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iv DEMONS AND VAMPIRES 101
that the
is important as confirming the principle
" "
Autochthones are more influential with the
spirits residing in their land than any later arrivals
can be, whatever skill the latter may have acquired
in the magic arts of the country from whence they
came.
"Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir, Munshi, in his
Autobiography, has an interesting passage on the
beliefs of the Malays on the subject of spirits and
demons, beliefs which are much more deeply-rooted
than is generally supposed. He does not, however,
differentiate between national customs and beliefs, and
those which have come in with the Muhammadan
religion. And indeed it is not easy to do so. Here,
everything is classed under the generic term sheitan,
which is Arabic, and we find the rakshasa of Hindu
romances and the/w and 'efrit of the Arabian Nights
in the company of a lot of Indo-Chinese spirits and
goblins, who have not come from the West like the
others :
" I explained to Mr. M. clearly the names of all
the sheitan believed in by Chinese and Malays ; all
ignorance and folly
which have come down from their
ancestors in former times, and exist up to the present
day, much more than I could relate or explain. I
merely enumerated the varieties, such as hantu,
sheitan^ polong? pontianak^ penanggalan? jin? pelisit?
mambang? hantu pemburu? hantu rimba, jadi-jadi-
1 Hantu and sheitan are generic
6
ThePe/isttorPH/sif, like the /Wof,
terms for evil spirits, the former being is a familiar spirit (vide pp. 329-331,
the Malay term, the latter Arabic. infra).
- The Polong is a familiar 6
spirit.
The Mambangs are inferior Malay
8 The Pontianak and PUnanggalan divinities (vide pp. 88 n., 91-93, supra).
are childbirth 7
spirits (vide pp. 327, 328, The Hantu PUmburu is the Spectre
infra). Huntsman (vide pp. 113-120, infra),
*
They* is the genie of the "Arabian for whom Hantu Rimba is probably a
Nights " (vide pp. 93-97, supra). mere synonym.