The sinicization of Malay keramats in Malaysia
Cheu Hock Tong, writing from the National University of Singapore, published this study in the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1998 to document how Chinese communities in Malaysia adopted and reinterpreted the Malay keramat (saint shrine) tradition as the Datuk Kong or Nadugong cult. The article’s overarching thesis is that this process of “sinicization” functions as a model of inter-religious relations and cross-cultural accommodation in multiethnic, multireligious Malaysia, operating through reinterpretation and reintegration rather than simple assimilation (pp. 29–31).
Summary
The article addresses a gap left since Richard Winstedt’s foundational 1924 classification of keramat sites and persons into six categories, arguing that the phenomenon has received insufficient scholarly attention relative to its cultural significance (pp. 29–31). Tong traces the concept of keramat from its Arabic root karamah (referring to the wali, a close friend of God) through its Malay folk adaptation, which blends Sufi Islamic mysticism with pre-Islamic animistic and naturistic beliefs in spirit beings, ancestor veneration, and the sanctification of natural objects such as rocks, trees, and earth mounds (pp. 31–34). He demonstrates that the practice persists despite official Islamic opposition, drawing on his own field surveys in Malaysia (1990–1993) and Singapore (1995–1998) to refute earlier claims that keramat-worship had effectively ceased among Malays (pp. 34–35).
The central analytical move is to show how Chinese settlers, beginning with the Straits-born Peranakan and accelerating after the May 13, 1969 riots, incorporated the Malay keramat into their own locality-deity framework. The Datuk Kong shrine adopts the organizational format of traditional Chinese locality deities such as Tudigong (Earth Grandpa) and Dabogong (Local Great Saint), while the object of veneration remains the Malay or native spirit being (pp. 35–37, 44–45). Tong documents the historical development of this syncretism through a periodized table showing the evolution from exposed natural mounds in the pre-colonial era to full-sized concrete temples with organizing committees, political patrons, and tourist promotion by the 1990s (p. 46). He further argues that the symbolic logic of the earth mound—representing the mountain, the phallus, and the microcosm of the macrocosm—finds parallel expressions in Chinese earth-deity worship, Hindu linga-yoni cults, Japanese mountain divinities, and Aboriginal Australian snake-cult mounds, suggesting a deep structural commonality across these traditions (pp. 47–54).
Tong’s argument is informed by his own extensive fieldwork: a preliminary survey of the Datuk Kong between 1977 and 1979 (conducted alongside his dissertation research on the Nine Emperor Gods cult), followed by a dedicated survey of approximately three hundred shrines and interviews with some three hundred and fifty Chinese respondents between 1982 and 1988, supplemented by Malay and Indian key informants (pp. 39–40). A detailed comparative study of Malay- and Chinese-style Nadugong rituals in two Datuk Acheh Temples in Penang was published separately in 1989 (p. 40).
Key Findings
- The ratio of Datuk Kong shrines to Chinese houses was 1:10 in villages and 1:100 in towns in the late 1970s; by the early 1990s this had shifted to 1:500 in new housing estates and 1:1000 in urban centres, reflecting the cult’s migration from rural to urban settings (p. 41).
- In Tawau, Sabah, black fowls used for sacrificial rituals before major lumbering, mining, and construction projects fetched between RM100 (US$40) and RM1000 (US$400) each due to the difficulty of obtaining wholly black specimens (p. 42).
- The earth mounds central to the cult typically measure two to three feet high by two to three feet in diameter, though some in Penang, Kedah, and Perak reach five to six feet; they are in fact colonies of giant termites (Macrotermes carbonarius, M. malaccensis, M. gilvus, M. ghmadi), not supernatural entities (pp. 47–48).
- On Pulau Besar off Malacca, the number of keramat shrines maintained by Malays rose from nine to fourteen in the 1980s, with a forecast increase to 44, contradicting claims that the practice was dying out (p. 50).
- Full-sized Datuk Kong temples constructed during the New Economic Policy era include the Stone Datuk Temple at Broga, Selangor (two acres, with plans to expand by a further three acres), the Datuk Kong Temple at Tuaran, Sabah (one acre), and the Datuk Acheh Temple at Jalan Weston, Penang (less than one acre) (p. 56).
- The invocation of Tangfan Nadugong became common only after the May 13, 1969 riots; before that date, most shrines were based on natural earth outgrowths with minimal structure, and the construction of dedicated shrines was rare (pp. 45–46).
Conclusion
Tong concludes that the sinicization of the Malay keramat is a circular, horizontal, and involutionary process in the Geertzian sense: while the cult has expanded spatially, become more elaborate in organization and architectural design, and facilitated inter-dialect and inter-ethnic contact, it has produced no substantive upgrading of religious or philosophical ideas (p. 57). The paradox he identifies is that the keramat cult is declining among Muslims under the pressure of the Dakwah movement while simultaneously gaining ascendancy among non-Muslim communities, with Chinese devotees believing they are performing a civic duty by maintaining shrines that the Malays have abandoned (pp. 54–55).
Context
- The study draws primarily on the author’s own ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah, and Singapore between 1977 and 1998, supplemented by Malay and Indian key informants; it does not rely on a single archival collection but synthesizes oral histories, shrine observations, and secondary literature.
- Historiographically, the article extends Winstedt’s 1924 typology by shifting the analytical focus from the Malay keramat as an object of study to its reception and transformation within Chinese folk religion, thereby contributing to the literature on religious syncretism and locality cults in Southeast Asia.