Article

Witchcraft

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Witchcraft

Scope and Historical Definition

The practice of witchcraft in the Malay Peninsula and Borneo, as documented in the published record, encompasses a range of supernatural techniques employed for purposes both criminal and protective, characterised by a distinctive fusion of Islamic formulae, spirit invocation, and practical folk magic. The available evidence, while limited in breadth, reveals a tradition that was sufficiently widespread to attract the attention of colonial administrators, missionaries, and ethnographers from the 1890s through the 1930s, and that operated across a spectrum from the domestic management of childhood illness to the armed protection of a professional burglar. The term ilmu jahat (literally “black art” or “evil knowledge”) was used by A.E. Coope in 1933 to designate the specific corpus of criminal sorcery he transcribed from a Kelantan manuscript, but the broader phenomenon extended well beyond the criminal context into the realm of popular belief, community coercion, and millenarian religious movements [1, p. 264].

The Pawang and the Polong

The earliest of the three surviving records addresses the role of the Pawang (a Malay term for a ritual specialist or sorcerer) in the context of the Polong, a spirit believed to afflict children. H. Marriott, writing in 1903, described a self-reinforcing logic of belief in which the Pawang exploited community fear to extract payment on the threat of bewitching children. If a person was thought to have offended the Pawang, the next illness in the household would be attributed to supernatural causation, ruling out ordinary remedies in favour of incantations alone. Marriott observed that the outcome for the patient was predictable: a young child in high fever, already familiar with the Polong narrative, would naturally give answers that confirmed the family’s suspicions [2, p. 210]. This account, though brief, illuminates the social mechanics by which witchcraft beliefs were sustained within a community, functioning less as a matter of individual credulity than as a system of mutual coercion in which the threat of supernatural retribution enforced social conformity and generated a market for ritual services.

Criminal Sorcery: The Kelantan Manuscript

The most substantial single document in the published record is the pocket book of ilmu jahat transcribed and translated by A.E. Coope, a Malayan Civil Service officer, in 1933. The manuscript was recovered from the belongings of a celebrated Kelantan burglar who, after a successful burglary in Kota Baharu, was making for the Trengganu border when he was challenged by a detective. During the ensuing scuffle, in which the detective’s pistol missed fire, the criminal dropped certain bundles containing stolen property and, among his own belongings, the pocket book [1, p. 264].

The book contained three ketika (lists of lucky and unlucky times), a list of days of ill omen, three invocations to evil spirits for help in burglary (sekol), a bullet charm (pengunchi peluru), and a diagram of what Coope described as a “bad luck compass” called by Malays bintang chelaka (star of misfortune) [1, p. 264]. Coope noted that there was nothing intrinsically criminal about the first four items or about the bintang chelaka, but that the invocations and bullet charms had an obviously criminal intent besides being blasphemous. He observed that the documents displayed “that mixture of orthodox religion and prayer to evil spirits which is universally common in the black art,” and that they shared a common characteristic of being somewhat obscure in detail, an obscurity due partly to corruptions in the text and partly to the fact that professors of the art were apt to conceal the commonplace in resounding abracadabras [1, p. 264].

The ketika prescribed specific preparatory actions before going out on each day of the week: on Sunday one was to wash one’s face in water; on Monday to lie down a while; on Tuesday to drink water; on Wednesday to have a meal; on Thursday to sprinkle ashes; on Friday to sport awhile; and on Saturday to ensure that the breath came more strongly from the right nostril [1, pp. 264–265]. A second set of ketika governed the times of going out at night, dividing the evening into three periods corresponding to fowls’ roosting time, children’s bedtime, and adults’ sleeping time, and assigning to each a different degree of fortune or danger depending on the day of the week [1, pp. 265–266]. A third set specified the fortune or misfortune attendant on going out at dawn, sun-up, midday, afternoon, or evening on each day, with the recurring formula “If Almighty God pleases” appended to most entries [1, pp. 266–268].

The list of days of great ill-omen (nahas akbar) identified ten specific dates in the Islamic calendar: the 28th of Muharram, the 10th of Safar, the 4th of Rabi-al-awal, the 28th of Rabi-al-akhir, the 22nd of Jamad-al-awal, the 20th of Jamad-al-akhir, the 12th of Rajab (designated nahas akhbar, “great ill-omen”), the 20th of Sha’ban, the 27th of Ramthan, and the 28th of Zu’l-Ka’dah [1, p. 268].

The three burglary invocations (sekol) were addressed to the Royal Jins of Islam, the Seven Brethren, and the Mighty Powers of the Seven Worlds or Seven Heavens. The invocations called upon these spirits to close the seven senses and lock the nine doors of a named victim, to press down upon the victim’s liver, heart, kidneys, lungs, and gall, and to render the victim as dead as a corpse in the grave [1, pp. 268–270]. Coope noted that the numbers three, seven, and nine, especially seven, carried mystic potency, and drew a comparison with the witches of Macbeth [1, p. 270].

The bullet charm (pengunchi peluru) was addressed to the Hantu Raya (Great Demon), which Coope identified as consisting of three persons or having three manifestations, namely Landi, Landak, and Daim. The charm invoked the demon in the formula “Father of the jungle, Mother of the sea, Son of the plain,” and threatened that if one of the three was named, the other two would disappear. It then turned to the gun itself: “Ho Gun, don’t shoot me, I adjure you! I know your origin, Bullet of lead! Eye of the Lord God. Bullet of the Thunder! Black of the Eye of God!” [1, pp. 270–271].

The bintang chelaka operated on a thirty-day cycle corresponding to the days of the Islamic month. Each day the malevolent star occupied a different point of the compass, making it unlucky to set out from any house whose door faced that point. On the 9th, 19th, and 29th the danger came from the earth; on the 10th, 20th, and 30th from the sky, and on those days it was best not to set out at all. On other days, if one had to set out in face of the unlucky star, the bad luck could be avoided by shading one’s eyes with one’s hand as one passed the threshold [1, p. 271].

Coope also recorded a Siamese cloth belt charm, over five feet long, written on strips of paper gummed together, which the criminal had worn. A Siamese informant explained that the words meant “prevent blows,” “enormous strength,” “thickness of skin,” “always in luck,” and “love of women,” and that the intended effect was to make the wearer strong, invulnerable, and successful in love. The informant judged it a poor specimen and described it as a fake [1, p. 264].

Coope concluded with a brief narrative of how the supernatural influences appeared to have worked in the criminal’s own experience. On a Friday night after midnight, when the ketika indicated it was “good until morning,” the criminal successfully burgled a house, rifling a cupboard within a few feet of the sleeping owner. On his way to Trengganu he met a detective, but the bullet charm appeared to work as the detective’s pistol missed fire. Later, on a Monday at dawn, when the ketika indicated one would be “anxious,” he encountered police who arrested him. Finally, on the 19th of a month, when the bintang chelaka indicated it was best not to go out owing to malevolent earthly influences, he came before a judge who sentenced him to seven years’ imprisonment [1, p. 272].

The Malingkote Movement in Borneo

The third record, though brief, documents a phenomenon of a different order: the Malingkote movement, a millenarian religious episode that swept through Borneo in June 1891. H. Wise reported that the movement originated in the Sipulote country and was founded by a man named Tahang, who during a severe illness dreamed that performing certain ceremonies would summon an angel whose demands must be met immediately. Those who complied would gain the power to see angels (malikot), become invulnerable (cabal), raise the dead, and grow wings to fly to the sky [3, p. 203].

The movement spread as Tahang’s followers went from village to village, threatening those who refused to join with thunderbolts and hurricanes. Adherents destroyed all livestock, drank continuously, and ceased planting padi (rice), believing that once their wings grew they would ascend to the sky and live on a miraculous padi that grew in ten days and never failed. Wise recorded that one man gave away his wife in exchange for the promise that his wings would grow within seven days, and that another climbed a coconut palm to fly, breaking his leg in the fall [3, p. 203]. The Malingkote episode illustrates how the boundary between witchcraft, prophecy, and millenarian religion could dissolve in conditions of social stress, producing a movement whose adherents acted on the conviction that supernatural transformation was imminent and that ordinary economic and social obligations had been superseded.

Research and Documentation

The published record on witchcraft in the Malay Peninsula and Borneo, as preserved in the Society’s journals, is sparse but spans a period of nearly four decades, from Wise’s brief note of 1894 to Coope’s detailed transcription of 1933. The three surviving records represent three distinct modes of engagement with the subject. Wise’s account of the Malingkote is a single-page field report, evidently written in the manner of a colonial administrator recording an unusual disturbance; it provides no analysis, no comparison with other movements, and no follow-up. Marriott’s remarks on the Pawang and the Polong are a brief concluding observation, likely appended to a longer discussion of another topic, and their value lies in the clarity with which they articulate the social logic of witchcraft belief as a system of mutual coercion rather than as mere superstition. Coope’s article is the only one of the three that constitutes a sustained scholarly treatment, combining transcription, translation, and commentary on a primary source document.

The shift in approach across these three records is notable. Wise and Marriott treat witchcraft as a social phenomenon to be described and explained in terms of its effects on community behaviour. Coope, writing three decades later, treats it as a textual and philological problem: his primary interest is in the recovery and interpretation of a specific manuscript, and his commentary is directed at the linguistic and ritual content of the document rather than at its social function. This shift reflects a broader change in the orientation of colonial-era scholarship, from the administrative concern with maintaining order to the antiquarian and linguistic interest in preserving indigenous texts before they were lost. Coope’s article also reflects the colonial administrative habit of collecting and cataloguing indigenous knowledge encountered in the course of police and judicial work, framing the material as a curiosity recovered from a criminal rather than as a living tradition [1, p. 264].

The historiographical value of Coope’s study lies in its preservation of a complete, annotated transcription of a criminal’s working manuscript in Jawi script, a genre of source material that is otherwise extremely rare in the published record. The manuscript itself, with its mixture of Islamic formulae, spirit invocation, and practical criminal technique, offers a unique window into the intersection of religious belief and criminal practice in early twentieth-century Kelantan. The Siamese cloth belt charm, though judged a fake by its informant, provides a point of comparison with the material described by Dr. Gimlette in an earlier volume of the journal, suggesting a regional trade in protective amulets that crossed political boundaries [1, p. 264].

The limits of the record must be stated plainly. Three articles, spanning from 1894 to 1933, constitute the entirety of the published evidence available here. No systematic survey of witchcraft practices across the Malay Peninsula or Borneo has been preserved in the Society’s journals during this period. No account of the Pawang as an institution, of the training and transmission of ilmu jahat, or of the social status of ritual specialists has been located. The Malingkote episode is known only from a single paragraph. The Kelantan manuscript, while rich in detail, represents the practice of a single individual and cannot be taken as representative of the broader tradition. What the record does establish is that witchcraft, in its various forms, was a persistent and geographically widespread feature of life in the region, encountered by colonial observers in contexts ranging from the domestic management of childhood illness to the professional equipment of a burglar to the apocalyptic expectations of a millenarian movement.

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. A.E. Coope (1933). The black art (ilmu jahat JMBRAS 11(2): 264–272. Read on JSTOR
  2. H. Marriott (1903). Malay witchcraft JSBRAS 39: 209–210. Read on JSTOR
  3. H. Wise (1894). The “Malingkote” in Borneo in June, 1891 JSBRAS 26: 203. Read on JSTOR