WARISAN PERUBATAN TRADISIONAL DALAM SENI SILAT DI KELANTAN, MALAYSIA

AbstrakSilat merupakan seni mempertahankan diri yang terkenal dalam kalangan masyarakat Melayu dan tersebar luas di Nusantara. Namun, tidak semua dalam kalangan masyarakat mengetahui tentang adanya proses perubatan secara tradisional di dalam persilatan dan kedua-duanya amat memerlukan antara satu sama lain. Dalam erti kata lain, perubatan tradisional dalam seni silat telah bergerak seiring dengan pembelajaran ilmu silat dan berfungsi sebagai ikhtiar untuk menyembuhkan pelbagai jenis penyakit. Aktiviti perubatan tradisional di dalam persilatan ini juga masih lagi diamalkan di Kelantan, yang juga terkenal dengan ritual perubatan melalui seni persembahan seperti Main Puteri dan Mak Yong. Walau bagaimanapun proses perubatan dalam seni silat yang dikaji berbeza dengan Main Puteri dan Mak Yong di mana ia tidak dipertontonkan di hadapan khalayak ramai. Mengungkap secara lebih mendalam mengenai perubatan dalam seni silat, pengkaji akan menerangkan objektif kajian ini iaitu apakah jenis penyakit yang dialami oleh pesakit dan bagaimana proses perubatan dilakukan oleh gurulatih. Di samping itu, pengkaji telah menjalankan kaedah pemerhatian serta pemerhatian secara ikut serta dan menemubual beberapa orang gurulatih seni silat itu sendiri. AbstractSilat is an art of self-defense that is well known among the Malay community and is widespread throughout the Malay Archipelago. However, the society might not be aware that in silat there is a practice of traditional healing and both need one another. In other words, traditional healing in silat have been moving along with the learning aspect of the martial art and serves as an effort to cure several illnesses suffered by a patient. Silat healing activities are still being practiced in Kelantan, which is known for its traditional healing rituals through the performance of Main Teri and Mak Yong. The healing process in the Seni Silat Pusaka Gayong Malaysia, Kelantan branch is different from Main Teri and Mak Yong and can’t be shown to the public. In looking deeper into the healing process in silat, the researcher analyses the objectives of this study which covered the types of illnesses experienced by patients and how healing processes were done by the ‘gurulatih’. The research was conducted using the participant-observation method and interviews with a few silat ‘gurulatih’

“Take dragon’s blood and crush it to a fine powder”: recipes in the alchemical composite manuscript MS Gotha orient A. 1162

In the Middle Ages, the recipe was of central importance for the safeguarding and transmission of knowledge. This holds true for the scientific traditions of both the East and the West. Recipes have been transmitted in a multitude of manuscripts, either alone or in combination with other recipes and works. This article presents a collection of recipes for the production of inks that have been handed down in an alchemical collective manuscript. The collection also contains a recipe to ward off the pestilence. This combination of alchemy, healing rituals and ink production is more common than one might think. The question arises whether this is due to pure coincidence or whether such collections reflect a literary tradition?

Goddess Worship and Bhakti

The worship of goddesses has been a vital part of Hinduism for centuries. There are innumerable goddesses whose worship encompasses a wide range of perspectives and practices that vary by language, region, tradition, and context. Some goddesses’ stories and iconography are pan-Indian, such as the supreme Devī in the 6th-century Devī-Māhātmya, while other goddesses’ devotional arenas are regional or limited to a particular locale. Bhakti is generally defined as devotion to a personal deity, including a goddess, expressed in praise texts in Sanskrit and in devotional songs and poetry in vernacular languages. Some goddesses are part of devotional traditions within a Brahmanical socioreligious order and temple orthodoxy in which rituals are performed by a priest; others are part of bhakti movements that resist religious and social norms. Śāktism is, in brief, the worship of the fundamental cosmic power, śakti, conceived of as the Goddess, supreme deity, and ultimate reality, whereas in Śaivism and Vaiṣṇavism the goddess is worshiped as the śakti of the male gods Śiva and Viṣṇu. The goddess is also equated with prakṛti, the material foundation of creation, so Śāktism centers on the sacredness and reality of the material world. Kathleen Erndl notes that although Śāktism pervades Hindu worship, it is more difficult to define than either Śaivism or Vaiṣṇavism (Erndl 2004, cited in General and Historical Overviews, “Śākta,” p. 140). In some Śākta traditions bhakti is the primary mode of attention to the goddess. Contemporary devotees may consider the goddess as transcendent and/or immanent; as ultimate reality and/or intimate Mother. Goddesses are worshiped in iconographic forms, such as images in temples and home shrines, natural sites in the landscape such as rivers or mountains, aniconic forms such as a stone under a tree, or the center of the human heart. Regular or occasional worship practices may be directed to a personal goddess, lineage deity, village protector, or goddesses with particular areas of power, and range from devotion to propitiation, divination, and healing. Rituals may be performed by priests or other specialists, but many are performed by devotees themselves, who may make a vow (Sanskrit vrata) to perform particular rites in exchange for desired goals; these rites include fasting, making particular offerings, body piercing, sacrificing an animal, possession, and going on pilgrimage. In Śākta tantra, the goddess may be worshiped in yantras or sacred diagrams and in mantras or sacred syllables, and women manifest the goddess in ritual contexts. Through esoteric yogic and ritual techniques the practitioner accesses the correspondences between the microcosm of the human body and the macrocosm of the universe to realize the fundamental identity with the goddess in order to achieve powers and ultimate liberation. This article focuses on worship and bhakti practices directed toward goddesses; for broader treatments of these topics, see the separate Oxford Bibliographies Online articles Bhakti, Goddess, and Shaktism. For the worship of goddesses with the gods Shiva and Vishnu, see Shiva and Viṣṇu.

Makna Upacara Balian dalam Ritual Pengobatan Tradisional Suku Paser Kabupaten Paser

This study describes the balian ceremony in the form of a ritual that is carried out as a traditional treatment in the Paser tribe, Paser district, East Kalimantan. This is motivated by the belief of the Paser people who still maintain healing rituals with the balian ceremony because of hereditary and entrenched beliefs, considerations of alternative medicine, perceptions and views of life. This study aims to uncover 3 important focuses, namely: the form of the balian ceremony procession, the meaning of the balian ceremony for the Paser tribal community, and the function of the balian ceremony. The research method used in this study is qualitative with an ethnographic approach. This study uses data collection techniques in the form of observation, in-depth interviews, and documentation with primary data sources and secondary data sources. The results showed that the form of the balian ceremony procession consists of three stages, the first is the preparation stage, namely the organizer prepares the equipment and coordinates with the parties involved in the balian ceremony. Second, the core activity stage is a mulung dancing along with reciting healing spells. Third, the closing stage is mulung awareness, wiping water, and returning ceremonial equipment. The meaning of the Balian ceremony is the struggle for life, harmony, welfare, safety, good morals, and opening of sustenance, the meaning of asking for protection, remembering God, and remembering the nature of life. The function of the balian ceremony is an effort to heal patients, as a medium of public entertainment, as a medium for connecting the Paser tribal community to the spirits of their ancestors. Penelitian ini mendeskripsikan upacara balian berupa ritual yang dilaksanakan sebagai pengobatan tradisional pada suku Paser kabupaten Paser Kalimantan Timur. Hal ini dilatarbelakangi kepercayaan masyarakat Paser yang tetap mempertahankan ritual penyembuhan dengan upacara balian karena kepercayaan turun-temurun dan membudaya, pertimbangan pengobatan alternatif, persepsi dan pandangan hidup. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menguak menguak 3 fokus penting yakni: bentuk prosesi upacara balian, makna upacara balian bagi masyarakat suku Paser, dan fungsi upacara balian. Metode penelitian yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah kualitatif dengan pendekatan etnografi. Penelitian ini menggunakan teknik pengumpulan data berupa observasi, wawancara mendalam, dan dokumentasi dengan sumber data primer dan sumber data sekunder. Hasil penelitian diketahui bahwa bentuk prosesi upacara balian terdiri dari tiga tahap, Pertama tahap persiapan yaitu penyelenggara mempersiapkan perlengkapan dan berkoordinasi dengan pihak yang terlibat pada upacara balian. Kedua, tahap kegiatan inti yaitu seorang mulung menari bersamaan dengan pembacaan mantra penyembuhan. Ketiga, tahap penutup yaitu penyadaran mulung, pengusapan air ,dan pengembalian peralatan upacara. Makna dari dilaksanakannya upacara balian adalah perjuangan hidup, keharmonisan, kesejahteraan, , keselamatan, moral baik,dan pembuka rezeki, makna memohon perlindungan, mengingat tuhan, dan mengingat alam kehidupan. Fungsi upacara balian adalah upaya penyembuhan pasien, sebagai media hiburan masyarakat, sebagai media penghubung masyarakat suku Paser terhadap roh leluhurnya.

Decolonizing moral injury studies and treatment approaches: An Africentric perspective

This article draws from an Africentric perspective to engage the ways in which the notion of moral injury is approached within psychology. The paper argues for the need to interrogate dominant Eurocentric approaches to moral injury and calls for more openness towards non-Western belief systems. The paper attempts to show how rituals that are perceived in the African context to be healing and transformative continue to be absent in the mainstream psychology literature and theorization. For this reason, there is a call for the centring of Indigenous healing rituals if the discipline is to make a positive and inclusive contribution in the scholarship of moral injury. The article is significant given its potential to contribute to the body of knowledge on the importance of centering African perspectives when engaging the notion of moral injury.

Hope for Cure and the Placebo Effect: The Case of the Greco-Egyptian Iatromagical Formularies

The present paper focuses on healing rituals from Greco-Roman Egypt, where medicine and religion were inextricably linked to each other and further connected to the art of magic. In Pharaonic Egypt, healing magic was especially attributed to the priests who served a fearsome goddess named Sekhmet; although Sekhmet was associated with war and retribution, she was also believed to be able to avert plague and cure disease. It then comes as no surprise that the majority of healing spells or other types of iatromagical papyri dating from the Roman period are written in Demotic, following a long tradition of ancient Egyptian curative magic. The extant healing rituals written in Greek also show substantial Egyptian influence in both methodological structure and motifs, thus confirming the widely accepted assumption that many features of Greco-Egyptian magic were actually inherited from their ancient antecedents. What is particularly interesting about these texts is that, in many cases, they contain magical rites combined with basic elements of real medical treatment. Obviously, magic was not simply expected to serve as a substitute for medical cure, but was rather seen as a complementary treatment in order to balance the effect of fear, on the one hand, and the flame of hope, on the other.

Deciphering etymologically unknown names of musical instruments of Siberia and Russian Far East

This study presents etymological deciphering using ancient Japanese ways of reading ancient Chinese scripts of the names for the five types of stringed instruments, known as komuz, tatonpa, sugut, tambur, and tonkori. Based on the phonetic variants of the term komuz written in Roman and Russian alphabets and Chinese scripts, two hypothetical forms *qonbulrsukie and *qonbulrsir were reconstructed: qon ‘sheep’, bulr ‘tendon’, sukie ‘string’, sir ‘string’. As to the form tatonpa, the ancient form *siudonbule {siu ‘boar’ + don ‘gut’ + bule ‘tendon-fiber’} was revealed. The hypothetical form *siugudi {siu ‘boar’ + gudi ‘gut’} was reconstructed from the phonetic variants of the name sugut, written in Chinese scripts. The hypothetical form *donbule {don ‘gut’ + bule ‘tendon-fiber’} was reconstructed from the phonetic variants of the name tambur written in Chinese scripts. An Ainu word tonkori consists of Altaic root-forms don ‘gut’ and kur ‘string-instrument’, followed by an Ainu suffix {i} ‘that’. We have proved that, except for the Ainu suffix {i}, all the root forms linguistically belong to Altaic lan- guages. Not a few ethnographers dealt with the etymological analysis of instrument names encountered in Siberia and the Russian Far East, mainly taking into account the context of shamanism. It is known that shamans used the instruments as tools in healing rituals. However, contrary to our expectations, the reconstructed root forms of the names revealed practical aspects of daily life.

Patriarchal Primitivism. Dying Peasant Women and the Soviet Anti-Developmental Turn

This article investigates the role played by images of the female peasantry in the late Soviet intelligentsia’s questioning of developmental modernism. From the mid-1960s, Soviet culture was replete with mournful female peasants. Painter Viktor Popkov pioneered this trope in visual art with a series of canvases that portrayed old peasant women as wizened saints. Subsequent works, including Larisa Shepitko and Elem Klimov’s 1981 film Farewell (based on Valentin Rasputin’s novel Farewell to Matyora), adopted Popkov’s techniques to more directly question the legacy of Soviet development. The article uses such images to examine what I call “patriarchal primitivism” as a common response to crises of modernity among imperial powers. It frames cultural nostalgia for an essentialized past as an attempt to resolve what the anthropologist Ernesto De Martino termed the “crisis of presence” in his studies of mourning and healing rituals in southern Italy. In the Soviet case, depictions of peasant women served to raise environmental consciousness while fueling a conservative nationalism that relegated women to subordinate roles. As in African colonial contexts, their posture of opposition was not only tolerated but cultivated by a state seeking to renew its claim to legitimacy as the authentic voice of the people.