Ambiguity, synecdoche and affect in semai medicine

Sm. Sci. Med. Vol. 27, No. 8, pp. 857-877, Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved

1988 Copyright

0

0277-9536/88 S3.00 + 0.00 1988 Pergamon Press plc

AMBIGUITY, SYNECDOCHE AND AFFECT IN SEMAI MEDICINE ROBERT KNOX DENTAN Department of American Studies and Department of Anthropology, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14261. U.S.A.

Content and meaning of belief vary widely from one individual to the next and the core of common beliefs one is able to extract is vague and general. As a mythic charter or cognitive system it displays such “unsystematic” attributes as amorphousness, fragmentation and fluidity. . . mhe traditional religious complex. . is amorphous, fluid, dreamlike, surrealistic. Mathias Georg Guenther Bushman religion and the (non)sense of anthropological

theory of religion [30].

Abstract-Semai descriptions of their beliefs about health and disease vary from person to person. Moreover, at different times the same person expresses mutually incongruent beliefs. This amorphousness and fluidity merit analysis rather than neatening. This paper details Semai beliefs, loose ends and all, and suggests that their formal peculiarities are due to the prevalence of synecdoche in conceptual organization. Their inconsistency and fluidity may stem from individualistic egalitarianism within Semai society and powerlessness in the face of nonSemai attack. Finally, it is suggested that construing indigenous medicine as a crude form of Western medicine leads to overtidiness and consequent error. Key wordr-egalitarian

society, cognition, Semai Senoi, medical beliefs

INTRODUCI’ION Questions raised and problems unsolved This paper recounts how Senoi Semai, Austroasiatic-speaking horticulturalists of the West Malaysian hills, talked about sickness in the 1960s and 1970s. The past tense used throughout indicates the time these data were collected. It does not imply that these beliefs and customs are now in abeyance. The sort of cognitive orientation involved was nothing if not flexible and I doubt there have been fundamental changes. The introduction to the paper sketches the context of Semai medicine. The next section details their medical ideas. A final one interprets the data. I have discussed how Semai conceptualize and treat mental retardation, mental illness and childhood diseases elsewhere [l]. To save space, I have abbreviated comparative and ethnobiological data and relegated them to the backnotes. Semai discussions of sickness raised several questions which puzzled me in the field. How did Semai entertain, without apparent cognitive dissonance, a welter of mutually contradictory diagnoses, etiologies and cures? Given the tentativeness, idiosyncratic variability and mutual incompatability of their ideas, in what sense did aggregated Semai medical knowledge exist? What were the consequences of so much ambiguity and incongruence? A related problem stemmed from accounts of how members of one category changed into members of a different one, menstruents into tigers, for example. Many peoples in Southeast Asia and nearby Oceania reported similar metamorphoses [2]. Did these descriptions reflect cognition or emotion? Did they refer to literal beliefs or to locally standard metaphors? Or were such distinctions ethnocentric and futile? 857

The plasticity of Semai medical ideas seemed related to the “cultural assignment of threat as a meaning to such commonplace phenomena as butterflies, dragonflies, and thunderstorms. . . a generalized Semai conception of a dangerous and unpredictable world, a world whose most ubiquitous and seemingly innocuous elements carry the potential for disaster and death” [3]. Why did Semai seem to distrust perceived reality? Why did the cosmic order appear prone to collapse into horror if, for instance, one whistled in the evening, giggled uncontrollably or mixed spices with bearcat meat? Why were the polymorphic horrors Semai talked about so erotic and violent at the same time? Anthropologists often neaten nonwestern systems of thought, to make them comprehensible in linear, parsimonious ways and to refute ethnocentric presumptions that nonwesterners are irrational and simple-minded [4]. The tendentious claim that, like its supposed Western counterpart, nonwestern thought was rational and well organized may be topsy-turvy. Probably all Westerners most of the time, and most Westerners all of the time, are not tidy-minded. Similarly, Semai medicine was not a crude facsimile of organized and written Western medicine but a lush jungle of conflicting ideas. How then to represent their reality? Accuracy requires as complete a picture as possible, loose ends and all, preserving the hodgepodge flavor of the whole. Unfortunately, describing a welter requires details which might try a reader’s patience. Compounding the problem is the fact that ethnography at its tidiest is discursive, as reporting unique complex observations entails. Validating observations that could not be repeated demands detail. Finally, most Semai who held the ideas I describe are now dead or under heavy pressure to assimilate

ROBERTKNOX DENTAN

858

into the rural Malaysian underclass, SO that a complete account may be of archival value. Readers uninterested in Southeast Asia per se might want to skim the rest of the introduction, glance at the data section, and proceed to the conclusion, referring back from it if their interest is piqued.

Table

c

of Semai words

j 9 r

Consonanrs pronounced rough!, (IS in English. as -tch- in etch as -dg- in edge glottal stop trilled aspxated. i.e. between English s and h. Yowls

Semai lived around the border between southeastern Perak and northwestern Pahang States (see Fig. 1). With Temiar, their neighbors immediately to the North, they constitute the bulk of the indigenes whom early ethnographers call Senoi or Sakai. Until recently, most Semai lived in small settlements that formed and dissolved in the pattern characteristic of rainforest swidden horticulturalists with low population density (here, about seven people per square mile). Nowadays, however, extensive lumbering, encroaching lowland peoples, their own population growth, and a government policy of resettling landless peasants in Semai areas have forced many Semai into wage or piece work, cash cropping or selling forest produce [5]. Much Western knowledge of Semai comes from Ngah Hari’ kn ^ Ln Kulop, a West Semai man. Although he never had the special kind of dream in which a singing familiar spirit gives the dreamer reliable knowledge, he was an intellectual by persona1 bent. His intelligence showed in complex dream

oronunciation

Stress IS on the final syllable.

S

The people

I. Auoroximate

a

e i 0

” I,

Semai

fright.

(vowel

kngrh

except

is phonemic)

in father as in bet as in seek ai in cope (a little shorter) as -oo- m boot (a little shorter) as -ou- in ought as -u- in put schwa, Standard transciptions of Austroaslatic omit schwa in unstressed syllables. as

infixes. For example, -sng’h. to fear. to respect; sngg’h. respect: -smg’h, to frighten. etc.

uses

narratives and lucid metaphors. West Semai called such ‘experts’ malib, from a Malay version of Arabic ‘alib. Although many people helped explain medical matters, Ngah Hari was preeminent. Another West Semai man, the late Batin Derus kn” * n Ngah, literate, familiar with Malay lore and expert on spiritual matters, was also particularly helpful. More mystical than Ngah Hari, he was an

BTSISI

1020

languages

1030

-

104”

Fig. 1. Some Semai settlements in West Malaysia. Slashed line encircles Semailand as of about 1975. E: ‘East Semai’ highlands along upper Telom River in Pahang State, 1962. Little outside contact. G: ‘Grnt’b Semai’ in low foothills near town of Geruntom in central Perak State, 1975, recently converted to Methodism. W: ‘West Semai’ at the base of the foothills near Kampar town in south central Perak State, 1963, 1975. Frequent outside contact. L: ‘Lengkok’ Semai on the road to Cameron Highlands in southern Perak, 1973-1974. Increasing land pressure from outsiders.

Ambiguity, synecdoche and affect in Semai medicine articulate exponent of the thesis that the cosmos runs by dialectic: male/female, day/night, sun/rain, pagan/Muslim, Senoi/Malay. To alter these dualisms, e.g. by converting Senoi Semai to Islam, would, he thought. be cosmically destructive. Peonle like Derus who have access to familiar spirits in dreams and trances are -haZoaq, adept. I

Semai talk

Semai conversations were usually laconic. Most chat was gossip and tended to be lurid, especially when gossipers were on bad terms with their subjects. People knew their neighbors well, and often had axes to grind, so that embroidering events both titillated the audience and served the narrator’s interests. Still, Semai, particularly in the East, distrusted verbal facility and some people preferred associating with others who were kal^ Aq, i.e. tame, harmless, stupid or inarticulate [6]. Once I tried recording spontaneous conversations. The commonest remark was: ‘It’s hot!’ A few hours of ‘It’s hot,’ long pause, ‘It’s hot,’ long pause, ‘Wah, is it hot!’ so discouraged me that I gave up the project. In short, Semai used restricted codes of conversation and ritual. Ordinary Semai conversation seemed as unelaborate as that of the English working class whose speech patterns gave rise to the notion of restricted code. Only on political matters did Semai normally wax eloquent. A restricted code “does not facilitate the verbal elaboration of meaning. . . [but] helps to sustain solidarity with the group at the cost of verbal signalling of the unique difference of its members” [7]. In this spirit, Semai averred that no one could know what someone else thought or felt. Therefore, they said, trying to articulate one’s own feelings or innermost thoughts was pointless. This code inhibited inflicting oneself on others. The equally restricted ritual code of daily life helped maintain placid egalitarianism. Speech or behavior which was disorderly, peq tntuq, upset Semai, who said it might unleash supernatural horrors that always threatened to burst into the clean, well-lighted place where they wanted to live. Semai rarely instructed children. Their reluctance to intrude on children’s autonomy, part of the general principle of not making difficulties for others, underlay their assertion that they did not teach their children. Most adult knowledge came from personal experience, as is usual where social relationships entail mutual respect. Semai should defer to each other, avoiding anything like pressuring or bullying. One should not raise one’s voice, refuse to listen or contradict anyone face to face. Giving unsought instruction would have violated the deference people of all ages and both genders owed each other. Confronted with the unfamiliar, like an unusual set of symptoms, people asked an expert, adept, midwife or other knowledgeable person. Their interrogation was ad hoc and therefore haphazard and fragmentary. Dreams were another source of information, although unreliable until empirically tested [8]. Most people were reluctant to assert ideas. Privately, one might poohpooh someone else’s ideas, as lies or kid stuff. Public intellectual argument, however, would have made difficulty for others, risked a quarrel and

859

exposed one to ridicule. Knowledge therefore remained socially unchallenged and thus idiosyncratic. Until recently most Semai in their lives travelled less than a dozen miles from their birthplace. They normally lacked opportunity to exchange ideas with nonsemai. Moreover, even West Semai, who respected Malay lore, were wary of Malays. In short, they rarely needed to talk about abstract or otherwise nonempirical matters with people who might not understand. PHENOMENA

INVOLVED IN HEALTH AND DISEASE

introduction

Discussing disease, almost all Semai I talked with used a restricted set of named basic concepts, a situation possible in small-scale societies. Usually, it was all they needed. Semai discussions of sickness, for instance, routinely invoked the concept of pain spirits, nyaniq (q.v., below). The restricted medical code forced Semai to use metaphors for more detailed explanations. ‘Souls’: components of the person Discussions of disease referred to components which together constituted a person. The ethnographic literature glosses these components as souls, an unsatisfactory usage that some literate Gmt* b Semai criticized because the Semai ideas are so unlike Christian or Muslim concepts of soul, @oh in Semai, Malay and Arabic). Unfortunately, the gloss is too pervasive in ethnographies about Malaysian indigenes to junk. The following paragraphs summarize what Semai said about their concept of souls. Timid head-souls, ruwaay, lived behind the center of the forehead. They flitted away from the body during altered states of consciousness and diseases involving lassitude, notably forms of soul loss. Most head-souls died as a result of being devoured by supematurals. When a person died accidentally, however, the undevoured head-soul might survive as an animal, most likely a bird, which was also prey to supematurals. Lengkok people used the term headsoul for most psychic phenomena, e.g. ruwaay klook, psyche soul, or ruwaay kcm* * c. ghost soul. The head-soul energized the body, so that feeling unaccountably tired or looking anemic implied its absence. In this sense, it corresponded roughly to English notions like pep or volition. Immortal psyches, klook, were formless and unlocalized, although focussed in the center of the eye. A roving psyche resembled its owner or a sexy teenager. Psyche loss was graver than head-soul loss, though victims looked healthy. Seven days after death, psyches went east to the ‘Flower Fields’. The term overlapped with English ego or perception. Other things had psyches or head-souls. For instance, on every lofty Perak mountain the biggest commercially valuable calamus rattan had a psyche. When that rattan was old, its psyche became a will-o’-the-wisp and floated about thrumming like an idling car; the plant died a week or so later. Although East Semai linguistic codes seemed generally more restricted than West Semai ones, they included more by-names for phenomena which had psyches or head-

860

ROBERT KNOX DENTAN

souls, i.e. storm phenomena, pain spirits, individual Semai, nonSemai peoples, most vertebrates and some other animals. By-names described appearances and were often insultingly witty. Unlike names, muh, by-names were just handles, m-1, lacking the ontological reality Semai imputed to names. Individuals coined or forgot by-names often, so that knowledge of by-names was idiosyncratic [9]. Heart-soul, sngiiq, was also formless. It expressed itself in breath. Lengkok Semai said infants and comatose people lacked heart-soul. The word connoted sentience and proprioception. Aura, skooq, a word used for the glitter of silver, referred to vigor, charisma, muscle tone or the gleam of good health in the face of a robust person. Although it disappeared when sickness made people pale, it could not leave the body like heart-soul or psyche. A dead midwife’s aura went to the seven Original Midwives, an adept’s or expert’s to their respective Originals. After a month, the shadow of a rotted corpse became an immortal ghost. Ngah Hari said that if people were cars, head-soul would be the battery, psyche the driver, heart-soul the purr of the engine, breath the gas, aura the paint and pulse the speedometer. These flat declarative sentences drastically simplify Semai ethnopsychology. Most Semai had no reason to think much about souls. Local and idiosyncratic variations in expressed belief abounded. Thus, at Lengkok psyche (rationality) centered in hearts rather than pupils, and heart-soul (sentience) was unfocussed. The terminology East Semai used to describe metamorphoses due to supernatural puncturing (below) suggested that sometimes some of them shared Lengkok notions, as opposed to the ones sketched above. The fact that the 40 odd dialects of Semai were mutually intelligible masked this variability [IO]. Metaphors about ‘Souls’

Semai also talked about souls metaphorically. Head-souls, for instance, were butterflies, birds, homunculi and children. Equating butterflies with headsouls supported East Semai notions that molesting butterflies or flashy dragonflies weakened natural order and thus risked cataclysmic upheavals like floods, thundersqualls and earthquakes. Many Southeast Asian peoples represent souls as birds. Heard often but seen only in flashes, birds seem mysterious to many rainforest peoples. Semai children learned about them by hearing birdsong and asking the bird’s name rather than by seeing the bird, so that adults had trouble identifying pictures or even specimens of forest birds. Individuals identified birds of different species but the same genus and niche as male and female of the same species, mistakenly attributed songs of one species to another or simply confessed ignorance. This ignorance lent credence to the notion that some birds were not real, mtul, but rather embodied forces of chaos that continually threatened the tidy Semai world. People suffering head-soul loss should not eat wild birds, though it was fairly safe to eat kal^ * q birds, stupid or tame enough to let people near them, e.g. close enough to kill with a slingshot [6]. Lengkok Semai said a startled chicken’s squawk could scare away head-souls of

children or sick people. Figurines in the shape of birds or butterflies were central in ceremonies to lure back head-souls. To Semai, butterflies and birds were beautiful, salient and elusive. These qualities characterized spiritual entities in general and head-souls in particular. The apparently effortless flight of butterflies and birds resembled the movement of consciousness in dreams, some trances and head-soul loss. Calling a head-soul both bird and butterfly was a portmanteau way to express and understand this complex of ideas. So were other beliefs about birds and buttetllies, especially those which stressed the danger of molesting them or meeting them at night. The bird/butterfly/head-soul complex exemplified the expressive richness of restricted codes. My truncated abstract presentation does not do justice to that richness but does suggest that talking about head-souls as birds and butterflies encapsulated a lot of information. Semai also used Malay ideas of souls as miniatures of their owners to describe head-souls and sometimes psyches. The replication explained the appearance of others and the persistence of self in dreams and trances. Head-souls must be thumb-sized to fit behind foreheads. This small size rationalized accounts of what happened in curing rituals, when, for instance, hundreds, i.e. lots, of souls perched in the fragrant leaves of the spirit palace set up for seances. Representing head-souls as children drew on stereotypes of children. Semai children should be and did become timid. This timidity, imputed to headsouls, explains the elusiveness that birds and butterflies symbolize and the difficulty of luring familiars’ souls to seances. Children’s head-souls were doubly timid, ‘soft’ as childish bodies, explaining children’s special vulnerability to soul loss. Adepts were parents to their familiars’ childlike souls, for they ceremonially nurtured, fed and housed them. Like Semai children, familiar souls trusted only their (adept) parents. Spiritual vulnerability : tumescence (Smlid) and stab bing (-Truug)

Semai said certain conditions make people prone to misfortune or disease. Asked the mechanisms involved, they would waffle or refer to pain-spirits. These conditions resembled accident-proneness or loss of resistance. When I think about trying to explain those Western notions to traditional Semai, the elegance with which Semai presented their ideas is impressive. In any of these conditions people were open to diseases specific to that condition. The conditions thus served implicitly as superordinate categories under which diseases could be grouped. ‘Tumescence’ and ‘stabbing’ typified such conditions (Table 2). Ngah Hari and Derus said that tumescence inhered in the body, i.e. was not due to external agents like germs, pain spirits, poor hygiene, breaking food taboos or the like, although eating pakuq ferns, wild kantad ginger or banana flowers made it worse. Therefore, no herbal medicines helped; and tumescence produced no diagnostic dreams, since dreams involved exogenous souls. Sufferers diagnosed themselves. Cures involved finding someone who knew the right cnag- h, prayer, or jnampiq, Malay spell, to say

Ambiguity,

synecdoche

and

affect

in S&mai medicine

861

Table 2. Smlid diseases Scmai name

(rot*ng) (pasak/pmpasak) -nyi’ w ^ k (karak batu’) rjan -puuk’ -t”d knyarad

JlJem Ingk’r -papaq thluqt tluuq (gajah) tluuq (puney) thluq grg - r tluuq (klubi’) k*r -nyiq klabf -nyiq pleenh -nyiq sampuuq

Salient symptom

Western

Diagnosis

nasal lesion inguinal pain/swelling lower back pain. kidney stones

yaws, syphilis abdominal colic, hydrocele kidney problems, urethral calculus

anal swelling/bleeding inguinal swelling vaginal swelling swelling of lymph glands in the groin, followed by pink streak down the leg from the gland(s); delirium and fever liquid drips from vagina testicles withdraw? madness involving genital display swollen legs leg skin folds leg skin glossy, tight slightly swollen legs lumpy legs swollen thyroid swollen spleen (klab) swollen pancreas (pleenh), jaundice, thirst, mild anorexia, loose stools smelling ‘like blood’, intermittent fever jaundice cravings for (sl9in9 ), sweet/sour/salty food, intermittent fever

bleeding hemorrhoids filiariasis, hernia vaginal prolapse filiariasis without tluuk, tubular lymphanginitis?

q.v.

below;

filiariasis, dropsy elephantiasis edema, dropsy mild edema varicose veins, etc. goiter malaria chronic malaria

jaundice and ascites due to liver failure caused by malaria

Dr J. M. Bolton identified these diseases from cases diagnosed in the Orang Asli Hospital at Gombak. Words of Malay origin are in parentheses. Related ailments are grouped together. N9o.r. swelling or turgor, is always involved. Jelutung barkcloth amulets [2l] over which an expert, malib, has said an appropriate Malay spell. jnampiq,may help. Although there are no specific diagnostic dreams, a man’s dream of a woman sometimes indicates smlid. *These afflictions are m/oh, from an Arabic word for misfortune. Malays and Semai use it for disease due to arrogance, notably, for Semai, disagreement, rudeness or erotic intimacy with senior kin. West Semai add sitting on a pillow, an act Malays say causes swellings, bind, on buttocks or anus. Abdul Jalil b. Hj. Noor. Pesako Orang Tua-rue, p. 16. Al-Ahmadiah Press. Singapura, 1961. In classic Malay literature girls ofhumble birth who wed aristocrats may suffer the rolah of kedal, a form of chloasma. West Semai j&m is cognate with jijek, a Perak Malay variant of Malay cicik, disgusting, a word which applies to diseases like these to/ah. tNote the phonetic resemblance between tfuug and -rrulrq, supernatural puncture. The subtypes are, sequentially, elephant, pigeon (Treron spp.), waddling and sweet potato tluuq. fSemai say spleen sickness develops into pancreas sickness, which may turn lo sampuu9.

over ashes which the patient then mixed with water on a leaf, making an ointment for afflicted areas. The generic symptom was nqus, swelling. The underlying notion involved something nasty, typically sexual but sometimes anal, which the body contains with distress [I 11. Any anomalous piercing was dangerous, e.g. a vine growing through a tree or a branch puncturing the surface of the earth. East Semai said puncturing foods hurt menstruents or people with young children because characteristics of the food (beaks, teeth, pincers, spines) stabbed the heart: biting it (-kup n ^ * s, e.g. certain lizards and terrestrial rodents, beetles with pincers) or puncturing it (-ch ‘k n ^ ^ s, e.g. spines of porcupines and some catfish or beaks of certain birds). Eating spiny fruits or the pith of spiny palms might have the same effect. Eating turtles might squash, oppress or squeeze the heart (-teb -n s, -dug n ^ ^ s), so that it flipflopped, -kpk * ” p. Cardiac flipflop adumbrated transformation of sufferers into monsters. The East Semai term was kmlook, derived from the word for psyche and meaning something like psychogenic or caused by psyche. They said that, for example, menstruents who did not eat apart from other people risked becoming dangerous animals: bears if they ate bear, once allegedly human; pigs if they ate pork or snouty carp; tigers if they ate striped bullfrogs, striped bee larvae or honey. I suspect that women’s genital bleeding suggested a meld of sex and violence anathema to Semai, so that

such women and their babies seemed at once vulnerable and threatening. Stabbing expressed this implicit violation of women, suggesting it aroused the women’s own sexual violence, made concrete as transformation into dangerous animals. The terminology suggested that the psyche, in this context located in the heart, was where such potentially explosive feelings resided [ 121. An East Semai and Lengkok word, -faruuq, affect by stabbing, referred to fallen trees made spongy by termites or to violation of species boundaries, e.g. intertwined trees of different species or two fallen trees of different species lying one atop the other (cf. mixing tabu below). Even chopped to bits, their wood was too dangerous for firewood. Lengkok people washed the machetes used to destroy a stab-effect before using them for other purposes. Contact with any of half a dozen named types of stab-effect might cause weakness, low fever, malaise and swollen belly in children, much like vivax malaria. There were no stab-effect spirits or diagnostic dreams, but contact with stab-effects was pathogenic unless the anomaly was physically destroyed. West Semai talked less about supernatural stabbing, though they too shunned punctured earth, e.g. would not clear fields where tree branches had re-entered the earth, even long after the tree had disappeared except from memory. Their demeanor when talking about supernatural stabbing showed they took the danger seriously. Their word tluuk, patho-

862

ROBERTKNOX DENTAN

logical swelling (Table 2) may have been cognate with the word for stabbing. In short, a general Semai notion of endogenic (female?) bursting outward apparently mirrored one of exogenic (male?) stabbing inward. Tumescence in these contexts might express the explosive pressure of unacceptable emotions; stabbing, an undefined fear of violation or penetration by others. Pain -spirits (Nyaniq) Nyaniq, pain-spirits, were active principles of disease or poison. The term may have come from verbs meaning hurt. Lengkok Semai also called them ceeq, bugs, or maraaq. The term maruuq may be short for muuy nruuq, elders, or a loanword from Sanskrit, meaning death [13]. Nyuniq ate victims, specifically their head-souls or psyches, also often raping them. Many Semai associated sexual violence with the violence of devouring flesh, as just noted in connection with metamorphoses due to cardiac puncture. Pain-spirits underlay but differed from symptoms. To explain how six pieces of tuber in a bait animal’s chest cavity could poison a tiger, East Semai said the pain-spirits of those tubers overwhelmed the tiger’s soul. Likewise, edible aroids which needed detoxifying had to contain pain-spirits, though no one had dreamed what they looked like [14]. Like most Malays, most Semai professed ignorance about pain-spirits. They got nondream information about pain-spirits the same ad hoc way they learned about birds. Sick people or their kinsmen would ask someone more expert, like Ngah Hari, hoping to learn a cure. Diseases amenable to ad hoc diagnosis rarely involved pain-spirits. If first diagnosis or subsequent course of the disease implicated painspirits, one might consult adepts like Derus, who had true dreams [8]. The distinction between diseases with or without pain-spirits depended on who was talking about what. Thus, explaining how crushed kultuump leaf juice (Nuucleu sp.) relieved rashes (kdul, -ktuump, meet), an East Semai adept invoked the idea of pain-spirit meer or pain-spirit kdul, “compared with which cockroaches are huge,” which ate one’s skin from beneath and fled the challenge of pain-spirit kultuump: “Kdul, don’t eat this person, eat me first.” None of these pain-spirits occurred in other conversational contexts. Moreover, since rashes required no intervention by adepts’ familiars, pain-spirits in the normal usage were not involved. The physical form of pain-spirits in such explanations differed from the forms in which adepts displayed them after extracting them from a patient’s body, e.g. specks of blood or white quartzite pebbles. Pain-spirits were thus contingent and multiform. Pain -spirit systemutics

Tables 24 probably represent no actual cultural system. They stem from negotiations about medical reality which occurred over a period of weeks between an alien ethnographer bent on systematic understanding, the idiosyncratically rationalist intellectual Ngah Hat-i and the idiosyncratically mystical Derus, subject to continual kibitzing and secondguessing and supplemented by information from less systematizing people. This sort of negotiation, with

its recurrent pauses for clarification, differed in content and structure from ordinary Semai conversation, the rules of which barred confrontation and discouraged pontificating. Since Semai learned about disease ad hoc, the knowledge in the tables was immanent and available piecemeal; but probably no one carried the whole system around in his or her head, and variability was the rule. Derus and Ngah Hari gave the basic framework for Table 4. They began with a Derus-style four-part division based on two oppositions: underground vs aboveground; inland (Senoi, hill. freshwater) vs seaside (Malay, valley, saltwater). Lengkok people also contrasted a humanoid, tailless kind with a beast kind that had tails [15]. Robarchek and I agree, however, that these overarching duahsms were secondary and superficial. We met them in no other contexts. behavioral, symbolic or otherwise. The seaside category comprised only Malay spirits unknown to most East and many West Semai. These spirits caused recently introduced diseases [16]. In short, pain-spirit systematics was ad hoc and readily incorporated new information. Ghosts and hunters

A hodgepodge of entities did not fit this scheme, notably elves, ludut; ghosts. kcm ^ ^ c or kiqm ^ ” c; ‘hunters’, srnglook; and squall deities. Elves lived in silent places. had ears so sensitive that they could hear people’s body hairs rubbing together and blowpiped fatal rheumatic illness into people. They may be Semai versions of cenoi, fairies more salient among Malaysian foragers. They seemed to have wound up in the tail-less pain-spirit category simply because the two men had no better place for them. Semai used the word ‘ghost’ almost interchangeably with ‘pain-spirit’. Still, ghosts were peculiar. They originated from shadows of the dead. Although they could not cross water and were thus not water pain-spirits, they were too mindlessly and unremittingly malevolent to be subterraneans. They haunted graves in many forms. Encountering such a form warned Semai that they were in a burying ground. For example, rats, which Semai knew ate corpses and carried disease, were sometimes really ghosts. Unlike other pain-spirits, humanoid ghosts had inverted characteristics, e.g. eyes in the back of the head. Thus, photographic negatives were by analogy ‘ghosts’. Still, like the pain-spirits with which people often conflated them, ghosts were polymorphic and difficult to categorize. At Lengkok hunters were tree pain-spirits, which appeared as flying fiery-eyed siamangs and made people fall from trees or trees fall on people. Robarchek writes in a 1986 letter: [Y]ou could srlook somebody [make someone vulnerable to hunting] by saying you were going somewhere and then not going. People you would have encountered could [be smitten by] smglook, and any number of bad things could happen to them (a bus accident that happened on the Cameron Highlands road was caused by this .) [A hunter]. sits in treetops.. . reaches down with its long arms and seizes the [head-soul] of someone passing beneath by the nape of the neck, twisting and breaking it. The victim, who was perfectly healthy that morning, goes home and, wracked with

Ambiguity, synecdoche and affect in Semai medicine chills and fever, curls up around the hearth to try to keep warm. Burning up with fever and tortured by excruciating pain in the neck and head, the victim usually dies before morning. Ocassionally, the victim may go crazy, try to eat coals from the fire, attack people randomly and have to be tied up. an outbreak of Falciparum [malaria] in the village where we were living in 1980. was diagnosed as being due to [tree pain-spirit].

A young

3. Diseases

without

East Semai adept

said:

Hunters are two fathoms high, with two pairs of eyes, one in front, one in back. Their limbs are thin as threads; their heads, hands and feet are tiny. The torso is huge, with bulging belly and protuberant navel [like East Semai babies]. It enters the house and grabs a sleeper’s nape, then opens its four eyes wide, claws out its victim’s eyes and inserts its own, two in front and two in back. The victim wakes screaming “I have four eyes, I have four eyes!” But other people in the house cannot see them. Some rush to restrain the patient while others summon adepts, who call on familiars to help find the victim’s head-soul. Meanwhile, the hunter stands just outside the door, its skinny arms extended stiffly at its sides, watching its victim die.

Other Semai would have recognized the supernaturals in this account as tree spirits but perhaps not as hunters, which would not belong in their tree spirit category. East Semai said hunters come in pairs, like people. Males raped and devoured women, females raped and devoured men, like other pain-spirits.

Table

863

tails,

i.e. not

involving

nyaniq

Semai

Bareh

rash of small

(Kudrs)

which

pimplelike

break

&

Western

Etiology

symptoms

NXIle

swellings,

spread;

can

m’n,

bathing

in dirty

in

name

scabies

water

become

rmaq. q.v. itchy

skin,

often

scratched

(Kudis)

sore,

scab

T.

broken

Tmaq’. ml-q q--s

of feet and hands.

playing

raw;

term = generic

commonest

that

leave itchy

especially

blisters

(k.api)*

Scmai and Malay

Lkaid

depigmented

for

bathing

areas;

dirty

area;

victims;

in dirty

children

scabies,

=

herpes

water

on

skin

infections,

zoster:

chickenpox;

vitamin

B deficit?

names mean fire rmaq

patches

secondary

impetigo

‘germs’?

(swal),

not

known,

maybe

leucodermia.

germs

e.g. from

leprosy

painless Pnas

develops

Gaast

whitish

from

(Kurap) G.kdal

thickened

(Kedal)

keratotic,

-Ktaamp

intermittent

itching

Qumed

hard

from

(Kurap) (Kurap

infected

skin

leprosy

lkaid patches,

nail

very common

bed;

itchy,

nonulcerative

to tell foot

not

hyper-

bathing

lesions

rash.

with

pussy

in

within,

lesion,

uncom-

dirty

unlike

insect

klaroamp

gaas

tinea

known

bites;

water;

eats

+ :

from

imbricata,

ringworm

+

yaws??

gaas rash

see text

not

known

tinea

circinata

not

known

Maduramycosis

“-IO”

g+h) Rgr’ k§

fissures

at

(kuaq)

base

of

toes,

going barefoot.

very

urine

cOmmO”

hot feet, stepping

or feces

in

1

Khang,

tinea

pedis

small

hard

lump

on the skin;

wart

Kahak. Tangkis Grismas

anal

itch,

GllC

hole

in

mostly

tooth,

among

which

sitting

on ground.

IS not

grubs.

spontaneously

dear-

eating

children

hurts

but

teeth,

(G”c?)!l

loose

Caclk

colic.

nausea.

(caclng)

rhea).

swollen

Snlah

discolored,

Knglap

name means

bkub (whitish belly.

(-s/ah)

stool.

worms

eat teeth badly

eating

pinworm,

fish

generated

like

dental

in

wood

cooked

helminth

fish

infection

in stool.

area of skin

sutTering

a blow

bruise

darkened

suffering

a blow

bruise

thing

hookworm

caries

by blood

bhiip Cmuit

swelling

-Sl-d

dyspnoea,

under

@kit

AM

boil,

the skin

weakness.

and on cold

lassitude.

days.

worse

little

in

eating

dirty

mner

coughing

itch.

food,

which

causes

TB,

an

infected chronic

swelling bronchitis

gselq

l&h) name

-Kh-I

means

followed

bhilp;

cough

blood;

by coughing

dry

germs

cough.

Bhnp

terminal

(komon)?

hereditary

blood

cancer;

(sakaq)?

smoke,

cas?

smoke,

cas?

phase of all acute disease; TB;

meningitis?

sakaq Sab’r

dimmed

Rdant

crosseyes

Wlthout

nyaniq.

Malay *Tmaq

there

refers

to sores. East

among

wounds Asia.

J. Swam

Swairs

Br. R. Asior.

House, $From

-r&k.

Br.

J. M.

Bolton

diagnosed

Kuala

Lumpur.

clinical push

sp.. whose

1952;

entity.

a stick

stinging

Kdal

against

what

Semai

is wordplay.

regard

of the Semai common

and York

Lowlanders

4, 21.

1880:

cases of these diseases;

Polunin may

1. The

+

marks

presbyopia,

astigmatism

identifications

from

photos.

suffer

P. D.

most,

F.

A.

(Edited

Ontario,

1986.

but eve” highlanders

From

Perak

R. An fnrroducrion

natural

Dictionary

Hamilton,

history

to Slim,

G. P.). p. 97. Joint

may be afiected. and down

IO the Ma/a_van

of the Malaya”

by Means

the Slim

Aborigines,

aborigines.

Med.

Leech

H.

W.

and Bemam

p. 36. Government. J. Malaya

8, 55.

Centre

C. About Rivers.

J.

Printing 1953.

be m/ah. usually

and Malays

as m/id

diseases for

in Semai.

use the ‘Malay

use to anoint

use WiNoughbcia word

still

medical

English-Sengoi

Umversity.

Swettenham

1880: Williams-Hunt

in a hole? People

sap Semai

aloe, H ik /eeq. Malays

morphology

Semai.

SC.

5, 51.

Sm.

N. Smgoi-English

of Toronto

West

R. Asiar

of earth

this

dreams.

and scabs. Means

University

19th century

Kinta.

ZUnidentified

IThe

are no diagnostic

myopia.

name in parentheses.

on Modern tPandemx

vision

termite. or more

to anoint

word‘

the lesions. yaws lessons.

jinrang, Semar

which also

may be jiran,

the name of a vine,

use the stinging

Malay jinran

Willoughbera

sap of new sweet potato

refers to a wide variety

of plants

leaves or

used for ointments

[I I]. gr”c.

suggests

coincidence,

a root

Ngah

Hari

g”c.

meaning

suspected

something that

some

like sort

‘holes

of grub

eaten by insects’. caused caries.

Whether

ROBERT KNOX DENTAN

864

Table 4. Nyaniq: a four-fold system of spiritual agents of disease A. SUBTERRANEANS

THEY BENEATH THE EARTH. MAAY KROOB TEIQ DRAGON. DANGGAQ. East; NAGAQ. West (Naga) ‘JUNIOR UNCLE BACKBASKET’ BAH RAGAQ. Crocodile. Babyaq. (Buaya). ‘Junior Uncle Cigarette.’ Bah Rok’q. Reticulated python. Rlaay. ‘Long Stuff.’ Anooq Cr’k. Giant monitor, Varanus saluator. Grik. (Gcriang). ‘Iron stuff.’ Anooq Bsiq, East. ‘Junior Uncle Machete.’ Bah Y - 1j BY-NAME:

MAJOR

PROTOTYPE:

Minor

Prototypes

Minor

Prototypes

of Malay

Examples

:

Origin:

:

Carabao. Krbooq. (Kerbau). Goose. Angsaq. (Angsa). Humanoid fairies (Orang Bunyi) Nyaniq busut. Barrow nyoniq. Nyaniq ludat. Male boulder spirit. Nyaniq tpaas/nyaniq tpoos. Female nyoniq ludat. Ceep gugunt. Crow pheasant, Centropus spp.(Butbut) C. tintoog. Racquet-tail drongo, Dissemurus spp. Thundersquall deities Thunder. Nkuq, East; Ngkuq, West. Wind. -PA. y. ‘blow’, Pn.. y. East; -P’s, West. Rain. -Pook. East; Maniq, West. Earthquake. -Prhar teeq. East. Glnyaq, Salep, West. Rainbow. Cdaw. Colored sky, e.g. due to sunlit rain. Nyamp. Dew. -Mam’nt, East; Ngm’t, Mm?, West. Thundersquall animals Brides of Thunder. Knah Ngkuq. Sandpiper. Arctitis hypoleucos. Cccp tadeit. Headband of Thunder. Tmpoq Ngkuq Blind snake, Typhlops diardi. Tnlur mat jiis Blind snake, T. lineatust Pipe snake. Cylindrophis ru/us. Cangcaht Malay hantu Smell nyaniq. Nyaniq ng- 1 y = Hantu jembalang

B.

SUPERTERRANEANS

TREE NYANIQ. NYANJQ JHUQ BY-NAME: ‘LONGHANDEDILONGARMED ONES.’ MAAY CR’K T’K. SIAMANG. HOOL, East; H”L, West. ‘JUNIOR UNCLE LONGHANDS BAH CR’K T’K white-handed gibbon, Hylobotes lar. Mawanq ‘Junior Uncle Longhands’ white-handed gibbon, buff phase. Krq*k, w”y. ‘Junior Uncle Longhands’ pigtail macaque, Maraca nemestrino. D-k; p’ng ‘Junior Uncle Convulsions,’ Bah Sahbad ‘Tearer.’ Bah -Cab-k ‘Tray,‘ Bah Talam ‘Junior Uncle Grab Shit,’ Bah -Klak Qec ‘Junior Uncle Shake Branch,’ Bah -Yoh Karuk spectacled langur, Presbytis obscura. Bsik. cingkoq ‘Junior Uncle Circled Eye,’ Bah Wer Mat ‘Junior Uncle Tinca Patch,’ Bah Swal longtailed macaque, M. fosciculoris. Raaw, qangr* nt silver langur. P. cristata. Pruud ‘Junior Uncle Beige,’ Bah Cabeh banded langur. P. melalophos. Bungar NAME:

MAJOR Minor

MAJOR Minor

PROTOTYPE Prototypes:

PROTOTYPE: prototypes:

ELEPHANT, CIJK ‘JUNIOR UNCLE BIG.’ BAH NT--Y [g~;ur~~;+gaurus. Sladak (Seladang)] [banteng. Bos jaconicus. Sapiiq (Sapi)] serow. Capricornrs sumatraensis. M I r. ‘Junior Uncle Waterfall’ Bah Lataaq, West and Grntob ‘Senior aunt’* M’q, East sambhur, Cervus unicolor. Rusaq (Russ). ‘Junior Uncle Tine (of antler), Bah Tabaq barking deer, Muntiocus muntjak. POOS. ‘Junior Uncle Tusk’ Bah Gadik mousedeer, Trogulus nopu. Cicoy, East; napoh. (Napuh). ‘Junior Uncle Tree Name’ Bah Muh Jhuq ‘Junior Uncle Big Water’ Bah Teew Nt” pygmy deer, T. javonicus. Bicook. ‘Junior Uncle Ankles’ Bah Kajeg

y

Ambiguity, Table

4 continued

Minor

prototypes:

Associated

Example

plants:

t:

synecdoche

and affect in Semai medicine

865

[rhino, two spp. Sjap, branaq gag, manoh ckap]. [tapir, T. ittdicus. Hagaab, East; macaan, West] Mangrentt (bearded pigt SUF barbotus. Jluh, East Gaw Kwiit, West] pig, Sus scrofo oitottus. Luuq, East; l”q, West. Gaw jelutung, AIstonia spp., Dveraspp. Bd’k. Freycinetia. Lriar. stinkbean, Pithecellobium lobotum. Jrik (Jering). strangler fig. Wik. Homolium frutescens? W. ^1 tnw. Ochanostochys antentacea? W _ 1 sraq. ‘Hunters’, Smglooq. (‘Fate’ to West Scmai). C. WATER NYANIQ WATER NYANIQ, NYANIQ TEEW. BY-NAMES: THEY STICK UP THROUGH MUD, MAAY BI-SUL PAYAQ; THEY STICK UP THROUGH WATER, MAAY BI-SUL TEEW. PRINCESS NYANIQ, NYANIQ PUTRIQ. (Hantu Puteri). ‘LONGHAIRED ONES,’ MAAY CR’K S--K ‘THEY WITH THICK LONG SLEEK HAIR,’ MAAY SNALAYEEW BIRD NYANIQ, NYANIQ CEEP. Argus pheasant, Kuw^ k, k-k. (Kuang). ‘Wow Bird’ ceep qawaw, ceep qawow Peafowl. Ccep maraq, ‘elder bird’ (Mara). Other pheasants. Kuw* k. Tailor bird, Orthotomur ?sutoritu eeep sreid, ‘summoner bird’ Westoodpecker, Dendrocopus sp.t ceep baluq, widow bird NAMES:

MAJOR

MAJOR Minor

PROTOTYPE:

PROTOTYPE: prototypes:

Nocturnal birds associated with death and ghosts Owls, Klak sanger; klak tikup; klak jirat, ‘grave raptor’. bee eater. Nyctiornis omicto, Merops spp., Ceep birek, ‘orphan bird’ (Berik). swifts and swallows. Ceep jaweer. nightjar, Eurostopodus temmitticki. Cecp taqtibaw (Taptibau). nightjar, Caprimulgus macrtuus. C. curuh, West. D. NAME: Example:

OCEANIC

NYANIQ

SEA NYANIQ, NYANIQ LAWUD (LAUT) Cholera nyaniq, nyaniq taqun (hantu ta’un). E.

GHOSTS

KCM--C, East; KIQM--C, West. INVERSION, e.g. inverted backbasket, eyes in back of head Overlap with Bird Nyaniq Gryllid cricket, Sment; connected with bird nyaniq Giant toad, Bu/o asper. Kaaq kar- k ‘Elder Ghost Aquatic,’ Kaaq Ranaq Kcm* ^c Bullfrog, Rona macrodon, Kaaq juk, kaaq jowang. (‘Leg aquatic’) Toadstool, Aconthophoro sp., btiis puug (‘Swollen scrotum fungus’) Grave miasma, Bhey Black rat. Rottus rottus subsp. Prook knew. Nocturnal birds (as for bird nyaniq) NAME:

MAJOR Minor

PROTOTYPE: prototypes:

By-names, m*l, in quotes. Malay names. where cognate, in parentheses. Minor prototypes listed in order of decreasing ritual salience and resemblance to the prototype or basic number. *Species in parentheses are so rarely encountered that they figure little in Semai dreams or other contacts with nyaniq. In terms of salience once list would begin with pig, the other with serow or, in most places, sambhur. tldentitication uncertain; East Semai only

Supernatural hunters liked lriur vines, eating whose leaves or berries was said to drive people mad and whose name may mean ‘making feral’. Two East Semai adepts with lriar familiars conflated painspirits, hunters, ghosts and thundersquall deities this way: Ghosts like I&r. If you must sleep in the forest, you check carefully that no lriar is near your lean-to. At dawn

pain-spirits collect lriur berries they smell. They bite a sleeper’s nape, twisting his neck until he dies. They only travel around 4-6 a.m. They dwell on high mountains, especially Mt Bujang. They don’t walk but ride cold high winds. Calling them, adepts sing, “Come, help the sick, Wind!” Their attack drives people mad. Friends must grab sufferers lest they kill someone. One man would have fled

into the forest as mad or possessed not held a 2-day seance for him.

people do if adepts had

The’ insanity reportedly lasted 2 days, sometimes involving echolalia, echopraxia and genital display. West Semai did not talk much about hunters but glossed snglook as fate or doom. Again, concepts overlap and metamorphose [17]. Pain -spirit synecdoches

Synecdoche is a metaphor in which a part stands for a whole. This paper uses the word for a relationship in which a salient basic member of a category, usually the largest and most dangerous one, epitomizes all the other members, as dragons epitomize reptiles in Semai or Chinese ideology. Semai

866

ROBERT KNOX DENTAN

talked about this relationship as leadership or fostering, saying, e.g. that dragons were reptiles’ elders or that other reptiles were dragons’ foster children. Pain-spirit taxonomy involved superordinate and subordinate synecdoches as well as named superordinate and subordinate categories [ 181. Tigers epitomized vicious supernatural beauty and thus pain-spirits in general. Semai discussing familiars often cited tigers, though few adepts actually claimed tiger familiars. Great adepts had them and so could turn into tigers when alive and became spirit tigers after death. Tigrine tropes permeated talk of supernatural dangers. For example, East Semai menstruents should shun fish poisoning expeditions and fish poison plants lest male tiger pain-spirits follow their scent home and invade their bodies, making them shake and try to smash through flimsy house walls, so that they could flee into the forest where tigers lurked. East Semai teenaged boys possessed during seances in fact behaved that way. If menstruating women ate spiny fruit or the pith of spiny palms, the spines might stab their hearts, so that they turned into tigers, men said. This transformation thus implicated supernatural stabbing, just as clawing tigers explain the sensation of cramps. Explanations typically mentioned the ravening lust of pain-spirits. ‘Like tiger claws’, the spines of a wild tuber on which East Semai relied when crops failed supernaturally stabbed the hearts of menstruents or the eater’s infants, as well as causing chest pains in young children whose parents ate it, “as if a small feline was clawing from inside.” West Semai added that this tuber was a bit poisonous and might cause vivid color dreams that ended in an explosion which startled the sleeper awake. The active ingredient, perhaps an alkaloid, thus generated several concurrent accounts, colored by tiger imagery: supernatural puncture, clawing pain-spirit, dream disturbance, poison [8. 191. Dragons epitomized reptiles, themselves often semblances taken by subterranean pain-spirits, Those Beneath the Earth, which metamorphosed at will. A dragon had 7 horns and 12 mustaches, said Ngah Hari, but an East Semai sketch showed only 2 limp, knobbed horns. The name Nugaq (West) or Danggaq (East) comes from Sanskrit nag, Malay nuga. The by-name was Junior Uncle Backbasket because the diamond scale pattern resembled a basket’s open weave. Malaysia was too hot for the greatest dragons, which lived in the mythical Central Sea. Like Chinese dragons, subterraneans were powerful but not necessarily vicious. If one’s body was supernaturally cool, lqup, as shamans’ and midwives’ bodies must be subterraneans might became familiars. Still, intimacy with them risked the cataclysms that followed loss of self control: floods welling up from beneath the earth, volcanic eruptions, eclipses. Eating them was such an intimacy. Perhaps because large reptiles like pythons and monitors were synecdochic for subcategories of subterraneans like snakes and lizards, Semai said restrictions on eating them helped prevent such cataclysms. At first Ngah Hari and Derus put storm deities in a separate class. But since loss of control also potentiated violent thundersqualls, Ngah Hat-i felt that thundersquall deities, although not subterraneans or

even pain-spirits, belonged with Those Beneath The Earth. This intepretation fit the Lengkok notion that dragons were wives of Thunder which lived in headwaters and appeared as floods when Thunder called

POI. Giant siamangs with long fingernails and white chest blazes epitomized tree pain-spirits. They were rarer than gibbons, said East Semai, living one to a mountain like tigers. They ate M.*- 1 fruit, which East Semai said made one dizzy, a state which often preceded trance and contact with supernaturals. Eating the fruit by oneself was safe, but sharing it was perilous. Anyone eating it ran the risks menstruents faced eating stabbing food. A youngish East Semai adept said: If two people share w’* ^ I, pain-spirits invade both after they fall asleep. One wakes up and says to the other, “I’m going.” Both discard their clothes, machetes and cigarettes and flee into the deep rainforest where they will wander, never to emerge. The pain-spirit (also) looks like an elephant. If you meet it in the forest, it grabs you and carries you off to its country.

Ngah Hari added: Tree pain-spirits live in jelutung trees [20], but their rest houses are w‘^ ^ I, stinkbean trees and strangler figs. They are usually only 3 ft tall [like siamangs], but one type is huge, like King Kong [a favorite Semai character]. They kill people or drive them mad, causing red eyes with pale patches beneath [like spectacled langurs]. You can see them when trees sway though no wind blows. They cry “Hyenq hyenq hyenq,” not like gibbons’ “m’m’m’m’.”

The white blaze on siamang pain-spirits suggested the flash of lightning during thundersqualls. Although, as the largest West Malaysian apes, siamangs were the prototypical Tree Spirit synecdoche, other animal imagery shared salient features: gigantic black gibbons, macaques or langurs, typically with white blazes. Walking siamangs and gibbons raise their arms above their heads, with elbows bent and hands stretched downward. Like American children pretending to be monsters, Semai aping pain-spirits assume this posture, which the tree pain-spirit byname, Long-Armed Ones, highlights. The apes’ greatcalls and conflict-hoos sound like the ghost-bird calls of owls or nightjars. The color imagery occurred in other contexts. Thunder might be a big black siamang or macaque, occasionally a white-yoked sun bear, which Semai said could take human form. Jelutung trees were home to huge spectacled langurs that connived with owl pain-spirits to wrap victims in thin invisible threads and slowly squeeze them to death. Painspirits bathed in the trees’ red sap [21]. Ruminants also might stand for tree pain-spirits: gaur, banteng, serow, deer. In Semai myth, deer also turned out to be a character’s dead mother; eating venison was thus violent incest. Eating ruminant might cause fainting fits or colic and convulsions. The larger species were more dangerous to eat. As in supernatural stabbing, fits suggested pain-spirit possession. Eating other animals like pigtailed macaque which stood for tree pain-spirits also led to fits. Siamang or gibbon meat caused colic and convulsions in the susceptible. The meat of langur or long-tailed macaque was less dangerous [22].

Ambiguity, synecdoche and affect in Semai medicine The by-name for water spirits was Longhairs, after their long, sleek, sexy hair. These gorgeous naiads, living in strangler figs by the river, drove men mad

with lust and horror. People demented enough to go alone into the rainforest would panic at the seductive calls of these succubi. Water spirits beset menstruating, pregnant and puerperal women, lured by blood and mother’s milk. Unhke tree spirits, water spirits might became familiars, viz.: A West Semar man, married and divorced four times because of sterility, went into the hills to collect rattan for sale and stayed for a week. A search party finally found him. At first he refused to go home, saying he had plenty to eat. That showed he was in touch with supematurals since Semai unaided could not live off the forest. A few months after they got him back home he returned to the hills. Again a search party found him and urged him to return, fearing he was mad. [Semai said people who flee alone to the rainforest were insane or possessed.] He said he couldn’t return because his ‘wife’ was pregnant, but once again his friends overcame his objections. Later he remarried and finally had children. Ngah Hari, his son-in-law, condemned the people who lured him back. The forest wife must be a spirit, and, had the man not returned, he might have vanished into the forest with his wife and become himself a local spirit, protecting the people.

Water pain-spirits might appear as birds, especially argus pheasants. Besides the pheasant’s size and beauty, its courtship was salient in explaining why people whose health was at risk should not eat it. The flapping typified possession trance and thus suggested pain-spirits. The jerky head movements also recalled hunter pain-spirit attacks. Night birds, especially nightjars and owls, were also pain-spirit birds [23]. Writing this material about pain-spirits required systematizing it somewhat. I hope that enough flavor of the original remains, at least in the backnotes, to indicate how sprawling and unsystematic it was, how categories overlapped, mutated and fed into each other. The collapse of categories

Semai recognized natural transformations. Grubs became beetles, tadpoles became frogs and so on. Other transformations they mentioned seemed rooted in formal similarity rather than in empirical biology. Some rice frog eggs, they said, became tadpoles, some became frogs and some became fish. Some baby porcupine rats became porcupine rats, others spiny grubs. Some snakeheads became cobras, some striped frogs became tigers. Bulbul eggs became bulbuls or carp with winglike fins. Similarly, dream appearances were not what they seemed. Thus, a middle-aged East Semai adept knew an old man in his dream was really a tiger because it had a bristly beard, unlike normal Semai. Form was not fixed. In this context, it was not odd that supernatural stabbing turned menstruents or young children into tigers or large civets. Categories deliquesced and oozed into each other, unleashing cataclysm and horror into the tidy Semai world. “If you are a this, STAY a this; if you are a that, STAY a that” was a common refrain of stories among Malaysian indigenes, who suspected many creatures were not what they seemed.

867

In fact, much Semai daily ritual explicitly demarcated categories, notably by separating the four basic classes of food: meat, fungus, bird and fish. Eating or cooking these foods together was always tabu and incurred disasters, notably epidemics and meterological catastrophes [24]. Nevertheless, by 1975 most West Semai, many of whom enjoyed Chinese food, were mixing food categories, having found it safe to do so. Individual Semai often tested tabus, to see whether the rules applied to themselves. If they or a member of their family later got sick, then they were scrupulous about observing the tabu. If not, as a young East Semai woman said, “I’m healthy, my children were healthy, I never had any trouble having babies, so I don’t fuss about tabus.” Such ad hoc empirical testing characterized the individualistic Semai approach to the world and partly explains the variability of Semai descriptions of it. Asked to tell the consequences of mixing food categories, Ngah Hari described four infectious diseases. The first, epidemic in his settlement in January 1963, resembled hepatitis due to leptospirosis. Symptoms included jaundice, headache, lip blisters. stomach pains that worsened as the disease went on, fever in the belly and lassitude so great that patients lost even the desire to talk. Baldness might ensue, as it often did for Chinese, who ate helterskelter. The illness came from inhaling steam of mixed foods, which settled in one’s stomach; or, as at Mncaak, from living in a place formerly occupied by Chinese. Pain-spirits appeared in adepts’ dreams as conglomerates, e.g. as bald pigs with human faces and fungus ears; or as Bah Taq Kualiq, a gibbonlike pain-spirit which lurked under houses and appeared in the dreams of the main Mncaak adept as an old Chinese peddler. As a familiar, Bah Taq Kualiq could effect a cure. Other sometimes fatal diseases due to eating without observing the rules- included herpes zoster, measles or smallpox. Patches of stinging blisters spread, accompanied by mild fever without diarrhea, as a result of, e.g. eating eggs mixed with fish or mixing cooking with other uses of fire, e.g. softening rattan or pandan strips over a kitchen fire instead of outdoors. Survivors might be pockmarked. Another disease due to careless eating resembled infectious hepatitis, which devastated West Semai settlements relocated by force during an insurgency in the 1950s. Early symptoms included sharp pains, chills, fever, apnea and dizziness, followed by jaundice and death. When people dumped water from cleaning, say, meat dishes, in the same area as dishwater from plates used for other sorts of food, the steam could infect people who lived nearby. Using disposable banana leaves as plates avoided this problem. In dreams the pain-spirits appeared as tree-spirits, e.g. pigtailed macaques, perhaps in the kitchen or under the house like Bah Taq Kuahq; or as stabbing creatures like porcupines; or conglomerates, porcupine from the waist up, pig below, with pigtailed macaque feet, fungus ears and tumeric eyes. An adept with one of these spirits as a familiar could suck out the teeth, spines or bone fragments with which they had stabbed a patient’s body. So infectious was the disease that adepts without such familiars might also fall sick. In the old days individual

ROBERTKNOX DENTAN

868

households would slip away unobtrusively from a stricken settlement, and distant kin from a patient’s house. Parents would care for a young child until it died, then desert the settlement, perhaps without burying their dead. Relatives might build a sufferer a lean-to deep in the forest and then abandon him or her there with a few days’ supply of food and water. Afterward, one should not recall their names or mention the abandonment. The final mixed-food sickness, resembling the 1918-1919 flu epidemic that devastated Semai settlements, began with jaundice. Breathing got difficult. Patients coughed incessantly and might develop TB, common among Semai until recently. Chest X-rays showed the steam from mixed food. Chest pains were due to stabbing by the food’s sharp bones, teeth, spines, etc. Adepts could not cure this disease but could effect temporary remission. ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSIONS Introduction

The amorphousness and variability of Semai notions of disease were not artifacts of ineffective research strategy or failure of empathy. They were significant phenomena with causes and consequences that needed analysis rather than neatening. (1) How did Semai manage intellectual inconsistencies and uncertainties without cognitive dissonance? (2) What processes maintained this sort of thinking? (3) Why the sense that appearances deceived, often hiding horrible dangers? (4) What generated the related feeling that cosmic order is so fragile that seemingly trivial actions like warming rattan indoors or eating ham and eggs can cause cataclysms? Psychodynamics projection

of Semai perspectives

on disease:

Reducing social phenomena to psychological processes can be misleading. Nevertheless, the fact that many Semai beliefs varied from individual to individual suggests that individual psychology played a part in the beliefs particular people professed at particular times. Presumably Semai ideas originated in daily experience, shaped by the hopes and fears people felt. Two of the processes which shaped that experience seem to be projection and generalization [25]. Projection involves hypersensitivity to the presence in other persons or things of denied, feared or socially repudiated urges. Semai described pain-spirits as obsessively driven to rape and devour, synecdoches for the violence Semai shun. Now, Semai depended on each other for emotional and physical well-being. Lacking external controls or hierarchies, their social life required self-restraint and mutual deference. Semai, particularly East and Lengkok Semai, seemed to fear any strong emotion that might get out of hand and threaten social order. When children’s play became boisterous, adults warned ‘Trlaid, trlaid!’ Although the grown-ups might themselves smile or giggle while delivering this admonition, the word trlaid referred to causing cataclysms. Tabus on mixing foods likewise reified the importance of keeping order. The fact that ritual restrictions are more salient and pervasive among East than West Semai seems

connected with a differential emphasis on selfcontrol. Juli Edo commented in 1987 [l] that Semai that lived deep in the forest. fear their own strong feelings. But for Semai who lived near town, this concept isn’t true, even though they depend on each other most of the time (example: wedding, death) because they do show their feelings somehow, whether in front or at the back of the person. Anyway, we believe it is very rude to show out

your anger or laugh at others because this attitude might threaten the good relationships among us. West Semai involvement in the market economy weakened the traditional patterns of cooperating with one’s neighbors in productive activities and of distributing resources, especially food, by sharing. The world of disease was a natural symbol for the chaos Semai said can follow lapses of self-control. Descriptions of pain-spirits were lessons in how not to live, a counter-culture. Semai adults denied that they teach children how to behave, since to do so would violate the rules of mutual respect and thus endanger the children. But the horrors of disease and death resulted from pain-spirits’ doing what good Semai did not. Given the restricted linguistic code, which itself inhibited expressing individual emotions, elaborate and flexible medical explanations expressed the results of projected misbehavior vividly. Psychod_vnamics of Semai perspectives on disease: generalization

Generalization is the organization of thought and feeling which results from the fact that similar stimuli tend to elicit similar cognitive and emotional responses. Often there is (1) a primary stimulus, corresponding to the basic member of a synecdochic class, and (2) a gradient of related stimuli such that the more similar a stimulus is to the basic member, (a) the more intense the generalized emotional response and (b) the more likely people are to include that stimulus in the class defined by reference to the basic member. For instance, tigers terrified Semai. Anything reminiscent of tigers required caution, often expressed ritually, e.g. by avoiding the word for tiger. Things which looked like tigers also evoked anxiety and thus ritual caution in proportion to their conceived similarity to tigers. In this way, cognitive similarity elicited similar emotional and ritual responses, and the tiger could serve as a synecdoche for everything that resembled it. But generalization also works another way, so that similarities of emotional response evoke cognitive similarities. For example, anything that made women’s genitals seem to bleed disturbed East Semai men. So did the thought of tigers. Semai rationalized the first response by conflating it with the second, saying that menstruents, neonates and women near childbirth were prone to turn into tigers. In this case, tigers embodied any horror, rather than only fear generalized from fear of real tigers. The similarity of affect led to conflating the categories; and a tiger synecdoche became a way to rationalize fears whose origins, Perhaps in socially or personally unacceptable feelings about sex and violence, were difficult to articulate in the restricted Semai code. Similarly, supernatural tumescence and stabbing, pain-spirits and contaminations, reified causes of

Ambiguity, synecdoche and affect in Semai medicine

869

fears whose empirical causes most Semai did not know. Semai fearfulness seemed more basic and general than the specific beliefs each person held and thus was logically prior. Although Semai talked as if supernatural violence always threatened to smash cosmic order, they spoke in colorless matter-of-fact tones, or even, when reprimanding boisterous children for example, with amusement. It did not seem to be the concepts of vicious supernaturals that evoked fear, but a caution or immanent fear that made such concepts plausible. Explanations for disease, whose causes were for the most part not open to Semai empirical observation, provided models to explain other vaguely sensed dangers with similarly obscure empirical causes. The beliefs that made rough sense of each person’s fear also reflected the vagueness of its origins and the multiplicity of its objects. In other words, Semai did not live in a social milieu pervaded by numinous beings and forces but in an affective world which impelled them to create such beings and forces, often ad hoc [26]. One reason metamorphoses seemed plausible is that synecdochic categories lack clear borders. They fade away at the edges. Creatures on the margin, for example striped bees or frogs on the margin of a category whose basic member was a tiger, might or might not belong, depending on extraneous circumstances. For Semai, the salient external circumstance seemed to be anxiety. People in circumstances otherwise risky would generalize farther from the basic member than when they felt relatively safe. Striped bees or frogs, for example, were particularly likely to suggest fearsome tigers to people already worried about pregnancy or menstruation, a generalization expressed as the danger that irreverent contact with the lesser creatures would evoke transformation into a tiger. That is, the boundaries of the cognitive category fluctuated according to individual affect. Observance of tabus followed the same pattern. People who had had difficult pregnancies or childbirths were more likely to observe tabus the next time than were people whose pregnancy and childbirth went smoothly. People who had tasted mixed foods and not fallen sick continued to eat that particular mixture, until they did fall sick. In this connection, the apparent ambiguity in Semai thinking comes from trying to analyze Semai categories as unchanging pigeonholes, rather than as flexible synecdoches whose generalization varied according to felt individual need for reassurance. In summary, Semai medical ideas did not exist in a separate ideological realm but varied with particular individual and social anxieties. Nor were they purely medical, since they also served the moral end of illustrating and punishing violations of social propriety. Internal inconsistencies rarely appeared in the specific, limited situations in which people used these ideas but only during abstract discussions with people from outside the Semai world.

seemingly banal or beautiful things might turn into horrors; that cosmic order, which in this analysis represents social order, was likely to collapse into catastrophe, disease and death. Semai interpreted their proscription of making trouble for others to preclude instruction. Their children, they said, just learned by themselves. In fact, children acquired bits of information ad hoc from other people and then rearranged them into idiosyncratic patterns. As a result, adults shared only a few basic notions from a limited code, and even those notions were subject to individual understanding. Thus, by preventing organized education, Semai egalitarianism fostered intellectual as well as political and economic autonomy. Much of what people learned came from individual experience, including dreams. Much of the empirical knowledge was memorate, i.e. based on recalling particular events and dreams: this sap helped my rash last year; that dream must have been of the bird spirit that took the baby’s head-soul [27]. By definition each person’s memorate knowledge differed from anyone else’s. But the mutual deference which Semai egalitarianism required made disagreement traumatic. Thus, although everyone heard other people say things which conflicted with his or her own knowledge, there was no acceptable way to challenge what had been said. Semai rarely contradicted each other face to face. Collective interviews almost never led to disagreement, although participants in subsequent individual interviews accused each other of ignorance, immaturity or, oftenest, of lying. Moreover, the more intelligent and verbally facile people were, the more likely their neighbors were to accuse them not only of telling self-serving lies but also of seeking illegitimate influence in local affairs. In other words, the same egalitarianism which led to memorate knowledge made it easy to believe other people are liars, especially those who acted arrogant, i.e. as if they knew what they were talking about [28]. Since people lied, Semai said explicitly, one never knew another’s feelings or beliefs. Usually, that ignorance did not matter. But credulity might have dire consequences, if, for example, a malevolent person persuaded one to do something against one’s best interests. Normally, the social world was what it seemed, safe; but, since people lied, sometimes not. Moreover, most dreams were deceptive, Semai said [8]. Projecting this deceptiveness onto the supernatural world, Semai asserted that even the most attractive beings, the forest incubi and succubi, may be in fact ravening, raping monsters. The natural order was as fragile and potentially misleading as the social one. The reticence and deference which maintained the latter had their counterparts in the bynaming and rituais which kept nature orderly.

Social dynamics of Semai perspectives egalitarian individualism

The history of contacts between Semai and Malays, the dominant people of the peninsula, is vague before the late 19th century. The oldest extant Malay history recounts a fabulous battle in which invading Malays defeated the indigenous peoples. On the edges of the rainforest, some West Semai became sukni,

on disease:

The question of how Semai life fosters variability in medical ideas remains. I suspect that the factors conducive to Semai individualism also predisposed people to think that appearances were deceptive; that

Social dynamics ideas

of Semai perspectives:

exchanging

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ROBERTKNOX DENTAN

serfs or dependents of Malays. As pagans, they were the lowest of the low in Malay social stratification; but they were not economically much worse off than Malays in similar social and ecological circumstances. In the sparsely populated center of the peninsula, Semai who remained independent seemed to Malays more like animals than human beings, kaffirs who ate unclean food. Although, West Semai said, local Malays managed to live in peace with Semai, Indonesian Malays, particularly Bugis and Orang Rakit, raided inland Semai settlements, butchering anyone above the age of 12, enslaving children and generally displaying the ruthlessness that characterizes their piratical descendents’ treatment of boat people fleeing Vietnam. A conservative estimate is that two centuries or so of intense slaving decimated the Semai [29]. West Semai had a chance to exchange ideas with Malays, particularly in areas of common interest like medicine. Many West Semai names for medicinal plants are cognate with Perak Malay ones. Exposure to contrasting Malay notions may have helped West Semai clarify their own ideas. The need to explain basic assumptions and categories to outsiders may have facilitated articulating those ideas. Indeed, Semai often presented information in contrastive form: “We do (or say) this; Malays do (or say) that.” Probably something like this systematization normally happens when people talk to ethnographers, so that most accounts are oversystematized even before the ethnographer sets to tidying them. Culture contact had familiarized West Semai with organizing and neatening ideas for ignorant outsiders’ easy comprehension. As a result, the most systematic medical information came from West Semai. I met no East Semai who thought about belief the way Ngah Hari, Derus or other West Semai did. Unlike West Semai, East Semai settlements had no single semi-official adept nor were there any recognized experts in the West Semai or Malay sense. Social dynamics of Semai perspectives letting-go

on disease:

Although all Semai talked about Malay slave raids, East Semai, lacking protection by local Malay masters, had been the most exposed. At any moment merciless brutal attackers might burst out of the forest, outnumbering Semai men and far better armed than anyone who might resist. When strangers appeared in East Semai settlements in 1962, most women and children still fled. Even in West Semai settlements more in contact with the outside, parents took the opportunity of a visit by a stranger known to be friendly to frighten their children, warning that the stranger had come to hurt them, until the children burst into tears of terror and their parents carried them away, cuddling and reassuring them. The resulting xenophobia, like Semai fear of rape and murder, had historical justification, even if it is not currently adaptive. The sense that there is no safety, even when things seem safe, has probably preserved Semai as a people. They know that appearances deceive. The historical fact of powerlessness, however, may have had more profound effects. Letting-go, i.e. recognizing personal powerlessness in the face of pervasive threat, can have far-reaching effects on

behavior. Although letting-go seems uncommon in modem America, it is prerequisite for membership in some born-again Christian congregations and in support groups for obsessive-compulsive behavior, like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Some Americans experience letting-go as an abrupt conversion. For others it comes gradually. People report that they do not experience it as willed but as a kind of surrender or relaxation which transforms their perspective on the world [30]. Unlike Americans, Semai did not need to experience powerlessness personally to learn the perspective of letting-go, which for them was a commonsensical understanding of the world, learned both from the instruction in fear just described and from watching other people’s behavior. The perspective involved in letting-go includes a feeling that the world is uncontrollable and that individual attempts to control it are not only futile but harmful. Instead, one should control one’s responses to it, as Semai did. Disappointment and frustration, Semai said, produced dangerous conditions, mnuur and punan, during which a person was prone to bad luck, physical injury or death. One should go to the person who had put one in that condition and seek a gift to restore one’s emotional balance. This procedure worked the same way as the procedures prescribed by Christian or AA groups for dealing with frustrations and resentments, which they construe to threaten salvation or sobriety. Similarly, a Semai in the Semai equivalent of psychological or spiritual good health bore no grudges and did not seek to control the uncontrollable. This adaptive praxis seemed less moral than realistic and psychotherapeutic. Intellectually, letting-go involves diffidence about imposing one’s own categories on the world and a consequent tolerance of ambiguity. Emotionally, it involves a sense that strong emotions, particularly but not exclusively unpleasant ones, endanger the person who feels them. The ideas of punan and mnuur rationalized this sense by connecting frustration or disappointment with bad luck, often in the typical Semai metaphors of being attacked by a tiger or falling sick. In other words, the appropriate response to an unpredictable external cosmos was to control one’s reactions to it. This emphasis on self-control and detachment instead of trying to control the world and other people stressed individual coping and inhibited the growth of hierarchy. Among Westerners, the people most sympathetic to hierarchy, external discipline and group power are the least tolerant of ambiguity. By contrast, perhaps the antihierarchical, internally disciplined and individualistic Semai were more tolerant of ambiguity than most peoples. Thus the social and intellectual organization which may have stemmed from defeat and the resulting lettinggo would reinforce each other [31]. Perhaps Semai, particularly East Semai. could sustain letting-go without the demoralization of defeated people elsewhere because, until the recent incursions, they have existed more or less outside Malay-run society. In the 1960s there were still unpopulated areas to flee to. Members of an East Semai band encountered Malays, almost always traders, no more than once a month for a couple of days. Otherwise, the perceived threat from Malays was

Ambiguity, synecdoche and affect in Semai medicine almost mythic: Semai women miles away from the nearest Malay would assert that they ventured out

only in groups for fear that Malays would rape and brutalize them, behavior also attributed to painspirits. Traditional Semai flight and the resulting isolation seem to have protected people from the daily humiliation that creates rage and despair among peoples subordinated by violence. Semai were defeated but not conquered. In the 1980s as pressure on Semai land grows and contacts with the Malay-run state proliferate, a new trend towards organizing resistance rather than fleeing has emerged among educated Semai. More traditional Semai simply wait for those who are taking their land to kill them [5]. A contrast with European historical experience may be useful. European faith in a lawful empirical world seems to stretch back through Natural Law and Divine Law to the ancient engineers and geometricians who rationalized architecture and agronomy. Their theories consistently worked. To this experience of successful engineering recent history coupled the experience of successful empire building. Both the natural and the human world seemed under control. Semai swidden horticulture and temporary dwellings needed no engineering theory, and they remain victims rather than perpetrators of imperial conquest. Little in their daily or historical experience suggests that people can master their world. Summary reality?

and

conclusions:

what

is ethnographic

The reality of appearances for Semai is no more elusive than the reality of Semai medical ideas for ethnographers. Individual Semai felt and did particular things about disease. Most gave the matter little thought and often disagreed with what others said and did. Treating these Semai medical ideas as a crude facsimile of Western medicine is ethnocentric and distorting. Western medicine is an orthodoxy, in which ideas are supposedly independent of social context, lack applicability to nonmedical fields and remain relatively constant, subject to scientific advance. Semai life worked against orthodoxy. Semai medical ideas varied according to individual and group experiences; served important moral and psychological functions; and adapted to particular situations. Indeed, in some ways the Semai phenomena discussed here were not conceptual. Semai feared pain-spirits more than they believed in them
871

aims. Semai, particularly East Semai, stressed social homogeneity and shunned disputation. There was no struggle inside or outside the group to establish ideological hegemony or orthodoxy. The danger is that ethnographies, to be readable, will impose their own orthodoxy; that they may paint such complexes of emotion and cognition, variation and flexibility, morality and medicine in a Western image: affectless scientism, packaged in subdisciplinary categories with clear borders. Perhaps anthropological accounts have become too infatuated with the principle of parsimony in scientific explanation. The principle of sufficiency is equally important. Of two explanations which cover the same data, the one requiring fewer assumptions is the better. But of two explanations with the same number of assumptions, the one which covers the broader range of phenomena and which most convincingly demonstrates their interrelationships is to be preferred [32]. The latter consideration has guided the writing of this paper. REFERENCES

I. In 1962, excluding time in hospitals, I lived 7 months in an east Semai settlement at Cbaq Jnteer in Ulu Pahang, now apparently ‘opened up’ to Malay resettlement. In 1963 I spent the same amount of time with West Semai in Mncaak, just outside the town of Kampar in Perak, where I returned briefly in 1975; this settlement is also nowadays under intense pressure from outsiders, overcrowded and no longer hygienic. I spent a month in 1975 in a forest reserve with a Grnr*b Semai familv. A long and helpful 1986 commentary on this paper by the sensitive and able ethnographer Clayton Robarchek, based on his extensive research at Lengkok in 1973-1974, provided the data in this paper about Semai there. I am also grateful to Bah Juli Edo, a Semai graduate student in anthropology at the Universiti Kebangsaan, for a long critique he wrote me in 1987. I describe Semai medicine in the following: The Semai. Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York, 1979; The response to intellectual impairment among the Semai. Am. J. mew. De/. 71, 764, 1967; The Semai response to mental aberration. f?&jr.Taol-. Land- en Vo/kenk. 124, 135, 1968; Notes on childhood in a nonviolent context. In Learning Nonaggression (Edited by Montagu A.). Oxford University Press, London, 1978. See also Chen P. C. Y. Medical systems in Malaysia. Sot. Sci. Med. 9, 171, 1975. 2. Bulmer R. Worms that croak and other mysteries of Karam natural history. Mankind 6, 621-639, 1968; Bulmer R. and Menzies J. Karam classification of marsupials and rodents. J. Polynes. Sot. 81, 472, 1972. and 82, 86. 1973; Dentan R. K. Notes on Semai ethnoentomology. Med. 24, 1069, 1987. 3. Robarchek C. A. Learning to fear: a case study of emotional conditioning. Am. Erhnol. 6, 555, 1979. 4. Otherwise “if we refrain from assuming that so many contradictory statements could not possibly have been uttered at the same time, do we not risk falling into a mere nonsensical, hopeless jumble of words that will defy a rational explanation?” Biardeau M. Amkhara, the ego principle in the Upanishad. Conrrib. Ind. Social. 8, 63. 1965. Some biomedical researchers complain about similar pressures for tidying data, e.g. that the “mystifying stress on exciting conclusions at the cost of excluding data, partly due to rising publication costs, encourages incompetence, inadequacy and even fraud.” Martin R. G. Quality of biomedical-literature. Science 235, 144, 1987.

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Another pressure towards overschematized reportage comes from the contamination of ‘etic’ studies by ‘scientificism’, the attempt to frame ‘folk science’ as if it were a rudimentary Western scientific system. For critiques of ‘scientificism’ in reports of nonwestern medicine, see Pedersen D. and BarutTati V. Health and traditional medicine cultures in Latin America and the Caribbean. Sot. Sci. Med. 21, S-12, 1985; Tedlock B. An interpretive solution to the problem of humoral medicine in Latin America. Sot. Sci. Med. 24, 1069, 1987. For the moment I also explicitly disavow any tacit implications of the sort entrenched in some older ethnography and perhaps suggested by the past tense, that the disorganization observed represents either colonialist disruption of a past coherence or a preliminary to assimilation. That sort of assertion should should be overt and documented. For a classic nonscientificizing view of nonwestern beliefs, see Levy-Bruhl L. La Mythologie Primirive, pp. vii-ix. Alcan, Paris, 1935. Although I lack the rich data and skill to do a semiotic analysis of Semai disease concepts, such a nonscientificizing approach to Semai medicine might prove enlightening. Seei e.g. Baer E. The medical svmutom. Am. J. Semior. 1 (3). 17, 1982. 5. For ethnographic background, see Banks D. J. Malay Kinship. ISHI, Philadelphia, Penn., 1983; Endicott K. L. The Batek De’ of Malaysia, Cult. Suru. 8(2), 6, 1984; Voon P. K. et al. Integrated survey for socioeconomic change among the Orange Asli of peninsular Malaysia. Fedn. Mus. J. 24, 145, 1979; Carey I. Y. Orang Ash. Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur, 1976; Dentan R. K. Senoi. In Ethnic Groups of Mainland Southeasr Asia (Edited by Lebar F. et al.). HRAF, New Haven, Conn., 1964, and Ethnics and ethics in Southeast Asia. In Changing Identities in Southeast Asia (Edited by Banks D. J.). Mouton, The Hague, 1976; Skeat W. W. and Blagden C. 0. Pagan Races-of the Malay Peninsula. Macmillan. London. 1906: Williams-Hunt P. D. R. An Introduction to the Malayan Aborigines. Government Printing House, Kuala Lumpur, 1952; Benjamin G. Temiar Relinion. Phd. thesis. Cambridge University, 1967. Endicott K. M. The effects of logging on the Batek De’ of Malaysia. Cult. Surv. 6(2), 19, 1982; Hashim S. and Faulstich P. The Taman Negara Bateka people in transition. Cult. Surv. 9 (13), 33, 1985; Nowak B. Can the partnership last? Culr. Surv. 8(2), 9, 1984, and You gave us saplings but what about the land? In Modernization and the Emergence of a Landless Peasantry (Edited by Appell G. N.), Studies in 3rd World Sot. No. 23, 1985. Although a few Semai are finally attaining higher education, the overall economic and political condition of the people is becoming increasingly desperate, accommunications, -personal several cording- i0 19861987. from Professor Albert0 Gomes, a distinguished anthropologist at Universiti Malaya. The official policy of massive deforestation and the financial involvement of government leaders in the timber industry works against Semai interests. See also Jasni Rahim 32 anak Orang Asli berjaya ke universiti tempatan (32 aborigines win places at universities, RKD), Berita Hurian 24 May, 1981; Man Y. F. and Hoh A. Living in fear of ‘outsiders’. Sunday Star 5 July, 1987; Hoh A. and Matthews J. Don: Orang Asli status will worsen Penan woes. Sunday Star 5 July, 1987; Ambimathe K. Saving the Asli link to our past. Sfar 6 July, 1987; Catmandu and Sivashanmugam, Semais living in fear of eviction but willing to be killed. Suuru Suhabat ‘Alam Malaysia (Voice of Friends of the Earth, Malaysia) 4(4), 2-5, 1987. Immediately after publication of the Suara S.A.M. issue focussed on Semai the Malaysian federal police

reportedlv shut down the Star at least one leader of indigenous peoples. Anon, Malaysia arrests political foe. N. Y. Times 28 October 1987; Crossette B. Malaysia shuts down 3 papers. N.Y. Times 29 October, 1987; Crossette B. Malaysia stages wave of arrests of opposition and civic leaders. N. Y. Times 30 October, 1987; Crossette B. Malaysian crackdown shatters a bright image. N.Y. Times 2 November, 1987. Educated West Semai nowadays would modify this characterization of Semai attitudes towards kal* * q people. Juli Edo writes in his 1987 critique: we disagree with your idea that most people are ‘kalooq’, even though we agree with your definition of it. To say that somebody is ‘kalooq’ depends on his/her skills as well as his/her character. We also refer to a person as ‘kalooq’ if he/she is very slow in almost everything. Most Semai don’t like ‘kalooq’ people, especially when they go hunting because these people are a bit difficult to deal with. It is not that they don’t have any skills, they do, of course, but they are a bit slow in performing their skills. The word kal” ^ q may be cognate with Malay kelu (Betsisi’ luq) or Mon klaw, both meaning ‘mute’ or ‘dumb’. Skeat W. W. and Blagden C. 0. Pugun Races of rhe Malay Peninsula, Vol. ii, pp. 586 and 727. Macmillan, London, 1906. For further discussion, see Dentan R. K. The response to intellectual impairment among the Semai. Am. J. men?. Def. 71,764, 1967. The distinction between the word in its-sense as ‘dumb’ and as ‘tame’ seems erroneous, but see Means N. (Ed.). Sengoi-English and English-Sengoi Dictionary, p. 48. York University, Hamilton, Ontario, 1986. Bernstein B. Social class and psycho-therapy. Br. J. Social. 15, 59, 1964. For the notion of restricted code, see Bernstein B. A socio-linguistic approach to social learning. In Penguin Survey of the Social Sciences (Edited by Gould J.). Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1965; Douglas M. Natural Symbols, pp. 44-58. Vantage, New York, 1973. For Semai conversation, see Dentan R. K. The Semai, pp. 5, 64. 84-90, 128-129. Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York, 1979. Nowak B. and Dentan R. K. Problems and tactics in the transcultural study of intelligence. Behav. Sci. Res. 18, 99, 1984; Westwood T. The Face of the Beloved, pp. 193 and 199. Allen & Unwin, London, 1962. For Semai dreams and trances, see Dentan R. K. Lucidity, sex and horror in Senoi dreamwork. In Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain. New Perspectives on Lucid Dreaming (Edited by Gackenbach J. and LaBerge S.).

Plenum Press, New York, 1988; Dentan R. K. A dream of Senoi. Council on International Studies, State, Universitv of N.Y. at Buffalo. Soecial Study 150. 1983; Dent& R. K. Ethnographic considerations in the cross cultural study of dreaming and lucidity. In A Sourcebook on Sleep and Dreams (Edited by Gackenbach J.). Garland, New York, 1986; Dentan R. K. Senoi dream praxis. Dream Network Bull. 2(S), 1, 1983. For other Malaysian dreams and trances, see Endicott K. M. Batek Negrito Religion, pp. 95, 128-129, 134-135. Oxford University Press, London, 1979. Banks D. J. Trance and dance in Malaya. Council on International Studies. State Universitv of N.Y. at Buffalo. Snecial Publication 74, 1976; Cuisinier J. Danses Magiques de Kelanrun. lnstitut d’Ethnologie, Paris, 1936; Endicott K. M. An Analysis of Malay Magic, p. 21. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1970; Shaw W. Aspects of spiritmediumship in peninsular Malaysia. Fedn Mus. J. 18, 71, 1973; Stewart K. R. Magico-religious beliefs and practises in primitive society. Ph.D. thesis, London University, 1948. Couillard-Afendras M.-A., Cardoza M. E. and Martinez M. R. Jah Hut musical culture:

Ambiguity, synecdoche and affect in Semai medicine context and content. Contrib. Southeast Asian Stud. 1, 35, 1982; Roseman M. The social structuring of sound. Ethnomusicology 28, 4 1I, 1984.

For comparison, see Devereux G. Dream learning and individual ritual differences in Mohave shamanism. Am. Anrrhop. 59, 1036, 1957; Firth R. The meaning of dreams. In Tikopia Ritual and Belief Allen & Unwin, London, 1967; ‘Bourguignon E. Dreams and dream interpretation in Haiti. Am. Anfhrop. 56, 262, 1954; Herdt G. H. Guardians of the Flutes, pp. 343-347. MacGraw-Hill, New York, 1981. 9. For bv-names. see Dentan R. K. The mammalian taxonomy of the Sen’oi Semai. Malayan Nat. J. 20, 100, 1967; Friedberg C. Boiled woman and broiled man: myths and agricultural rituals of the Bunaq of central T;mor. In The Flow of Ll$?: Essays on Eastern Indonesia (Edited by Fox J. J.), p. 273. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1980; Vogt C. and Fry P. OS mestres da ‘lingua secreta’ do Cafundo e o paradox0 do segredo revelado. Bol. Mus. Nacnl. 51. 1985; Evans I. H. N. Studies in Religion, Folk-lore &‘Cuslom in British North Borneo & the Malay Peninsula, pp. 232-236. Cass,

London, 1923. 10. Oscar Wilde’s mot that England and America are separated by a common language describes a similar situation. Ideological diversity is clearer across language barriers. Thus, Temiar head-soul resembles Semai heartsoul but also performs functions Semai assign psyche. Temiar psyche also focusses in eyes but seems less salient medically. Moreover, Temiar head-soul is in an upper/lower trope with Temiar heart-soul, not salient in Semai conversation. Cognate languages use words cognate with Semai ‘aura’ for entities resembling Semai head-souls. In short, Senoi soul concepts seem labile and elusive pegs on which to hang discussions rather than elaborated theological concepts. For similar beliefs in Southeast Asia and adjacent Oceania, see Cuisinier J. Sumangat. Galhmard, -Paris, 1951: Feld S. Sound and Sentimenr. Universitv of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, Penn., 1982; Skkat W. W. Malay Magic, pp. 47-50. Macmillan. London, 1900. Semai notions of supernatural birds differ sharply from the complicated set of beliefs about birds found on Borneo, e.g. Dove M. R. Swidden Agriculture in Indonesia. The Subsistence Srraregies of rhe Kalimanran Kanru’, p. 86. Mouton, Amsterdam, 1985. 11. A Malay cognate, sembelit, referred to constipation,

costiveness or indigestion, which traditional Malay medical theory attributed to passive liver congestion leading to chronic colonic blockage. The word extended to swellings, swollen varicose veins. colic. genitourinary diseases and thence to plants used to treat these ailments. Hemorrhoids were puru sembeht, puru referring to yaws, sores and skin ulcers. Wojowasito S.. Poerwadarminta W. J. S. and Gaastra S. A. M. Kamus Indonesia Inggeris. Versluys. Jakarta, 1959; Gimlette J. D. and Thompson H. W. A. Dictionary of Malqvan Medicine. Oxford University Press. -London, 1939; Wilkinson R. J. A Malay-English Dictionary. Kelly & Walsh, Singapore, 1901; Pino E. and Wittermans T. Kamus Inggeris Indonesia. Pradjaparamita, Jakarta, 1966; Ismail A., Gimlette J. D. and Burkill I. H. The medical book of Malayan medicine. Gdns’ Bull. Waifs Seftl. 6, 377-378, 404, 418, 490, 1930; Echols J. M. and Shadily H. An Indonesian-English Dictionary. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y.. 1963; Burkill I. H. and Haniff M. Malay village medicine. Gdns’ Bull. Sfraifs Settl. 6. 193. 195. 218. 254. 255. 257. 260. 261. 319-320. 1930. See also Table ‘II, note on rgr^ k.

12. The verb for using fish poison may be cognate. The relationales for keeping menstruating women away from fish poisons seemed to draw on a likeness between the poisons and menstrual discharge which might pro-

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voke, among other things, sexual violence. The sexual connotations of the word -rruuq showed up in related languages like Btsisi’. in which froq refers to swellings associated with yaws. Malay cognates included ferok, acute or severe, and keruk, the ‘koro’ of ethnopsychiatry, in which the penis withdrew into the body and pierced the liver. For koro. see Yap P. M. Koro-a culturespecific depersonalization syndrome. Br. J. Psychiar. 3, 1965; Wulfften-Palthe P. M. van. Psychiatry and neurology in the tropics. In A Clinical Textbook of Tropical Medicine (Edited by Langen C. D. and Lichtenstein A.). Kolff, Jakarta, 1936; Edwards J. W. Indigenous koro, a genital retraction syndrome of insular Southeast Asia: a critical review. Cult. Med. Psychiar. 8, 1, 1986.

Birds with puncturing beaks included several species of hombills, bulbuls and green pigeons, all large and showy; homed beetles included the large Batocerus sp. Pignosed carp included Anabas lesrudineus. Barbus and Punfius spp. Turtles, because of the penile head that tumesceses in a confining slit, have sexual connotations throughout East Asia, e.g. Chinese Wang ba, Btsisi’ kuraq, Sulawesi and Malay kurakura. The latter terms may be cognate with ‘koro’. 13. In Indian Buddhism, Mara is Lord of Death and Desire, who unsuccessfully assaulted Buddha’s self control with sexual temptation in order to kill him. See, e.g. Campbell J. The Masks of God: Oriental myrhologi, pp. 17-20.218-221.272. 304. Vikine. New York. 1962: Gbeyeskere G. Medusa’s Hair, pp. 319;1888189. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Ill., 1981. The Sanskrit conflation of sexual arousal and death, especially by violence, resonates with traditional Semai feelings about pain spirits. 14 Both examples are East Semai. The bait aroid iaanjer may have been Alocasia lowii. Edible poisonous tubers included baseew, Dioscorea hispida. Six was a traditional magic number. For Malay ignorance of spirits, see Banks D. J. Trance and dance in Malaya. Council on International Studies, State University of N.Y. at Buffalo, Special Studies No. 74, pp. 15-17. 1976; for Malay stories about spirits, Ahmad Embun Hanru dun Kerja-nva, Sinaran Bras, Penang, 1959; McHugh J. N. Hanru Hanru. Malayan Heritage Series 3. Eastern Universities Press, Singapore, 1959. 15. Cf. Schebesta P. Religiose Anschauungen der Semang uber die Orang hidop (die Unsterblichen). Arch. Religionsw. 25, 5, 1927; Evans I. H. N. Studies in Religion, Folk-Lore and Custom in British North Borneo & the Malay Peninsula. Cass, London, 1923. Lengkok Semai opposed above ground, ayat ku balik, living in the sky, to below ground, ayat ku riiq, living in or on the earth.

This trope occurred in most indigenous Malaysian symbolic codes. The ocean-inland contrast was also traditional. A sandpiper was ‘Thunder’s wife’ because it migrated daily from the seaside, where Thunder lives, to the mountains, where dwelt his younger brother, Wind. Malay stories sometimes opposed arboreal creatures to those of earth and water, e.g. Maxwell G. In Malay Forests, pp. 58-59. Eastern Universities Press, Singapore, 1960; Ira M. Siamang dun Raksasa. Qalam, Singapura, n.d. Although celestial Bird Spirits and subterranean Dragons recalled Hindu garuda and naga, Semai garudas were not the Bird Spirits of Table 3. Instead, these huge extinct golden ‘parent-in-law birds-of-prey’, klak bl*9, a phrase connoting great respect, ate elephants and villages; they lived in limestone caves near Sahum, Perak. The goldenness of the birds suggested both the Hindu Sun Bird and Chinese Phoenix. For example, Grosher B. P. The Art of Indochina, pp. 99-101. Crown, New York, 1962; Campbell J. The Masks of God:

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Oriental Mythology, pp. 20 and 194. Viking, New York,

1959; Harrison J. L. The domestic rats of Malaya. Med.

1962. Like Chinese, Semai associated dragons with deep pools, floods and thundersqualls. Anon. The Rites and

J. Malaya 4, 96, 1949.

Mysteries Connecred with the Origin, Rise, and Developmenr of Serpenr Worship in Various Parts of the World. DD. 118-124. Tutor Press, Toronto, 1980; Tyler 8. A. India: An Anthropological Perspective, pp. 99-100.

Goodvear. Pacific Palisades, Calif., 1973; Werner E. T.-C. Myths and Legends of China, pp. 208-235. Harrap, London, 1922. The connection of serpents and dragons with sex and violence, explicit in such Hindu esoteric practices as kundalini yoga, seemed implicit for Semai. Cf. Obeyesekere G. Medusa’s Hair. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, III., 1981. 16. Semai said that what they called ‘Odor spirits’, nyaniq ngoy, Malays called hanru jembalang. In dreams, odor spirits appeared as oxen or cattle, Malay domestic animals Semai rarely meet (see also Ref. [20]). Among Malays, hanru jembalang are gnomish earth beings to which one should make offerings when disturbing the soil, e.g. to plant fields or set house poles. Semai cholera spirits were also oceanic, appearing in dreams as nonSemai: European or Malay women, Malay hajis. The name, rawud, and lore were all of Malay origin, e.g. an association with Pusat Taseq Pawuh Janji, a corruption of Malay Pasat Tasek, Navel of the Sea, an island where Mangifera trees called pauh janggi grew on a sunken bank. The cure for cholera, painting three fingernails with henna to repel the spirits when they try to grab the patient’s hand, was also Malay. Still, Semai knew these two pain-spirits at the turn of the century. Wilkinson R. J. A vocabulary of central Sakai (dialect of the aboriginal communities in the Gopeng valley). Papers on Malay Subis 3. 46, 54, 1915. For uauh ianggi. see Skeat W. W.- Malay Magic, pp. 7-10. Macmillan, London, 1900. 17. Few taxonomies anywhere accurately classify all relevant data. Jah Hut, kin to Semai, often conflated ghosts and spirits. Other nonwestern peoples have similar problems, as do Western taxonomists. Wilkinson R. J. A vocabulary of central Sakai (dialect of the aboriginal communities in the Gopeng valley). Papers on Molay Subjs 3, 20, 1915; Werner R. Joh-her of Malaysia. Penerbit Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, 1975; Douglas M. Animals in Lele religious svmbolism. Africa 27. 46. 1957: Douglas M. Natural Symbols, p. 162. Vantage, ‘New York, I-973; Gould S. J. Treasures in a taxonomic wastebasket. Nat. Hisf. 94(12), 22, 1985.

Among the forms ghosts took were bhey, miasmas found near East Semai graves; btiis puuk, swollen scrotum toadstools, Amorphophallus sp.; kar^ k, giant toads, Bufo asper, by-named ranoaq kcm ^ Ac, elder ghost; bullfrogs, jowong, by-named kaoq juk, leg fish; and nocturnal birds associated with Bird Spirit, like swifts, owls and nightjars. The rats were subspecies of Rorrus ratfus. the black rat. A man would hold the head of a grylled cricket, smen?, in the fire to kill it, since the crickets originate from corpse blood, especially from corpses of women who die in first child-birth, and devour corpses or, if no corpses are available, headsouls. Their stridulated ‘Soiyem, saiyent’, i.e. ‘Child, child’, presaged death. The Malay equivalent of smenf are pelesir, rustlers or suckers. For details on rats, ghost birds and insects among Semai. Semang, Malays and Andamanese, see above and Dentan R. K. Notes on Semai ethnoentomology. Molayan Not. J. 21, 17, 1968; Radcliffe-Brown A. R. The Andamon Islanders, p. 156. Free Press, New York, 1964; Haughton H. T. The berik-berik or baberik. J. Straits Br. R. Asiof. Sot. 15, 39, 1885; McHugh J. N. Hanru Honru. Eastern University Press, Singapore,

18. At first I thought the prevalence of synecdoche among Semai was unusual, since anthropological linguistic theory at the time stressed componential analysis, which assumed as in set theory that any member of a class fit in that class because it had an identity feature it shared with all members of its class, and with no members of other classes. Later studies of cognition, however, indicated that people often categorize by synecdoche, assigning things to classes on the basis of their similarity to a ‘typical’ member of that class, the basic member or ideal type. See Dentan R. K. Labels and rituals in Semai classification. Ethnology 9, 16, 1970; Dentan R. K. Hocus pocus and extensionism in central Malaysia. Am. Amhrop. 72,358, 1970; Lounsbury F. G. The structural analysis of kinship semantics. In Cognifive Anthropology (Edited bv Tvler S. A.). Holt. Rinehart & Winston. New York, 1969;ORosch E. Principles of categorization. In Cognition and Caregorization (Edited by Rosch E. and Lloyd B.). Gelbaum. Hillsdale, N.J., 1978. Like Semai, Chinese treated dragons as synecdochic chiefs of all scaly reptiles. Werner E. 1. C. Myths and Legends of China, p. 208. Harrap, London, 1922. 19 Gorgeous and deadly, tigers typify supernaturals throughout Southeast Asia. Semai called fish poison plants knr*q, with modifiers identifying species, e.g. k. cab’l, unidentified; k. cros, perhaps Phyllanthus reclinatus; k. lr * * q, a name perhaps cognate with the word for supernatural puncture, perhaps Diospyros sp.; k. ryenk, Dioscorea piscatorum; k. jnuq, Derris elliptica and perhaps Milletia sp. The phonology of the root verb -kr^q suggests an association with supernatural punc-

ture (see text and Ref. [I I]) which may account for the salience of puncture imagery in the rationales of menstrual taboos associated with using fish poison (see text and Ref. [ 1I]). Ritually dangerous spiny plants included paley palm, Oncosperma horrida; sreek, wild jackfruit, Arrocarpus cf. londaefolia; solak, Zolocco edulis; and snwed, a primary forest vine with foul-smelling fruit. The tuber, bajel, perhaps Hodgsonia capniocarpa, was unusual among plants in having a by-name, viz., rrhuuq, perhaps cognate with the word for supernatural puncture. The word for the vivid dreams was rayeh, nightmare, cognate with Malay rayan, delirium, raving, incoherent speech while asleep or excited. Delusions and incoherence, like disorderly speech, -cakop rawooc, or disorderly eating, -caaq rawooc, could upset metaphysical order and bring on chaos (see also Ref. [7]). 20 Semai divided those beneath the earth, maay kr ^b reiq, into three synecdochic subcategories, the dragon’s foster children, kn ^ * n bmcoaq: regal python, rlaay, P. reticulams (snakes), giant monitor, grig, Varonus salvator (lizards) and crocodile, bahyaq. Crocodiles were so rare in Semai territory as to be mythic beasts with a name of Malay origin. For discussion of thundersquall beliefs, see Robarchek C. A. Frustration, aggression and the non-violent Semai. Am. Ethnol. 4, 762. 1977; Baharon A. bin R. Engku’-spirit of thunder. Fedn Mus. J. 11, 34, 1966. East Semai responded to blind snakes by patting their chests to indicate strong emotion and saying “I’m scared, I’m scared”. They said blind snakes and pipe snakes (Typhlops diardi muelleri, rnlur mot jiis, sun spawn; T. lineatus; Cylindrophis rufus, cangcoh) were headbands of thunder, fmpoq ngkuq. The sandpiper bride of thunder, knah ngkuq, was Arctitis hypoleucos. 21 W- ^ I, wool at Grnt^ b, was generic. The prototype or true w --I, w*- I mtul, was upland w ^ ^ I, w ^ ^ I sraq, probably Ochanosrachys amenlocea. Water w * AI, w - * I feew, may have been Homalium frurescens. The name of another variety, w L* I kraal, male w ^ LI, suggests that

Ambiguity, synecdoche and affect in Semai medicine Semai regarded these trees as generic females. Gmt* b people said that a forest lean-to built with w * A1 boughs might attract tigers, presumably because the wood was bnyuniq, infected with pain-spirits. The dizziness, /nwig mar, which eating the fruit might cause also preceded spirit possession in seances. Bd^ q was the genetic Semai equivalent of Malay jelurung. The prototype was a tree 10 fathoms tall with red latex that reminded Semai of blood, Dyera spp. and possibly some Alsfoniu spp. normally called puley. Men used the sap along with other sticky alleged poisons to elue dart butts to shafts. West Semai made spirit perches of the wood for their seances and sold it to Chinese for lumber but would not use it to build their own houses (see also Table 1). Although tree pain-spirit creatures usually lacked tails, Semai classed spectacled langurs, Presbyris obscura, as tree spirits because the Malay name lurung was a partial homonym of the Malay name for the tree. The same sort of homonymous association affects yellow-crowned bulbuls, ceep baraw, Trachycomus ochrocephalus, half of whose eggs supposedly change into carp, kaq sbaraw, Hampala macrolepidoprera. The fish has big fins, like the wings of a bird. The Malay term jelutung also covered Ervaramia corymbosa and E. hirra, small trees with white flowers and milky latex. Malays used jelutungs to treat venereal diseases, again supernaturally connecting sex and violence. Burkill I. H. and Haniff M. Malay village medicine. G&s Bull. Straits Settl. 6, 167, 228-229 1930. For the gibbon behavior featured in Semai accounts of this synechoche, see Yerkes R. M. and A. W. The Greof Apes, p. 66. Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn., 1929; Ellefson J. 0. Territorial behavior in the common white-handed gibbon. In Primates: Studies in Adupfation and Variubility (Edited by Jay P. C.). Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York, 1968. 22. Semai associated involuntary spasms with spirit possession The two Semai words for such spasms had Malay cognates: pilaq (Malay pelak) and sahbad (Malay sawan). Pilaq included shivering and fainting; suhbud, colic, choking and uncontrollable gasping, especially in babies. The connection with ruminants kerned to come from the animals’ jumpiness and the wav in which they shudder off flies. The threat behavior of -pigtailed macaques, d-q or pang, Macaca irus, involves choked barks, jerky jumps and shaking branches; hence the by-names Bah-Yoh Karuk, Mr Shake Deadwood, and Bah Sahbad. Malay pelak refers to evil influences haunting places where some terrible wrong has occurred, often associated with jembahmg [16] and thus with puncturing the earth [cf. 121. Malay sawcn includes apoplexy, grand ma1 seizures and fits of uncontrollable sobbing or coughing, often associated with foaming at the mouth. fbu soban, genetrix of fits, is children’s head boils; Minangkabau sabunsaban is a bladder disease. The latter two usages suggest tie-ins with supernatural tumescence [l I]. 23. Semai bird spirits incorporated aspects of a congeries of mostly female Malay hanru, e.g. (a) puntianuk, ghosts of murdered illegitimate children or women dead in childbirth; (b) langsuyar, whinnying females with long fingernails and dangling entrails; (c) penggalan, cut in two at the waist; (d) meowing civet-like male bajang; and (e) Kelantanese kemang and their agent, the pouncing-seizing hanru sambaran [cf. 171. Minangkabau si ngiangngiung, ghosts of murdered infants, have similar habits. See Skeat W. W. Malay Magic. Macmillan, London, 1980; J. N. McHugh Hanru Hanfu. Eastern Universities Press, Singapore, 1959; Ahmed Embun Hanru Dengan Kerja-nya. Sinaran Bras, Penang, 1959. Supernatural forest wives also occur in Malay stories, e.g. Evans 1. H. N. Studies in Religion, Folk-lore &

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Custom in British North Borneo & the Malay Peninsula,

pp. 284287. Cass, London, 1923. 24. The Semai word for this system of tabus was pnaliq, from Austronesian words meaning tabu at all times, as opposed to situationally tabu. Dentan R. K. Labels and rituals in Semai classification. Ethnology 9, 16, 1970; Dove M. Swidden Agriculture in Indonesia, pp. 24, 171. 281. Mouton, Amsterdam, 1985; Bock C. The HeadHunters of Borneo, pp. 115, 215, 230. Samson Low, London, 1881. The dizziness of mixed-food diseases was lnwig mat, spinning eyes, which also preceded spun possesston. The only one of these diseases to have its own name was kruqboq, the ‘blisters’ or ‘pimples’ of which were m-n, the mild fever sqir. The name means to be affected by kboq, a root which may refer to the blood clots or pebbles adepts allegedly suck out of patients. Turmeric, rmet, Cucurma longa, is a ginger. Perhaps due to Hindu influence Semai medicine attributed it curative powers, like true gingers. The plant, an ancient cultivar, no longer occurred wild. Its salience in mixedfood disease imagery may have come from its supposed medicinal value and the fact that its musky rhizome produces bright yellow or orange dye, the color of jaundiced eyes. See, e.g. Cobley L. S. An Imroducrion IO the Botany of Tropical Crops. Longmans, London, 1956. The porcupine in this section was kuus, Hystrix brachyura. The medical department of the Department of Orang

Asli Affairs waged a successful campaign against tuberculosis among west Malaysian indigenes in the 1970s. Bolton J. M. Medical services to the aborigines in west Malaysia. Br. med. J. 2, 818, 1968; Jimin 1. et al. Development programmes for tribal peoples (the Malaysian setting). Community Integrated Rural Development Asia Pacific Country Report, Malaysia, pp. 74-84, 1983. Relocation, notes Jimin, killed about 7000 of a total indigenous population of about 50,000, mostly old people and children, p. 60n. 25. For readers unfamiliar with the notions used in the section on psychology, the sociology of knowledge rests on the assumption that ‘perspectives’ not derived solely from empirical observation and internal logic must grow out of daily life. The relevant German phrase Seinsverbundenheir des Wissens, existential connections or determinants of knowledge, leaves open the question of how daily life affects cognition. The classic source is Mannheim K. Ideology and Utopia. An Inrroducrion to the Sociology of Knowledge (Translated by Wirth L. and Shils E.). Harcourt, Brace, New York, 1946. Psychological reductionism is an analytical evil only when it claims to be the sole and sufficient explanation of social facts. For a defense of learning theory in anthropological analysis, see Murdock G. P. Anthropology’s mythology. Proc. R. Amhrop.-Inst. 1971, 17, 1972; of psychodynamic theory, Paul R. A. The question of applied psychoanalysis and the interpretation of cultural symbolism. Ethos 15, 82, 1987. The gradient of generalization is a fundamental learning theory construct. See, e.g. Miller N. and Dollard J. Sociul Learning and Imitation. Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn.. 1941. I have modified the notion of projection to fit the Semai data, so that it may ne:d not involve repressed or dissociated impulses. S. Freud coined the original psychodynamic concept to explain paranoid delusions as “ego defense mechanisms” which allow people to be aware of their own repressed feelings only insofar as they imagine others to have them. Psychoanalytische Bemerkungen uber einen autobiographisch beschriebenen Fall von Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides). Juhrb. Psychoan. Psychopath. Forsch. 3, 1911. 1 lack the clinical evidence or expertise to discuss unconscious

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Semai impulses and therefore deal only with projected fears about violence and sexual attack, feelings Semai would discuss freely, rather than with repressed or dissociated aggressive or sexual impulses about which by definition they could not or would not talk. For discussion of this issue, see Robarchek C. and Dentan R. K. Blood drunkenness and the bloodthirsty Semai: unmaking another anthropological myth. Am. Anrhrop. 89, 356-365, 1987. 26. This interpretation

avoids the question of whether Semai statements about these matters are to be taken literally or metaphorically, since Semai evinced the gamut of attitudes towards them, from credulity to disbelief. In any case, to ask such a question requires a long tradition of thinking about thinking which is alien to Semai. As metaphors, Semai descriptions of supernaturals were ‘dead’ in the sense that they evoked a system of associated commonplaces to which everyone has access. Dead metaphors, of course, are transitional between live metaphors and literal descriptions. Ricoeur P. Hermeneurics and rhe Human Sciences, pp. 169-175. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1981. Moreover, treating these usages as the product of restricted codes seems less ethnocentric than fussing about whether they are literal or metaphorical. Restricted codes need not entail simplistic ideas. The following description could apply to Semai as well as English. “People sometimes say that words are now used as flat counters, in a way which ignores their delicacy; that English is coming to use fewer of its words, and those more crudely. But this journalistic flatness does not mean that the words have simple meanings, only that the word is used, as at a distance, to stand for a vague and complicated mass of ideas and systems which the journalist has no time to apprehend.” Empsom W. Seven Types of Ambiguity, p. 236. Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1961. 27. Egalitarian mutual deference and memorate knowledge correlate cross-culturally; see Gardner P. M. Symmetric respect and memorate knowledge. Sourhw. J. Anlhrop. 22, 389, 1966. In America, mutual ritualized informality and the multiplicity of authoritative sources of knowledge create an ability to hold incompatible beliefs much like that of Semai, especially in areas where an individual hears strong but clashing opinions, e.g. in the areas of race relations or homosexuality. See Myrdal G. An American Dilemma. Harper & Row, New York, 1944; Aki S. Toward an ethnographic approach to homophobia, MA project, Anthropology Dept. State University of N.Y. at Buffalo, 1987; Kinsley M. The art of polling. New Repub. 16, 20 June, 1981. 28 Mistrust of glibness pervaded social relations among Semai and the related Temiar and Btsisi’ (61. Dentan R. K. The response to intellectual impairment among the Semai. Am. J. men!. De/. 71, 764, 1967; Nowak B. and Dentan R. K. Problems and tactics in the transcultural study of intelligence: an archival report. Behac. Sci. Res. 18, 1, 1983; Benjamin G. Headmanship and leadership in Temiar society. Fedn Mus. J. 13, I, 1968. 29 The Hikayat Marong Mahawangsa, in ‘Abdul-Hadi b. Hasan Sejarah *alam~Melayu. The Malay School Series No. 7. 1925. The story is thus not of ‘aood’ indigenes and ‘bad’ Malays. Some peninsula Malays strongly condemned slaving or. themselves victims, joined indigenes to fight off slave raids. Conversely, some indigenes, notably Temiar, guided slavers to defenceless settlements. Carey 1. Y. Orang Asli. The Aboriginal Tribes of Peninsular Malaysia, p. 286. Oxford University Press, London, 1976; Couillard M.-A. Les rapports sociaux dans la societe malaise pre-coloniale. Hypotheses et commentaires. Anrhrop. ioc. 10, 1455162; 1986; Endicott K. M. The effects of slave raiding on the aborigines of the Malay peninsula. In Slavery, Bondage,

and Dependency in Southeast Asia (Edited by Reid A.

and Brewster J.). University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1983; Fix A. G. Semai Senoi population structure and genetic microdifferentiation. Ph.D. dissertation, p. 84. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich., 1971; McNair J. F. A. Perak and rhe Malays, pp. 190-200. Oxford in Asia, Singapore, 1972; Wheeler L. R. The Modern Malay, p. 11I. Allen & Unwin, London, 1928. The Malay-Semai dualism in Semai descriptions of themselves exemplifies a cross-culturally common response to Muslim-kaffir contacts. Dentan R. K. If there were no Malays, who would the Semai be? In Pluralism in Malaysia: Myth and Reality (Edited by Nagata J.), Contr. Asian Studies 7. 1975; Dentan R. K. Identitv and ethnic contact: Perak, Malaysia, 1963. J. Asian kff. 1, 1976; Pipes D. In the Path of God. Islam and Political Power, pp. 3940, 165-167. Basic Books, New York, 1983. 30. My experiences with Angloamerican interpretations of Semai ethnography makes me a little reluctant to propose the ideas (1) that Semai notions of the world may reflect letting-go, accepting that the world is beyond their control, and (2) that their letting-go comes from defeat by Malays. Angloamericans despise ‘losers’ more than they despise, say, murderers or liars. Early British observers, reflecting this bias, write about Semai fearfulness with contempt. In this context, it is perhaps worth noting that denial, the compulsive refusal to accept an unpleasant reality, is rarely adaptive in the long run as an ego defense mechanism, let alone as a response to attack by overwhelmingly more powerful people. The experience of letting-go and its effects are described in the literature of Alcoholics Anonymous and its offshoots, as well as in some of the literature on conversion. Unfortunately, the language may be difficult for the audience of this paper to take seriously. Letting-go tends to occur, gradually or all at once, after a prolonged period of stress, what anthropologists used to refer to as a ‘state of cultural distortion’, Christians as ‘being sunk in sin’. and AA as the ‘bottom’. Lettinggo renders the individual open to a radically changed way of life. often radically different from what went before but usually involving self-control, refusal to try to control others, a rejection of worrying about whether one’s plans will succeed and an acknowledgement of personal powerlessness and insignificance. -See, e.g. Trite H. T. A study of the process of affiliation with Alcoholics Anonymous. Q. j. Srud. Ale. 18, 39, 1957; Kessel N. and Walton H. Alcoholism, revised edn, pp. 106. 14&141. 153. Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1969. Social disorder seems to foster skepticism about appearances. During the Warring States period, when ordinary Chinese ran the risk of being slaughtered or brutalized by invaders like Semai during the slavers’ heyday, the great Daoist works attributed to Laozi and Zhuangzi first appeared. They treat the categorization of the world as the foolhardy imposition of arbitrary form on chaos. The model of how ideas relate to the world resembles the Semai one. Moreover, Daoism reflects the pervasive egalitarianism and antiintellectualism of traditional Chinese peasants, attitudes which resemble Semai ones, although Chinese peasants were and are more likely to express those attitudes violently. But whereas Daoists take arbitrary forms as barriers to participating in a creative chaos, hundun, Semai seek to be shielded by arbitrary forms from a destructive one, fluid. Moreover, Semai rhetoric is sarcastic and metaphoric, whereas Daoists tend to irony and paradox. The Daoist notion of wu wei, no striving, is perhaps closer than the Western idea of letting-go to the emotional and intellectual complex this paper seeks to sketch. Zhuang Zhao. The Complete Works of

Ambiguity, synecdoche and affect in Semai medicine Chuang Tzu (Edited and translated by Watson B.). Columbia University Press, New York, 1968; Creel H. On the origin of wu:wei. In Whcr is Taoism? And Other Essavs in Chinese Cultural Historv. University of ChicagdPress, Chicago, Ill., 1970; Girardot N. J. &yth and Meaning in Early Taoism. The Theme of Chaos (hunrun). University of California Press, Berkeley, Calif.,

1983. The San peoples of southern Africa seem to many observers to epitomize nonviolent societies. Their social organization is remarkably like that of Semai: egalitarian, acephalous, with shamans, informal age-grades, loosely territorial bands, bilateral-generational kinship terminology and so on. The beliefs of veldt San are as amorphous and internally variable as those of East Semai, while San in contact with outsiders have more systematized beliefs, like West Semai. In the 19th century, however, San violently resisted encroaching Boers, British, Germans and Bantu, so that their current life and beliefs may also be a response to defeat by overwhelmingly more powerful foes. Veldt San, like East Semai, could flee to refuge areas into which the enemy rarely penetrated; San in closer contact became serfs, like West Semai. There is no reason to think that current San beliefs survived unaltered from the Paleolithic. For similarities between San and Semai, see Bodley J. H. Anthropology and Contemporary Human Problems, pp. 174-180. Benjamin/Cummings, Menlo Park, Calif., 1976. For San culture change, see Pratt M. L. Fieldwork in common places. In Wri&g Culture. The Poetics and Politics of Ethnoaraphv (Edited bv Clifford J. and Marcus 6. E.). U&e&y of California Press, Berkeley, Calif., 1986. Guenther M. G. has several relevant papers: The San trance dance: ritual and revitalization among the farm bushmen of the Ghanzi District, Republic of Botswana. J.S. W. Afr. Sci. Sot. 30, 45, 1975/1976;

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Bushman religion and the (non)sense of anthropological theory of religion. Sociologus 29, 102, 1979; from ‘brutal savages’ to ‘harmless people’. Notes on the changing Western image of the Bushmen. Paideuma 26, 123-124, 1980; from foragers to miners and bands to bandits: on the flexibility and adaptability of bushman band societies. Sprache Gesch. Afrika 7, 133-159, 1986. His explanation for the differences between veldt and serf San religions in the article on the theory of religion would be an alternative or supplement to the one under discussion: “the extent and intensity of social and existential stress can be argued to determine such cognitive and affective attributes of belief as degree of fragmentation, conceptual clarity, reality-connectedness and emotional intensity. If stress is low.. belief is correspondingly fragmented, conceptually loose, isolated from reality and emotionally low-key; if stress is great . belief is correspondingly standardized, integrated, linked with reality and emotionally intense.” 31. Alcoholics Anonymous and the Christian groups on which it is modelled stress avoiding emotional highs and lows. To do so Semai sought compensation from people who broke promises or frustrated another’s desires, whereas the Western groups urged victims to ‘let go and let God’. The classic account of the relationship between authoritarianism and intolerance of ambiguity is Adorn0 T. W. et al. The Authoritarian Personality. American Jewish Committee, New York, 1950. 32. For parsimony and sufficiency as prime criteria for evaluating scientific accounts, see Lounsbury F. G. The formal analysis of Crow- and Omaha-type kinship terminologies. In Explorations in Cultural Anthropology (Edited by Goodenough W. H.). McGraw-Hill, New York, 1964; Ricoeur P. Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences (Edited and translated by Thompson J. B.), pp. 175-l 76. Cambridge University Press, 1981.