, Seri, and sperm, mani).

109 Kitab Perintah Pawang. See ‘bab ini kata kepada kemenyan akan melambas tanah dan hantu hutan’, ‘bab ini perkataan memberi kepala nasi’, and ‘ini kelaminnya [the supplement, to Salih daripada Ngah Johor Andong]’.

110 Cited from Hamilton, R. A. W., ‘The Boria’, JSBRAS, 82, 1920, pp. 142–143Google Scholar.

111 See ibid., pp. 142–143; Maxwell's, W. E. mention of ‘Abdi’ in Perak consisting of ‘Habshi [East African] Slaves and Their Descendants’ in ‘The Law Relating to Slavery among the Malays’, JSBRAS, 22, 1890, p. 254Google Scholar; and Winstedt, R. O.’s ‘The Perak Genies’, JSBRAS, 7:3, 1929, pp. 460–466Google Scholar.

112 Basu, Helene, ‘Drumming and Praying: Sidi at the Interface Between Spirit Posession and Islam’ in Simpson, Edward and Kresse, Kai (eds) Struggling with History: Islam and Cosmopolitanism in the Western Indian Ocean, Columbia University Press, New York, 2008, pp. 303–304Google Scholar. Also see Lewis, Ioan M., Religion in Context Religion in Context Cults and Charisma, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 140–145Google Scholar. For an exploration of the interweaving relationships of spirit cults in Bihar and labour relations and the articulation of ‘bondage’, refer to Prakash, Gyan, Bonded Histories: Genealogies of Labor Servitude in Colonial India, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 1990CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

113 Andaya and Andaya, A History of Malaysia, pp. 27, 47, 64, 81–82, 86.

114 Kitab Perintah Pawang. See ‘bab ini tangkal menyelibehkan hantu ayer dan berjamu dia’, ‘sempena hantu bhuta’, ‘bab ini jampi bhuta’, ‘bab ini kata pada kemenyan tetkala akan memulakan menebas membuat ladang atau barang sebagainya’, ‘sempena hujan panas Imam Shamsulddin’, ‘bab ini jampi hujan panas atau ayer sireh’, ‘ini tangkal hujan panas atau pemadam panas’, ‘ini pemadam panas’, and ‘ini jampi [unclear] atau pemadam panas’.

115 See Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, ‘Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia’, Modern Asian Studies, 31:3, July 1997, pp. 735–762CrossRefGoogle Scholar.