ABSTRACT
The conception of culture in this book is implicit in its table of contents. Broadly it is regarded as a body of ideas, practices and techniques that have been cherished by the Malays long enough to affect their way of life, a legacy that gives them heart and interests and saves their minds from inanition as food saves their bodies. Malay culture includes a fear of nature spirits, an instinctive perception of the “unbecoming” rather than of the sinful and the criminal, the seance of the shaman, the Hindu ritual of a royal installation, the celebration of the Muhammadan New Year, the sermon in the mosque, the pilgrimage to Mecca, Sufi mysticism, the Hamlet of the Malay opera, the curry, football, the cinema and the mistranslations of the vernacular press. It includes, indeed, much more, but compared with the (comparatively few) great cultures of the world it has been derivative, owing ideas and practices to prehistoric influences of central Asia, to the kingship and architecture of Assyria and Babylon, to bronze-workers and weavers from Indo-China, to the religions and arts and literature of India, to the religion and literature of Persia and Arabia, to the material civilisations of Portugal, Holland and Great Britain and to the remote but compelling fantasies of Hollywood. Many of the more primitive beliefs of the Malay survive to-day only in sequestered hamlets or in the customs of such backward tribes as the Torajas of Celebes or the Igorots of Luzon. Many are mere survivals in culture like our avoidance of ladders or our dislike of spilling salt or having thirteen at a table.
