Page 215 - Malay sketches

MALAY SUPERSTITIONS

and feet tied, put into the water and slowly pushed
down out of means of a with a
sight by long pole
fork at one end which fitted on to her neck. Those
who witnessed these executions have no doubt of
the justice of the punishment, and not uncommonly
add that after two or three had been made
examples
there would ensue a
alwa}^ period of rest from the
torments of the bdjang. I have also been assured
that the in the of a
bdjang, shape lizard, has been
seen to issue from the drowning person's nose.
That no
statement, doubt, is made on the authority
of those who condemned and executed the victim.
The following legend gives the Malay conception
of the origin of all Jin, hantu, bdjang, and other
spirits.
The Creator determined to make Man, and for
that purpose He took some clay from the earth and
fashioned it into the figure of a man. Then He
took the Spirit of Life to endue this body with
and the on the head of the
vitality placed spirit
But the was and the
figure. spirit strong, body,
could not hold it and was reft in
being only clay,
pieces and scattered into the air. Those fragments
of the first great Failure are the spirits of earth and
sea and air.
The Creator then formed another clay figure, but
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