The tiger-breed families
Zainal Abidin bin Ahmad’s short note documents the belief among certain families in Jempul, Malacca, that their deceased members transform into tigers after burial.
Summary
The article describes the full cycle of the transformation: tigers gather around the house of a dying family member, the corpse is carried to the forest after burial, and a new tiger appears bearing the physical marks and gait of the dead person, recognisable by name. Ahmad illustrates the belief with two personal anecdotes—one involving his grandmother calling a dead friend named Faseh to drive off buffaloes, and another in which a woman’s dream of her wounded brother is confirmed by the discovery of a tiger killed by a spring-gun with a matching chest wound (pp. 37–38). He also notes that these family-tigers visit relatives during Hari Raya and feast in kitchens, and identifies two particularly revered graveyards, Kubor Nesan and Kubor Leban, as sources of Harimau Keramat under the lordship of Dato Paroi of Gunong Angsi (pp. 38–39). The note closes by distinguishing these post-mortem transformations from the were-tiger belief (harimau jadi-jadian) attributed to the Korinchi of Sumatra, where the power is indicated by the absence of the philtrum (p. 39).