Lemas Semangat (with annotations)- Chapter Two: tuhan//hantu
Previously published (put together by the amazing guest editors and friends, Cher Tan and Nina Chabra) in Portside Review's #6 Rocking the Boat in 2022 with other brilliant pieces.
Preface:
Recently I’ve created a video work, developed from this essay. I’ve decided to release this piece (in three chapters over the next few weeks) here with updated annotations. You can find Chapter One: mulut ke mulut here
Chapter two: tuhan//hantu
The word semangat, which is often mistranslated as a soul of a living thing, seems to have no fitting English equivalent to truly describe or capture its polymorphous qualities. A soul, yes, but it’s also a kind of energy, a life source, a force that can strengthen when multiplied, or weaken in despair. It is a traditional Malay belief, one which has been lost to or replaced by Islam, that semangat is the size of a human thumb, appearing as a miniature version of the body that acts as a sarung (or casing), in which it inhabits*, It was believed that at the time of death, semangat usually passes into another living being. As such, hantu, which is Malay for ghosts or spirits, are believed to be bodiless semangat that linger – trapped in their forms searching for places to inhabit, searching for homes.
*There are some malay words that are truly non-translatable, almost too adaptable in its usage and expansive in its meaning to be distilled to a single English word. In this chapter I touched briefly on these two words, semangat and dolat. There are observable symmetries in tracing the lifecycles of keramats to tracking the etymologies of these words as I attempt to translate both their origins and departures from our consciousness. This definition of semangat as a miniature copy of the prototypical corpus was taken from James Hastings’s Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (Part 15) and I had never, before coming across this translation, heard of semangat described in this manner. Lifted entirely from Wikipedia’s Ghosts in Malay Culture, (defined by a white person, no less hurhur), is this translation considered inaccurate or false? Maybe…But accuracy is never the endgame.
In Yoke-Sum Wong’s Bedbugs and Grasshoppers: Translation, Myth and the Becoming of the Nation-State, describes translation as an allegorical act ‘– that is, when referring to the Greek roots of allos (other) and agoreuien (to speak), translation as allegory is letting the other speak. Translation is where the other erupts….My interest in translation is what it does when it is carried out – what it exposes as well as conceals, how it confuses and much as it clarifies, the effects of the translating process, and what it leaves behind”.
There is semangat in all living beings: trees, rocks, and even the sea**. If the force is powerful, it attracts other living beings and pulsates in a sort of collective dreaming that protects, guides, and gives in abundance in exchange for gratitude and devotion. In exchange for perpetuity in existence.
**In 2021, using a hot-seating method, I ‘interviewed’ a fictional character I created to explore notions (and consequences) of displacement. The character Madam Salmah came from two distinctive reference points; an oral history interview of Osman bin Awang talking about propitiation rites practised by his grandfather when building a new dock at sea and a mother and cabaret dancer Pinkie, from A Samad Said’s auto fiction (and imo a seminal body of work about independence and modernity) Lantai T. Pinkie.
In that hot-seat session, Tysha Khan, my brilliant corroborator mentioned semangat many times. When asked what were her husband’s propitiation rites for, Madam Salmah struggled to an explanation before saying…. “The Malay believes that every living thing has a semangat….The trees has semangat…The sea, its semangat is very strong….So before we build anything we must seek permission right?”. In the same work, my first visual translation of semangat was emerged from a mask of white plastic flowers and the same red cloth I had used in other works and performances. Why this you ask? Much like what Yoke-Sum Wong mentioned earlier, this image erupted in my mind though still far from being precise though close enough. This image appears again in the video version of lemas semangat. This time, the masks are moulded from my own face and yet still with that same red cloth, a sarung or casing of what I believe to contain a semangat of all these stories I’ve collected over the years, translated and retold in my own words and ways.
It was your force that brought us here to your shores and it is this same force now that is splintered, across the present, inhabiting these shrines, keramats, and other sacred beings, into myths that carries with it the same pulse; to protect, guide, and give even though our dreams may not be the same and we may not be as deserving.
Perhaps one can speculate that the Singapore Stone*** – marked by indecipherable writings – was the earliest known keramat. Described as a rude mass, with rude writings and decorated with flags and offerings, it was blown to pieces to clear and widen the passageway at the Singapore River mouth to make space for 'Fort Fullerton and the quarters of its commander.'1 Making space, for those in power. This is probably the first known destruction of a keramat too, carried out with no remorse, no fear and no heartbreak, shaping the conditions for future destruction of sacred sites.
***I found out much later in my research that Bengal sailors who were under the employment of Captain Flint went against colonial orders to destroy the Singapore Stone because they were afraid to do so…Maybe because they too could sense its semangat and felt that did not have the permission to carry it out. Here’s an excerpt taken from the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (1848):
You remember the situation of it [the sandstone slab] on the rocky point on the south [sic: southeast] side of the entrance of the Singapore Creek. That point was covered with forest trees and jungle in 1819, and the stone was brought to notice by some Bengal clashees who were employed by Capt. Flint, R.N. (the first Master Attendant); the men on discovering the inscription were very much frightened, and could not be induced to go on with the clearing, which, if I recollect right, was completed by Chinese under the stimulus of high wages.2
But there's always dolat****, some cosmic consequence that is deserving of such an act. It is said that once the stone was destroyed, the river became choked with silt. But dolat is never enough of a deterrence. The silted mouth of the river did not stop other ships from coming into the port; it is but only the last fighting breath. Accounts of toppling bulldozers3 that would not start, or the tree4 that bleeds when it is being cut…these have become synonymous with the strong magic of these sites and the beings that inhabit them. One can't help but wonder what other dolat early migrants and settlers may have encountered when they began to make space on this island?
****Dolat, much like semangat resists a razor sharp translation. In fact, the use of dolat to describe the supernatural occurrences of these sacred sites when faced with threats of demolition/destruction, is how I chose to revive the word. Dolat is derived from Daulat usually attached to someone in power, (almost always a king) to denote sovereignty, having the power over land as their rightful leader. It also can be translated as supreme power, something divine and beyond worldly limitations as though there will be cosmic consequences to those who disobey their king. It’s only later that daulat manifested into dolat, used colloquially as a language of reprimand, usually by parents to children, for their stubbornness and disobedience. Dolat is not used as often these days, and I truly feel that the word as much as the power it held have grown weak from its lack of collective use (and belief).
The worship of earth gods is a common ancient practice amongst Chinese communities and when land is used in some way, for example to build upon, or to plant, or mine, an altar, mostly in the form of a humble shrine, or even just a pile of stones, is set up on the site so that the local earth god may be prayed to for permission5*****, seeking the god’s blessing to exploit the land and for protection. The Datuk Gong, a syncretic Rock Star God, sits as guardians and protectors across the Southeast Asian region. Here in Singapore, and in Malaysia and Indonesia, this notion was conceived from various beliefs; merging of the Chinese earth deity, Tu Di Gong, together with keramat worship of Datuks, and mortal humans who either have a high standing in society or possess special attributes such as being a medium to spirit realms. One too may place a Datuk Gong outside their houses in the hopes for luck and protection, but is told to never at all costs, invite them in.
(*****Much like the fictional hot-seating session in which permission was felt to be necessary when “using” the land or sea in some way, this appears again in reference to the Tu Di Gong or the Toa Pekong. As I am writing this, I realised that these words (semangat, dolat and Tu Di Gong) were introduced to me pretty early in my life. My next door neighbour had a Toa Pekong shrine outside of their house and every morning without fail, he’d light joss sticks and pray outwards to the open window of the block, before placing it into the bowl of the shrine. I remember this vividly because on one instance, I had ran up to him and poke his belly button. My mother pulled me back into the house and in the hallway, in whispered screams, warned me not to do that again. Nanti datok dia marah. Being a sickly child and frequent to illness, I was said to possess a lemah (weak) semangat and was always made to drink holy water to strengthen it. Dolat was used often, up till my teens, each time I was up to some mischief and suffered the consequences. And I think about other words like hantu (ghost) and tuhan (god) (and their interchangeability), their slippages in both meanings and uses, how these words are imbue with the same kind of divine source spilling in and out of us, through time and space, distilled in sound into air and then nothing.)
Thank you for reading my loves. Till next time. <3
Crawfurd, John (1967). Journal of an Embassy from the Governor-General of India to the Courts of Siam and Cochin China; Exhibiting a View of the Actual State of Those Kingdoms. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. pp. 45–46.
Bonny Tan, Marsita Omar, ‘Keramat Habib Noh’, 19 August 2016, https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_1573_2009-09-25.html; ‘God Tree in Toa Payoh, Singapore’, 24 June 2019, https://thoughtmoments.me/2019/06/24/god-tree-in-toa-payoh-singapore/
The Last Rubber Tree’, 17 April 2014, https://thelongnwindingroad.wordpress.com/2014/04/17/the-last-rubber-tree/; ‘Last Post Standing’, 16 July 2012, https://thelongnwindingroad.wordpress.com/2012/07/16/last-post-standing/
Zheng Z.M. [郑志明] (2004) ‘Kejia Shehui Dabogong Xinyang Zai Dongnanya de Fazhan’, [‘客家社会大伯公信仰在东南亚的发展’ ‘Development of Grand Uncle belief of Hakka communities of Southeast Asia’], Quanzhou: Huaoqiao Daxue Xuebao – Ke Xue Shi Hui Ke Xue Ban [泉州: 华侨大学学报 – 哲学社会科学版 Journal of Huaqiao University – Philosophy & Social Sciences], 1: 64-7