Pawang

A pawang is a Malay medicine man or shaman. The pawang's original role is a person who is skill with dealing with wizards and sorcerers, wild animals and spirits.[1]

A pawang is said to control elements and entity by chanting and usually by having spirit servants to do his bidding. Practitioners believe the spirits can perform healings, seek missing persons and things or even investigate reasons for bad luck. They further claim that spirits can be used to possess people, cause sickness and miseries and many other bad things.[2]

Unlike bomoh, a pawang is not restricted to healing the sick, but is said to also control animals, spirits and other beings.

The British colonial administrator Frank Swettenham wrote about the role of the pawang in late nineteenth century Malaya in a chapter on 'Malay Superstitions' in his volume of essays Malay Sketches (1895). Swettenham described how the supposed victim of a bajang would employ a pawang to use various methods to determine the identity of their attacker, such as scraping an iron bowl with a razor to produce a corresponding loss of hair in the guilty party, divination by use of a water bowl or dowsing.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Montague Summers (1928). The Vampire: His Kith and Kin. University Books. pp. 221–. ISBN 978-1-60506-566-3.
  2. ↑ Magic In Names. Forgotten Books. pp. 95–. ISBN 978-1-4400-7234-5.
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