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Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 140 (2014) 291 - 294
PSYSOC 2013
Traditional Malay Healing Practices: Expressions Of Cultural And
Local Knowledge
Solehah Ishak *, Muhammad Ghouse Nassuruddin
Department of Theatre, Faculty of Film, Theatre and Animation, University Technology MARA, Puncak Perdana campus, 40150, Shah Alam,
Selangor, Malaysia School of Arts, University Science Malaysia, 11800, Penang, Malaysia
Abstract
This paper looks at the healing practices of Main Peteri, a traditional-ritual form of Malay theatre, as an expression and evolution of local culture and knowledge. The main purpose of this paper is to understand and highlight the uniqueness of local knowledge and culture within the trajectory of its community. The rituals of buka and tutup panggung, the concept of the angin/wind(s) and semangat/spirit/soul are seen within the context of local knowledge and the healing mechanisms of performance. This research situates main peteri as a communal theatre performed not only for the benefit of the sick person, but also for the performers and by extension, the community at large. This study is based on ethnographic investigations and recordings involving phenomenological observations and in-depth semiological interviews with key informants of the main peteri. This resarch is grounded on structuralism's intricate interpretations of relationships between elements of signifiers and signifieds in order to understand the unconscious mind of the sick persons, the practitioners and the community. This is achieved through a study of the form and the semiotics of the main peteri theatre. The binary relationships between religious restraints/edicts and modernists approaches, the concerns of purists-traditionalists and accomodators-innovators of this theatre form are juxtaposed within the parameters of cultural change, innovation and development. It concludes by analyzing traditional theatre's re-positioning as it confronts an information-technology driven world.
© 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.Org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of PSYSOC 2013.
Keywords: Traditional healing practices, Cultural knowledge, Local knowledge, Angin/wind, Semangat/spirit. Main peteri;
1. Introduction: Malay traditional theatre forms and the Malay Gemeinschaft
* Corresponding author: Solehah Ishak Tel.: +0-000-000-0000 E-mail address: solehah_ishak@yahoo.com
1877-0428 © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of PSYSOC 2013. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.04.422
Malaya/sia has a rich array of traditional theatre forms known by these various names: wayang kulit, boria, mak yong, jikey, mek mulung, kuda kepang, saba, and the main peteri, found in different states throughout the country. These myriad Malay theatre forms exemplify to the richness and variety of different performativities. They all share several common characteristic; they (i) are scriptless, the stories being handed down orally from one generation to another; (ii) do not require a stage or a special theatre building but a performance space is created/demarcated for these rituals; two important rituals of (a) buka panggung/opening the stage and (b) "tutup panggung"/closing the stage.
The former is to call, involve and persuade the ancestral spirits (nenek moyang) to come down, bless and participate in the chosen traditional theatre performance and to ascertain that the performers and the attendant audiences are well protected. A small altar, called the sakak, is carefully and ritualistically prepared to worship and pay homage to these ancestral spirits and to the gods. Food must be prepared and arranged on special trays and platters to be served to the spirits and gods. The Tutup Panggung Ritual/Closing the Stage is to ensure that there is closure to the performance. The ancestral spirits and gods which have descended, blessed, helped, and participated in the theatre production must now be thanked and sent back to their abodes, else they will continue to taunt, haunt, inhabit the earth or the bodies of the performer(s) or some "chosen" members of the audience and continue to made them ill. (iv) The trance element where some performers and audiences become unconscious, (known variously, as,mabuk/drunk, lupa /forget, naik syeik/become high or rebah/fall down), and they morphed into different beings, depending on the type of traditional theatre being performed. Members of the audience also get into a trance. As they become lupa, they leave the audience area and run, sashay, saunter or gyrate into the performance area to join the performers.
Malaysia, a multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi- religious nation of 30 million people is home to the Malays, Chinese, Indians and others. Although the official religion is Islam, there is freedom of religion and religious practices in the country. Prior to the coming of Islam to then Malaya, the country was inundated with paganism and animistic beliefs, which together with the religions of Hinduism and Buddhism, have influenced and impacted the Malay psyche.
Malay belief in the spirits and beings from the nether world can be traced to these animistic and pagan practices when Malays believed that their lives, physical bodies, livelihoods, homes, weather, harvests, everything that they did or did not do, were governed by semangat1 or the soul which resides in all things: in human beings, in animals, in trees and plants, in the earth, in the sky, in rivers, seas, even in inanimate objects. The semangat must always be at peace, be balanced, be in equilibrium. It cannot be ruffled, disturbed, deprived, depressed, deranged, and bothered. If the semangat is not at peace, man, nature, things will conversely not be at peace either. In the realm of the Malay ethos, the semangat is constantly threatened, discouraged, disturbed by malevolent spirits who are ever eager to challenge the equilibrium and disrupt the balance.
The Malays are also governed by the concept of angin/wind. One's angin must always be sedap/nice. If one's angin is not sedap than it is time to have a traditional theatre performance during which these unhealthy angin/winds will be dispelled.
1 I prefer the term semangat (which has been the common term used by Malay traditional theatre practitioners) although I am not denying the existence of other Malay terms like roh, nyawa, jiwa. I also prefer the term soul to refer to Semangat although various definitions of semangat have been suggested by Endicott, Firth, Skeet, Winstedt and Wilkinson.
1.1. Purpose of study, methodology and theoretical underpinnings
The main purpose of this study is to understand the uniqueness of local knowledge as expressed in the healing practice of main peteri as exemplified physically, spiritually, visually and verbally. The study is based on ethnographic observations, recordings and in-depth interviews with theatre practitioners and audiences to collect visual and vocal data. The analysis is based on phenomenological aspects of this theatre practice and the semiotics of the performance structure which can only be understood by members of the local community and not open to cross-cultural interpretations. The importance, usefulness and sustainability of main peteri are seen within the contestations of the traditional-cultural-local knowledge and religious edicts and state sanctions.
1.2. The curing ritual theatre of Main Peteri
The main peteri is an elaborate curing/healing theatre involving a complicated process of identifying the spirits, appeasing them, ejecting them from the body of the sick person and finally ensuring that the person, and by extension, the community is healed and balanced at the end of the ritual.
In Main Peteri, the main players would be the bomoh/ Tuk Puteri tuk teri, the man responsible not only for invoking the different spirits to descend and imbibe in his body but also for recognizing and diagnosing the different angin(s); the second, main player would be his assistant, the Tuk Minduk, the interrogator responsible for questioning and identifying the various spirits which had occupied the body of the sick man now transferred into the body of the tuk teri and or the bodies of the different spectators whose angin(s)/winds are not strong enough. The third group of main actors are the musicians who are responsible for providing the correct milieux, thus facilitating the appropriate semangat(s) for the performers, besides enabling the spirits to communicate with their earthly brethrens. The fourth group of important performers, although not visible to the audience, would be the various malevolent sprits and or demons themselves.
Equally important as the above are the musical instruments comprising of the gong, seruling, canang, geduk, kesi, tetawak, klenang and rebab, the epicenter of all the musical instruments. This Malay orchestra played the songs to invite the varied invisible beings to descend and participate in the main peteri ritual.
1.3. Analysis: The semiotics of the performance
The bomoh initiates the performance by conducting the ritual of buka panggung. When the spirits have entered his body, he will enter into a trance, become lupa, or naik syeikh. Under these different guises, the Tuk Puteri/Tuk Teri/bomoh speaks in different ways or sing different songs, all of which are undecipherable to ordinary audiences but must be deciphered or interpreted by the Tuk Minduk, the Tuk Puteri's assistance who must always be aware and react to these many changes so as to help the bomoh oust the spirits. Likewise the audience must be alert and be able to read the bomoh's many "ventriloquial" changes.
The spirits, in their own individual turns were having a monologue, which became a dialogue and what they uttered must be acted upon by the tok minduk in his capacity now as the tok bomoh, the traditional healer. The spirits, whether they be the spirits of the iron, river, diver, Mak Jenab or that of the baby, had all been transformed and accepted as participants in the curing/healing ritual. The assumption made is that the bomoh/healer could feel and see them, but the rest of those attending the healing ritual could not, although they were aware that the spirits were present and were communicating with the bomoh. Still, the final result seen or unseen, could be heard through their different voices, and irrevocably believed and accepted by the patients and communal audience.
As the Tuk Puteri strove to find the correct angin, the patient would also enter into a trance. He would awaken from his trance after each angin had been found, restored or dispelled. The process would go on until he eventually became well. He went in and out of trance, each going in and coming out of the trance signifying the elimination/expulsion of a particular spirit which had inhabited in his body and was now dispelled. The process was completed when all the spirits were removed and the sick man no longer went into a trance and as he had now been cured and made well again.
This is the quintessence of local knowldege, embedded in the cultural-traditional matrix of the people. It is a practise shared amongst a selected group of people, believed by the community at large, yet, ironically, it is very exclusive, believed and pracised and understood only by members of that very community.
2. Conclusion: Tradition, religion, modernity and cultural change
Main Peteri is usually performed after the late evening isya' prayers with no specific time mentioned. Getting into trance, a crucial trait of Main Peteri and other traditional theatre forms, exemplify animistic practices mixed with elements not only from the local culture but, more importantly' incorporating Islamic practices, through the recitation of Quranic verses and the chanting of holy verses incorporated with manteras, hence are no longer the pure , original Quranic verses. This practice is wrong, unacceptable and unforgivable; it goes against the basic tenet of the Islamic religion just as is the invocation to and involvement of spirits and demons. This practice is syirik, forbidden and the one sin unforgiving by Allah.
The main peteri functioned not only as a curing ritual, but also an instrument for the general well being of the village community. It was also an entertainment which had successfully provided a social service, an emotional stabilizer and cultural curer for the community. It is local knowledge, entrenched within the culture and tradition of the community.
Although considered to be unIslamic, the State is also aware that these traditional performativity's are signifiers of the ethos of the Malay communities reflecting and refracting their gemeinschaft, intriguing and hence worthy to be preserved and displayed. As such these productions are highlighted and allowed to be performed for tourists but only at the Gelanggang Seni, the Arts Arena.
The juxtapositional dilemma and trajectories between State power, religious edicts and communal needs persist. How can traditional theatre practioners remain true and honest to the aesthetic demands of their arts and not flout state rules? How can they continue to perpetuate their local culture and enhance their local knowledge, yet abide by the tenets of their religion? How can they survive in a modern world which frowns on their beliefs and cultural practises yet ironically, continue to perpetuate these cultural-traditional endeavours as signifiers of their ethos? For now they thread a thin balance, performing, per state stipulation, at the Gelanggang Seni, while in their fast disappearing isolated villages they will remain true to the nature of their traditional theatre and true to the needs of their souls even as they have to confront the diminishing interest from the younger generation, the onslaught of new media and technology in the repository of their local knowledge and culture.
References
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Firth, R. (1974). Faith and sceptism in Kelantan village magic. In William Roff (Eds.), Kelantan: Religion, society
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