Malay Magic (Illustrated)

Briefly, the purpose of the author has been to collect into a Book of Malay Folklore all that seemed to him most typical of the subject amongst a considerable mass of materials, some of which lay scattered in the pages of various other works, others in unpublished native manuscripts, and much in notes made by him personally of what he had observed during several years spent in the Malay Peninsula, principally in the State of Selangor. The book does not profess to be an exhaustive or complete treatise, but rather, as its title indicates, an introduction to the study of Folklore, Popular Religion, and Magic as understood among the Malays of the Peninsula.
It should be superfluous, at this time of day, to defend such studies as these from the criticisms which have from time to time been brought against them. I remember my old friend and former teacher, Wan ʿAbdullah, a Singapore Malay of Trengganu extraction and Arab descent, a devout and learned Muhammadan and a most charming man, objecting to them on the grounds, first, that they were useless, and, secondly, which, as he emphatically declared, was far worse, that they were perilous to the soul’s health.