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Hello everyone and welcome to the new books in museum studies, a podcast channel on the new books network. I'm Lauren Fanta, one of the hosts of the channel. Today I'm speaking with Dr. Faruk Yahia, author of the book, A Magic Indivination in Malay Illustrated Manuscripts.
Welcome to the show. Thank you, Lauren. Thank you very much for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here.
Could you please introduce yourself, including how you came to study Malay manuscripts and how you came to work on this book? Yeah, hello. My name is Faruk Yahia. I'm currently a researcher associate in the Department of History of Art in Archaeology at SOS University of London.
So my book looks at, as Lauren mentioned, my book looks at Malay manuscripts that relate to magic indivination, things like spells, talismans, astrology, predictions and so on. So just to clarify, a few things for manuscripts are basically handwritten texts, so before printing, most things were handwritten. And manuscripts that were written in Malay language produced in many parts of Southeast Asia, such as in Malaysia, Indonesia and Southern Thailand, and they date mainly to the 17th to early 20th century. And they're written in a form of Arabic script known as Jawi.
So my interest in Malay manuscripts came out of my master's degree that I did at SOS about 20 years ago now. And my master's course was on Islamic art, which included a course on Arab and Persian manuscript paintings. So that course sort of opened my eyes to what art that can be contained in this manuscript and made me think about Malay manuscript painting. So I decided to investigate it further, and I did a master's dissertation on an illustrated Malay manuscript on a devotional text known as the Dai Aqairad.
And then I decided to do a PhD and when came to the PhD, it was natural for me to continue to study Malay manuscript. And I chose to do my thesis on illustrated Malay magic indivination manuscripts. And my book basically came out of that PhD thesis that I did at SOS. Great, thanks for that introduction.
And next, could you tell us about the significance of the relationship between image and text in the context of Islamic art? Yeah, so in Islamic manuscripts, there's often a very strong connection between text and art. So basically the visual elements, the art, can help explain what the text is about. For instance, you might find a painting that describes the scene from story.
And on the other hand, text can also help explain the art. For example, in some paintings, you might find things that captions which explain what the painting is depicting. And there's also things like, you find a manuscript, things like decoration, which helps to, they not only make the manuscript beautiful, but also help to mark different sections of the text. And also, the relationship between image and text goes further.
So there's some visual elements that are very intrinsically connected to text like diagrams and tables. They're used to organize textual information in a graphical way. And there's some things which even blur the lines between text and image. One such example are kilograms or pictorial calligraphy.
So things like text have been shaped into the animals like lions or even human beings. So when you look at them, you think, is it a text or is it an image? And these are the things which I look at in my book. So I talk about kilograms as well.
I talk a bit about diagrams as well. So how the text can inform the image and vice versa. That's really interesting. Please tell us about the artist article approach that you've taken in the book and how this can create a better understanding of the illustrations, diagrams and talismanic designs in Malay manuscripts.
So for my research, firstly, I looked at a large number of manuscripts, I think around 100. Basically, to gain an overall view of the material to see if there's any patterns, for example, which I did with common images, which I did with common text. But then once I've done that, then I looked at the illustrations or these diagrams and these talismanic designs to first identify what they are, what they represent, and then try to establish any typology or iconography, how things are commonly depicted. For instance, I found that in the manuscripts, the most common animal depicted is the naga, which is a type of mythical serpent, sort of like a dragon.
And in the manuscripts, typically, the naga is usually illustrated in a certain way. They usually illustrate it in profiles. So from the side, and they don't have legs. They have very elaborate crests on the head and elaborate tail.
And they're always often shown with their mouth open, showing a long tongue and very sharp teeth. And then, as I also mentioned, the strong connection in text and image. So then the next important step is also to read the text in the manuscripts to help understand why the images are depicting and why they have been useful. Unfortunately, sometimes quite often, actually, with these images in this magic and divination manuscript, they don't have any explanations to them.
So which presumably, this sort of information would have been transmitted orally. So what I had to do was to rely on other sources, like anthropological reports, and also comparative material, and other similar things being used in other cultures. Because quite a lot of these practices you find in these manuscripts, they're very common across other cultures within Southeast Asia, but also the wider world, with Thai, Japanese, India, and the Middle East, and also ancient Greece as well. So many of them are common practices.
So that helps to understand what these images show and how they were used. Right. Thanks for that explanation. So in chapter three, you observed that many of the earliest manuscripts relating to magic and divination have not survived in Malaysia due to various factors such as insect attack, humidity, et cetera.
However, later manuscripts gave evidence of the existence of earlier manuscripts. Could you tell us more about the evidence for the earlier manuscripts? Yes. So also the surviving manuscripts we have from Southeast Asia, not just Malayo ones, but also from other cultures like for Thai and Japanese languages.
And mainly only date from the 17th century onwards. And this is due to a number of factors primarily because of the tropical region. So there's lots of humidity and heat, which means that appreciable material like paper and leaves decay very quickly. There's also lots of pests, insects, and also things like fire, floods, war, and so on.
So that's why we don't have much material manuscript dating prior to that. So but we do have evidence that manuscripts were existing much earlier than the surviving evidence show. We have stone inscriptions dating to at least the 5th century in terms of Malay in Malaysia and Indonesia. So if there was writing on stone, then they would have been writing on other materials as well.
And also certain kingdoms were centers for Buddhist studies. So surely they would have books for the to learn from. And also you have things like Chinese sources, I mentioned books being used, and also historically in this early Buddhist sculptures show figures holding books. So these are sort of evidence that show that the book tradition, manuscript tradition was going on for much longer than the present evidence shows.
And also when you look at the surviving manuscripts from the later periods, you know, the text containment them are already quite extensive and diverse, which indicates that it's already a very well developed literary tradition much earlier than that. That's all very interesting. Yeah. So I found the use of paper from the Netherlands and elsewhere interesting, especially the descriptions of the various watermarks on the paper.
Now were the watermarks used for dating the manuscripts you studied and how reliable did you find this method given the available watermark data at the time? Yes. So the majority of Malay manuscripts were copied on European paper, especially those from the Netherlands, Britain and Italy. So one characteristic of European paper is that they have watermarks.
So just to explain the watermark is a graphic design symbol used by the paper manufacturer as a sort of a form of trademark. And you can see watermarks, you hold the paper up against the light. And they can be in the form of a design or sometimes they have the name of the manufacturer and sometimes they have a date as well, some of the watermarks have dates. So if that's the date, then this can provide us with this date of manuscript would have been copied.
So for example, if it was a paper as a watermark of 1795, then we know it was copied after 1795, not earlier than that. And we also know that most manuscripts, most of the manuscripts were copied just a few years, three or four years after the paper was produced. So if we find a paper, a manuscript with the paper of watermarks, 1795, then we probably can assume that was copied, was produced, the manuscript was produced maybe between 1795 to 1800, say. So that's one thing.
And another method we can use to determine the date of the manuscript using watermark is to look at comparing with other manuscripts with the same watermark for which we know the date they were copied. For example, we find a particular watermark in Malay manuscript dating, we find one from 1864 and then we find the same watermark in another manuscript, 1873. Then we know that if you find another manuscript with the same watermark, which doesn't have a date, then we know it's roughly the same period, like the second half of the 19th century. So there's a few things we can use watermarks for to determine the date of a manuscript.
Right. Inks for that explanation. So within the Kedikalima divination tables and Saatlima divination tables, they appear to be similar symbols and equivalent associative properties. Could you tell us about the differences between the two forms and how they are used in divination?
Yes. So the Kedikalima, you can translate it into English as the five times and the Saatlima, which you can translate as the five moments, are both divination techniques that you can use to determine auspicious or inter-splicious times to carry out actions. So, and they're very similar to each other. So basically in these systems each day is divided into five time periods.
So these five time periods are morning, afternoon, afternoon and evening. And each time period in a day is presided over by a ruling power over watch. And these watches rotate their positions over a cycle of five days. Now, each watch also determines what would happen during that time period.
For example, whether if it's a good time for traveling, you know, if it's something got stolen, whether you get it back, if someone's sick, you know, what kind of medicine should give them. And in the Kedikalima method, the five times method, the watches, the time periods are Hindu gods, five Hindu gods, there's much water out of just Shiva, Kala, Sri, Brahma and Vishnu. And for example, the way you use it, for example, so the color associated with Brahma is red. So if, you know, all the longings are stolen during that time, the time of Brahma, then the people have red skin or red hair.
If someone's ill during that period, then they could be cured by red colored medicine. And if you are traveling during the time of Brahma, then, you know, we'll come across the fight or we see blood being still. So that's how it works. And it's hardly, you know, five moments.
It seems very similar. But now instead of Hindu gods, you have Islamic prophets and angels. We have Ahmed, with Mohammed, Abraham, Joseph, and two angels, Gabriel, and also Israel, the angel of death. But basically, otherwise they work basically the same way.
So you can sort of say that, you know, this is an adaptation of the political lemur system with Islamic figures. And you can sort of compare the counterparts, for example, Kala, God of death and Israel's the angel of death. So, you know, there's some associations there. Now my theory is that both of these systems come from a system of astrology known as planetary hours, which is used in Europe, Islamic world in India.
So whereby the 24 hours of the day's rule by 107 planets, so sat in Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Macri and Moon. You know, each planet in this planetary hour system affects human lives and activities during the time they're ruling over. So I think that the critical and the system and asylum systems derive from this astrological system. I see that's fascinating.
So next, let's discuss the links between traditional house building methods and how that relates to divination. For example, the counting of methods used to determine whether a house is of correct proportions in terms of whether it is auspicious or inauspicious. So in basic traditional Malithian architecture, there's a method used to determine whether a house is a new house is auspicious or not. And in this method, it's sort of a measure, you measure it.
So you have to measure the length of the outstretched arms of the, oh, no, the mistress of the house. So you take a string, let the person, you know, stretch the arms out and you measure that measurements using a piece of string. And then the string is then divided into three. You discard one third and keep it moving two thirds and then two thirds divided to eight and you discard seven eight and remaining.
And the remaining one eight is to use it to count off the length of the threshold. And you count this off using a list of eight animals of objects. So you have the naga, the mythical serpent again, has smoke, lion, dog, cow, donkey, elephant and crow. So basically, the animals objects with odd numbers are auspicious, but those even numbers are not.
So if you count the threshold using that remainder piece of string and you count and you end up with the lion, then the house is auspicious, but if you end up with the dog, then, you know, it's inauspicious, it's not auspicious at all. And basically, this technique has its roots within the Indian architectural tradition. So there are texts such as the vastu shastra or the shiopas shastra that provide, you know, various mathematical formulae to be used to determine whether building measurements or building is, you know, auspicious or not. And among them are similar calculations where, you know, use the remainder number, which is linked to an animal object to determine whether it's auspicious or inauspicious.
So basically, the traditional method, you know, using all these eight animals and objects basically is derived from this Indian tradition. Thanks for that helpful explanation. Now let's talk about the use of the Chris in divination, especially the pommel markings. Yeah, so the Chris is the type of dagger in South East Asia that is very, is probably the most esteemed weapon and is also taught to be very supernaturally powerful.
And so the Chris, certain attributes of the Chris are believed to indicate his luck. So one is the measurements, so you know, the measurements of the Chris. And also another one is sort of the Damasim patterns on the blade of the Chris. This is known as the pommel, these patterns, sometimes in the pommel.
And these are sort of this, if you look at the blade of the Chris, you can see, sort of these swirly patterns can find on the Chris, which is made from layering iron and nickel. And it's believed that certain patterns have certain meanings. So in some manuscripts, you find illustrations showing various designs that you can find on the pommel of the Chris. So, and they give the name of the, this pommel designs all have names and they'll have meanings.
And sometimes the manuscripts give you the meanings, but not always, unfortunately. So, so more research is needed on that. That's very fascinating. I'm sure that would be a very interesting area of further research.
So I found the discussion of the connections between the illustrated melee literary and emotional manuscripts. And those of magic and divination, fascinating. Could you share more about these connections with the listeners and aspects where the two types of manuscripts differ? There are some connections between these types of manuscripts, the literary manuscripts and the original manuscripts with magic and divination manuscripts in terms of the style of the paintings.
So basically in traditional melee painting, typically images or living beings in objects are very stylized. They're two dimensional, they don't show any background or landscape usually. And they also often show connections to other forms of art, like shadow puppets, theatre, shadow puppets, and also woodwork in terms of how they show the iconography and the style of the subject. For instance, you find in the two types of figures, there's the refined characters, like heroes and princesses, usually depicted sort of with slim waist and thin arms, they have narrow eyes, whereas you have coarse characters like demons and animals, they have sort of broad bodies and thick legs and bulging eyes, and you should have, you know, a mouth also wide open with teeth and fangs.
So we find similarities in ways in which how living beings and buildings are depicted across these manuscripts. But one major difference in terms of how manuscripts were used is that for literary and devotional texts, the works are generally quite linear. So basically you start reading it basically from the beginning and they carry on until the end, right? So but with manuscripts on magic and divination, they see these manuscripts are basically notebooks or was compiled by the user and the musician and the practitioner has basically actively selected texts from various sources into, compiled into this book.
And so basically you find no two copies of the match. I've never found two copies of magic and divination, which are the same. They're all completely different, all unique because they're all personalized to the user. And also because they're notebooks, they're references, so you don't read it from beginning to end, you know, the practitioner would, if they need something, they just open the relevant page and find what they need to be used.
And another difference also is that these manuscripts, magic and divination manuscripts, quite a lot of the divination techniques involves very active participation by the user. So basically it's diagrams, you don't just look at them, you actually use them. And also sometimes you end up using the whole manuscript as well, like certain divination techniques, you end up flipping over various pages trying to follow these instructions, trying to gain the prediction. So in that sense, you know, they use as tools as well as, you know, the actual equipment.
And finally, a major difference is that literary and devotional texts were often meant to be read aloud. So, you know, you read aloud, you know, maybe with a group of people in public. On the other hand, contents of magic and divination, they usually very closely guarded secrets. And, you know, they could only be used by those who were, you know, properly trained and properly initiated in this field, in these techniques.
Which is why, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes these diagrams don't have explanations on how they can be used, which, you know, implies, you know, this sort of knowledge on how to use the word transmitted orally to the, to the, to the student, to the practitioner. So those are basically the differences, the similarities and differences between these sort of genres of text and the demands, Chris. Thanks for the helpful explanation and summarizing. So in chapter seven, you discussed female magicians.
Could you tell us more about women's access to studying magic and, or divination and what roles they have played? So a woman could equally become a magician and they basically have the same skills and the same, and they were in the same area as the men. And although we know that women are also magicians, but it's actually quite rare to find text on magic and divination that we know explicitly that were written by women or owned by women. So, and this could be due to a number of reasons.
We're still unclear. Firstly, firstly, most of these magic and divination matters, they're anonymous. We don't know, actually know who compiled them or who owned them. So there may have been some women, we just don't know.
Another reason, maybe perhaps there used to be a lower literacy rate among women. So in fact, with my late text and manuscripts quite rare, quite unusual to find text written and owned by women in general. But although on the other hand, we don't know, we don't have actually much data about literacy rates prior to the 20th century in Malay society. And also we actually do have evidence of women reading and writing texts.
So, but these were members of the courts. So maybe one, the differences in literacy levels, you should probably attribute a repression of class rather than gender. And another reason could be due to perhaps the difference in how men and women learn magical knowledge. So it could be that women have less access to teachers and maybe they couldn't travel far or they couldn't afford to take time off to study for long period with teachers.
So maybe they relied less on written texts. So they focus more on, you know, oral supernatural means to learn around this magical knowledge. So although these are things, we still need a lot of more research. We don't have enough data for the moment to understand why there's not many texts or magic in the nation that we know are connected to women.
Well, it sounds like this area of text connected to women is another interesting area of research. Yes, definitely. Lastly, what projects are you working on at the moment? Yes, since the book came out, I've been delving deeper into some of the specific magical designs and divinatory techniques that I talked about in my book.
For example, I've since published articles on the Ketikalima specifically, and also on kilograms, characters of lions that I mentioned earlier. And also, I also recently been working on a paper on this group of charismatic symbols known as the Seven Seals of Solomon, which is a group of symbols which was found in many parts of the time it was in the south east Asia. And, you know, they wanted the designs used on the, you know, as mentioned, the illustrations of the pommel on the crits. So they were one of the charismatic designs found in the manuscript illustrations of that on the crits.
More in the long term, what I quite like to do is to see how to share this knowledge beyond just the academic circle, so in doing more sort of public engagement. So I'm thinking maybe writing and, you know, explore other forms of writing, like maybe writing novels or comics or other types of media. Just to make, you know, all this information more accessible to the general public. So that's my hope for the future.
Well, it all sounds very interesting. And thank you very much for coming on the podcast. My pleasure. Thank you very much for inviting me again.