“Retreat, withdraw demons and armies of Iblis! The children of Adam intend to make passage.”
As prospective farmers struggled to clear forests for rice fields in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Malaya, their efforts might have been accompanied by mystical incantations like this invocation against Iblis, the Devil in Islamic tradition. Farmers, hunters, miners, and other agrarian workers knew well the shamanistic arts of the pawangs, whom religious historian Teren Sevea describes as “Muslim miracle-workers, ritual specialists and spirit mediums.”
Among the pawangs—who blended Islamic tradition, Hindu lore, and animist beliefs—were specialists in the difficult task of cultivating ladang, or unirrigated upland rice fields. In long-overlooked texts such as the Kitab Perintah Pawang (Book of the Pawang’s Command), Sevea finds “invaluable historical documents of the religious and economic sensibilities of cultivators” in agrarian Malaya.
Oral and written accounts by pawangs “placed little emphasis upon orthodox historical chronology,” Sevea notes. They instead claimed descent from Islamic prophets such as Noah and Muhammad, whom they credited with the development of ladang in Malaya. The pawangs—who came from a variety of Malay, Tamil, or Arab Muslim backgrounds—also understood themselves as negotiating for safe passage with non-Muslim divinities, including the Hindu deities Shiva, Indra, Krishna, and Vishnu.
“[T]he incanting pawang began cultivation by gathering a congregation of friendly spirits to shield the bodies of peasants engaged in dibbling and direct seed planting,” Sevea explains. “When sowing was complete, the pawang invited a deity to the modern Malayan ricefield, to serve as the playmate, foster mother, nurse, and ‘enchantress’” to the newly planted seeds.
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At the same time, pawangs drew up contracts with malicious spirits—including demons and jinn from far-flung locales that were identified as Zanggi or as African in origin. These spirits could become guardians for farmers and rice crops—and the pawangs warned them that, if they broke their word, they would be guilty of “treason against God.”
The pawangs’ role in rice cultivation reflects a complex set of values. They enforced what Sevea calls an “Islamic hegemony,” but also promoted reverence for ladang rice as a source of subsistence rather than a commodity for sale.
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Indicating this high status, “the pawang was the ruler of the rice field, was ‘entitled to maintenance from the faithful,’ and was free from state taxation and forced labour,” Sevea notes. British colonial administrators might have hired pawangs as local forest guides. Even so, some dismissed their practices as a “jumble of aboriginal superstition … Hindu mysticism … [and] Muhammadan nomenclature,” as William E. Maxwell, the Assistant Resident of Perak, put it.
In modern Malaysia, orthodox Muslims have also condemned pawangs as “relics of the pre-Islamic ‘Days of Ignorance’ and as obstacles to Malay economic progress.” Yet Sevea argues they remain “pivotal to a broad range of socio-economic activities” even in modern times. Their arcane arts are a testament to the “composite socio-economic worlds” shared not just by humans of different cultures, but also—if the pawangs are to be believed—by a surprisingly diverse array of supernatural entities.
