A curious Kelantan charm
J.D. Gimlette, writing in 1920 for the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, examines a talismanic belt recovered from the body of an unidentified Malay robber killed during a break-in in Kelantan in 1917. The article combines forensic description of the object’s physical components with ethnographic testimony from local police, a Siamese high priest, and Kelantan informants to assess the charm’s purported protective and criminal functions.
Summary
The belt was discovered concealed in the sarong of a man stabbed to death by Awang Tanda bin Salleh in the village of Pauh, Bacho’ district, on 26 May 1917. Gimlette, who received the object from Chief Inspector Jackson, provides a detailed physical account: a girdle of two twisted cords forming a central pouch, wrapped in orange calico dyed with jack-tree heartwood, and further encased in a long strip of white cloth whose inner surface bore Siamese inscriptions, numerals, and drawings. The talismans secured within included a wild boar’s tusk, several stones, a tuft of hair identified by police as chemara babi, and a fragment of copper pyrites.
The article’s central analytical interest lies in the hair tuft. Police and local witnesses described it as chemara babi—a charm associated with protection from weapons, induction of sleep in victims, and general daring. Gimlette, however, subjected the tuft to microscopic examination and found it to be human hair (75 microns in breadth), not the coarse vegetable fibres (225–300 microns) that constitute genuine chemara babi charms, which he had separately examined in Kota Baharu. This discrepancy prompted a range of local explanations: hair from an exhumed firstborn child, hair tangled by ghosts on a dying woman’s head, or a scalping trophy.
The Siamese inscriptions on the cloth were assessed by Chow Kiew, the high priest of the Siamese community in Kelantan, who dismissed the design as a spurious, commercially produced charm made by a Siamese “witch doctor” for a few dollars, with letters and figures taken haphazardly from sacred texts. The Police Magistrate Tengku Hassan noted that no reference to such a charm appeared in any original Malay book on charms and medicines he had consulted.
Key Findings
- The robber was killed on 26 May 1917 in Pauh village, Bacho’ district, Kelantan; the case resulted in the acquittal of Awang Tanda bin Salleh (p. 116).
- The belt’s central pouch originally contained a white stone; two additional stones or talismans were stolen from the court exhibit after the trial (p. 116).
- The chemara babi tuft in the belt measured 75 microns in breadth under microscopy, matching human hair, whereas two genuine chemara babi specimens examined in Kota Baharu measured 300 and 225 microns respectively (p. 118).
- A genuine chemara babi charm in Kota Baharu consisted of approximately thirty stiff dark palm fibres tied into a bundle about fifteen inches long, enclosed in a red cloth bag, and valued at more than fifty dollars (p. 118).
- The orange calico wrapping was dyed with a decoction of the heart of the jack-tree (Artocarpus integrifolia, Linn.) (p. 116).
- The Police Magistrate Tengku Hassan recorded that Kelantan informants described the charm as buntat (petrified stones from animal bodies) and that no reference to it appeared in any original Malay book on charms and medicines (p. 117).
Conclusion
Gimlette’s definitive takeaway is that the belt was a composite, probably fraudulent assemblage: the hair tuft was human rather than the vegetable-fibre chemara babi it was claimed to be, the stones were ordinary polished pebbles failing the native lime test for guliga, and the Siamese inscriptions were the work of a low-grade commercial practitioner rather than a learned monk. The object thus illustrates how talismanic authority in Kelantan could be manufactured and marketed to individuals engaged in criminal activity, drawing on a mixture of Malay, Siamese, and possibly apocryphal elements.
Context
- The article draws on a single police case file (accessed through Captain H.A. Anderson, Chief Police Officer of Kelantan) and direct physical examination of the object, supplemented by oral testimony from local informants and the Siamese high priest Chow Kiew (pp. 116–118).
- The piece sits within the early twentieth-century MBRAS tradition of collecting and cataloguing material culture encountered through colonial administrative contact, with Gimlette’s forensic-microscopic approach distinguishing it from purely descriptive ethnography of the period.