The Malay Medicine

Maajun in traditional medicine

2012-01-03T17:26:00.000-08:00

Maajun is one of herbal remedies in Malay traditional medicine. The practices incorporate influences from Arab, Persia, India and China.

The term of maajun itself meaning ‘kneaded’ or ‘paste’ in Arab.

Traditionally, jamu is produced at home. An experienced family member provides friends and relatives with a homemade version of the product.

Knowledge of such cures have been gained through centuries of trial and error and is passed on to the next generation through word of mouth.

Maajun medication is based on a broad conception of body, health sickness; the notion of care and therapy.Maajun are believed to cleanse the blood, increase male virility and build health.

This Maajun made from various tree roots and are taken daily.

Some Maajun is known good for treating rheumatism, blood circulation and others.

To regular coffee drinkers sometimes they added small dose of maajun especially tongkat ali maajun because of its ability to increase male virility .

Maajun in traditional medicine

Minyak pengasih

2011-10-23T19:23:00.000-07:00

Love magic using minyak pengasih is widely practiced in Malay villages even until present day. It is considered unfair to its victim and dangerous to others.

Minyak pengasih is a love potion used to turn around girl’s feeling towards the man who in love with her. It also can happened the other way around. Young women may use minyak pengasih to make themselves loved by man.

Everyone fears being affected by minyak pengasih, yet at the same time, everyone also wishes to own them in order to posses the power to control others.

Other of possibility of using it when meeting a socially superior outsider, so as to make the other lean towards flavoring the user of the oil. By using the minyak pengasih it will brighten the face of the user.

Minyak pengasih sometimes prepared from dead man chin’s. This called minyak dagu. While according others it can be prepared from tear drops of sea cows. It is the strongest minyak pengasih.
Minyak pengasih

Buah petai

2011-09-19T02:36:00.000-07:00

Buah petai or scientifically name Parkia speciosa can be eaten either raw or cooked. It is important ingredient in Malay cuisine such as in sambal.

There the odorous or stinking seeds also can be roasted and fried after sun, drying and storage, or else cooked in sauce and curries, more as a condiment.

Parkia speciosa indigenous to Southeast Asia, where it can be found in cultivated plantation.

To pluck the petai, the collector climbed the 20-30 meter tall petai trees to reach the ripening pods.

Petai is rich in iron and can be remedy for anemia. Its vitamin B6 content can also control glucoses levels. Furthermore, as it is high in potassium and low in salt, it is a good dish for people with high blood pressure.

The Malay treatment for diabetes is to consume the bitter bean seed of the petai. The bean also were said to be good treatment for obesity.
Buah petai

Curcuma xanthorrhiza

2011-08-01T03:51:00.000-07:00

Locally it named ‘temu lawak’, is similar to turmeric. The rhizome is mostly valued for its medicinal properties. It plays an important role in Asia as spices and herbal drug.

In traditional medicine it can be used for treatment of liver disease and yellow fever. It has been shown in animal experiments to provide protection from hepatoxin-induce liver damage.

It too mostly uses for dyspepsia and other gastrointestinal problems.

Curcuma xanthorrhiza have been reported to retain an anti-inflammatory. It contains chemical diarylheptanoids. It also has characteristics of anticancer.

The genus Curcuma originated in the Indo-Malayan region. The genus Curcuma belongs to the family Zingiberaceae and contains 49 genera and 1400 species.
Curcuma xanthorrhiza

Allium sativum or bawang putih

2011-06-30T20:17:00.000-07:00

The name garlic is derived from the Anglo-Saxon words gar-spear and lac-plant that refer to the shape of garlic leaves. Allium sativum is a member of the Liliaceae family, which also includes onions leeks, scallions or chives.

Garlic herbs have a bulb consisting of a cluster of smaller bulbs. The leaves are long, linear and sword shape.

In Bahasa Melayu, garlic named as bawang putih.

In Malay traditional medicine Garlic or allium sativum has been used as an herbal to lower cholesterol and blood pressure, prevent blood clots and ward off arteriosclerosis.

Garlic also has been used since prehistoric times as a spice as well as a medicine to combat microbial and fungal infections, help in cardiovascular problems, stimulate immunological system or stop s tumor growth.

Garlic also helps keep the arteries flexible. Garlic has also been reported to help protect from some infections and particularly useful for digestive system health.

Malay also believes that garlic can help increase the female sexual drive. One of the instructions: pound garlic, young betel and ‘kucai’ until fine and then mix with the water. Add egg yolk. Drink this mixture, every night, about two hours before bedtime.
Allium sativum or bawang putih

Sea Cucumber in Malay Traditional Medicine

2011-05-07T22:34:00.001-07:00

Malays have traditionally utilized sea cucumber for their medicinal properties and traditional medicines are used in would healing, treatment of stomach and as a painkiller. They are renowned for their medicinal oils, which treat a multitude of ailment.

Sea cucumber or gamat are covered with a very elastic, leathery skin, kept moist by mucus that exudes through the pores; they have a somewhat worm like appearance the radiate structure only visible in the tentacles which usually surround the mouth.

The sea cucumber collected are used for the preparation of traditional medicinal products like gamat water and gamat oil.

Preparation for gamat water involves draining the coelomic fluid from the gamat, which is then returned to the net cages holding them. Animal are only harvested when there is a demand for gamat oil.

The pure type or gamat water is to be consumed orally. It is used to cure all internal ailment such as peptic ulcer, duodenal ulcer, bleeding piles and stomach aches. It also said can enhance body immune system.

The mixed kind or gamat oil is for external application. It is used to quicken the healing process of toothaches, cuts or wounds. Minyak gamat is a liniment prepared with the mixture plus sea cucumber.

The modern world only get to known about sea cucumber when in 1874, scientist on a round the world oceanographic voyage aboard HMS Challenger captured some very odd animals. They did not realize it at the time, but they had found the first known specimens of swimming cucumbers.

Sea cucumber contains 900 species echinoderms with reduced ossicles resulting in a rubbery or leathery skin. Sea cucumbers may be an inch long to three feet or more and squat to wormlike.
Sea Cucumber in Malay Traditional Medicine

Malay Santau

2011-03-30T00:37:00.000-07:00

Santau can be defined as ‘a slow and sure poison; not a specific drug, but a compound of several poison’. It is targeted to another person who the client much hated.

The cause of death from santau is usually from internal hemorrhage.

It is apply using traditional ingredients mixed into meal and drinks. In this case food and drinks are perceived be manipulated in order to other person. The ingredient including broken glass, bamboo, fingernails, hairs and some other materials.

This santau involves summoning jinn or syaitan to do ones bidding. Word charms and meal can effect the emotions the person who consumes them.

It will help a client become more spouses, business associates. When these privately effective it is an instance of but if they cause serious illness or death, it is the case of santau.

Santau angin is the most powerful poison. The victim would not know that he or she had been infected.
Malay Santau

Healing Properties of Aloe Vera

2010-12-25T01:28:00.000-08:00

Botanically name Aloe barbadensis Mill., Aloe Vera is the species under family of Aloeaceae.

Malay community called it pokok daun lidah buaya, which literally translated to mean the tongue of crocodile.

For centuries, aloe vera has been used extensively by Malays because of its apparently magical properties and effectiveness in treating burns, healing wounds and relieving aches and pains.

It traditionally used to clean hair and used as cosmetics, but contains a purgative. It also can treats scalds and insect bites.

Aloe vera is good for headache, constipation, malnutrition, pertussis and diabetes.

However it’s not suitable for pregnant women or patients with weak gastro-intestinal condition.

Aloe, actually popular houseplant, has a long history as a multipurpose folk remedy. Ancient Malays used aloe vera for wounds, insomnia, kidney aliment, sunburn, skin care, stomach disorder, itching, blistering, hemorrhoids and blemishes.

The plant can be separated into two basic products: gel and latex.

Aloe vera gel is the colorless mucilaginous gel obtained from the parenchymatous cells in the fresh leaves of Aloe vera.

The gel contains carbohydrate polymers and water. It also contains amino acids, lipids, sterols, tannins and enzymes. Mannose 6-phosphate is a major sugar component.

Aloe latex, commonly referred to as "aloe juice," is a bitter yellow exudates from the pericyclic originating from the bundle sheath cells of the leaf.

Earliest recorded medicinal uses of aloe vera can be found on an ancient Sumerian clay tablet dating back to 2100 BC.
Healing Properties of Aloe Vera

Who is Tok Mudim?

2010-09-14T19:21:00.000-07:00

Who is Tok Mudim?
The Tok Mudim performs circumcision on boys. Most boys are circumcised after religious instruction, sometime between 9 and 13 years of age, but the range is 6 to 20 years of age.

Traditionally, the circumcision ritual and feasts as a public event, sometime hosted by a single households with one or several boys and sometimes by several households in neighborhood.

Tok Mudim will laid out wicker mats along with a mat type used for daily prayers, on which Tok Mudim would perform the circumcisions.

On top of this he placed a log of from a banana tree for the boys to sit on during the operation. On other either side of the log was a pile of ashes, used by the Tok Mudim so that his grip would not be slippery.

The event usually begins in the morning. About an hour before, candidates are told to bathe and soak in the water for a few hours to help ‘shrink the size of the bodies’. It is the essential to success of the operation.

The circumcision takes place immediately after that. Tok Mudim said a prayer at the head of the banana tree log and dashed a handful of rice onto it.

The boys were then called in one by one. Each sat on the log, with the assistant sitting behind them, holding them firmly with one hand, covering their eyes with other and encouraging them to chant to Allah as the operation was perform.

Tok mudim pulls the the foreskin over the end of the glans of the penis, clamps the foreskin with a traditional implement, and cuts off the excess foreskin with a bamboo knife.

The wound is wrapped in a mixture of tree root powder to stop the bleeding and to prevent infection.

Tree roots commonly used are pokok Jerman (Eupatorium odorotum), gelenggang besar (Cassia alata), kecubung (Datura metel), and inai (Lawsonia inermis).

The boys now fully Islamic males, lie down on cots or bedding dressed only in their sarongs and are on public view the first day.
Who is Tok Mudim?

Rice Spirit

2010-07-30T03:47:00.000-07:00

Rice Spirit
For Malay ‘Semangat’ or spirit of life is not limited to animals. It permeates the universe, dwelling in man, beast, plant and rock.

The universe teems with life: the life of a fire is swift and soon runs out; a rock’s life is slow and dreamlike.

Semangat strengthens its dwelling place, whether the human body or a stalk of rice and maintains its health and integrity.

However, it is extremely sensitive and can be depleted; it can even flee, startled or frightened, from its receptacles.

The vulnerability of the semangat governs the conduct of the traditional Malay rice harvest, whose performance has become increasingly rare as modern technology supplants the handiwork of traditional methods of rice production.

Modern methods may be more efficient, but they are not calculated to spare the feelings of the Rice Spirit (semangat padi).

To a traditional Malay, the field of rice is like a pregnant woman and the harvest is equivalent to the birth of a child.

It is inaugurated by the taking of the Rice Baby, a stalk of rice swaddled like a human child after being cut from its plant with a small, curved blade concealed in the hand, so as not to frighten the Rice Spirit by its brutal appearance.

The harvested rice rice crop is stored in a special bin with as coconut , coconut oil, limes, beluru root (used for shampoo), bananas, sugar cane, water and a comb, all for the use of the Rice Spirit, personified as a timid young woman.

Since she is easily frightened , the rice must be brought back to the storeroom and left there in silence for three days.
Rice Spirit

Malay Beliefs

2010-06-28T22:22:00.000-07:00

Malay Beliefs
The study of early cults shows that the place of a sky god tends later to be taken by gods of the sun, the moon and the stars.

So in some ancient layer of Malay beliefs before the introduction of Saivism, the white spirit of the sun, the black spirit of the moon and the yellow spirit of sunset may have been important, seeing that they have Indonesian names (mambang), have been incorporated into the Malay’s Hindu pantheon, and have survived under Islam as humble genies.

The fishermen along the west of the peninsula sacrifice to four great spirits (also called mambang) who go by many names but whose scope is always the same. One is the spirit of the bays, another that of banks or beaches, another that of headlands, and last and fiercest is the spirit of tideways and currents.

Three of these bear primitive names used by the Proto Malays. The spirit of the tides is famous. The spirit of the bays mentioned as a black genie and the spirit of headlands as a white.

Was there originally a fourth spirit? To the three Proto-Malays names yet another, not convincingly authentic, is sometimes added.

But only three of the four bear Sanskrit names. And the modern naming of four spirits after the Archangels may be due to the liking of the Malay Muslim pantheist for that number.

It is uncertain, too, if the primitive Malays, like the people of Madagascar and Celebes, believed in four gods of the air in charge of the quarters of the globe.

In Bali Indian influence gave these gods Hindu names, and three are still worshipped there as forms of Shiva.

On peninsular charm speaks of “the four children of Siva who live at the corners of the world.” A Perak charm describes Berangga Kala as the spirit of the West, Sang Begor as the spirit of the East, Sang Degor as the sprit of the North and Sang Rangga Gempita as the sprit of the South.

But generally the four corners of the world are held to be in charge of four Shaikhs, of whom the most often mentioned Abdul Qadir, is probably the founder of the famous order of Muslim mystics.
Malay Beliefs

Malay Traditional Medicine

2010-05-24T01:41:00.000-07:00

Malay Traditional Medicine
Before the advent of Islam in the Malays States, Malay traditional medicine was largely influenced by the belief and practices existing then. This certainly chanting and the used of supernatural powers.

Traditional medicine has been used since time immemorial and until today, it remains a popular method of treatment.

In the earlier century, the local community held traditional medicine in very high regard. This is obvious from the respect accorded by the community to the bomoh (shaman), the mak bidan (midwife) and also the mudin (religious man who performs circumcision on boys). These practitioners of dispensing medicinal care.

However, time have changed and the attention given to them now, is not the same as before. This is due, not just the progress of science and technology or modern methods of treatment, but in part, to the weakness of the practitioners themselves.

Their inherited knowledge is undocumented and has therefore resulted in a decline of the knowledge thus making it unreliable.

In Malay traditional medicine, knowledge of treatment methods and materia medica were imparted orally and committed to memory.

In the case of specific skills, it was imparted to select pupils only and if none was found befitting, the knowledge was ultimately buried with dead practitioner.

Malaysia is rich in natural resources basic to traditional medicine. There are over six thousand species of tropical plants all over the country and in Peninsular Malaysia there are 550 general containing 1,300 species.

Most of these are medical plants beneficial for the human body. Traditional medicine is well known for its high nutritional value, as well as its ability to cure various ailment.

Unfortunate, thus far it has not been presented to the community in a very impressive manner. Probably a more scientific and modern approach, combined with cautious and hygienic measures may earn traditional medicine a more respectable place in the community, and not just as products to be peddled on the payment.
Malay Traditional Medicine

Adhatoda vasica

2010-04-29T21:32:00.000-07:00

Adhatoda vasica
Common name for this plant are Adhatoda, vasaka, adusa, Malabar nut tree and many theirs.

It is a lush, evergreen, many branch shrub that usually grows to a height of 2.5 m, but can reach 6 m.

The large leaves, bright green on the upper surface and pale below have an unpleasant odor when crushed.

The leaves and roots are well-known drugs and recommended for a variety such as colds, bronchitis, asthma, fever and jaundice.

Leaves of Adhatoda vasica are sources of an expectorant drug used to relieve coughs. In ancient times Yunani people use the fruit for bronchitis, the flowers for jaundice, poor circulation and strangury; the emmenagogue leaves in gonorrhea and the diuretic root in asthma, bilious, nausea, bronchitis, fever, gonorrhea and sore yes.

Sometimes ago European physician have successfully in treating typhoid and diphtheria.
Adhatoda vasica

Plants in Medicine

2010-04-02T03:49:00.000-07:00

Plants in Medicine
Since the beginning of life, plants have played a major role in influencing man and his thought.

Similarly, man has influenced the forms and characteristics of plants in helping them adapt to man’s progress.

This is evidence from the changes in vegetation and environment, as agriculture and technology, central to human civilization, continue to progress.

If go back in time a few thousand years and we can find that plants were widely used as food and medicine.

Agriculture is believed to have flourished nearly 10,000 years ago, and there were records on medicinal plants even in ancient times.

In 490 BC, Hippocrates, the ’Father of Medicine’, established the Temple of Aesculapius, a college in medicinal studies.

Hippocrates learnt about medicinal herbs from the Egyptians and after his death, this knowledge was passed on to Aristotle.

Aristotle was a naturalist and tutor to Alexander the Great. With Alexander the Great’s army expeditions, he traveled far and wide.

He collected various herbs and learned about them from captive doctors.

One of his pupils, Theophrastus (372-278 BC) developed his works and produced two books called The History of Plants and Reasons for Plants.

He studied over five hundred plants from the Mediterranean Valley and categorized them scientifically. He also discussed medicinal value of these plants.

When the Romans took over the power from the Greeks the focus in medicinal study naturally shifted to the west.

Consequently, the Arab scientists began to learn, preserve and develop the field of medicine and botany. The Muslims especially were highly interested in agriculture and medicine.

Muhammad Ibnu Zakariyya al-Razi and Abu Ali Ibnu Sina were two great experts then.
Plants in Medicine

What is Keramat?

2010-03-19T08:41:00.001-07:00

What is Keramat?
Keramat are “tombs or reputed of saints that are believed to wonder working shrines.”

A specifically Malayan institution, the worship of innumerable saints arises from Indian-derived Shia’ belief and practices in local Islam.

This worship involves making offerings at the graves of ancestors, founders of settlements, rulers, religious teachers and even rocks or stones.

It is said that the Malays, who are otherwise Sunni Muslims do the School of Shafie, adopted the institution of the Keramat to continue under the guise of Islam, some of their former animistic practices.

While keramat worship was originally a Malay practice, members of the Chinese and Indian communities have also adopted it.

There persists a folk believe that keramat and the various religious “deities” worshipped at shrines do not only have the power to heal, protect and bless devotees, but also the ability to admonish, punish and torment individuals, should disrespect be shown to them or their abodes disturbed.
What is Keramat?

Buah Jering

2010-03-02T19:01:00.000-08:00

Buah Jering
General
Botanical name for buah jering Archidendron Jiringa. Buah jering originated in Southeast Asia, it grows wild and also cultivated in Southeast Asia. Rarely grown outside Southeast Asia.

Jering are medium-sized trees that can reach 20 m in height. The bark is smooth and light grey in color. The leaves are compound, two pinnate up to 25 cm long, leaf stalks up to 6 cm long.

The leaflets are 8-25 cm ling, 4-5 cm wide, ovate to booing in shape, light green, shiny.

Young leave are soft, purplish red in color. Young leaf are normally produced on the whole tree at the same time.

Fruit is a legume, 5 cm wide, twisted in a spiral, purplish brown in color. Seeds large, testa yellowish when young, reddish brown when mature, the edible cotyledons are yellowish when young, becoming orange brown when mature.

Health benefits
Leaves are pounded and applied in chest pains, pains, skin ailments. Ashes obtained by burning the old leaves are applied on itch. Ashes obtained by burning the young leaves are applied on cuts, wounds.

Bark are pounded and applied on chest pains, pains, skin ailments, made into a gargle for treating gum pains, toothache.

Fruits are eaten at meal tome to treat diabetes, hypertension.
Buah Jering

Petai – Parkia speciosa

2010-02-16T16:53:00.000-08:00

Petai – Parkia speciosa
The tree is tall buttressed, leaves bipinnate; leaflets 20-35 pairs on side stalks; flowers very small, crowded on pear shaped head, pods large, flattened and twisted, with onion smell, edible.

It is fresh local salad or ‘ulam’ is widely accepted as a kind of food in our menu served during lunch or dinner.

Petai can be eaten raw. Petai also used in sambal or as a vegetable. Fresh petai is very rich in vitamin and fiber. They are believed to have medicinal values for.

The tree of petai about forty five feet high, is grown for its seeds. These seeds have an offensive smell but the people eat them either raw or toasted. The odour of this vegetable is present in urine passed after eating.

The beans grow in clusters of several pods, with the swollen seeds clearly visible though the bright green aid. The pod, which contains about 10-18 large seeds or beans, is opened by pulling the “strings” of each side and twisting.

The seeds contain about 70% water, 11-17% carbohydrates, 9% protein, 1.8-8% fat, 1% fiber, alkaloids, calcium, cystine, iron, lectin, phosphorus, potassium, sulphur compounds, tannin, thioproline, provitamin A, vitamin B1, vitamin B2, vitamin B3, vitamin C.

The seeds are used in the treatment of diabetes, hepatalgia, hypertension, nephritis, edema, stomach and intestinal worms.

The leaves are used to treat jaundice.

Supernatural in Primitive Medicine

2010-01-30T19:02:00.000-08:00

Supernatural in Primitive Medicine
In primitive medicine, the supernatural is involved in all aspect of disease and healing. Because disease and misfortune are attributed to supernatural agents, magic is essential to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease.

All events must have a cause visible or invisible.

Thus the disease for which there are no obvious immediate causes must be due to ghosts, spirits, gods, sorcery, witchcraft or the loss of one of the individual’s special “soul.”

Illness called for consultation with those have the power to control the supernatural agents of disease: the shaman, medicine man, wise man, diviner, witch-smeller, priests, chief, soul-catcher, or sorcerer.

A close examination of the roles and powers assigned to such figures reveals many specific differences, but for our purpose the general term “healer” will generally suffice.

However, we should note that most societies differentiate between healers and herbalists who dispense ordinary remedies and the shamans or priests like healers who can intercede with the spirits that affect, weather, harvest, hunting, warfare, conception, childbirth, disease and misfortune.

Although the shaman performs magical acts, including deliberate deceptions, she or he neither a fake nor a neurotic.

The shaman is as sincere as a modern physician or psychiatrists in the performance of healing rituals.

When sick, the shaman will undergo therapy with another shaman, despite, knowledge of all tricks of the trade.

For shaman, the cause of the disorder is more significant than the symptoms because the cause determines the manner of treatment, be it penicillin or exorcism.

Diagnostic aids may include a spirit medium, crystal gazing and divination.

Having performed the preliminary diagnostic tests, the healer conducts a complex ritual involving magic spells, incantations, the extraction of visible or invisible objects, or the capture and the return of the patient’s lost soul.

To drive out or confuse evil spirits, the shaman may give the patient a special disguise or a new name, offer attractive substitute targets, or prescribe noxious medicines to transform the patient onto an undesirable host.

The shaman may dispense powerful drugs but it is the ritual, with its attempts to compel the cooperation of supernatural powers, which is of prime importance to healer, patient and community.

Outsiders may see the healing ritual in terms of “magical” and “practical” elements, but for healer and patient there is no separation between the magical and empirical aspects of therapy.
Supernatural in Primitive Medicine

From: http://medicine-history.blogspot.com/

Mandi Minyak

2010-01-16T17:13:00.000-08:00

Mandi Minyak
There are many rituals similar to mandi minyak in many parts of the world and the theory of ritual heat has developed to account for this type of “supernatural” or shamanic performance.

It is hard not to see these entertainments as means of generating heat which must then be cooled through various means.

Similarly, in the mandi minyak heat could be said to be generated in the separation of the initiate from the regular community as he or she enters the liminal stage of silat training.

Reincorporation into the community with enhanced social status is similarly a heat filled process that is symbolized through the blazing fires of the mandi minyak.

The student must literally overcome this heat to be cooled by the soothing properties of the oil which is rinsed off the following day.

The raising of ritual heat helps to explain the potential of the mandi minyak to act as a precursor to explosions of violence.

Ritual heat works well where the symbols fit, for example, linking hot coals, knives and boiling to explosions of violence.

The mandi minyak is a judicial ordeal, an invulnerability rite, and a bath in healthy oil.

Ritual heat does not account for the mandi minyak’s transmutation over time.
Mandi Minyak

Pokok Misai Kucing

2009-12-18T06:58:00.000-08:00

Pokok Misai Kucing
One of the commonly used herbal medicines in Malaysia is Orthosiphon stamineus, Benth (family: Lamiaceae) or locally known as Misai Kucing.

The plant is the native to tropical Asia.

The main component of Orthosiphon stamineus, Benth, leaves and extracts are the pharmacological active polyphenols, the polymethoxylated flavonoids and the caffeic acid derivatives.

The plant is sued for treating the ailments of the kidney, since it has a mild diuretic effect. It is also claimed to have anti allergenic, anti-hypertensive and anti-inflammatory properties and is commonly used for kidney stones and nephritis.

It is also sometimes used to treat gout, diabetes, hypertension and rheumatism.
Pokok Misai Kucing

Music of the Shamans

2009-11-16T04:16:00.001-08:00

Music of the Shamans
A shaman without music and sound is one without power.

On the East Coast, main Puteri is a popular trance dance accompanied by a makyong ensemble which consist of a rebab (fiddle), two gendang (double headed drums), and a pair of tetawak.

The chief performer, Tok Puteri, entranced by the music of the rebab, communicates with the spirits.

Aided by his attendant, Tok Minduk, who is also the rebab player, he “sucks out” evil spirits from afflicted patients.

A popular form of folk singing is Ghazal mostly in Johor. Ghazal is the vocal rendition of love poems, known as pantun, to the accompaniment of various musical instruments such as the gambus, table, violin, accordian, guitar, and maracas.

Like Nobat, Ghazal came from the Middle East and became an instant hit with the locals especially so because of its Arabic/Persian melody and the romantic lyrics.
Music of the Shamans

Pokok Cekur Manis

2009-10-28T07:17:00.000-07:00

Pokok Cekur Manis
Botanically name: Sauropus androgynus is a common vegetable food in Malaysia and consumpotion of the raw leaf or its jucie was a lad for losing weigth.

The superb and unique flavor of these leaves is most similar to peanuts, also similar to snow peas. Then tender tips, the leaves, the flowers and the young berries are all used for food. Older leaves can be eaten raw but are commonly cooked. The young leaves and tips are eaten raw in salads. When cooked all parts of the plant have a distinct agreeable odor and flavor and the leaves and stems retain their dark green color. The leaves have about 6-10% protein content.

The leaves and the top 15 cm of stem tips of the Sauropus plant have a pleasant taste, similar to fresh garden peas, and slightly nutty and are normally eaten raw in salads or steamed, to add to stir-fry, rice and egg dishes, soups or casseroles.

The dark-green leaves provide a rich source of chlorophyll which is a valuable blood building element, cell rejuvenator, and beneficial to the circulation, intestinal flora, and for regular bowel elimination.

An infusion made of the leaves, is used as a poultice to treat fevers and ulcers.
Pokok Cekur Manis

Pokok Sambung Nyawa

2009-10-08T17:56:00.001-07:00

Pokok Sambung Nyawa
Gynura procumbens Merr is an herb belonging to the family Compositae. Locally known as Pokok Sambung Nyawa.

Pokok sambung nyawa is herbaceous climber of forest margins and thickets. It is native of South East Asia.

Originating from Myanmar and China, it can live with the height of 1 until 500 meters from the sea levels.

It grows vertically, or sometimes the edge collapse and comes out root, wet stem, branches purplish in color.

The leaves are almost egg-shaped and slightly different shape between each leaf. The size is 3 cm – 10 cm x 0.5 cm – 3 cm. The lower surface is more or less purple.

The leaves serve in Malay peninsular as a flavoring for food, and also widely used for treatment of: kidney diseases, rashes, throat infection and high fever.

In addition, the leaves of the plant have been used in folk medicines and antihypertensive agent.

It has been reported that an ethanolic extract of Gynura Procumbens significantly reduces serum cholesterol and triglyceride levels of diabetic rats.

It can be used to stop bleeding, overcome menstrual cycle problems, improves the kidney function, for animal bite.
Pokok Sambung Nyawa

Music for Storytelling

2009-09-13T20:42:00.000-07:00

Music for Storytelling
Storytelling in Malay culture includes the use of stylized, singing, chanting, instrumental, accompaniment, and sometimes drama.

In past generations, professional storytellers related romances, often accompanying themselves instrumentally.

As late as the mid 1900s, the art of storytelling was widespread in the northern Malay states and as far as Selangor. By 1990s, however, both in rural and urban areas, published texts film television and modern drama had begun to hold interest and many of the storytellers had died, taking their art with them.

Regional genres were known by specific names, derived from the main (or root) story, or from as hero in the most popular story of the genre.

In the northwestern states the genres were selampit and awang batil (also awang belanga).

The selampit involved song and recitation, without instrument accomplishment. The awang batil used an overturned brass bowl (batil), on which the storyteller beat out short, repeated rhythms to accompany and complement his recitation.

Sometimes he would wear a mask, representing the character about whom he was speaking.

Probably the most musically complex of the extant traditions of storytelling was found in Kelantan. The storyteller (tok selampit) was often blind man who sang tales as he accomplished himself in a rebab.

The rebab doubles or imitated the vocal part either playing in unison with the voice or repeating the vocal melody.

The part is played on the rebab were melodically dense, with considerable sixteenth, and thirty second not movement.

The melodies were usually ornate, with many grace notes, slides and other embellishments. In both voice and rebab parts, the melodic range was narrow, and microtonal intervals were common.

In many traditions, the music acted as a catalyst to enables the storyteller to develop his story.
Music for Storytelling

Tukang Urut

2009-08-30T18:47:00.000-07:00

Tukang Urut
Many aspects of traditional Malay medicine are known to ordinary persons.

Malay adolescents and adults usually know how to stop the flow from wounds and how to clean and dress minor wounds so that the risk of infection is reduced.

Those who live along the seashore know how to treat the stings of jellyfish by applying a dressing made from crushed fish or crustaceans that are naturally immune to jellyfish stings.

And ordinary Malays know about some plants and parts of plants that cause illness.

Some ordinary individuals know how to set and splint simple fractures, although a bone setter (dukun patah, tukang tulang, tukang urut) is more skillful.

Also, the home setter would have a method for speeding the mending of the bone, for example, by teaching the patient to relate the feeling of the fracture to a rhythmic sound produced by the patient.

Who is tukang urut? The tukang urut was knowledgeable in the practice of traditional Malay medicine and was a popular source of medicinal assistance in the kampung (village). The tukang urut would dispense traditional Malay medicines, treating common ailments using plant or animal-based ingredients.

Tukang uruts were knowledgeable about various conditions of the human body and relied heavily on their knowledge of the human anatomy during massages. In a body massage, the main purpose of a tukang urut is to relax tense and tired muscles and tone up flabby muscles.
Tukang Urut

Bomoh and the illness

2009-07-26T18:17:00.000-07:00

Bomoh and the illness
As a Malay, a devout Muslim and a bomoh, they believes that for every illness there must be an agent responsible for it and that for all these sickness there must be a cure.

Consequently, it is necessary to continuously seek ways and means to free oneself from illness, a process known as ‘ikhtiar’.

In common with other bomoh – which loosely translates as a medicine–man cum magician they believes that everything derives from God, but the human beings are nevertheless responsible for the illnesses that befall them.

People can become sick through irresponsible behavior, for example, which can be avoided by behaving properly.

However, supernatural forces such as evil sprits – locally known as ‘hantu’ or ‘penunggu’ - can process an individual whose soul is weak.

Illness can also be caused by sorcery, which used to be rampant, but rare today.

A bomoh uses various healing technique, the mot popular being his ability to heal fractured bones.

Many Malaysians believe that modern medicine is no match for treating fractures and even those who have undergone western medical treatment often seek further help from a traditional healer.

Bomohs are also well versed in the art of curing with herbal medicines.

If someone is diagnosed to suffer from ‘unusual’ illness, then the service of the bomoh is needed.

Once the bomoh knows the cause of the ‘unusual’ illness, he will advise the sufferer either to take certain herbal medicine or change his or her daily diet.

However, sometimes herbal treatments and dietary changes alone cannot alleviate the symptoms of illness due to a spirit attack.

The basis of the belief that is the excess of angin, tanah, fire and air must be removed and earth and water increased.

Therefore the bomoh counteracts the spirits’ backs, the shaman often advises s that they battle in cold water made still cooler by the addition of lime juice and the chanting of a cooling spell.

The bomoh will further increase water and earth by applying tepung tawar a neutralizing rice paste, to the patient’s forehead.

Simultaneously, destructive spiritual influences may be wept away from the patient’s body with leafy branches.
Bomoh and the illness

Malay ‘semangat’

2009-06-17T17:41:00.000-07:00

Malay ‘semangat’
Fundamental to Malay ideas is the belief in ‘semangat’, or soul force. This the Malay finds present in all things, both living and dead.

He finds it in inanimate thongs like iron, which gives soul-force to the Malay knife.

‘Semangat’ is found in rocks, trees, waterfalls and the natural objects.

Tall isolated trees, the ‘pokok rajah’ king of the jungle are often standing when the forest is cleared because no workmen can be found to risk offending the spirit of the trees by cutting them down.

Soon small spirit shrines will appear at the base of these giants.

Above all, ‘semangat’ is present in rice, the staff of life.

Malays like all related Malaysian carefully reap the heads of grain with a special knife, the ‘tuai’, which they hide in the palm of the hand so as not to frighten the soul of the plant.

‘Semangat’ is found also in parts of he body, even in discarded parts such as hair, fingernails, spittle, sweat and placenta.

There is spirit in one’s shadow, in footsteps, in the water in which one has washed even on one’s spoken name.

Thus it is believed that another person can influence your actions by performing rituals over your possessions or traces.

It is thought that one’s spirit can take off in dreams, as well as in death. Belief in ghosts, called ‘hantu’, is widespread even among educated Malays.

Malay ghosts can be good and bad. Among the most dangerous is he ‘pontianak’ the ghost of a woman who has died in childbirth.
Malay ‘semangat’

Primitive Gods

2009-05-23T19:39:00.000-07:00

Primitive Gods
The Mantra, a proto-Malay tribe, claim to be descended from Mertang, the first magician, who was the child of two persons called Drop of Water and Clod of Earth.

In the Moluccas the earth is a female deity, who is the west monsoon is impregnated by Lord Sun-Heaven.

The Torajas in Celebes believed in two supreme powers, the Man and the Maiden, that is, the sun and the earth.

The Dayaks of Borneo hold that the sun and the earth created the world.

The terms, “Father Sky” and Mother Earth,” occur in the Malay ritual of the rice-year, at the opening of mines and of theatrical shows and in the invocations of the Kelantan shaman.

A Kelantan account relate s that the sun and earth once had human form, sun the form of man and earth the form of a woman, whose milk may be traced in the tin-ore of Malay and whose blood is now gold.

Actors in the north of the Malay Peninsula say that “earth spirit, whom actors fear, is the daughter of Seretang Bogoh, who sits in the sun and guides the winds and of Sang Siuh, the mother of the earth, whom sits at the naval of the world.”

Many religions at once unite and dissociate the fruitful earth and the gloomy underworld.

But as Malay drama came from India, this northern tradition may be a corruption of Hindu mythology. By some Malay actors Raja Siu, lord of the surface of the earth, is invoked along with Siva, and the name is perhaps a corruption of Siva.

Anyhow, in time Siva and Sri usurped the place of Father Sky (or Father Water as he is sometimes called) and of Mother Earth in the Malay pantheon, and to-day even the existence of these two primitive gods has been forgotten.

The palace of a sky-god tends later to be taken by gods of the sun, the moon and the stars. So in some ancient layer of Malay beliefs before the introduction of Saivism, the white spirit of the sun the black spirit of the moon, and the yellow spirit of sunset may have been important, and have seeing that they have Indonesian names (mambang), have been incorporated in to the Malay‘s Hindu pantheon, and have survived under Islam as humble genies.

The fisherman along the west of the Peninsula sacrifice to four great spirits (also called mambang) who go by many names but whose scope is always the same.

One of is the spirit o the bays, another that of banks or beaches, another that of headlands and last and fiercest is the sprit of tideways and currents.
Primitive Gods

Medical Practitioners: Bidan

2009-04-20T21:39:00.000-07:00

Medical Practitioners: Bidan
There are four commonly recognized categories of traditional medical practitioners: bidan, bomoh, dukun and pawang.

A bidan is comparable to a “midwife” in cosmopolitan medicine, but she is more.

She helps pregnant women prepare for giving birth attends and directs the birth and deals with postpartum problems of the mother and child.

She treats children’s illness and female health problems.

Any bidan knows a great deal about diet and the humoral qualities of foods.

Most urban and many rural Malay women now give birth in clinics or hospital; but even urban women consult with traditional bidan in such matters as diet, bathing, and positioning the fetus for easier birth or preventing pregnancy after intercourse.

In certain Malay majority area, bidan are often incorporated into national health programs through additional training, licensing and involving in community clinics.
Medical Practitioners: Bidan

Music for Healing

2009-04-04T18:15:00.000-07:00

Music for Healing
Traditional Malay medicine encompasses various kinds of ritual ceremonies intended to communicate with the world of spirits to determine whether the nature of an illness is physical or psychological.

In such ceremonies, the aim is to summon and exorcise the spirits causing illness.

A ritualist serves as a medium, and a small ensemble often provides the musical component.

Known by different name, healing rituals appear in different forms.

The main saba (a curing ceremony, incorporating dance around a saba tree) and main lukah (a fisherman’s curing ritual performed in Pahang) are regional types using song, dance and drumming.

The main puteri (peteri), another form that extensively uses music, is found in Kelantan and Terengganu.

In the main puteri, a medium (tok puteri, tok teri, bomoh) becomes possessed by the spirit causing an illness.

The performance of vocal and instrumental pieces helps him enter a state of trance.

A trance dance (tarian lupa) is a prominent feature of the ceremony.

An assistant, the tok minduk, plays the rebab as he converses and sings in dialogue with the medium.

The orchestra used in Kelantan is larger, perhaps because of the occasional performance of the main puteri with mak yong.

The contemporary main puteri orchestra of Kelantan includes the core mak yong orchestra (a rebab, a pair of gendang and a pair of tetawak), plus two or more canang, a pair of kesi and sometimes an oboe.

The dialogue between the tok minduk and the tok puteri is sung in a slow tempo, with long gong units, long rhythmic patterns in the drum part, and a vocal line featuring a basically syllabic style of singing.

The rebab accompanies the vocal lines of both singers by either playing heterophonically with voice or reiterating, short melodic phrases as ostinatos.

The trance dance sections feature the repetition of brief gong units and short drummed rhythms, a fast tempo and the reiteration and emphasis of the running beat by the small gongs and the hand held cymbals.
Music for Healing

The Malay Charm

2009-03-01T18:03:00.000-08:00

The Malay Charm
There are three words used by Malays for incantation or charm, two of them Sanskrit (jampi, mantra), the other the Arabic word for prayer (do’a).

Charms are employed in agricultural operations, by fisherman, hunters, fowlers and trappers; to abduct or recall the soul; to revive ore in a mine in a patient on a bed of sickness; against cramp, poison snakebite, enemies, vampires, evil spirits; at birth and at teeth, filing; to save men from tigers, and crops from rats and boars and insect; for beauty, virility, love; to weaken a rival in a race or in a fight; to divert a bullet or break a weapon as it is being drawn.

A Malay charm may form part of a primitive ritual, like that of the rice-year, conducted by a skilled magician. It may be merely recited in an appropriate occasion by any layman who has learnt it.

One may buy the words of a love charm for example, from an expert “for three dollars, three yards of white cloth, cotton and thread, limes and salt, areca-nut and betel-vine,” or for “limes and salt, three small coins, five yards of white cloth and a needle.”

The charm may require to be supplemented by contagious and by homoeopathic or mimetic magic.

Sand from the foot-print of the woman loved, earth from the graves of a man and woman, the hair-like filaments of bamboo, black pepper: these are often steamed in a port while a love-charm is being recited.

Another method is to “take a lime, pierce it with the midrib of a fallen coconut palm, leaving one finger’s length sticking out on either side whereby to hang the lime.”

Hang it up with thread of seven colors, leaving the thread also hanging loose an inch below the lime.

Take seven sharpened midribs and stick them into the lime, leaving two fingers’ length projecting.

The sticking of the midribs into the limes is to symbolize piercing the heart and liver and life and soul and gall of the beloved.

Put jasmine on the end of the midrib skewers. Do this first on Monday night, for three nights and then on Friday night. Imagine you pierce the girl’s heart as you pierce the lime.

Recite the accompanying charm three or seven times, swinging the lime each time you recite the words and fumigating it with incense.
The Malay Charm

Mas Cotek

2009-02-04T03:56:00.000-08:00

Mas Cotek
Scientific name for Mas Cotek is Ficus deltoidea from the family of moraceae. Ficus deltoidea is native to Malaysia where it may grow to 6 feet tall. It is well suited to growing indoors and in containers grows to a maximum of 3 feet tall.

This is the only indoor fig that produces fruit on a regular basis. Figs are small and inedible, but ornamental. They are yellowish, pea-size and grow singly form short stems originating in the leaf axils.

In Malaysia there are more than 80 species in Ficus deltoidea family. Plant that is known as are is also one of the species in the Ficus deltoidea family. Ficus deltoidea jack or Mistleteo fig is from the species which is classified scientifically and it is grouped in Moraceae family.

In Malay community Ficus deltoidea is traditionally used for: regulate blood pressure, reducing blood sugar level, increasing sexual desire, reducing nerves and joints pain, and remove toxin form the body.
Mas Cotek

Malay beliefs and Forest

2009-01-11T19:08:00.000-08:00

Malay beliefs and Forest
To the Malays the great enveloping forest is full of supernatural powers. There are the wonderful; Jin Tanah, and Earth Spirits: Gergasi, the great tusked giants; Orang Bunyi, the invisible Voice Folk.

There are individual; creatures – such as Hantu Pemburu, the Spectral Hunter; mountain-top and river pool have their local; spirits; and there are classes innumerable of ghosts, goblins and demons.

They are known as Hantu Hutan – the Spirits of the Forest, - and as real to the Malays and as much dreaded as the tigers and other wild animals of the forest.

Men, such as rattan-cutters or gutta-hunters, whose vocations take them into the forest, repeat a short charm to avert the wrath or displeasure of these spirits; and the farther they go from home the more careful are they to make use of due ceremony and incantation.

The forest envelope their homes and their lives; but, as with the fisherfolk and the sea, the more they explore it, the more they know that it is a world apart. That it is so near and extends so far adds to it majesty and terror.

The charms which have been handed down from generation to generation, and which the Malays repeat to this day when they enter the forest, one may have some perception of the sentiment that inspires them.

A rattan cutter, though he may find plenty of canes within easy call of his home, repeats this invocation to see the spirits of the forest:

Peace unto you all!
I come as a friend, not as enemy
I come to seek my living, not to make war
May no harm come to me or mine
To my wife, my children, or my home
Because I intend no harm, no evil
I ask that I may come, and go, in peace

Malay beliefs and Forest

Betel Nut

2008-12-27T19:55:00.001-08:00

Betel Nut
The areca palm, first described by Theophrastus (374 – 287 B.C) in about 340 B.C, is cultivated in Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka and the Philippines. Its unbranched trunks can reach fifty feet but is only about one and a half feet around, with a cluster of up to a dozen palm fronds sprouting from the top.

The fruit, about the size of an egg, has a tough rind that contains a hard seed or nut. The fruit is picked in the fall, before it is fully ripen and is husked, boiled and finally sun-dried until it turn dark brown or black.

The seed of betel nuts is used for medicinal purpose. The seed when it chewed is intoxicating. However, it can be used for urinary bleeding or to treat intestinal worms. It also can treat, fever and diarrhea too. The nuts are chewed which was dried and broken down into smaller, usually in wrapped with betel leaves, along with some lime and spices for flavoring. Chewing the nut releases brightly yellow colored keratin.

The stimulating ingredient in betel nuts is the alkaloid arecoline a drug used by veterinarians as a worming agent. For more than two thousand years the natives of the regions where the betel palm have used this drug. Betel chewing was recorded in China by the fourth century, where the nut then as now, was known under its Malay name “pinang.”

Those who enjoy betel prepare to chew the dried pieces of the nut of the areca palm, by wrapping it in the fresh leaf of the ‘daun sirih’ smeared with a lime paste and perhaps flavored with cloves, tamarind or other spices such as ‘gambir’. The used of the ‘daun sirih’ and lime increases salivation and help to bring out the active alkaloids of areca nut. When the betel nuts and leaves are chewed a large amount of red saliva is produced, which temporarily colors the gums and lips.
Betel Nut

Main Puteri for Healing Illness

2008-12-19T09:04:00.001-08:00

Main Puteri for Healing Illness
Traditional Malay Medicine encompasses various kinds of ritual ceremonies intended to communicate with the world of spirit to determine whether the nature of an illness is physical or psychological. In such ceremonies, the aim is to summon and exorcise the spirits causing the illness. A ritualist serves as a medium, and a small ensemble often provides the musical component. Known by different names, healing rituals appear in different forms. The main saba (a curing ceremony, incorporating dance around a saba tree) and main lukah (a fishermen’s curing ritual performed in Pahang) are regional types using song, dance and drumming. The main puteri (peteri), another form that extensively uses music, is found in Kelantan and Terengganu.

In the main puteri, a medium (tok puteri, tok teri, bomoh) becomes possessed by the spirit causing an illness. The performance of vocal and instrumental pieces helps him enter a state of trance. A trance-dance (tarian lupa) is a prominent feature of the ceremony. An assistant, the tok minduk, plays the rebab as he converses and sings in dialogue with the medium. The orchestra used in Kelantan is larger, perhaps because of the occasional performance of the main puteri with the mak yong (resulting in a hybrid form, main puteri-mak yong). The contemporary main puteri orchestra of Kelantan includes the core mak yong orchestra (a rebab, a pair of gendang, and a pair of tetawak), plus or more canang, a pair of kesi and sometimes an oboe.

The dialogue between the tok minduk and the tok puteri is sung in a slow tempo. With long gong units, long rhythmic patterns in the drum part, and vocal line featuring a basically syllabic style of singing. The rebab accompanies the vocal lines of both singers by either playing heterophonically with the voice or reiterating short melodic phrases as ostinatos. The trance-dance sections feature the repetition of brief going units and short drummed rhythms, a fast tempo, and the reiteration and emphasis of the running beat by the small gongs and the hand held cymbals.
Main Puteri for Healing Illness

Acquiring the Knowledge

2008-12-08T08:00:00.000-08:00

Acquiring the Knowledge
Most healers, such as the bomoh or Tok Dukun, pawang, do not attend any special or formal medical training schools in acquiring knowledge and skill as compared to modern Western medicine. To become qualified and be known as a Bomoh, Tok Dukun or Pawang, either in Malaysia or in Indonesia, each individual has to go through various methods of acquisition of the ability to heal by traditional methods.

One of them is through meditation and suffering whereby the person who wish to become a healer isolates himself in a holy place, at a shrine or in a cave. While in those places, he will perform things like fasting and meditating in an attempt to establish contact with the spirit of the holy place and then ask the spirit to grant him the ability to cure the sick.

Learning under master is another method of becoming a traditional healer. This practice of serving an assisting and established bomoh/Tok Dukun or pawang occurs in the hope of one day being permitted to take the place of the master, and inherit his knowledge and skill.

Such attitude to acquire knowledge and skills is no longer practiced in modern times. Nowadays, a Tok guru or master passes the knowledge and skills to his or her students and ‘siswa’ through proper classes or learning processes. Some of the religious or mystical movements in Malaysia and Indonesia consider that propagating the skill or healing of their follower is a part of their overall mission.
Acquiring the Knowledge

Health and Illness in Malay Culture

2008-12-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

Health and Illness in Malay Culture
Basic concepts of health and illness in Malay culture have many origins. Some are clearly aboriginal and ancient. The concept of ‘semangat’ (soul substance), for example, is clearly related to other Malayo-Polynesia languages of South East Asia and the islands of the Pacific Ocean. In these cultures, absences or loss of soul substance and intrusion of soul substance of another being are believed to be major causes of illness, especially mental illness.

Humor and sensual concepts relevant to health have native Malay terms (‘angin’, air or wind; ‘panas’, heat; ‘sejuk’ cool; ‘kotor’, dirty; ‘bersih’, clean). These conceptual foci have been reinforced through early and continuous contact with other societies participating in the ancient long distance sea trade involving China, South Asia, the Middle East, and the West.

Major themes in Malay culture are reflected in traditional medicine. These themes include profound enjoyment of details of
1. Food and drink
2. Register (vocabulary and grammatical levels) and dialects of Malay and related languages
3. Systems and levels of courtesy in their own and other social systems
4. One’s own social rank compared to others

Health and Illness in Malay Culture

Durian Fruit

2008-12-01T08:17:00.000-08:00

Durian Fruit
Durian (Durio zibethinus) is one of many tropical fruits native to South East Asia. The capsule fruit is usually large (up to 4 kg) and is characterized by a green to brownish skin fully covered by numerous thick spikes.

Its edible aril is soft and creamy with white or yellowish color. The aril has a sweet taste and strong dominated by fruity (estery) and unique sulfury notes. Due to its unique and highly characteristic flavor, durian is deemed as a delicacy and even regarded as the King of Fruits by local people.

This fruit can reduce lethality of alcohol. Leaves and roots used for fever. Leaves also used in medicinal bath during fever and jaundice. For fruit walls used externally for skin disease.

Vitamin E and antioxidant in general relates to durian. This turn out to be fairly rich in vitamin E among fruits. This is very interesting, since to the public while E is anti-sterility vitamin, then the durian is the anti-sterility fruit.

At any rate, it is thought to have aphrodisiac qualities. Indeed the lore surrounding the durian as a whole is quite remarkable.
Durian Fruit

Medicinally use of tamarind (Asam Jawa)

2008-11-24T08:00:00.000-08:00

Medicinally use of tamarind (Asam Jawa)
Botanically name Tamarindus indica. The fruit has been used medicinally for at least 3000 years. The ripe pulp is widely used as a laxative, diuretic, antiscorbutic and to treat fevers. Other folk uses include the treatment of indigestion, bile disorders, sore throat, sunstroke, alcohol intoxication and the restoration of sensation after paralysis. The high vitamin C content of the pulp makes it an effective treatment for scurvy.

A tea prepared from the leaves has been used to treat worms, dysentery, diabetes, coughs as a diuretic and as an eyewash for infected or inflamed eyes. Strips of young bark have been pounded, cooked and eaten to cure diarrhea. A tea from roots has been uses to treat constipation and leprosy. The seed cut in two and rubbed on a scorpion sting is said to be a certain cure. Modern medicine has determined that the ripe fruit has antibiotic activity against gram positive and negative bacteria, yeast and fungi.
Medicinally use of tamarind (Asam Jawa)

Centella asiatica - Pokok Pegaga

2008-11-09T17:45:00.000-08:00

Centella asiatica - Pokok Pegaga
Pegaga botanical name Centella asiatica is a tender creeping perennial herb of South Asia and Southeast Asia. It is also found in Madagascar and the southeastern United States. Centella asiatica has been utilized as a medicine since prehistoric times in India. Fresh extracts of the plant seem to have been used for medicinal purposes by the people of Malay Peninsular for many years as both typical and internal agents for healing of wounds and relief from leprosy.

Other name for Pegaga is gotu kola. Gotu kola contains a variety of organic acids, triterpenes and flavonoids. It also contains and essential oil with an unidentified terpene acetate.

Centella asiatica is employed in many cultures in Asia. Malay beliefs and use for healing many skin afflictions, including burns, wounds and ulcers. It too reduces the formation of scar tissue and prevents cellulite from forming.

It also helps to prevent varicose veins and reduce high blood pressure. The clinical studies show that Centella asiatica strengthens the veins and capillaries and improves the flow of blood. Malay is also belief that Centella asiatica can give longevity.
Centella asiatica - Pokok Daun Pegaga

Malay Bomoh

2008-11-08T06:36:00.000-08:00

Malay Bomoh
A bomoh uses various healing techniques, the most popular being his ability to heal fracture bones. Many Malays believe that modern medicine is no match for treating fractures, and even those who have undergone western medical treatment often seek further help from a traditional healer. Bomohs are also well versed in the art of curing with the herbal medicines.

Only Malay who has received the calling can become a real bomoh. And he usually learns his art by serving as an apprentice to a well known master. An individual can also become a bomoh through inheritance, and often the master will choose one of his siblings to learn his art. The chosen one can be any of his children, but to be eligible and individual must have certain physical and mental characteristics.

One specific requirement is the ability to remember and recite long incantations. This is extremely important because in every form of healing there are various mantras that need to be recited. Even medicine has its own incantations so as to ensure its effectiveness. If bomoh forgets his words this would ruin the healing process.

Incantations can be magical words or verses chosen from Al-Quran. However, most mantras begin with the name of God and end with the mention of the holy prophet Mohammad. This is to ensure that what is being done is always accomplished with the help of God.

Some bomoh treat a wide range of ailments, others specialize in healing certain illness and some, like pawang don’t even involve themselves in healing. The pawang hujan, performs ritual to prevent rain and the pawang buaya is called upon to catch crocodiles. Besides these, there is also the bidan – female bomoh whose specialty is childbirth.
Malay Bomoh

Momordica charantia L. or ‘peria’

2008-10-25T20:58:00.000-07:00

Momordica charantia L. or ‘peria’
It comes from family Cucurbitaceae and genus of Momordica.

In Malay they call it ‘buah peria’. It has herbal properties which is anti microbial, anti tumor and anti virus. It can treat skin disease and stomach ache. The plant is widely used in the treatment of diabetes and diarrhea. The leaves can be used for skin disease and inflammation. Some place in Malay peninsular use the plant as an abortifacient.

It is also used as an anthelmintic for worms, to treat fevers (especially malaria) and gastric ulcers, and to relieve itching and for snake bites.

The fruit is eaten as a vegetable; the leaf may be made into a tea called ‘cerassie’. Both the fruit and leaf have hypoglycemic affects. The extract causes hypoglycemia in animals and human diabetics patients.

It also has toxic effects. Contraceptive and teratogenic effects have been described in animals, so care should be taken in pregnant women, although cooking the vegetable may well destroy many of the toxins.

Momordica charantia is in the gourd family, which has many species that are grown as crops. Fruits of this family are among the largest in the plant kingdom. Momordica charantia is native to the old world tropics but is now a weed on the tropical and subtropical regions in most of Latin America, all of Asia and parts of Africa.
Momordica charantia L. or ‘peria’

Gajus (Anacardium occidentale)

2008-09-22T00:44:00.000-07:00

Gajus (Anacardium occidentale)
Gajus or cashew or Anacardium occidentale is a tree in the flowering plant family of Anacardiaceae. The English name derives from Portuguese name for the fruit of the cashew tree, “caju”. The tree native to Brazil, in the area between the Atlantic rain forest and the Amazon rainforest, and was domesticated long before the arrival of European at the end of the fifteenth century. It was discovered by European traders and explorers. Later, it was planted in India initially to reduce erosion.

The leaves are spirally arranged, leathery textured, 4 to 22 cm long with a smooth margin. Younger leaves can be eaten fresh and the people said that it can prevent and control diabetes.
What appears to be the fruit of the cashew tree is an oval or pear-shaped accessory fruit or false fruit that develops from the receptacle of the cashew flower. The fruit can be eaten raw, or preserved as jam or sweetmeat.

Bark of the tree can be used after boiled with water as antidiarrheal.
The seeds are ground can be used as antivenom for snake bites. The seed oil is believed to be alexeritic and amebicidal; used to treat gingivitis, malaria and syphilitic ulcers.
Gajus (anacardium occidentale)

Malays Healers

2008-09-09T01:26:00.000-07:00

Malays Healers
Dukuns are the Malay healer. Dukuns attribute most illness to wind and ghosts, but they do not favor any particular explanation of illness. Many Dukuns are adept at diagnosing and countering spells and charms, and most are also proficient at using herbal remedies for treating illnesses not attributed to any external intentional agent, spirit or human.

The dukun not only cures illness but divines fortunes and can solve problems by either casting or breaking a spell. If property has been lost, the dukun may cause it to return, or he may use his proficiency to identify and punish the thief. A dukun’s services may be solicited to make a protective amulet containing a Quran verse for a newborn baby. Malay healing also focuses on sexual problems. While issues of male potency and female frigidity are address, charms and therapies concentrate at least as much on such matters as jealousy, fidelity, and compatibility. A dukun’s spell can make a person love or hate another person.

Most of the dukuns claimed that the basis of their practice was inherited tradition and divine scripture, their methods of healing varied substantially. They all used some combination of spells, charms, and herbal medicaments, but the basis of their practice was ilmu. Ilmu is an Arabic derived Malay-Indonesian word, the standard meaning of knowledge or science, however, in the context of Malay medicine it refers to mystical knowledge.

The source and authority of knowledge in Malay medicine is attributed to the Quran. Spoken and written charms and blessings from this and other sacred writings are used in Malay healing. Blessings are intoned over medicines, and blessed water is also thought to possess curative power.
Malays Healers

Spinach or spinacia oleracea

2008-08-09T02:23:00.000-07:00

Spinach or spinacia oleracea
Spinach is an Asian herb of the goosefoot family cultivated for its edible leaves. In Malaysia people called it bayam. Spinach is native to central and southwestern Asia. It is a flowering plant in the family of Amaranthaceae.

According to history, spinach might have been originated from ancient Persia and it made its way to China in 7th of century. In 11th century Muslim people introduced the spinach to Andalusian people.

Spinach or Spinacia oleracea is a good source of iron. Spinach has a high content of calcium. Apart from that it also rich with vitamin A. vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin K, magnesium and antioxidants.

Malay community normally relates the spinach with healthy eyes. This might due to spinach rich with vitamin A. However, it will be surprised to learn that spinach may also have been protecting people who eating it from osteoporosis, heart disease, colon cancer, arthritis and other disease at the same time.

Latest research shows that there are 13 different flavonoids in spinach that function as antioxidants and as anti-cancer. In one research said that spinach is relatively rich in nitrogenous substances, in hydrocarbon. It is thus more nourishing than other green vegetables. It is valuable part of the diet in anemia, not only on account of its iron, but also for its chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is known to have a chemical formula remarkably similar to that of hemoglobin, and it is stated that the ingestion of chlorophyll will raise the hemoglobin of the blood without increasing the formed elements.
Spinach or spinacia oleracea

Typhonium Flagelliforme

2008-07-19T18:19:00.000-07:00

Typhonium flagelliforme
Typhonium flagelliforme or normally Malay called it ‘keladi tikus’ or ‘rodent tuber’.
Class: Liliopsida
Subclass: Aridae
Superorder: Aranae
Order: Alismatales
Family: Araceae
Genus: Typhonium
Scientific name: - Typhonium flagelliforme

Not many people know about this ‘keladi tikus’. The due to difficulties to find the plant and not so many people can differentiate the species in the same family.

Typhonium flagelliforme is used in traditional medicine in Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore for treating different types of malignancy. The plant was found to posses anti-cancer properties and used extensively as one of the components of traditionally for combating breast, lung, colon and liver cancer.

The study shows that rodent tubers contain high Arginine. Arginine is an essential amino acid, which is required for normal growth of microbes, plants and animals. Arginine is required to maintain normal metabolism and proliferation of cells.
Typhonium flagelliforme

The Myth of Tasek Pauh Janggi

2008-06-17T00:09:00.000-07:00

The Myth of Tasek Pauh Janggi
The Pusat tasek, or Navel of the Seas, supposed to be a huge hole in the ocean bottom. In this hole there sits a gigantic crab which twice a day gets out in order to search for food. While he is sitting in the hole the waters of the ocean are unable to pour down into the underworld, the whole of aperture being filled and block by the crab’s bulk. The inflowing supposed to cause the rising of the tide, while the down pouring of the waters through the great hole when the crab is absent searching for food is supposed to cause ebb.
The Myth of Tasek Pauh Janggi

Michelia champaca Linn

2008-05-18T01:39:00.000-07:00

Michelia champaca Linn
The Malay people called it as cempaka. Filipino called it champaka. Spanish also called it as champaka. There are 3 types of cempaka based on its color of flower: white, yellow and red. In scientific term; M. alba DC, M. champaca L., and M. figo.

This is a small tree, growing to a height of 6 meters or more. The bark is grey and smooth. The wood is soft, with white sapwood and light olive-brown heartwood. The young shoots are silky. The flowers are pale yellow or orange, very fragrant, and 4 to 5 centimeters long. The fruiting spike is compact and 8to 15 centimeters in length. The seeds, 1-2 are brown when old, polished, and variously angled. The flower yields the champaka oil, which is used as a perfume. The flowers are also put away with clothes to impart their perfume. The flowers appear from May to July and fruits ripen about three months later that is, in August.

History of Michelia champaca Linn
M. champaca is probably only native to India but is commonly cultivated throughout the tropics. The genus is named after Italian botanist Peter A. Michel (1679-1737); the specific epithet after the Hindu name.

Usage of Michelia champaca Linn
In traditional medicine, an infusion or decoction of flowers is given in dyspepsia, nausea and fevers; also for preventing scalding in renal disease. Flowers, macerated in oil, are applied externally in cephalalgia, opthalmia, nasal infections, sinus, rheumatism, gout and vertigo. While yellow colored flower also use for high fever by boiling the flower.

It also use as anti inflammatory and antipyretic. Juice leaves is given with honey in colic. Leaves are also applied in andolent swellings.

Leave of champaka were include in a vagina pessary recommended for treating vaginal foul smell and infections.
Michelia champaca Linn

Illicium verum Hooker fil. (star anise)

2008-04-24T20:38:00.000-07:00

Illicium verum Hooker fil. (star anise)
It is a shaped fruits, always used in dried state. Besides the regular eight-pointed shape one rarely finds specimen with a larger number of carpels. Each 12 mm long and 6 mm to 11 mm thick, radially around a short, central and blunt-ending.

Malay called it bunga lawang. It use for cooking and also for medicinal purpose. It used to cure colic and rheumatic. Sometimes the star anise tea drinks for the purpose to cure pregnant woman morning sickness.

There is an essential oil resides in pericarp, not in the seed. It contains 5 to 8 % of essential oil, which dominated by anethole (85 to 90%). The other components, phellandrene, safrole and terpineol, have only small effect on the aroma.
Illicium verum Hooker fil. (star anise)

Areca catechu

2008-04-16T16:37:00.000-07:00

Areca catechu
Areca catechu, known commonly as Betel palm or Betel nut tree or Pinang is a medium-sized tree growing to 20 m tall, with a trunk 20-30 cm in diameter. The leaves are 1.5-2 m long, pinnate, with numerous, crowded leaflets.

Betel nut tree is very attractive palm to about 10 m high, with dark green leaves, and an attractive dark green, ringed trunk. It has fragrant, scented, white flowers, which form into orange/scarlet fruit about 50 mm (2 inchs) long.

Betel nut was distributed by indigenous people throughout tropical Asia as far as East Africa and the Pacific before the arrival of Europeans in the region. The palm was distributed to the Pacific islands aboard sailing canoes by the prehistoric ancestors of the Micronesians who explored and settled the islands of the western pacific.

The seed of Areca catechu is used for medicinal purpose. The seed when it chewed is intoxicating. However, it can be used for urinary bleeding or to treat intestinal worms. It also can treat, fever and diarrhea too. The nuts are chewed which was dried and broken down into smaller, usually in wrapped with betel leaves, along with some lime and spices for flavoring. Chewing the nut releases brightly yellow colored keratin.

There is little evidence to support clinical use of betel, but the constituents have demonstrated pharmacological actions. The main active component, the alkaloid arecoline, has potent cholinergic activity.
Areca catechu

Malay Believe of Natural Phenomena

2008-04-08T21:26:00.001-07:00

Malay Believe of Natural Phenomena
Most Malays imagine that the world is of an oval shape, revolving upon its own axis four times in the space of one year; that the sun is a circular body of fire moving round the earth, and producing the alternations of night and day. Certain native Malays imagined the firmament to consist of a sort of stone or rock which they called Batu Hampar, or “bed rock,” the appearance of stars being cause by light which streams through its perforations.

Malay theory of the earth declares it to be carried by a colossal buffalo upon the tip of it horns. When one horn begins to tire the buffalo tosses it up and catches it upon the tip of the other. This world-buffalo stands upon an island in the midst of the nether ocean. The universe is girt round by an immense serpent or dragon which feeds upon its own tail.

Some Malays ascribe the tides to the influence of the sun; others to some unknown current of the ocean; but the generality believe confidently the following, which is more skeleton of the original legend. In the middle of the great ocean grows an immense tree, called Pauh Janggi, at the root of which is a cavern called Pusat Tassek, or navel of the lake. This is inhabited by a vast crab, who goes forth at stated period during the day. When the creature returns to its abode the displaced water causes the flow of the tide; when he departs, the water rushing into the cavern causes the ebb. Malay Believe of Natural Phenomena

Jasminum sambac

2008-02-04T20:04:00.000-08:00

Also known as bunga melur. Sweet fragrance, double, pure white flowers and an upright vining habit make this cultivar of Jasminum sambac a pleasure to grow. Need warm temperatures and good light.

Varieties Jasminum sambac is usually accepted as commercial jasmine which is a shrub. There are three types in jasminum sambac.
* Single flower Arabian jasmine. This is the most commercial type, which bears flowers profusely.
* Semi double type of jasmine called Dontara Malle.
*The fully double small floweredArabian jasmine (Boddu Male) also called as the grand duke of Tuscany.

The plant was originated from from the northern parts of the Himalayan valleys, although it is grown throughout India today. Others place the origins of even farther off to Egypt and Persia or present-day Iran. Since ancient times Jasmine has been thought of as the 'queen of flowers'. The name Jasmine is derived from the Persia 'yasmin', meaning a fragrant flower. Chinese emperor of the Sung dynasty (960-1279 AD) had Jasmine in his palace grounds so he could enjoy its fragrance. In the 1400s, Jasmine was planted for kings of Afghanistan, Nepal and Persia.

Varieties of Jasmine used in perfume, found their way to places across the seas -- beginning from areas along the Arabian Sea, such as Persia and India then crossing the Red Sea into Egypt. They reached into the territory around the Aegean Sea into Turkey and Greece. And, they spread to areas along the Mediterranean Sea from Africa through Egypt, Algeria and Morocco -- reaching Western Europe through Spain by Moors in 1600, and France and Italy. The plant was introduced into Britain in the latter part of the 17th century.

Jasmine sambac or Maid of Orleans single variety is a symbol of purity, simplicity, humility and strength. In India they used the young leaves and flowers to make a putty, which was mixed and eaten with rice to dry scabies and other skin eruptions. Some varieties are used as religious offerings symbolizing divine hope. The Hindus string the flowers together as neck garlands for honored guests. The flowers of one of the double varieties ("Belle of India") are held sacred to Vishnu and are used as votive offerings in Hindu religious ceremonies.

Flower
Food: sauces, condiments, spices, flavourings
Medicines: pain-killers
Phytochemistry: aromatic substances
Products: household, domestic and personal items
Social: ceremonial
Leaf Medicines: cutaneous, subcutaneous parasitic infection; fabrifuges; skin, mucosae

Jasmine sambac has a long history of use as a chief remedy for male and female reproductive conditions, is said to help prevent Post Natal Depression and infertility and is ranked among the ‘aphrodisiac’ herbs. It has a calming and sedative effect on the nervous system and is especially beneficial in conditions caused by psychological stress and imbalance.

The action of Jasmine is warming, opening, and relieving of spasm. It is indicated where there is cold, listlessness, spasm, depression, catarrh or other discharge. Jasmine sambac is very useful as an anti-depressant giving optimism and confidence, producing a feeling of euphoria and helps overcome apathy and listlessness.

Fundamental of Malay Medicine

2007-11-09T09:27:00.000-08:00

The successful practice of Malay medicine must be based on the fundamental principle of preserving the balance of power among the four elements. This is chiefly to be effected by constant attention to, and moderation in diet. To enforce these golden passages from Qu’ran are plentiful quoted against excess in eating or drinking. Air, they say is the cause of heat and moisture, and earth of cold and dryness. They assimilate the constitution and passions of man to the twelve signs of the Zodiac, and the seven planets, etc.

The mysterious sympathy between man and external nature was the basis of that system of supernatural magic which prevailed in Europe during the Middle Ages.

Eugenia aromatica

2007-06-22T02:46:00.000-07:00

Malay Medicine
Eugenia aromatica normally called as clove. The clove come from family of myrtacae. The Malay community called it as bunga cengkih. The cloves is used in cooking in order enhances the taste of food. The cloves also used as traditional medicine.

Some people used this bunga cenkih or cloves which scientific name Eugenia aromatica to treat stomach ache and also to allay vomitting. Another usage is to put 3 pieces of cloves in mouth. It will act as antiseptic to treat of tooth ache.

Clove also can stimulate the digestive function. Eugenia aromatica is a beautiful tree. Its branches are numerous, slender and opposite. The flowers are very odoriferous, and are in short, terminal many-flowered panicles, trichotomously divided and jointed at every division.
Malay Medicine

Tok Batin and Shaman

2007-06-09T15:47:00.000-07:00

Malay Medicine
Among some proto-Malay tribes the Tok Batin is both chief and Shaman. And it seems likely that differentiation between the Malay chief and shaman is hardly more remote than their conversion to Hinduism. Both hold office that ideally are hereditary and in any event require some form of consecration; both are masters of an archetypal world; both have insignia baleful to the profane ; both have been credited with possession of familiars and with supernatural ability to injure and to heal and to control the weather; both have been honored by tree-burial.

In one state northern peninsular, shaman qualified by hereditary still ranks higher in popular esteem than one qualified by seeing visions or by study under the teacher. His consecration, like that of most rulers in Asia and Europe, include lustration and turning towards the four quarters of the globe. Many countries in the Far East, Japan, Fiji, Timor Leste and others solves the dual functions of leadership by having two sovereigns, one secular, and one spiritual.
Malay Medicine

Cymbopogon nardus

2007-06-06T16:02:00.000-07:00

Malay Medicine
The dried leaves can be used as insects repellant by warding off insects. In case of stomach ache, the essential oil is rubbed for comfort. In local community of Malay, the plant is known as - serai wangi. It is in the family of Gramineae.

It is can be called as citronella grass. It is arching leaves and overall vertical form subtle opposition when planted near bushy or rounded shrubs and flowers. Cymbopogon nardus is a clump-forming tropical grass, the clump increases in size as the plant matures.

The genus of Cymbopogon is a genus of 55 species, habitat to warm temperate and tropical region.
Malay Medicine

Earth Creation – the old Malay believe

2007-05-28T07:56:00.000-07:00

Malay Medicine
In the days when Haze bore Darkness, and Darkness Haze, when the lord of the Outer Silence Himself was yet in the womb of creation, before the existence of the name of the Earth and Heaven, of God and Muhammad, of the Empyrean and Crystalline spheres, or of Space and Void, the Creator of entire Universe pre-existed by Himself, and He was the Eldest magician. He created the Earth of the width of a tray and the Heavens of the width of an umbrella, which are the universe of the magician.

Now from before the beginning of time existed that magician – that is God – and He made Himself manifest with the brightness of the moon and the sun, which is the token of the True Magician. The God created the pillar of the Ka’bah, which is the Navel of the Earth, whose growth is comparable to a tree. Whose branches are four in number.
The 1st – Sijaratul Muntahar
The 2nd – Taubi
The 3rd – Khaldi
The 4th – Nasrun Alam
Malay Medicine

Kaempferia Galanga

2007-05-26T06:05:00.000-07:00

Malay Medicine
Known as ‘pokok daun cekur’ by Malay community. Sometimes people called ‘cekuh’. The plant contain of imporatn chemical borneol, kamfor, sineol and ethyl alcohol. The plant can be eaten with salt to reduce sore throat. The water after boiling with it’s leaves can be drinks by woman after pregnancies.

Sometime the water used to be rubbed on the stomach of the pregnant woman. Other than that the plant also is used for treatment of diarrhea and migraine. It is also given for food poisoning, tetanus and mouth ulcers.

The leaves grow to about 15 cm in height under the right conditions. When burned as an incensed it is thought to increase energy and overcome exhaustion and sadness. As an ornamental, it makes an interesting groundcover, leathery green leaves that lie flat to the ground.
Malay Medicine

Old Malay Magician Part 2

2007-05-23T08:41:00.000-07:00

Malay Medicine
There are two types of magician which reflect a differentiation between primitive science and religion. Islam recognized this and the pious Muslim who readily consults the ordinary magician records for a spirit –raising and condemns the shaman as a follower of false gods.

What ever the origin of the distinction between the two classes the Malay Magician, whether ordinary practitioner or shaman, commands respect by possessing a body of occult knowledge derived often from cultures greater than his own and framed by the ingenuity of many forerunner into an acceptable dogma of superstition.
Malay Medicine

Old Malay Magician

2007-05-21T06:22:00.000-07:00

Malay Magician
In some part of Malay Archipelago the initiated priest or magician has for his province the cure of the sick and the care of rice fields and house building; but only the sky born hereditary magician can invoke ancestral spirit or act as an intermediary between man and heaven. In Malay community, one may search large collection of ordinary incantations in vain for references to Father Sky and Mother Earth and the dead shaman ancestor in tiger form but always occur in the chants of a shaman at his spirit raising séance, and when they are encountered rarely in the ritual of the rice field or at the opening of a mine., it may be that a hereditary shaman was officiating or that the old distinction had been forgotten.

Even now the shaman is so respected that in Kelantan if he operating in a district all other medicine men disqualified for time being. However, the development of a settled agriculture society probably encouraged the initiation of many magician with no hereditary qualification, there being generally no need for a shaman in order to deal with the rice baby, or teach the appropriate spell for a catching crocodile or a tabus to be observed by collectors of camphor and honey.
Malay Magician

Pedilanthus Tithymaloides

2007-05-18T08:47:00.000-07:00

Malay Medicine
Pedilanthus Tithymaloides is known as “pokok lelipan” by Malay community. It is a small type of plant, which under family of Euphorbiaceae. The plant produce shrub with milky juice which can be used to neutralize the poison secreted by scorpion.

Some people use for treatment of wart. However, the milky sap from all art of the plant is very poisonous and it can irritated of the mouth and throat, vomiting and diarrhea when ingested.

From scientific study Pedilanthus Tithymaloides is reported wide range of healing properties such as anti-inflammatory, antibiotic, antiseptic, antihemorrhagic, anti viral, antitumor, and abortive .
Malay Medicine

Lawsonia Inermis

2007-05-16T03:56:00.000-07:00

Malay Medicine
It is called “pokok Inai”. Lawsonia Inermis is a member of Lythracea. It is among the most fragrant flowers in this world. The plant contains two important chemical known as nafkokulnon and Lawson. It used for coloring purpose, where the women used to color their nail, men to color their beards and hair.

It paste after grinding can be used for healing of scabes or sores. The water after boiling together with it leaves could be used for sore throat. However, the other part of the world likes African countries the plant can be used for treatment of jaundice, hysteria and nervous disorder.
Malay Medicine

Old magician

2007-05-12T15:48:00.000-07:00

Malay Medicine
Although the Malay has long been an orthodox Muslim, still in many hamlets there is a pawang or magician, repository of immemorial superstitions and older faiths. The majority of these traffickers with the supernatural are concerned with fishing and hunting or agriculture or mining and traditional cures for the sick, professing to be expert only in spells and tabus, talismans, and emulates and simple methods of divination. A minority practice shamanism, and in an ecstatic trance thorough a familiar interrogate spirits as to the future or as to the cause and cure of a disease.

Temperamentally the two classes differ. The ordinary magician may be a village pundit with his head full of amulets and spells and old herbal remedies; the other like a shamans of Siberia and China starts as a neurotic, a dreamer of dreams and seer visions. Often the distinction came to be one between hereditary and initiated magicians.
Malay Medicine

Function of Malay Magician

2007-05-10T16:49:00.000-07:00

Malay Medicine
He held out the like hood of rain for crops and of remedy for disease. He taught spells with precise iteration, his insistence that any error in words would mar their cogency enhancing popular respect for their efficacy. He instructed how to sacrifice with such stress on details as to make men almost the risk or disaster that called for offering. He dealt in charms and philters that solaced unhappy lovers and brought excitement into dull village lives.

He distributed talismans and amulets, which were outward and visible shield against spiritual evils. He was an indefatigable student of inaccessible concupiscences and transcendences’ and he whispered to clever neurotic adolescents secrets that fired their minds for abstruse knowledge and disciplined their vague imaginings.
Malay Medicine

Jarak Belanda

2007-05-07T20:01:00.000-07:00

Malay Medicine
Jarak Belanda or Jatropha Curcas is an average size tree. Normally, it grows between three and five meters in height, but can attain height of up to eight or ten meters. The fruit is green color and it will change to black once ripening.

It has large green to pale-green leaves, alternate to sub-opposite, three-to five-lobed with a spiral phyllotaxis. It leaves normally will be grounded with some to cure furuncle and mouth ulcer . It also can cure cramp muscle.

It has the flower and it formed terminally, individually, with female flower is slightly larger and occurs only in hot season. Homeopathy practitioner usually used the plant for treatment of stomach or abdominal pain.
Malay Medicine

Mountains of Qaf

2007-05-06T18:36:00.001-07:00

Malay Medicine
The Mountains of Caucasus are usually called by Malays as Bukit Qaf, or the Mountains of Qaf. These mountains are not frequently referred to in Malay charms, e.g. in invocations addressed to Rice spirit.

The Mountains of Qaf are to the Malays a great range which serves as a wall to the earth, and keep off both excessive winds and beasts of prey. This wall however, is being bored through by people called Yajuj and Majuj, when they succeed in their tasks the end of all things will come.

Besides these mountains which surround the earth there is a great central mountains called Mahameru (Saguntang Maha Biru, or merely Saguntang-guntang). In many Malay stories this hill Mahameru is identified with Saguntang-guntang on the borders of Palembang Sumatra.
Malay Medicine

Panax Araliaceae

2007-05-01T12:01:00.000-07:00

This plant is called as Ginseng Jepun. Normally Malay people boil it with some water and then drink the water. It can reduce your high blood pressure.

The plant is from family of Araliaceae. It stems solitary from big root, to 50cm tall, green and herbaceous. The leaves are whorled, 3 or 4 in number.

It habitat wooded slopes and most ground. It prefers a loamy, deep (12 in), weel drain soil with a high organic content and a PH near 5.5. Often called as ginseng in United States. It is believed by American that the have medicinal value such as being aphrodisiac to cancer treatment. It is marketed in Asian food and health food stores.

Old Malay Believe: How the world was created

2007-04-28T21:48:00.000-07:00

Malay Medicine
From the Supreme Being first emanated light toward chaos: this light, diffusing, itself, became the vast ocean. From the bosom of the waters thick vapor and foam ascended. The earth and sea were the formed, each of seven tiers. The earth rested on the surface of the water from east to west. God, in order to render steadfast the foundation of the world, which vibrated tremulously with the motion of the water expanse, girt it round within adamantine chain, viz. the stupendous mountains of Caucasus, the wondrous region of genii and aerial spirit.
Beyond these limits is spread out a vast plain, the stones rubies and emeralds, the vegetations of odoriferous flowers. From the range of Caucasus all the mountains of the earth have their origin as pillars to support and strengthen the terrestrial framework.
Malay Medicine

Pawang

2007-04-26T09:02:00.000-07:00

Malay Medicine
The pawang or the magician is the functionary of the great and traditional importance in a Malay village, though in places near town the office is felling into abeyance. The pawang is the accredited intermediary between men and spirits.

In the inland districts, however the pawang is still a power, and regarded as part of the constituted order of the society, without whom no village community would be complete. It must understood that he has nothing whatever to do with the official religious of Islam.

The pawang is quite outside this system, and belongs to a different and much older order of ideas; he may be regarded as the legitimate representative of primitive medicine-man or village-sorcerer, and his very existence in this days is an anomaly, though it does not strike Malays as such.
Malay Medicine

Tumeric

2007-04-24T06:11:00.000-07:00

The Malay Medicine
The Malay called Kunyit. Tumeric, has been used in Asian cookery for thousands of years. Powder ground from the dried root is an ingredient in curry.

Turmeric is pungent, bitter and astringent, not sweet like ginger. Turmeric has anti-inflammatory properties that make it useful as a pain reliever. Pastes made from turmeric powder are used to treat sprains and swelling, skin disorders and insect bites. It can also be used as a mouth rinse to treat pain caused by dental problems.

Turmeric can be used to treat gastrointestinal problems like diarrhea, flatulence, and even worms. Rich in iron, turmeric is also used to treat anemia. People with asthma can use turmeric powder to prevent attacks by taking the powder with warm water.
The Malay Medicine

Piper ribesioides

2007-04-21T13:55:00.000-07:00

The Malay Medicine
Malay community called it as Sireh Murai.

Easily found mountainous area.

Smaller size than the Malay sireh.

Crush the leaves and add with some water.

Applied to the forehead for fever.

Add some salt, it can cure cough and sow throat.
The Malay Medicine

Pandan Wangi

2007-04-18T13:16:00.000-07:00

Malay Medicine

There are several of the Pandanaceae family that grow in tropic regions. The most famous are the pandanus odoratissimus (a tree with spiral blade leaves, with aerial roots and a white male flower that is also known for it’s voluptuous flavor) and the pandanus odorus (known as daun pandan).

The plant is normally used by Malay as an ingredient for cookies. It also believes that the plant can cure a chicken pox. The plant need to be grind before add some water. Then apply to the body of the patient.

Malay Medicine

Uncaria Gambir

2007-04-14T22:02:00.000-07:00

The Malay Medicine
Common name is Gambir Sarawak. Scientific name is Uncaria Gambir, the family of rubiaceae.
The species only can growth in the area of Long Panai, Marudi Sarawak.

Original gambir sarawak traditionally used by natives in sarawak to prolong and help penis erections.

Beside that it is also being used for:
1. Gum and tooth ache
2. Bitten by insects
3. Before piercing
4. Minor cut
5. Prolong penis erection
6. Treat dysentery, diarrhea, astringent and masticatory
7. Treat scuff, burnt

Although it's mainly used by men, there have been reports that women that uses them, loves the burning sensation on their clitoris/labia and have achieved multiple orgasms due to the tingling sensation and the prolong performance by their lover. Note: The affect might differ with each individual. There has not been any report of side affect or allergy due to gambir as it is made from natural organic material. If unsure, do try on a small skin surface before hand.
The Malay Medicine

Punica granatum

2007-04-11T06:12:00.000-07:00

Malay Medicine
Malay community called buah delima.

Pomegranate is a very popular fruit all over the Middle East.
Though it can't be proven definitely, the fruit of the “Tree of Knowledge” mentioned in the biblical history of creation most probably was meant to be a pomegranate – though most Westerners would hardly believe it, it's nowhere said to be an apple!

There is also a parallel in Greek mythology, where the earth goddess Demeter lost her daughter Persephone to the underworld god Hades because of one single pomegranate grain the daughter had accepted.

Pomegranate is a delicious fruit (one of my favorites - except for the hassle of peeling) with many beneficial compounds. Pomegranate has substances, such as polyphenols, that have antioxidant, anti-viral, and anti-tumor activity.

Pomegranate may also be helpful in maintaining healthy cholesterol and triglyceride levels, and a recent study indicates pomegranate has compounds that play a role in osteoarthritis and prostate health.
Malay Medicine.

Malay Believe: Father Sky and Mother Earth

2007-04-09T07:06:00.000-07:00

The Malay Medicine
The Mantra, a proto-Malay tribe, claim to be descended from Mertang, the first magician, who was the child of two persons called Drop of Water and Clod of Earth. In the Mollucas the earth is a female deity, who in the west monsoon is impregnated by Lord Sun heaven. The Trojas in Celebes believed in two supreme powers, the Man and the Maiden, that is, the sun and the earth. The Dayaks of Borneo hold that the sun and the earth created the world, ‘Father Sky and Mother Earth’, occur also in a mixture of Sanskrit and the vernacular Bali.

In Malay they are addressed not only by the shaman but by the master of the shadow play, before the drama of Rama and Sita is enacted: but then the player is an incarnation of Vishnu, of whom Rama was an avatar.
The Malay Medicine

9 Benefits of Kacip Fatimah

2007-04-03T06:49:00.000-07:00

Malay Medicine
1. Increases libido and treat female ailments relating to the reproductive system and well-being.
2. It is anti-dysmenorrhoea which helps in cleansing and avoiding difficult and painful menstruation.

3. Used effectively to treat disorders in the reproductive system like dysentery and gonorrhoea.
4. It helps balance your hormones and overcome postnatal depression such as loss of interest in intimacy as well as promotes strength and vitality to improve intimacy.

5. Helps to firm and tone the abdominal muscles making you look slimmer.

6. It is anti-flatulence which helps in eliminating excessive gas in the body.

7. It boosts your body resistance and thereby helps to relieve cold.

8. It improves blood circulation and therefore relieves rheumatic pains in joints and muscles.

9. It has also been known to overcome constipation and restore damaged hair, besides a whole lot of other benefits.
Malay Medicine

Aloe vera

2007-04-01T02:28:00.000-07:00

Malay Medicine
Aloe Vera is the species under family of Aloeaceae. Malay community called it pokok daun lidah buaya. It traditionally used to clean hair and used as cosmetics, but contains a purgative.

It also can treats scalds and insect bites. However it’s not suitable for pregnant women or patients with weak gasto-intestinal condition.

Aloe, actually popular houseplant, has a long history as a multipurpose folk remedy.

The plant can be separated into two basic products: gel and latex. Aloe vera gel is the leaf pulp or mucilage, a thin clear jelly-like substance obtained from the parenchymal tissue that makes up the inner portion of the leaves.

The gel contains carbohydrate polymers, such as glucomannans or pectic acid, plus various other organic and inorganic compounds.

Aloe latex, commonly referred to as "aloe juice," is a bitter yellow exudate from the pericyclic tubules just beneath the outer skin of the leaves.
Aloe vera

Peperomia Pellucida

2007-03-30T16:44:00.000-07:00

The Malay Medicine
Peperomia Pellucida or what the Malay community called “pokok Ketumpangan Air” is easily grown found in the wet area. Some people called it “pokok rangu-rangu”. It is a small type of plant.

The leaves contain antibacterial antibacterial activity against Bacillus subtilis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus, and antifungal activity. It can be eaten without cooking or heating. It can cure, fever, headache, stomachache and weak body.

The Malay Medicine

The Elements

2007-03-24T08:52:00.000-07:00

Malay Medicine
The successful, practices of Malay medicine must be based on the fundamental principle of preserving the balance of power among four elements. This is chiefly to be effected by constant attention to, and moderation in, diet.

To enforce these golden precepts, passages from Quran are plentifully quoted against excess in eating or drinking. Air, they say, is the cause of heat and moisture, and earth of cold and dryness. They assimilate the constitutions and passions of man to the twelve sings of the zodiac, and the seven planets.
Malay Medicine

Murdannia Nudiflora

2007-03-05T06:16:00.000-08:00

The Malay Medicine
The Malay community use to called this plant as Daun Embun Tengahari. It come from family of Commelinaceae.

Habit, vegetative morphology.
Herb, less than 50 cm or 50–150 cm, annual or perennial, non-insectivorous, non-aromatic, non-parasitic. Bladder-shaped organs absent. Milky sap absent. Thorns absent.

Plant habitat. Land plant.

Underground parts.
Underground parts without tuber-like structures. Rhizomes absent. Stolons absent.

Stems.
Stems hairy or not hairy, with simple hairs, round, erect or procumbent, solid, succulent.

Leaves.
Leaves one type present, small (less than 2 cm long/wide) or large (more than 2 cm long/wide), not hairy on upper surface or on lower surface, hairy on upper surface or on lower surface, sessile, simple, narrow or broad, alternate, evenly distributed on stem, margin entire, apex acute or obtuse, base clasping, parallel-veined, with close-parallel secondary venation, midrib not-prominent, surface not-waxy, succulent, glands absent, dots absent, papillae absent, hydathodes absent. Leaf sheath present, hairy. Stipules absent. Ligules absent.

Usage:
the leaves to be grinded and add some water in order to make it pasty. The paste then to be applied to wounded area. The result is that it will stop the heavy bleeding immediate due to.
The Malay Medicine

Onion

2007-02-28T08:10:00.000-08:00

Malay Medicine

Onions are a member of the 500-plus allium family. While garlic, another allium, has been highly touted as a cancer preventative, most people consume far greater quantities of onions. As Americans search for low-fat, low-salt, but tasty meals, they're eating more onions - almost 18 pounds per person, which is 50% more than a decade ago.

As with garlic, onions help prevent thrombosis and reduce hypertension, according to the American Heart Association. The juice of one yellow or white onion a day can raise HDL cholesterol (the good stuff) by 30% over time.

Malay Medicine

Blechnaceae

2007-02-27T05:50:00.000-08:00

Malay Medicine

Blechnaceae contains about twelve species (six more have been described from China, the center of diversity) found throughout the Northern Hemisphere and equatorial Southeast Asia.
The Malay called it ‘Paku Lipan’. It is believed to be used to neutralize the insect poison. The leave of Blechnaceae is to be grind and paste it to the wound.

Malay Medicine

Physalis minima

2007-01-28T21:04:00.000-08:00

Malay Medicine
The Malay community called for Physalis minima is Pokok Letup-Letup. These species commonly found growth at wild and open area.

Fruit, a berry, enclosed within the enlarged, 10-ribbed, reticulately veined calyx, which is 4.1 cm long and 2.5 cm broad; berries, stalked (stalk, 2.2 cm long), almost round having a pinhead-sized depression at the end; diameter, 1.4 to 1.6 cm; weight, 2.15 g; volume, 1.32 ml; fully mature fruits primrose yellow 601/2 at full maturity.

The fruit is juicy, containing 61.4 per cent extractable juice and 76.7 per cent moisture. The total soluble solids content of the juice is 12.5 per cent. The acidity of the juice is 1.84 per cent. The fruits contain 5.97 per cent total sugars, 3 per cent reducing sugars, 2.81 per cent non-reducing sugars, 0.64 per cent tannins and 0.52 percent pectin. They contain a good amount of vitamin C which is 24.45 mg per 100 ml of juice.

Studies shows that the plants of Physalis minima are bitter, appetizing, tonic, diuretic, laxative, useful in inflammations, enlargement of the spleen and abdominal troubles. Malays use this plant for healing of cancer.
Malay medicine

Sirih

2007-01-02T05:40:00.000-08:00

Malay Medicine
In english literature known as Betel Pepper Liquid Extract.
But Botanical Name known as “Piper betel”It is under family of Piperaceae. However Malay called it Sirih

In India, Malaysia and Indonesia the leaves are chewed, alone or with other plant materials including the areca nut, lime, and catechu for their mouth-freshening, digestives, aphrodisiac and sense of well being properties.

As an external medicine people use the fresh, crushed leaves as an antiseptic for cuts and wounds and as a poultice for boils. Warm poultice of the leaves and coconut oil is applied on the chest of children in catarrhal and pulmonary affections.

Leaves, warmed and applied in layers are used effectively for arresting the secretion of milk. The leaf oil is highly recommended, as counter irritant in swellings, bruises, painful sores, and enlarged glands.
Malay Medicicne

Practice of Malay Medicine

2006-12-04T07:22:00.000-08:00

Practice of Malay Medicine
The successful practice of Malay medicine must be based on the fundamental principle of ‘preserving the balance of power’ among four elements. This is chiefly to be effected by constant attention moderation in, diet.

They all used some combination of spells, charms and herbal medicaments, but the basis of their practice was ‘ilmu’. In the context of Malay Medicine it refers to ‘mystical knowledge’.

The source and authority of knowledge in Malay Medicine is attributed to the Quran. Spoken and written charms and blessings from this and other sacred writings are used in Malay healing.

Blessings are intoned over medicines and blessed water is also thought to posses curative powers.

To enforce these golden precepts, passages from the Quran are plentifully quoted against excess in heating or drinking. Air, is the cause of heat and moisture, and earth of cold and dryness. They assimilate the constitution and passions of man to twelve signs of the Zodiac, an then seven planet.

The foregoing quotation shows that the distinctive features of the Aristotelian hygienic theory, as borrowed by the Arabs, did eventually filter through (in some cases) until they reaches the Malays. Such direct references, however, to Greek theories are the rarest character, and can hardly be considered typical.

Traditional Malay Medicine practice includes herbal remedies. It incorporates influences from Arabia, Persia, India and China.

The early Malays, living their semi-nomadic lifestyle, have garnered a wealth of knowledge about the usefulness of some animal parts, and natural herbs and spices.

At that time, traditional Malay Medicine was laced with superstitious and folk beliefs that had little basis in logic and science.
Practice of Malay Medicine