Malay Magic / Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay Peninsula

Chapter 261: [cxc] Cholera

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About This Book

A compilation of Malay Peninsula folklore, popular religion, and magical practices drawn from manuscripts, published sources, and the author's field notes, presenting creation myths, supernatural beings, charms, incantations, ritual practices, and folk explanations for illness and misfortune. The text emphasizes literal translations of spells and formulæ with originals in an appendix, confines attention to Malay communities of the peninsula, and compares recurring motifs while avoiding non-Malay populations. Methodological notes explain evidence and limits. The volume serves as an introductory survey that organizes material thematically—cosmology, spirit lore, protective and harmful magic, divination, and ritual observances—without claiming exhaustive treatment.

[cxc] Cholera

It is related that a Malay named Satuba, who lived at Kuala Selangor, had a wife and two children, both of whom died of cholera and (apparently) became cholera-demons. The wife enters the right-eye socket (chengkong?) of the cholera patient, and is named Sapu-laman; and the two children, who enter the left eye, are called Sapu-negri and Sapu-rantau.

Satuba (when his wife and children died) ran off to the woods, and there he met an orang kramat, who gave him this charm against cholera:—

Ya kayun Muhammad baka kallah

Ka hatal Makah.

The charm is called Satuba’s charm, or the charm against “Prince ‘Lick-up-the-men-of-war-ships’” (Raja Jilat juak kapal prang). The wife’s name in Arabic was Adayatu’llah, and the children’s, Hidayatu’llah and Ayatu’llah respectively.