Malay beliefs. {In Papers on Malay customs and beliefs
R.J. Wilkinson’s Papers on Malay Customs and Beliefs (1957), published in the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, is a sweeping ethnographic monograph that examines the layered religious beliefs, cosmology, and life-cycle customs of the Peninsular Malay in the mid-twentieth century. Wilkinson’s central argument is that Malay religious life constitutes a palimpsest of successive faiths—animist, Hindu, Buddhist, and Muhammadan—each stratum preserved beneath the next, so that the average Malay simultaneously professes Islam while practising rites of far older origin under a thin veneer of orthodoxy.
Summary
Wilkinson opens by establishing that the Malay approach to religion differs fundamentally from the Western model. Where a European may treat theology as one branch of knowledge among several, the Malay regards it as the key to all science, morality, and civilisation; consequently, Islam functions less as a creed than as a “quasi-political force” and “militant brotherhood” to which the Malay is proud to belong (pp. 3–5). The Five Pillars of Islam are theoretically paramount but unevenly observed: the daily prayers are neglected, yet abstinence from pork is treated with far greater seriousness than the ritual obligations that theoretically outweigh it (p. 7). Wilkinson notes that no Pillar is ethical in character, and that the ethical standard of a Muhammadan country is “national, not religious” (p. 7).
The bulk of the work then surveys the spirit-world as the Malay conceives it. Wilkinson identifies four classes of supernatural beings: the vengeful souls of the prematurely dead (including the langsuyar, pontianak, and penanggalan); the gods and demons of successive foreign religions (Hindu deities such as Siva/Betara Guru, Kala, and Sri persisting alongside Moslem jinn); spirits generated from natural phenomena (echoes, will-o’-the-wisps, the rainbow as celestial serpent); and demons created at the will of magicians from the products of childbirth (pp. 10–16). Beneath these strata lie the oldest Indonesian divinities: the four Spirits of the Sea (of Bays, Banks, Headlands, and Tideways) and the “Black Youth” or “Black Spirit,” King of the Earth, who represent the gods of an aboriginal race whose blood still runs in the veins of the Malays (p. 14).
The final sections turn to life-cycle customs—birth, childhood, betrothal, marriage, adult economic life, sickness, and death—and to Wilkinson’s concluding historical analysis. He argues that Malay ceremonial is “a museum of dead customs kept up for the benefit of the dead” (p. 74): the Malay does not exchange old practices for new but adds the new to the old, preserving each as a mere formality to appease the ghostly majesty of ancient lawgivers. The bersanding (enthronement) at a wedding, for instance, is not a marriage rite at all but a dramatisation of royalty inherited from the old Palembang tradition, while the simple Moslem marriage contract is treated as a mere legalising form (pp. 59–60, 77). Wilkinson closes with a melancholy assessment of British colonial impact: the Malay is “becoming less of a Malay and more of a Mussulman,” his national ceremonies discarded, his racial laws set aside, and his allegiance transferring from local Sultans to Pan-Islamic ideals (p. 40).
Key Findings
- The Malay demonology is composed of distinct historical strata: a Moslem upper layer (Persian and Arab jinn), a Hindu middle layer (Siva, Kala, Sri, Indra, Ganesha), and a primeval Indonesian base (the four Sea Spirits and the Black Youth of the land), the latter representing the gods of an aboriginal race (pp. 13–14).
- The pawang (wizard) is the lineal representative of the old priests of Siva; his office is hereditary, he possesses regalia, and he appeals directly to Betara Guru, yet the word pawang itself predates Hinduism and belongs to a still older creed (pp. 38–39).
- In Perak, a separate spiritual Sultanate exists alongside the secular one: the Sultan Muda rules over the Spirits of the Land, presides over a ghostly court numbering spirits from all religions, and may never succeed to the secular throne; his fee for conducting a royal berhantu ceremony is $100 (pp. 69–70).
- A 1907 agricultural experiment in Krian demonstrated that Banjarese native methods yielded 366 gantang per acre (the best result), while imported Ceylon seed produced a “complete fiasco,” confirming that local ryot knowledge was superior to European agricultural science (p. 64).
- Cremation was practised by the Malacca Malays in the first half of the fifteenth century (attested by Chinese navigators), and tree-burial survives in the Northern States for those who die a “bad” death, indicating that Islam overlaid Hinduism in the South and Buddhism in the North (pp. 75–76).
- The Malay possesses over 500 names for fish and over 500 for birds, with both generic and specific nomenclature that in several cases (e.g., the distinction between tragulus napu and tragulus pygmaeus) accords with modern zoological classification (p. 30).
Conclusion
Wilkinson’s definitive historical takeaway is that Malay ceremonial life is best understood as an unlabelled museum in which each exhibit retains its form but has lost its meaning to the living practitioner. The Malay preserves old rites not from love or comprehension but from fear of the vengeance of their creators; he keeps the old while adopting the new, so that a painted elephant still follows a motor-car at a rajah’s installation (p. 60). This conservatism, Wilkinson argues, is the single most important key to interpreting Malay custom: it explains why the simple Moslem marriage contract is surrounded by an elaborate mass of pre-Islamic survivals, why the pawang persists alongside the imam, and why the solar agricultural calendar continues to operate in parallel with the lunar Moslem year. The work is ultimately a plea for the urgent recording of these customs before the “disintegrating influence of modern improvements” renders them beyond recovery (p. 78).
Context
- This monograph was published in the JMBRAS at a time when the Society was serving as the principal repository for ethnographic documentation of Malay life; Wilkinson, a senior colonial administrator in Perak, drew on decades of direct observation as well as the archival holdings of the Society.
- The work builds on and frequently cites the earlier scholarship of W.W. Skeat (Malay Magic, 1911–1913) and Snouck Hurgronje (The Achehnese, 1899–1900), positioning itself as a synthesis and update of the foundational literature on Malay religion and custom produced for the colonial administration.