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Ritual and Drama in Malay Spirit Mediumship1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Raymond Firth
Raymond Firth
Affiliation:
The London School of Economics and Political Science
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Extract

Phenomena identified as spirit mediumship seem to be world wide and to be recognizable from an early period in human society. Attention has been paid to them by writers of classical antiquity of whom, from an anthropological point of view, Jane Harrison was one of the most noteworthy. Influenced by Durkheim and by Rivers, she recognized the importance of collective elements in religion and of the need for a knowledge of the social structure to gain an understanding of any particular cult. Robustly she argued, “What a people does in relation to its gods must always be one clue, and perhaps the safest, to what it thinks.” Knowing that her attempt to build a bridge between anthropology and the classics was viewed sceptically in some quarters, she countered trenchantly “It is only a little anthropology that is a dangerous thing.”

Type
Healing Rituals: Malay Spirit Mediumship
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , January 1967 , pp. 190 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1967

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References

2 Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 1903, p. viiGoogle Scholar.

3 Themis, 1912, p. 22.

4 Guthrie, W. K. C., The Greeks and their Gods (Boston, 1955), p. 149Google Scholar; Jane Harrison, Prolegomena, pp. 388–9, 424–5, 568 et seq.

5 Firth, Raymond, Essays on Social Organization and Values (London, 1964), pp. 247–8Google Scholar.

6 A general account of Malay spirit mediumship has been given by Sir Winstedt, Richard, The Malay Magician, being Shaman, Saiva and Sufi, revised and enlarged (London, 1951)Google Scholar. For a valuable account of the phenomenon in Kelantan see Cuisinier, Jeanne, Danses Magiques de Kelantan (= Université de Paris, Travaux et Memoires de I'Institut d'Ethnologie, XII) (1936)Google Scholar.

7 Prolegomena, p. 568.

8 Gimlette, J. D., Malay Poisons and Charm Cures, 3rd ed. (London, 1929)Google Scholar; lette, J. D. Gim & Thomson, H. W., A Dictionary of Malayan Medicine (London, 1939)Google Scholar. Few of these folk remedies seem to be used in modern times.

9 See Yap, P. M., “The Latah Reaction: Its Pathodynamics and Nosological Position”, The Journal of Mental Science, vol. XCVIII (1952), pp. 515–64CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

10 Gong in Kelantan means: a musical instrument of the percussive type; a rising ground or hillock; crazy or “touched”. See Wilkinson, R. J., A Malay/English Dictionary (Romanised) (Mytilene, 1932)Google Scholar. I have been informed by Mr. Ronald Ng that in Cantonese gong means hillock and by Professor Maurice Freedman that in Hokkien it means foolish, silly.

11 Puteri traditionally means princess, and the spirit medium's performance is sometimes translated as “play of the princess”, with a traditional but probably apocryphal attribution to a royal lady. (See Gimlette, 1929, p. 8; Jeanne Cuisinier, 1936, pp. 94–5.)

12 Rentse, v. Anker, “The Kelantan Shadow Play (Wayang Kulit)”, Journal Malayan Branch Royal Asiatic Society, vol. XIV (1936), pp. 284–301Google Scholar.

13 Ancient Act and Ritual (London, 1913), p. 127Google Scholar.

14 See Koran, , Sura LXXII, Djinn (Rodwell transl.) Everyman ed. (London, 1909); also p. 326Google Scholar.

15 I remember seeing at least one example of performance of main puteri as part of the Ruler's Birthday celebration at Pasir Puteh in 1940, and saw the preparations for filming one at Bachok in 1963.

16 Wayang seems to have originally meant “shadow” and later from the “shadow play” to have been applied to all forms of theatre.