The Healing Arts of the Malay Mystic

D. S. FARRER

The legacy of Alfred Gell offers a rich stock of ingenious ideas to apply and extend to the thought-provoking artwork of Mohammad Din Mohammad, who combines the skills (ilmu) of the Malay martial art silat with the knowledge of the traditional Malay healer, to press life, breath, and divine power into his painting and sculpture. The artists agency is said to open a gateway to the unseen realm. By painting calligraphic motifs derived from the Quran with his bare hands, the artist channels Allahs energy from within, energy that is embodied and suspended within his artworks, to protect the patient from spiritual attack. The artwork serves as a protective talisman during spiritually vulnerable moments, such as birth, marriage, fasting, and death. During crisis, the power stored within the artwork may be unleashed to counter attacks from ghosts, vampires, or other nefarious creatures. [Key words: agency, calligraphy, enchantment, silat, Susm]

Introduction

ust as Chinese kung fu may be referred to as meditation in motion, the Malay martial art (silat) is the moving embodiment of Malay magic and religion.1 This article is concerned with the doings of magic, mysticism, and religion, and with agency as exemplied through works of art, ritual, and performance (Hughes-Freeland 1998:46; V. Turner 1988). I discuss silat at length as embodied magic elsewhere (Farrer 2006a, 2006b, in press).2 Here I focus on the artwork of a contemporary Malaysian artist (pelukis), Mohammad Din Mohammad, a member of the Singapore Modern Art Society, who has generously given permission for his paintings and sculptures to appear in Visual Anthropology Review.3 Mohammad Din is a master (guru silat) of the secretive Malay martial art (silat Melayu). He became a mystical healer after a motorcycle accident and several years of treatment from his own guru silat, Pak Hamim Bujang. Through these experiences Mohammad Din has become a master of the unseen realm (alam ghaib). A graduate in ne art from The Nanyang Academy of Fine Art in 1976, Mohammad Din now eschews the pen and the brush to paint with his bare hands. He infuses mystical power (tenaga batin) into his sculpture and painting, and transforms these mediums of expression into a vehicle for Malay mysticism and the celebration of God. In much the same way that westerners regard classical music and ballet as art, the Malays generally regard silat as an artFhence seni silat. Seni is the Malay term

for art, but it also denotes aesthetics. Seni, moreover, refers to the skill involved in the production of art. Seni applies to modern painting and sculpture as well as to all the traditional Malay arts, including batik, Arabic calligraphy, wood-carving, jewelry, silverwork, weaponry, music, and the performance arts of dance, theater, and puppet theater (wayang kulit) (Frey 1995; Ghulam-Sarwar 1997, 2004; Sedyawati 1998; Sheppard 1972, 1983). Therefore, any denition of art must be wide enough to embrace performance and not be narrowly conned to objects.4 Considering silat as an art drew me toward Gells Art and Agency (1998), and suggested the intriguing possibility for the anthropology of martial arts. However, because difculties must be surmounted one at a time, Gells denition of art excludes verbal and musical arts, and refers primarily to objects including paintings, carvings, and sculpturesFto what he calls visual art (1998:13). Despite his narrow denition, Gell does consider dance, body-paint, tattoos, mazes, sand-drawings, knots, and even animal traps as art forms in his Art and Agency and in books and articles throughout his career (Gell 1975, 1999[1985], 1993, 1999[1992], 1999[1996]). Furthermore, in Art and Agency, Gell does discuss nonmaterial types of art, particularly the relation between drawn patterns and dance, where performance art complements graphic art. Regarding Mohammad Dins artwork alongside Gells anthropology of art opens an interpretive window onto contemporary Malay mysticism, and illustrates the continuing utility of Gells

Visual Anthropology Review, Vol. 24, Issue 1, pp. 2946, ISSN 1053-7147, online ISSN 1548-7458. & 2008 by the American Anthropological Association. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-7458.2008.00003.x.

30

VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW

Volume 24 Number 1 Spring 2008

theory of enchantment (Gell 1999[1992], 1998). Ziauddin asserts, despite the formalism of Malay interpretations of Islam, Malay Islam leans heavily towards a mystical spirituality that draws its sustenance from myths, miracles and magic (2000:133). Art critic Rubin Khoo says that it would not be an exaggeration to say [Mohammad Din paintings] have the ability to command the viewer, adding that they exude a certain energy that draws you in (Mohammad 2001). Khoo is on the right track when he supposes that the uncanny result of the artwork is achieved through the artists technique of applying the paint straight from the tube onto the canvas with his bare hands. This supports Gells theory of the technology of enchantment, the undecipherable skill of the artist, leading to the enchantment of technology, which is a propensity to see the world in enchanted form (1999[1992]).

Art and Agency

Gells master project was to establish the anthropology of art upon the study of social relations, and not upon aesthetics, culture, or Saussurian semiotics. This proved to be a controversial move that went against the grain of much of the contemporary anthropology of art (Morphy 1994:648685), and has stirred up some bitter criticisms (Bowden 2004), to which I shall return shortly. Gell underscores agency and challenges representational strategies in the anthropology of art, asking not what art objects such as Asmat shields or painted prows on Trobriand canoes represent, but what they doFwhich for Gell (1998:6, 31) is to inspire fear and awe in the enemy (see also Pinney and Thomas 2001:4).5 Gells task is to gure out how indigenous artworks inspire fear and trepidation in the enemy. In Art and Agency, Gell outlines the concept of captivation (1998:6872) developed from his earlier theories concerning cognitive traps (1999[1996]), the enchantment of technology, and the technology of enchantment (1999[1992]). Gell emphasizes that social agency, primarily an attribute of the human actor, is also invested in things. Proceeding implicitly upon the commodity fetishism of Marx, and citing Mausss work on the gift, Gell argues that art objects, cars, dolls, and even antipersonnel mines act as sites of congealed agency (1998:1821). Art objects therefore may be considered to act as

second-class agents or as secondary agents (Gell 1998:17, 2021). Secondary agents possess within them congealed power to act upon the world. According to Gell, such agency should be the proper focus of the anthropology of art. Gell formulates his theory of visual art in terms of the abduction (inference) of agency, namely the index (the agency of the artwork), the artist (the originator of the agency of the artwork), the recipient (those who exert agency or have agency exerted upon them via the artwork), and the prototype (the entity represented in the artwork) (1998:1227). Gell implicitly follows Campbells (2002:56) use of the term patient, where the artist becomes a vessel for otherworldly powers, these powers somehow assuming the role of the agent (contra Bowden 2004:310). Layton perceptively notes that while Gell makes a good case for the agency of art objects he does not explain the distinctive ways in which art objects extend their makers or users agency (2003:447). My intention here is not simply to adopt or critique Gells conceptual apparatus, but to apply and extend his insights concerning enchantment and captivation to the artwork of Mohammad Din. In a rather complicated passage, Gell explains that by abductionFa notion derived from logic rather than linguisticsFhe is looking to adopt a nonlinguistic model of causality, where abduction refers to inferential schemas (Gell 1998:1416; cf. Schutzs [1944] scripts). I think reading Batesons Style, Grace and Information in Primitive Art (2000) gives a rmer grip on what Gell is trying to achieve. Gell disdains aesthetics in relation to the anthropology of art in much the same way that Bateson is not interested in translating mythology into an understanding of particular artworks. What is essential for Bateson and Gell is not the message but the code. Moreover, Gells scienticlooking notation obviously derives from Bateson, where square brackets enclose the universe of relevance and parentheses [universe (of relevance)] (Bateson 2000:132, 134). However, whereas Bateson employs an oblique stroke/within the brackets to represent a slash across which some guesswork is possible, and Gell substitutes the notion of abduction to reason across the slash from the known artwork back to the unknown agent, I am fortunate to have known both the artwork and the artist. Describing himself as a Sunday painter (1998:72), Gell was fascinated and mystied by the amazing skill

Dr. Douglas Farrer earned a doctorate in social anthropology from the National University of Singapore in the Department of Sociology in 2006. His thesis focuses upon the Malay martial art, silat. Dr. Farrer has practiced martial arts since 1975 and is a qualied instructor in kung fu and silat. Dr. Farrer resided in Singapore and Malaysia from 1998 to 2007; he is currently based in Micronesia.

The Healing Arts of the Malay Mystic

FARRER

31

of art masters in the production of the masterpiece. He refers to the application of the skills of the virtuosi to the production of works of art as the technology of enchantment (Gell 1999[1992]). Here the agency of the artist eludes the comprehension of the viewer, who is left mystied as to how the artwork was produced. The resulting enchantment of technology refers to a spell cast over those who would see the real world in an enchanted form (Gell 1999[1992]:163; Campbell 2001:123). The artwork appears as miraculously fashioned, an exalted masterpiece produced through divine inspiration, exerting an indecipherable agency that traps the spectator within the index, a process Gell dubs as captivation. In Gells terms, captivation or fascinationFthe demoralization produced by the spectacle of unimaginable virtuosityFensues from the spectator becoming trapped within the index because the index embodies agency which is essentially indecipherable (1998:71). Therefore, captivation occurs when the spectator cannot reason across the slash. Tambiah notes that the knotted corded bracelets given by Buddhist monks beguile spirits who, instead of entering the body, are kept busy trying to gure out how the knots were tied (1984). Similarly, Gell notes that apotropaic patterns are demon traps (1998:84). Beguilement is the key concept in Gells explanation of complex designs sketched on the doorsteps of Indian houses that lure and trap spirits to prevent them from entering the house (1999[1996]:187214). Furthermore, Gell claims that Asmat shield designs beguile their enemies and make them fearful (1998:6, 31). According to Gell, the power of the index may captivate, demoralize, or even horrify the opponent, through its objectication of emotion: The tiger which is about to pounce and devour his victim looks, above all, terriedFof itself, as it wereFand the same is true of warriors bearing down with grimaces of fear and rage. The Asmat shield is a false mirror, which seems to show the victim in his own terror when, in fact, it is anothersFand in this way persuades him that he is terried. Like the famous trompe-lil image (by Parmigianino) of the Medusas head in the mirror of Perseus (in the Ufzi gallery) the shield terries us by persuading us that we are what it shows. [1998:31; also 1998:6872] Even though the index may captivate, demoralize, and horrify the recipient as opponent, the recipient is also the benefactor of the artworks agency and of the indexs capacity to fortify and delight. Across the slash of demoralization lies inspiration. Simultaneously, ow states and moments of astounding creativity may be ac-

companied by sensations of euphoria and a sense of the uncanny. Gells Art and Agency reverses Freuds ideas of the uncanny (1990[1919]). Freud reminds us that the uncanny is part of a little known branch of aesthetics, and locates the source of uncanny sensations or feelings within the individual recipient, anxieties from which we moderns have never become free, including silence, solitude, darkness, and death (1990:339). On the other hand, in his anthropological Grundrisse, Gell locates the source of uncanny sensations within the social context (artist, index, and recipient) in the production, exchange, consumption, and distribution of art and fetish objects. Freud juxtaposes art and experience; Gell attempts to bridge that gap through anthropological theory; and Mohammad Din attempts to bring the uncanny into quotidian life through his art. Mohammad Dins artworks have social and psychological functions as they approach ancient anxieties and reect specic Malaysian anxieties concomitant with rapid modernization, problems of religious identity between Susm to Wahabbism, and comparative ethnic fear of failure. This supports Campbells point that the enchantment effected by art is frequently mediated by culturally specic references (2001).6 Turning to an altogether different type of false mirror, Bowdens principal argument, in his Review of Gells Art and Agency, hinges upon his complaint of Gells handling of the ethnographic evidence (2004: 312313).7 Bowden argues that Gell overrelies upon a picture of a newly decorated prow board originally taken by Campbell in 1977 (see also Campbell 2002) as evidence for his theory of enchantment, in both his earlier article and his later book (Bowden 2004:312313; Gell 1999:164 [1992]; 1998:70). According to Bowden, who admits that he has never sailed off the southeast coast of New Guinea, the choppy seas around the Trobriand Islands would remove the paint from the prow board, rendering the image far less imposing than the spectacular prow board of Campbells picture, thus negating any supposedly enchanting effect (2004:312). However, as Shirley Campbell put it to me: [Bowden (2004)] misses the point entirely and apparently has not been able to grasp the central argument of Gells thesis. It doesnt matter that the paint may or may not be washed off [from the prow of the boat] on the out-going journey. When occasion allows the eet stops near to their destination to freshen up the paint of the prowboards and their own decoration. However, this is not essential as it is the knowledge or expectation that there are powerful elements displayed on the boards and that the

32

VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW

Volume 24 Number 1 Spring 2008

paint itself has been imbued with magic to alter the minds of the hosts. Essentially then, what Gell was arguing, which he took from my own analysis of the situation, was that people believe that the designs, the paint, [and] the magic that is encased within all of these are powerful elements that will [affect] people and their behaviors. [pers. comm, February 3, 2007] As far as I am aware, the somewhat ad hominem postmortem criticisms of Gell made up by Bowden (2004) have remained unchallenged. This is not to say that Gells 1998 book is beyond reproach, but there is a signicant difference between the sour grapes of destructive criticism and an attempt to appreciate it for what it is worth.8 For example, in order for a theory to adequately account for the performance of martial arts, cognition and rationality need to be recognized as embodied phenomena that are manifested through performance. Therefore, Gells concepts of the technology of enchantment and the enchantment of technology could be recast as the performance of enchantment and the enchantment of performance for the purposes of understanding silat. Here the performance of enchantment refers to the esoteric abilities or skills of the silat practitioner to confound and confuse the enemy with devious maneuvers (possibly vanishing right under their nose), and the enchantment of performance refers to the animist, Hindu, Tantric, Buddhist, and Islamic cosmologies embodied within the practice and performance of silat (Farrer 2006b, in press).9 While I agree with Campbells comments concerning Bowdens misreading, my contribution to this debate is to illustrate Gells theory with the artwork of Mohammad Din, where art, magic, and healing coalesce. In the following account, I pursue the complex multiplicity of silat (which fuses art, enchantment, medicine, ritual, performance, and skill) poured into the artwork of Mohammad Din, an artist who paints with his bare hands onto canvas using the movements of silat. The nished products are supposed to be able to spring into action automatically in times of crisis, and act as a reservoir for the divine agency of the artist to serve and protect the recipient against the forces of evil.

Mohammad Din Mohammad

In his early 50s, Mohammad Din is soft-spoken and slightly built. He has a youthful, thoughtful countenance, a quick smile, and a sharp wit (Figure 1). He has exhibited in Bahrain, China, Dubai, Germany, Holland, Indonesia, Istanbul, London, Macau, Malaysia, New York, Paris, Perth, and Singapore. Born in Melaka, nowadays, he resides mostly in Singapore and Malaysia

where his work, examples of which are displayed in the Singapore Art Museum and the National University of Singapore Museum, is recognized as a tidy investment. Polymath Mohammad Din is renowned for his abilities as a martial arts expert, natural healer and herbalist (pawang), stage and lm actor, musician, and songwriter. He is an avid collector of Southeast Asian artifacts and has an impressive collection of Malay art, antiques, and exotica, including sculptures, shadow puppets, and traditional Malay weapons (throwing axes, daggers, halberds, knives, shields, spears, and swords).10 Every item carries a biography and most have magical properties (Kopytoff 1998). For example, one keris (dagger), named kelap lintah, is said to grow to hundreds of feet in length when drawn in battle, and dwarfs the combatants. The material object partially supports the story, because when the blade is slowly drawn it appears far too long to have emerged from its scabbard. Mohammad Din says the name kelap lintah means the blade moves like a leech, appearing small and then big as it feeds upon blood. The clever gestalt design uses the angles of the hilt of the keris against the scabbard to trick the eye into seeing the blade appear to grow too long for the scabbard. According to Mohammad Din, his silat style, which he describes as Seni Silat Pusaka Hang Tuah, dates back to the famous Malay warrior, Laksamana (Lord Admiral) Hang Tuah, who resided in Melaka during the 16th century.11 In the Middle Ages, Malacca was the cosmopolitan capital city of the Malay (Melayu) people, who safeguarded trade and commerce across large coastal areas of Southeast Asia until 1511, when the Portuguese sacked the city (Andaya and Andaya 2001; Reid 1988, 1993). Nowadays, Melaka is widely regarded as a rather sleepy tourist town, although for Malaysian silat practitioners it is the Mecca of silat. Supposedly rst developed exclusively by and for the Malay aristocracy, silat Melayu (Malay silat) is an especially elegant-looking ghting art where the movements of the waist transmit a smooth, owing, whipping power into gestures akin to Balinese and Javanese dance. Despite a preference for very low stances, the footwork is light, fast, and nimble, with the performer veering off at unlikely or inconceivable angles. The best exponents can move like a shadow, and Mohammad Din demonstrates superb balance, control, power, and speed in his silat forms. In Dance and Drama in Bali, de Zoete and Spies (1952:256) describe the silat performers arms, wrists, and hands as carving intricate mysterious circling patterns through the air in gestures of adjuration or exorcism as if weaving charms. In the same sense that Japanese kendo is generally understood to embody Zen Buddhism, and Chinese taijiquan and baguazhang to

The Healing Arts of the Malay Mystic

FARRER

33

FIGURE 1. Mohammad Din in his studio at Gallery Mystique.

embody the Taoist philosophies of yin and yang, Mohammad Din understands silat Melayu to embody Islamic mysticism. Therefore, from his point of view, it may be said that silat is Susm in motion, with the hands weaving Islamic calligraphy through the air in remembrance of Allah. Mohammad Din adopts a holistic approach to art, calligraphy, martial arts, medicine, and nature, which he says are all part of the One. According to him, warriors in Southeast Asia were always and necessarily involved in healing because the practice of silat leads to many injuries, including bruises, broken limbs, burns, concussions, cuts, stab and puncture wounds, strained muscles, and torn ligaments. Sickness, induced from poisoning, witchcraft, and war sorcery, must be added to this list. Mohammad Din emphasizes that the knowledge (ilmu) of healing and silat are contiguous, asserting that it is rare to nd a guru silat who is not also a healer, or a Malay healer who has not been a practitioner of silat.

decided that we should take a detour to Kuala Lumpur instead. Late that night, we arrived at Gallery Mystique, located in Bukit Tunku, the Beverley Hills of Kuala Lumpur, perched atop the sprawling capital of Malaysia. Nestling on the brow of a precipice, the ve-story mansion boasts a huge reception area encompassed by four alfresco dining areas. From the third story, a swimming pool yawns out into the sky like a sparkling blue bottom lip. The entire house is saturated with Mohammad Dins paintings and sculpture. For one night only Gallery Mystique was opened to the public, for an event mischievously called the Night of the Secret Wine.12 Secret wine does not just refer to proper wine drinking at the artists exhibitions, but also to the ecstasy of the mind and the feeling of the soul when the viewer becomes intoxicated by the artwork, as Mohammad Din noted to me. In the words of the great Su poet Jalaluddin Rumi, as quoted by Mohammad Din: Of the secret wine all drank but just a sipFso as to become so as to exist. But I drank barrels and barrels of that wine so as to become a mirror pure. Such feelings, summoned by the skills of the artist, captivate viewers and function to draw them into a larger cosmology that the artwork embodies rather than represents. None of this relies on cultural or performa-

Gallery Mystique
As I visited his home gallery one day in Singapore, Mohammad Din suggested that we travel to Melaka to practice silat in his chicken shack. I embarked upon the journey with some trepidation, having just completed several weeks of rank eldwork in a silat training ground (gelanggang) covered in cat feces, musk, and urine. However, while we were driving, Mohammad Din

34

VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW

Volume 24 Number 1 Spring 2008

tive notions of aesthetics, which Gell argued must be bracketed for the purposes of understanding art anthropologically (1999[1992], 1998).13 Entering the mansion through the imposing stone entrance, one rst encounters a small wooden sculpture of a dragon behind which are situated two paintings: The Conference of the Birds and the Garden of Revelation (Figures 2 and 3). The downstairs wall space mainly displays Mohammad Dins work on the Zikr theme, completed in calligraphic style, done in black and white, or in bright vibrant colors all painted with his bare hands. Upstairs are the private apartments of the owners and the artists studio, featuring a series of paintings including those from Mohammad Dins series entitled Flora and Nature. Less abstract than Jackson Pollocks drip technique, these stunning works of abstract expressionism enchant the space around them. The Conference of the Birds refers to the story related by the Su, Farid Ud-Din Attar, and although not calligraphic in its visual style, it has been painted by hand in what Mohammad Din calls the free style of calligraphic rendition. The picture and the story concern the hoopoe bird that becomes the leader of the birds around it in their quest to nd the King of the Birds (simorgh). Many birds failed to nd the King, although in the end 30 birds managed to reach the door of the King of the Birds. When the door was opened, they discovered that the bird they were seeking was in fact their own self. As Mohammad Din says, this is a direct reection, or a

FIGURE 3. The Garden of Revelation. Acrylic on canvas. 9090 cm.

symbol, of mankind trying to look for the truth, and the truth is of course, within yourself. The Garden of Revelation reveals how the hoopoe bird stopped along the way of the journey to interview all the birds around it. Mohammad Din says, It is done in a very aggressive calligraphic style and continues, Many birds complained about how they didnt have the ability to look for the truth because either they were obsessed by their singing ability, or the beautiful color of the peacocks, or whatever thing has stopped them from being able to go on with the journey. But of course. . .thirty of these birds have managed to pass through the test, and thirty of these birds have found out that the bird they were looking for, the King of the Birds, is Simorgh. Simorgh in the Persian language means thirty birds. They have found themselves.

The Art of Silat

My work responds to Kapferers call to explore realms beyond rationalism (2003) by deconstructing parts of the colonial legacy of analytical constructs concerning religion and magic (Farrer 2006b, in press). Deconstructing such categories exposes a blind spot of the Victorian colonial ethnographers who ignored embodiment of magic and religion (Csordas 1994a, 1994b, 1999, 2002; B. Turner 1995, 1997). In contrast to the insights

FIGURE 2. The Conference of the Birds. Acrylic on canvas. 9090 cm.

The Healing Arts of the Malay Mystic

FARRER

35

of Africanist anthropology, Michele Stephen claims that in Melanesia the shaman, the sorcerer, and the meditative mystic are part of the same complex of practitionersFeach is a master of soulsFwith the difference being that the shaman has simply been more accessible to anthropological inquiry than the sorcerer (1987:67, 7375; Farrer 2006b:3, in press). Similarly, in the Malay world, which spreads across a region characterized by great geographical and historical complexity and diversity, clear distinctions between sorcerer, shaman, Imam, and the martial arts expert are difcult to maintain. My view is that the analytical separation between the indigenous Malay bomoh and the guru silat has been exaggerated. Originally an analytical error of the colonial ethnographers (Skeat 1984; Winstedt 1993), the error continues to rebound into the current literature.14 Given the regional cultural complexity, the guru silat could be regarded as warriors and healers, artists and religious virtuosos, sorcerers or shamans, or as war-shamans, war-sorcerers, war-magicians, warrioralchemists, or even warrior-priests (Farrer 2006a, 2006b, in press; Shaw 1976; Werner 1986, 2002).15 Obviously, each of these concepts involves a different set of anthropological problems, but without an understanding of silat the anthropology of Malay healing, magic, performance, and shamanism remains patchy (Farrer 2006b, in press).16 One way of bracketing this complexity, for discursive convenience, is to adopt the Malay vernacular, where in Malay the term mystic is rendered mystik, pertaining to activities that western viewers would understand as sorcerous or magical. As the denition of a shaman is generally someone who goes into trance to commune with the spirits in another realm so as to facilitate healing on patients in this realm, the term warrior shaman may be inappropriate for the Muslim guru silat on two counts (Crapanzano and Garrison 1977; Eliade 1972; Halifax 1991; Heinze 1988; Lewis 2003). First, Islam forbids trance; second, guru silat summon spirits or shades of dead heroes into this realm, rather than enter another dimension themselves.17 Sorcery involves the magical empowerment of the individual through the summoning of supernatural entities or powers from other realms. The spontaneous bodily movement employed in the ritual creation of new forms of Islamic silat, referred to colloquially in Malaysia as gerak (movement), is basically a displacement of the Javanese menurun (trance).18 In menurun the spirit of a horse, an eagle, a tiger, or another animal is summoned (berseru) into the body of the silat practitioner, who then spontaneously adopts the movements of the animal.19 However, in the esoteric language of Malay silat, gerak serves as a gloss for spontaneous bodily

movement where the spirit of a dead human being takes animal form to enter the body of the practitioner (Farrer 2006a:41). Both menurun and gerak use the power of Allah to summon the spirits. The practitioner remains unpossessed only in gerak, unlike menurun, where the spirit takes over the will and the body of the practitioner. It is but a short step to conceive the summoning of an animal soul, a divine spirit, or a human ghost in animal guise not solely into the body of a practitioner, but as passing through them to be contained within a sculpture, painting, or other receptacle such as a blade, a ring, or a stone. Such a distribution of the person or of the entity is the essence of Mohammad Dins artwork (also see Gell 1998:96155; Strathern 2001). Although Malay mysticism combines elements from many different arcane Gnostic, magical, and religious traditions, the inuence of Islamic Susm on the artwork of Mohammad Din needs to be emphasized. Rather than using jampi (spells) to infuse his art with the magical power conveyed through breath, Mohammad Din chants dhikr (also spelled as zikr), a term that means remembrance of God and refers to the rhythmic chanting of the 99 names of Allah. Dhikr may be audible or inaudible. The audible form is usually accompanied by gentle to increasingly vigorous swaying movements of the head. This is commonly performed by Sus at the Su lodges (zarwiah) spread across Malaysia on Thursday nights and is done on many other ritual occasions of the Islamic calendar. To more fully understand Mohammad Dins artwork requires a brief summary of the Malay notion of the soul. Semangat is the term for spirit or life force, as well as being an umbrella category covering the seven elements of the soul. Early texts regarding Malay magic eetingly report the components of semangat as the shadow soul, reection soul, puppet soul, bird soul, and the life soul (Skeat 1984:50 n. 2). The sevenfold soul or the seven souls of Malay cosmology are simultaneously separate elements and a totality. The sevenfold soul may also include badi (the evil impulse), which is possibly a ghostly remainder left in the world by murder victims (Endicott 1970:73), and may now be fused with the Islamic additions of roh (the individual identity from the spiritual breath of God) and wa (the part that goes to heaven or hell upon death). nya The Malay term bayang means both shadow and reection. Wilkinson sums up the bayang epistemology: man is but a mirror, God is the resplendent sun; man is a phantom, God is absolute being (1906:15).20 A clinical separation of animist, Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic elements is problematic because they overlap, blur, and fold into one another under the hegemony of Malay Susm, resulting in fuzzy religious/magical

36

VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW

Volume 24 Number 1 Spring 2008

categories. Mohammad Dins painting Confused Lover (Figure 4), where the lover is confused by his own shadow (Mohammad Din), reects and reinvents the tradition of Malay mysticism, and is painted in the style of wayang kulit (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). Some of Mohammad Dins pieces can be directly read as Islamic calligraphy. Others, such as Confused Lover, explore more ancient Southeast Asian themes, including silat, Malay weaponry, shadow puppet theater (wayang kulit), and the Javanese hobby horse dance (kuda kepang), which, although centuries old, is probably a relative newcomer to Southeast Asian performance art (Burridge 1961; Sedyawati 1998). The guru silat attain their special powers by undergoing fearsome ascetic ordeals, ritual practices linked to the esoteric indigenous animist belief system known as kebatinan.21 Batin (inner/hidden/mind), the root word of kebatinan, is of Arabic derivation and contrasts with zahir (outer/manifest/bodily). Cultivating the breath, known as tenaga dalam, tenaga batin, or prana, awakens the power of the naga or dragon.22 Bertapa (ascetic seclusions) may involve fasting, meditation, prayer, and solitary survival in the rain forest, undertaken as steps along the path toward the mystical revelation of self and the attainment of magical powers. Mohammad Din, for example, relates a ritual where he had to stand alone in a well with the water up to his neck for seven days and seven nights. Unfortunately, on the sixth day, a woman came to draw water from the well and disturbed him, and so he did not complete the test.

Mohammad Dins sculpture, Dragon Journey, illustrates the journey into the hidden dimension (Figure 5). Dragon Journey, as Mohammad Din says, is a journey into the unknown, into a dimension where the end is unknownFa journey, real, and mystical, representational, yet very abstract. Made in Paris, the head comes from discarded bits of a crab dinner; the body consists of coconuts found in a Vietnamese shop strung together with plastic rings; the tail is an old moose horn; the eyes are made from a stone once embedded in Mohammad Dins broken ring; the eyebrows come from the heels of his shoes; and the eye sockets are made from the cork of a wine bottle. As Mohammad Din notes, I think the whole philosophy of this artwork is actually getting into its oneness, of the whole creation, you and what you create, you and what you see and what you feel, even you and what you have been collecting to produce the artwork. In sum, guru silat harness inner powers (tenaga dalam) to harm or kill their enemies, and conversely, use the same energy to heal the victims of black magic. Mohammad Din pours this energy into his artworks, and paints with his bare ngers so as not to impede its ow. Thus, he is both agent and patient, creator and vessel for powers emerging from the unseen realm (alam

FIGURE 4. Confused Lover. Acrylic on canvas. 8686 cm.

FIGURE 5. Dragon Journey. Mixed media.

The Healing Arts of the Malay Mystic

FARRER

37

ghaib). These powers are stored in his artworks ready to leap into life during times of emergency, akin to what Gell calls the homunculus effect (1988:133).

The Art of Healing

Mohammad Din walks with a limp due to a motorcycle accident he had more than 20 years ago. A truck forced him off the road and ung him down a cliff. His foot twisted 360 degrees around and dangled from his ankle by a sliver of esh. In the hospital, due to the onset of gangrene, the surgeon decided to amputate. Mohammad Din refused the procedure, insisted the doctor stitch his foot back together, and promptly discharged himself. Tending to him rst in Singapore and then in Perak, Pak Hamim Bujang searched for ubi nyaharu (an inedible wild yam) in the rain forest, which was crushed into a powder and mixed with turmeric, spiders web, and soot to form a poultice applied twice daily. Pak Hamim Bujang spent two years healing and removing the bits of dirt and debris from Mohammad Dins foot. Mohammad Din then vowed to God that if he were to keep his foot he would himself become a traditional Malay healer and devote his life to alleviating the suffering of others. Mohammad Din, who learned some French while painting and exhibiting in Paris, says that alleviating suffering is the prime mo tre. tivation of his art and provides its raison de From his house he treats people with all kinds of ailments, from headaches to cancer. Generally the cancer patients come as a last resort, he says. He tells them he can offer no guarantees, but can sometimes help to stop the growth. Failing that, he will stay with them until they die, in order to ease their passage into the hereafter. He treats his patients with massage (urut), stones, including petried dew (geliga embun), prayer (doa), jampi, and herbal medicine (ubat), for topical application or ingestion. In 2005, I witnessed Mohammad Din in action when I took the French Canadian lmmaker Josette Normandeau, the black-belt presenter of the Deadly Arts series, on a reconnaissance trip to see him in Melaka at his kampong (village) house. While tucking into a homecooked lunch of fresh river sh accompanied by hot and spicy coconut gravy, Josette snared a sh bone in her throat. She began to asphyxiate and clutched her own neck in blue-faced agony. Mohammad Din sidled over to her and asked, Do you want to spit it out or swallow it? Looking more dead than deadly at that moment, the deadly arts star rasped spit it out, whereupon he pressed a nerve in her throat with a pincer grip, making her vomit the bone out in a t of coughing. For the most part, Mohammad Din uses his paintings and sculptures to act as a kind of preventative medicine.

For example, he himself wears a talisman (azima) suspended from a string about his neck, made from wood with a petried hailstone inserted in the back.23 The idea, he explains, is to have an upright alif on ones chest in the form of a miniature sculpture (also see Gell 1993).24 Alif is the rst letter of the Arabic alphabet, and represents the standing posture at the beginning of the Muslim daily prayer (solat), which precedes kneeling and placing the forehead onto the prayer mat (Figure 6). The postures of the prayer embody the Arabic calligraphy for Ahmad, comprised of the letters alif, ha, mim, and dal.25 From this vantage silat is Islamic calligraphy in motion, just as the daily prayer is Islamic calligraphy in motion, an idea recognized by Muslims worldwide.26 Incidentally, in the painting Alif (Staircase of Life) the image is also suggestive of the straight (aristocratic) Malay keris and of a dragons head. Hence, guru silat Mohammad Din paints dhikr directly onto the canvas with his bare hands, using his bodily movements of silat as a transducer of divine power from the sacred to the profane realm (Csordas 2002:163).

The Art of Nature

Mohammad Din draws his inspiration from nature, including sunshine, rain, the sea, lakes, rivers, streams, mountains, and waterfalls, and takes long sojourns into the Malaysian jungle to experience its natural calligraphy. For him, the oil palm appears calligraphic because

FIGURE 6. Alif (Staircase of Life). Acrylic on canvas. 10590 cm.

38

VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW

Volume 24 Number 1 Spring 2008

of its uprightness; the money plant grows in harmony with the wall; and epiphytic ferns live in harmony with their hosts as they know how to share a space to survive. Knowing how to share, Mohammad Din says, is the whole idea of being on earth, and the plant knows it very well; this is of course what we need in human life. He points out that there are more than 50 species of heliconia, a plant that is extremely difcult to draw unless drawn in the form of calligraphy. Furthermore, the Great Frangipani, known as a haunted temple and graveyard tree, produces beautiful rm-looking leaves and owers, and has many medicinal qualities, being used to cure boils, blisters, and swollen gums. To paraphrase the artist, the Flora paintings (there are four in the series) look like owers, but if one refuses to focus on the owers then many other images may be seen behind them (Figure 7). The dreamlike quality of the Flora series accords well with the following comment of Ziauddin: One of the most notable characteristics of Malay mysticism is its emphasis on miracles . . . . But the Malays do not demand any old miracles. Since the quest for miracles is essentially a desire for a belief in the necessity of spiritual life, the miracles have to be rmly outside the boundaries of rationality and

material signs, areas Islam rules rmly within the boundaries of routine normality. So dreams often play an integral part in these miracles. [Ziauddin 2000:138]27 The viewer of paintings in the Flora series sees images of nature, of the garden, and looking deep enough may discover a host of avatars or dreamlike apparitions (see also Figure 1). Such enchanted beings are normally unseen by human eyes, and may include ancestors, the angelic host, faeries (pari pari), dragons, chthonic manifestations of mythical heroes (such as Hang Tuah and Hang Jebat), the black warrior spirit who protects the gelanggang (Panglima Hitam), ghosts (hantu), female vampires (pontianak), birth demons (toyol), the shadow and reection souls (baying-bayang), were-tigers (harimau), and any number of the vast pantheon of good and evil indigenous and Islamic spirits (jinn).28 The images are polysemic and suggestive, and continuously provoke attribution and reattribution. By hinting at a kaleidoscope of meanings they fascinate spectators, transforming their role from passive observer to eyewitness. Julie, for example, the owner of a brace of paintings by Mohammad Din on the black warrior Panglima Hitam in calligraphic styles, hangs the paintings on either side of her bed. One night she awoke to the sound of scraping noises coming from outside her window when suddenly the gure from the painting (Gells prototype) leaped into the room. Julie was unsure whether this was a startling dream or a shocking vision, but now rests assured that the paintings will protect her during her sleep. During eldwork, I trained silat, slept, and wrote my eld notes on the oor of the artists studio in a space submersed in paintings and sculptures (Figure 1). The Malaysian days commenced with thin rays of light, progressed to the white glare of noon, faded to the yellow afternoon sun, and melted into the incarnadine dusk, only to plunge back into night. Mohammad Din would teach me silat by starlight, usually at about 3:00 a.m. The prototypes in the Nature and Flora paintings change markedly during the transitions from dawn to dusk. I rst noticed the transmogrications when I awoke with a sudden jolt on a moonlit night. Weird forms and images appeared within the paintings and their familiar, taken for granted appearances vanished to reveal other imagery, or calligraphy, depending on the strength and the direction of light.29 The effect is startling, eerie, and uncanny. From an innocuous-looking bit of Holy Scripture, a monstrous form would emerge and then vanish as the gestalt continuously shifted. The slow subtle shift of light causes an uncanny sense of cognitive disturbance: one does not realize that the light has changed until

FIGURE 7. Flora (in red). Nature series. Acrylic on canvas.

The Healing Arts of the Malay Mystic

FARRER

39

something different registers in the painting. Upon twilight black lines writhe beneath the now-invisible bright colors that dominate the pictures at noon, and it is then that one can best see the strange subterranean calligraphy underlying these images. As Mohammad Din explains, the shadowy images running around behind the owers make them appear to move. The background consists of a clear energy ow, like a hurricane brought into the forest. While Mohammad Din sits in the garden a brigade of corpse ants (semut mayat) traverse his foot without pausing to bite him. He does not need my citronella repellent against the ubiquitous mosquitoes because they refuse to suck his blood. I ask him, How is this possible? His reply is that one must catch a mosquito or an ant and request them not to bite, asking not the individual critter, but their collective soul (semangat). He says his ability is only possible given the living power of the Quran, read not as series of dead words on paper, but as the embodiment of Allah in all creation. Thus, he demonstrates his oneness with the jungle and nature, something modern Malay people are now more distanced from than ever, as everywhere hefty concrete bungalows replace stilted wooden houses, while oil palm plantations inexorably overwhelm the ancient rain forests. Aside from reasons of propriety, deep-rooted fears of losing control (amok or latah), death, and the supernatural underlie the religious motives for owning the protective talisman of Allah and Mohammad seen above or upon the door of virtually every Malay house. Mohammad Din casts his charms into this milieu: the artist as hero using scripture from a divine book to battle the powers of the unseen world surfacing through accident, impotence, misfortune, sickness, and death. For Mohammad Din, the Flower series above all, is a reection of calligraphy in nature. In his terms, medicine, which largely derives from plants, is substance for the essence of art. In sum, he takes his inspiration from what he calls natural calligraphy, the calligraphy of the jungle in the line of a branch against the sky, the ribbed pattern of a leaf, and the trickle of water down a brook. His artwork reveals and records his sensuous communion with the ubiquitous spirits (semangat) of nature, including insects, birds, and animals, trees, blades of grass, rocks, the sun and the moon, night, different types of daylight, the sea, rivers, lakes, and waterfalls, to name but a few.

the Quran to protect routine normality, but also to celebrate nature and the origin of the universe (Figure 8). Here he breaks with tradition in his rendition of the seven styles of traditional Islamic calligraphy known as khat, comprised of the kuc, rikaah, diwani, nastaliq, thuloth, and naski styles, because he does not paint with a kalam (bamboo pen), but renders the paint directly onto the paper or the canvas with his bare ngertips (Mohammad 2000).30 He has a sophisticated theory of contemporary Islamic calligraphy as an endless form of creation: My form of calligraphy is limitless, it should be able to express not just technique, not just feeling, but concept and philosophy, and it comes back to Su thinking, looking for the essence of things. As noted above, Mohammad Din fuses natural calligraphy, traditional medicine, and martial arts into his paintings and sculpture. Therefore, when you see the line, you also see the stroke, the therapeutic energy which is transferred into calligraphy (Mohammad Din). Yet there is more to Mohammad Dins calligraphic style of painting than meets the eye, because the artist provides an audiovisual experience for those able to read Arabic. As Dzul Haimi observes, these expressive letters contain sound and this sound only exists in the mind of the audience (2000). Coming after the Nature and Flora series, the more than 50 paintings of the Zikr series, many in black and white, comprise the majority of Mohammad Dins recent artwork. These stark renditions of Arabic calligraphy perform a host of specic functions to ensure good health, fortune, prosperity, sexual potency, and spiritual cleanliness. Toh, for

The Modern Art of Calligraphy

The dreamlike quality of the Flora series is less pronounced in Mohammad Dins calligraphic Zikr series, which offers the Islamic rationality of the material calligraphic signs of

FIGURE 8. Ah-Rahman (Blessing Light). Acrylic on canvas. 9191 cm.

40

VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW

Volume 24 Number 1 Spring 2008

example, is a calligraphic gure that looks like an enormous phallus and testicles. Another painting in the Zikr series is the Call of Blessing, Allah hu akbar (God is great), painted in black and white to reect the need to cleanse oneself in and out, especially during the month of Ramadan. Throughout Ramadan, Muslims must fast during the daylight hours and avoid physical and spiritual vices, a difcult task that requires much effort to accomplish properly.

Raja Majun
Raja Majun means the King of Medicine (Figure 9). Majun is a traditional Malay medicine made from medicinal herbs, roots, and honey mixed into a small black ball. This sculpture, the head of which is made with a large round cannonball fruit, incorporates medicine into art. The upright spine symbolizes the strength of the alif, and the arms reect human bones. The idea is to stretch to feel good and strong, and to stand upright like the alif. According to Mohammad Din, majun combines the primitive and the modern to strengthen the body: Everything starts with a dot and continues after only that. In calligraphy, as with everything else, it is the start, or the essence that counts, whether its a seed, a drawing, a painting, architecture or a human life.

Mohammad Din regards Arabic calligraphy as the language of God inscribed upon all creation. By his Su reckoning Arabic words are polysemic, bearing multiple layers or dimensions of meaning that stretch back through history to the beginning of creation, religion, writing, and the rst day of humanity, a beginning that starts from monochrome, before entering into color. For him, black is the last part of color and white is the rst part. Hence, in his work, there are many black and white pieces, to act as a reminder of the present, the past, and the future.

Conclusion
This article has provided an in-depth case study of the work of one Malay artist through which to regard Gells theories of captivation and enchantment. Such a narrow focus does not mean I subscribe to an art-cult where Mohammad Din stands beyond his socio-historic context. Many other Malay artists express Malay mysticism through their artwork, including Ahmad Zakii Anwar, Syed Hussein Alatas (the political writer, not the late sociologist), and Raja Shahriman (of Perak). In other words, Mohammad Din is an exemplar rather than an exception. His work shows how calligraphy contains the power of God in Islamic societies, although that power is beyond representation. The beyond-representation in the representation of the beyond resonates with the central condition of Islam (lit. submission), namely that there is no God except Allah. To skeptics, Mohammad Din may appear as a new breed of bomoh, guru silat, and artist, one who feeds upon the prots of artwork sold to royalty, multinational corporations, banks, and private businessmen in the supernatural rat race of modern Kuala Lumpur. According to Ziauddin, in his discussion of Kuala Lumpur: In these fantastical realms of the modern city, new breeds of bomoh have adapted themselves to the rapidly changing nature of Malay society. There are the bomohs consulted by party ofcials and upwardly aspiring businessmen, not for exorcism in the old sense, but a more proactive kind of exorcising of the constraints to advancement and the accumulation of wealth and power. The existence of the transmuted bomoh became evident in the most sensational murder trial in KLs history. Mona Affandi was a female bomoh with, according to repute and the rumour mill, an illustrious clientele of movers and shakers. She was convicted of murdering one of her clients, a member of parliament, in circumstances that suggest the bomohs too are seeking their share of wealth and prot by legal

FIGURE 9. Raja Majun. Mixed media.

The Healing Arts of the Malay Mystic

FARRER

41

pragmatism as well as by magical means. [Ziauddin 2000:161] However, Ziauddins comment ill applies to the Malay (martial) artist, who genuinely believes that malecent forces exist in the community, which must be checked by self-defense, combined with the arts of healing, nature, and calligraphy. Gells theory of Art and Agency and the essays collected for his Art of Anthropology open an interpretive window upon the artwork of the Malay artist Mohammad Din, just as Mohammad Dins artwork provides ample ethnographic evidence in support of Gells notions of captivation and enchantment. Bowdens (2004) posthumous criticisms of Gell are premature when situated against the utility of Gells ingenuity, which is better read together with Batesons (2000) essay on style and Freuds (1990) work on the uncanny. More than simply a criticism of Bowdens review essay (2004), this article vindicates Gells coupling of art and enchantment to explore the culturally distinctive ways in which art objects extend their makers or users agency (Campbell 2001; Layton 2003:447). While Gell neglected performance art, and did not provide an adequate account of aesthetics, his insights concerning enchantment and captivation operate well beyond his own ethnographic examples. Mohammad Din Mohammad, through his painting and sculptures, advances the direction of wisdom against a purely formalist approach to Islam that would decry the representation of God. Against representation, Mohammad Dins art is a divine embodiment of calligraphy.

Acknowledgments
5

Mohammad Din Mohammad passed away in May 2007. He is survived by his wife and ve children. He carefully read this manuscript and made several important adjustments. He said he found the article unusual as he was used to art reviews, but when I asked him, with furrowed brow, whether he liked it, he said, No, I love it. Ellis Finkelstein, Julie Farrer, and Roxana Waterson also read through drafts of the article and offered valuable suggestions. I must thank Mohammad Din and his wife, Hamidah, for their help and guidance in my journey through Malay art and culture.

Notes
1

Benjamin points out that: Historically, the Isthmus of Kra, the Malay Peninsula, Singapore, Riau, Sumatra, and Kalimantan have belonged to one historical realityFthe Malay World (Benjamin 2003:5 n. 2), regions that were historically ruled by a Malay Sultanate (Benjamin 2003:7; Milner 1981).

The literature regarding silat includes Anuar (1992), Chambers and Draeger (1978), Cordes (1990), de Grave (2001), Draeger (1972), Farrer (2006a, 2006b, 2007, in press), Gartenberg (2000), Hamzah (1967), Ku and Wong (1978), Orlando (1996), Maliszewski (1996), Maryono (2002), Mohd. Anis Md. Nor (1986), Pauka (1998, 2002), Rashid (1990), Shamsuddin (2005), Sheppard (1972, 1983), Tuan Ismail Tuan Soh (1991), Wiley (1993, 1994, see also 1997), J. Wilson (1993), and L. Wilson (2004). Useful discussions of silat are scattered across the literature on Southeast Asian dance and theater, including de Zoete and Spies (1952:252257), Fernando-Amilbangsa (1983), Mohd. Chouse Nasuruddin (1995), and Simatupang (n.d.). Silat also features in books on Malay magic: Skeat (1984), Shaw (1976:2229), Werner (1986:2239). Performance ethnography was the primary research method I used to study the secretive Malay art of silat between 1996 and 2003. Performance ethnography is a eldwork method whereby the researcher actively joins in and learns the performance genre of the informants (Farrer 2006b, 2007, in press; Zarrilli 1998). Unless otherwise noted, the material on Mohammad Din in this article consists of verbatim conversation (barring grammatical adjustments for readability) collected in eld notes from 2002 to 2007 and from a video interview I lmed with him in 2003. Likewise, Burrows (1963), in the rst U.S. study of Micronesian art (based on Ifaluk Atoll), had to redene the study of art given the apparent lack of sculpture, paintings, and drawings in a region where there is little pigment for paints, where coral is too crumbly for sculpting, and where coconut wood is unsuitable for carving (Burrows 1963:6; Rainbird 2004:3536). As Rainbird sums up, Burrows soon found that there was much to be studied in the art of Ifaluk when a broader understanding was adopted and detailed issues of body art, poetry, dance and song (2004:36). There are several aspects to Gells discussion of agency. Fundamentally, whenever an event is believed to happen because of an intention lodged in the person or thing which initiates the causal sequence, that is an instance of agency (Gell 1998:17). My thanks to a Visual Anthropology Review anonymous reviewer for supplying this reminder. Bowden (2004:309) also criticizes Gells supposed errors and his supposed lack of originality. Gell was working on the draft of Art and Agency (1998) on his deathbed and consequently his book lacks polish. The term performance in my formulation dispenses with the notion of technology, itself probably an outcome of Mausss (1979:107) techniques du corps. I prefer to use the term skill (Ingold 2000:5) in place of Gells ([1999]1992) technical complexity. However, skill and performance address only half of Gells equation, the other half being enchantment, which Gell tackles in many ways, including volt sorcery, necromancy, demon traps, and transmogrication.

42

VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW

Volume 24 Number 1 Spring 2008

10

11

12 13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

On the impressive arsenal of Indonesian and Malay weaponry, see Draeger (1972). On Hang Tuah, see Sheppard (1964), the recent lm Putri Gunung Ledang: A Legendary Love, and the classic P. Ramlee movie Hang Tuah. In Malaysia it is illegal for Muslims to consume alcohol. See also Pinney and Thomas (2001) and, for a contrary view, Sharman (2002) and Hobart and Kapferer (2005). For example, Winstedt (1993), in his book The Malay Magician: Being Shaman, Saiva and Su, omits the guru silat, a colonial categorical error which then rebounds down through the literature (see, e.g., Endicott 1970; Rashid 1990). Several indigenous terms for traditional healer may be mentioned here, including bomoh (of which bomoh silat is a derivative). Believed to enter trance and practice religious beliefs outside of Islam, the bomoh is considered to be objectionable in the current and ongoing dakwah climate of Islamic reform (Hussin 1993; Nagata 1980, 1984; Shamsul 1997:212217). Dukun or pawang are sometimes employed as alternatives for bomoh, although for Mohammad Din pawang (herbalist) is more acceptable. In contemporary Singapore, many bomoh now refer to themselves with the Arabic substitution of tabib (traditional Arabic doctor), or may simply refer to themselves as guru silat. According to Werner (1986:17), a western doctor who studied traditional medicine in Kelantan, the bomoh may become a specialist in one of three elds to become an herbalist (bomoh akar-kayu), an herbalist and medical specialist (bomoh jampi), or a puppeteer of wayang kulit (dalang). Werner (1986:17 n. 1) lists eight other types of bomoh, including the bomoh patah (bone setter), tukang urut (masseur), tukang bekam (specialist in blood-letting), tok mudim (circumciser), bidan (birth-attendant), tok puteri (shamanic ritual specialist in the border region of Thailand and Malaysia), tok minduk (the tok puteris interpreter), keramat hidup (a living saint), and pawang (a nature-hygienist, spiritual protector of the elds and crops, but also in various specialties, including pawang ular [snake specialist], pawang buaya [crocodile specialist], and pawang laut [sea specialist]). The embodied performance of healing in Malaysia is advanced by Laderman (1991, 1995, 2000) and Roseman (1991). At this juncture I have rened my earlier views (Farrer 2006a, 2006b). Alternate states of consciousness take subtler forms than trance, including ASCs resulting from dancing, daydreaming, deep thought, drugs, inhalation of smoke or incense (benzoic stone), percussion from drumming or gongs, sleep deprivation, and yoga-like martial arts movements (Tart 1990). On trance and possession in Southeast Asian performance genres, for example, see Burridge (1961), Heinze (1988), Rashid (1990), and Shaw (1976). This paragraph is adapted from Farrer (2006b:186187).

21

22

23 24 25

26

27

28

29

30

On kebatinan, see Beatty (1999), Errington (1989), Geertz (1976), Keeler (1987), Maryono (2002), Mulder (1980), Rashid (1990), and Wilson (1993). In silat, control over the breath may be achieved through breath training while submerged in the sea, rivers, wells, or waterfalls, and through chanting dhikr at length. On Malay magical stones, see Sheppard (1972). Tattooing is forbidden in Islam. Allah: Alif 5 A, Lam 5 L, Lam 5 L, Ha 5 H. There is a missing a after the second L because Lam with a stroke on top is also pronounced as la (Farrer 2006b:212213, in press). Regarding mystical experience and various silat applications for the same postures, see Farrer (2006b:213219, in press). Shanafelt suggests the term marvel should be given to miracles, the appearances of ghosts, UFOs, vampires, and suchlike, where marvel refers to any event or effect of extraordinary wonder, thought to be tangibly real, that is claimed to be the result of ultra-natural force (Shanafelt 2004:336). Because it disassociates miraculous phenomena from religious discourse, it is somewhat tempting to dub miraculous, magical, or mystical phenomena as marvels. However, to my mind, the term also conjures images of Batman and a host of comic-strip heroes. See Werner (1997) for a fascinating and beautifully illustrated study of Mah Meri carvings in Malaysia. Of course, comprehending the specic details of the images depends on the cultural capital the observer brings to the artwork, but the ability to perceive changes occurring as one set of images changes to another, as signs become symbols or vice versa, is facilitated by the strength, intensity, and angle of the light. For a spectacular visual introduction to Islamic calligraphy combined with a thoughtful analysis from an Islamic perspective, see Khatibi and Sijelmassi (2001).

References
Andaya, Barbara Watson, and Leonard Y. Andaya 2001 A History of Malaysia. 2nd edition. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Anuar Abd, Wahab 1992 Teknik dalam seni silat melayu. Kuala Lumpur: Percetakan Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka. Bateson, Gregory 2000 [1972] Style, Grace and Information in Primitive Art. In Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Mary Catherine Bateson, ed. Pp. 128152. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Beatty, Andrew 1999 Varieties of Javanese Religion: An Anthropological Account. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press/Harvard University Press. Benjamin, Geoffrey 2003 On Being Tribal in the Malay World. In Tribal Communities in the Malay World: Historical, Cultural, and

The Healing Arts of the Malay Mystic

FARRER

43

Social Perspectives. Geoffrey Benjamin and Cynthia Chou, eds. Pp. 776. The Netherlands/Singapore: International Institute for Asian Studies/The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Bowden, Ross 2004 A Critique of Alfred Gell on Art and Agency. Oceania 74(4):309325. Burridge, K. O. L. 1961 Kuda Kepang in Batu Pahat, Johore. Man 61:3336. Burrows, E. G. 1963 Flower in My Ear: Art and Ethos of Ifaluk Atoll. University of Washington Publications in Anthropology, 14. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Cited in Rainbird, Paul (2004:36). Campbell, Shirley F. 2001 The Captivating Agency of Art: Many Ways of Seeing. In Beyond Aesthetics: Art and the Technology of Enchantment. Christopher Pinney and Nicholas Thomas, eds. Pp. 117136. Oxford: Berg. 2002 The Art of Kula. Oxford: Berg. Chambers, Quentin, and Donn F. Draeger 1978 Javanese Silat: The Fighting Art of Perisai Diri. Tokyo: Kodansha. Cordes, Hiltrud 1990 Pencak silat: Die Kampfkunst der Minangkabau und ihr kulturelles Umfeld. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cologne. Crapanzano, Vincent, and Vivian Garrison, eds. 1977 Case Studies in Spirit Possession. New York: Wiley. Csordas, Thomas J., ed. 1994a Embodiment as a Paradigm in Anthropology, the 1988 Stirling Award Essay. Ethnos 18:547. 1994b Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1999 The Bodys Career Anthropology. In Anthropological Theory Today. Henrietta L. Moore, ed. Pp. 172205. Cambridge: Polity Press. 2002 Body/Meaning/Healing. Basingstoke: Palgrave. de Grave, Jean-Marc 2001 Initiation rituelle et arts martiaux: trois ecoles de kanuragan Javanis. Paris: Association Archipel. de Zoete, Beryl, and Walter Spies 1952 Dance and Drama in Bali. London: Faber and Faber. Draeger, Donn F. 1972 [1992] Weapons and Fighting Arts of Indonesia. Boston: Tuttle Repr. Dzul Haimi, bin Md. Zain 2000 N.p. in In Zikr: Hands on Calligraphy, Mohammad Din Mohammad. Kuala Lumpur: Tinta. Eliade, Mircea 1972 Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Willard R. Trask, trans. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press/Bollingen. Endicott, Kirk Michael 1970 An Analysis of Malay Magic. Singapore: Oxford University Press.

Errington, Shelly 1989 Meaning and Power in a Southeast Asian Realm. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Farrer, D. S. 2006a Deathscapes of the Malay Martial Artist. Social Analysis: The International Journal of Cultural and Social Practice. Noble Death (Special Edition) 50(1):2550. 2006b Seni Silat Haqq: A Study in Malay Mysticism. Ph.D. dissertation, National University of Singapore. 2007 The Perils and Pitfalls of Performance Ethnography. International Sociological Association E-Bulletin, No. 6. In press In the Shadow of the Prophet: Martial Arts and Su Mysticism in Malaysia. Muslims in Global Societies Series. The Netherlands: Springer. Fernando-Amilbangsa, Ligaya 1983 Pangalay: Traditional Dances and Related Folk Artistic Expressions. Philippines: Ayala Museum. Freud, Sigmund 1990 [1919] The Uncanny. In Art and Literature, vol. 14. Albert Dickson, ed. James Strachey, trans. Pp. 335 376. London: The Penguin Freud Library, Penguin. Frey, Edward 1995 The Kris: Mystic Weapon of the Malay World. 2nd edition. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. Gartenberg, Gary Nathan 2000 Silat Tales: Narrative Representations of Martial Culture in the Malay/Indonesian Archipelago. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Berkeley. Geertz, Clifford 1976 The Religion of Java. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gell, Alfred 1975 Metamorphosis of the Cassowaries: Umeda Society, Language and Ritual. London: University of London/ The Athlone Press/Humanities Press. 1993 Wrapping in Images: Tattooing in Polynesia. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1998 Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1999 [1985] Style and Meaning in Umeda Dance. In The Art of Anthropology, Essays and Diagrams. Eric Hirsch, ed. Pp. 136158. London: The Athlone Press. Originally appeared in Society and the Dance: The Social Anthropology of Process and Performance, Paul Spencer, ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985. 1999 [1992] The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology. In The Art of Anthropology, Essays and Diagrams. Eric Hirsch, ed. Pp. 159186. London: The Athlone Press. Originally appeared in Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics. J. Coote and A. Shelton, eds. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1999 [1996] Vogels Net: Traps as Artworks and Artworks as Traps. In The Art of Anthropology, Essays and Diagrams. Eric Hirsch, ed. Pp. 187214. London: The

44

VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW

Volume 24 Number 1 Spring 2008

Athlone Press. Originally appeared in Journal of Material Culture 1(1):1538. Ghulam-Sarwar, Yousof 1997 The Malay Shadow Play: An Introduction. Penang: Asian Centre. 2004 Panggung Inu: Essays on Traditional Malay Theatre. Singapore: Unipress. Halifax, Joan 1991 Shamanic Voices: A Survey of Visionary Narratives. New York: Penguin Compass. Hamzah, bin Ahmad 1967 Silat terlak nata: pesaka hulubalangmelayu. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka. Heinze, Ruth-Ingle 1988 Trance and Healing in Southeast Asia Today. Bangkok: White Lotus. Hobart, Angela, and Bruce Kapferer, eds. 2005 Introduction: The Aesthetics of Symbolic Construction and Experience. In Aesthetics in Performance: Formations of Symbolic Construction and Experience. Pp. 122. New York: Berghahn Books. Hobsbawm, Eric J., and Terence Ranger, eds. 1983 The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hughes-Freeland, Felicia, ed. 1998 Recasting Ritual: Performance, Media, Identity. London: Routledge. Hussin, Mutalib 1993 Islam in Malaysia: From Revivalism to Islamic State. Singapore: Singapore University Press. Ingold, Tim 2000 The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge. Kapferer, Bruce 2003 Beyond Rationalism: Rethinking Magic, Witchcraft and Sorcery. New York: Berghahn Books. Keeler, Ward 1987 Javanese Shadow Plays, Javanese Selves. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Khatibi, Abdelkebir, and Mohammed Sijelmassi 2001 The Splendour of Islamic Calligraphy. London: Thames and Hudson. Kopytoff, Igor 1998 The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process. In Economic Anthropology. Stephen Gudeman, ed. Pp. 426456. Cheltenham: Elgar. Ku, Ahmad bin Ku Mustaffa, and Kiew Kit Wong 1978 Silat Melayu: The Malay Art of Attack and Defence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Laderman, Carol 1991 Taming the Wind of Desire: Psychology, Medicine and Aesthetics in Malay Shamanistic Performance. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1995 The Poetics of Healing in Malay Shamanistic Performances. In The Performance of Healing. Carol Laderman and Marina Roseman, eds. Pp. 115142. New York: Routledge.

2000 Tradition and Change in Malay Healing. In Healing Powers and Modernity: Traditional Medicine, Shamanism, and Science in Asian Societies. Linda H. Connor and Geoffrey Samuel, eds. Pp. 4263. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey. Layton, Robert 2003 Art and Agency: A Reassessment. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 9:447464. Lewis, I. S. 2003 [1971] Ecstatic Religion: An Anthropological Study of Spirit Possession and Shamanism. 3rd edition. London: Routledge. Maliszewski, Michael 1996 Spiritual Dimensions of the Martial Arts. Rutland, VT: Tuttle. Maryono, OOng 2002 Pencak Silat in the Indonesian Archipelago. Ruth Mackenzie, trans. Yogyakarta: Yayasan Galang. Mauss, Marcel. 1979 Sociology and Psychology: Essays. Ben Brewster, trans. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Milner, Anthony 1981 Islam and Malay Kingship. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 1:4670. Mohammad Din Mohammad 2000 Zikr: Hands on Calligraphy. Kuala Lumpur: Tinta. 2001 Vers Mon Unite: Towards Self Unication. Atelier Annette Huster du 29 mars au 22 avril. Mohd. Anis Md. Nor 1986 Randai Dance of Minangkabau Sumatra with Labanotation Scores. Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya. Mohd, Chouse Nasuruddin 1995 The Malay Dance. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka. Morphy, Howard 1994 The Anthropology of Art. In The Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology: Humanity, Culture and Social Life. Tim Ingold, ed. Pp. 648685. London: Routledge. Mulder, Neils 1980 Mysticism and Everyday Life in Contemporary Java. 2nd edition. Singapore: Singapore University Press. Nagata, Judith 1980 Religious Ideology and Social Change: The Islamic Revival in Malaysia. Pacic Affairs 53(3):405439. 1984 The Reowering of Malaysian Islam: Modern Religious Radicals and Their Roots. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Orlando, Bob 1996 Indonesian Fighting Fundamentals: The Brutal Arts of the Archipelago. Boulder, CO: Paladin Press. Pauka, Kirstin 1998 Theatre and Martial Arts in West Sumatra: Randai and Silek of the Minangkabau. Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies.

The Healing Arts of the Malay Mystic

FARRER

45

2002 Randai: Folk Theatre, Dance, and Martial Arts of West Sumatra. CD-ROM. N.p.: The University of Michigan Press. Pinney, Christopher, and Nicholas Thomas 2001 Beyond Aesthetics: Art and the Technology of Enchantment. Oxford: Berg. Rainbird, Paul 2004 The Archeology of Micronesia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rashid, Razha 1990 Martial Arts and the Malay Superman. In Emotions of Culture, a Malay Perspective. Wazir Jahan Karim, ed. Pp. 6495. Singapore: Oxford University Press. Reid, Anthony 1988 Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 14501680. Vol. 1, The Lands Below the Winds. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 1993 Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 14501680. Vol. 2, Expansion and Crisis. Thailand: Silkworm Books. Roseman, Marina 1991 Healing Sounds from the Malaysian Rainforest: Temiar Music and Medicine. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schutz, Alfred 1944 The Stranger: An Essay in Social Psychology. In Collected Papers II: Studies in Social Theory. Arvid Brodersen, ed. Pp. 91105. The Hague: Matinus Nijhoff. Sedyawati, Edi, ed. 1998 Performing Arts. Singapore: Archipelago Press. Shamsuddin, Sheikh 2005 The Malay Art of Self-Defense: Silat Seni Gayong. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books. Shamsul, Amri Baharuddin 1997 Identity Construction, Nation Formation, and Islamic Revivalism in Malaysia. In Islam in an Era of NationStates: Politics and Religious Renewal in Muslim Southeast Asia. Robert W. Hefner and Patricia Horvatich, eds. Pp. 207230. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Shanafelt, Robert 2004 Magic, Miracle, and Marvels in Anthropology. Ethnos 69(33):317340. Sharman, Russel Leigh 2002 Duke Versus Tito: Aesthetic Conict in East Harlem, New York. Visual Anthropological Review 18(12):321. Shaw, William 1976 Aspects of Malayan Magic. Kuala Lumpur: Yau Seng Press. Sheppard, Mubin Tan Sri Datuk 1964 The Adventures of Hang Tuah. 5th edition. N.p.: Eastern Universities Press. 1972 Taman Indera: A Royal Pleasure Ground, Malay Decorative Arts and Pastimes. London: Oxford University Press. 1983 Taman Saujana: Dance, Drama, Music and Magic in Malaya Long and Not-so-Long Ago. Malaysia: International Book Service.

Simatupang, R. O. N.d. Dances in Indonesia. Indonesia: Jajasan Prarantja. Skeat, Walter William 1984 [1900] Malay Magic: An Introduction to the Folklore and Popular Religion of the Malay Peninsula. Singapore: Oxford University Press. Stephen, Michele, ed. 1987 Sorcerer and Witch in Melanesia. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Strathern, Marilyn 2001 The Patent and the Malanggan. In Beyond Aesthetics: Art and the Technologies of Enchantment. Christopher Pinney and Nicholas Thomas, eds. Pp. 259286. Oxford: Berg. Tambiah, Stanley Jeyaraja 1984 The Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the Cult of Amulets: A Study in Charisma, Hagiography, Sectarianism, and Millennial Buddhism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tart, Charles T., ed. 1990 Altered States of Consciousness. 3rd edition. San Francisco: Harper. Tuan Ismail Tuan Soh 1991 Silat sekebun: seni silat melayu dengan tumpuan kapada seni. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka Kermenterian Pendidikan Malaysia. Turner, Bryan S. 1995 The Body and Society. 2nd edition. London: Sage. 1997 The Body in Western Society: Social Theory and Its Perspectives. In Religion and the Body. Sarah Coakley, ed. Pp. 1541. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Turner, Victor W. 1988 The Anthropology of Performance. New York: PAJ. Werner, Roland 1986 Bomoh/Dukun: The Practices and Philosophies of the Traditional Malay Healer. Switzerland: The University of Berne Institute of Ethnology. 1997 Mah Meri of Malaysia: Art and Culture. Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press. 2002 Royal Healer: The Legacy of Nik Abdul bin Hj. Nik Dir of Kelantan. Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press. Wiley, Mark V. 1993 Silat Gayong: Seven Levels of Self-Defence. Journal of Asian Martial Arts 2(4):7695. 1994 Silat Kebatinan as an Expression of Mysticism and Martial Culture in Southeast Asia. Journal of Asian Martial Arts 3(4):3845. 1997 Filipino Martial Culture. Rutland, VT: Tuttle. Wilkinson, Richard James 1906 Malay Beliefs. The Peninsula Malays, vol. 1. London/ Leiden: Luzac/E. J. Brill. Wilson, James 1993 Chasing the Magic: Mysticism and Martial Arts on the Island of Java. Journal of Asian Martial Arts 2(2): 1043.

46

VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW

Volume 24 Number 1 Spring 2008

Wilson, Lee 2004 The Management of Tradition: The Constitution of a National Martial Art, Dencat Silat in Indonesia. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge. Winstedt, Richard 1993 [1925] The Malay Magician: Being Shaman, Saiva and Su. Kuala Lumpur. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Zarrilli, Phillip B. 1998 When the Body Becomes All Eyes: Paradigms, Discourses and Practices of Power in Kalarippayattu, a South Indian Martial Art. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Ziauddin, Sardar 2000 The Consumption of Kuala Lumpur. London: Reaktion Books.