V

The Social World of the Straits Chinese

by Hugh M. Lewis

The center of Baba and Peranakan culture must be found somewhere along a continuum of possibilities between what it has meant to be traditionally Chinese, on one hand, and traditional Malay or Indonesian on the other; between being a sub-cultural and inter-ethnic orientation barely distinguishable in its basic components from the dominant cultures in which it was born and became situated, and being its own, fully grown Creole culture with its own distinctive orientation to the world; its own basic patterning of cultural sanctions, views and values, and characteristics of personality which are enculturated and transmitted with each subsequent generation.

There is another corresponding continuum of language in which the speech of the Babas and Peranakans lies along a continuum between spoken Amoy Hokkien, on one hand, and vernacular Malay, on the other, as well as between Chinese/Malay and English. Baba and Peranakan culture has also existed along a continuum of traditional versus modern, as well as along a continuum of urban versus rural. In all, we can distinguish these basic dimensions which intersect somewhere in the center that we would define as the locus of Baba/peranakan culture.

If we can refer to the social construction of reality, in which processes of externalization, objectification, reification, subjectification and internalization are, in that order, dialectically interdependent and convergent in the critical moment of social reproduction and transmission, attendant especially upon the processes of primary and secondary socialization and discourse, we can also talk about an antithetical "psychological reconstruction of reality" which, from an historical point of view, becomes somewhat independent and primary in the ongoing patterning and processes of cultural development and social history. Once internalized in the form of such cognitive models, psycho-cultural orientations become in a sense "naturalized", "habitualized", "subconscious" and also, most importantly, self-fulfilling in rebounding back upon the social processes which led to their original constitution and constraint in the first place.

There is a sense in which ethos and ethnos represents an internalized frame of mind of the participant, and that though there is a wide range of divergence and variability between individuals, there is also some form of convergence upon common ground in core values, cognitive and normative orientations and collective symbolic representations upon which a consensus of shared ethnos is based.

To a great extent, a person's attitudes and outlook is a function of that person's social and structural positionality and situational context within this continuum, as well as a function of that person's capacity to negotiate and intermediate between alternative positions--people commonly adopt and internalize status symbolisms which reflect not so much the reality of their status positionality within a society, but the ideal direction and expression of where that person ideally wants to be, as well as where that person may somewhat fictitiously believe him/herself to be. But cognitive orientation and positionality also become dialectical in the articulation of social action and historical happenstance--to a large extent, given the appropriate circumstances, such values and orientations do become 'self-fulfilling,' albeit in ways that most participants may not anticipate.

Furthermore, in entertaining the possibility of a variety of alternative positions within the cultural continuum, some of which may be mutually incompatible or contradictory, the ability to negotiate new positions and intermediate between them is a function of a person's past experience in doing so, as well as a function of that person's capacity to effectively mediate the boundaries between different positions, status-identities, roles, and internalized states of being. Past experience with diversity results in an openness to new varieties of experience, whereas an 'introverted' orientation to one or a few positions results in decreased capacity to integrate or deal effectively with a wide range of plurality. Furthermore, the ability to negotiate boundaries demands the mastery of certain social skills--the ability to linguistically, emotively, cognitively and behaviorally code-switch and code-mix; the ability to function along a number of parallel continuums of cognitive orientation, and to adopt the "other's" point of view.

In this sense we must see psycho-cultural identity as a function of a kind of "cognitive pluralism" in which an individual is able to maintain a number of different cognitive orientations in relation to one another within a single universe of experience, and we may properly refer to an "ethno-psychology" of social experience. There is a suggestion for a weak form of the linguistic relativity hypothesis in that code-switching between Malay, English and Hokkien requires the adoption of different conceptual codes and cognitive orientations which have different foci, different dimensions of significance and salience, and which exclude some elements that are central in other cognitive orientations.

Though the basic cognitive structure may remain the same in each of the cases, the "cognitive style" of orientation and operation between orientations may be quite different, and even contradictory. Furthermore, the internalization of code-switching/mixing in complex social situations to accommodate for diversity acquires a mode of social functioning that becomes habitual and automatic, based on a wide latitude of "native speaker/hearer intuition" which must not only fill in the many gaps, but cross-over the many switching points.

There is in this sense that such a complex, heterogeneous orientation, is based upon a kind of minimal structure, like a pidgin or creole, which is in many of its features reduced in the amount of constraint or redundancy it requires. Code-switching/mixing discourse must have a structure which is open to many variables and quite flexible in its applicability. And what is true on a linguistic level, is reflective and representative of a deeper symbolic and culturally encoded level of cognition and experience--people are not only switching and mixing codes in a quasi-regular but informal way on a linguistic level, but also upon meta-lingusitic and cultural levels as well.

Language, religious orientation in both values and world-view, and ethnic identity are all interrelated in certain important ways. Language comes to reflect our symbolic universe of understanding, and our language becomes a primary vehicle for the expression and realization of such symbolic understanding. Who we are and what we are become defined by the words we use, and the words we use become framed within the compass of our social knowledge and the kind of social understandings with which we approach the world. Ethnicity and ethnic consciousness; are a kind of relative psycho-social identity that falls somewhere within the dialectic between the spoken and textual realities of the lanuage we use, and the social and symbolic contexts of relation in which we use that language.

The problematic understanding of Ethnoculture comes to rest upon the nexus of relations between language, religious beliefs and values, and ethnic identity. Language has a tremendous internal consistency and order. It has its own separate sense of history, change and directionality of development. Religious orientation is also a kind of living, performed symbolic system. It has a traditional momentum which, through processes of socialization, shape and reshape human character and culture in a constraining and conservative way. Ethnicity, and ethnic stereotypes, reemerges time and again with amazing persistence in spite of the social processes and historical forces which always threaten to disintegrate them, despite ideological prejudices which seek always to deny them, stigmatize or euphemize them, or even efface or eradicate them.

Baba Malay

One of the most visible aspects of any society is the language. "Even more striking than Malay physical appearance is the Baba's general Malay behavior: hence they not only look like Malays, but they walk, gesticulate, shake hands, eat, chew betel, sit, squat, expectorate, defecate, laugh and talk like Malays." (L. A. P. Gosling;,1964:pg. 212)

Malay, particularly the bazar or "pasar" Malay, has been the primary lingua franca, or "business language" of the Malay peninsula and Indonesia between the many different ethnic groups. Before the coming of the British, Dutch and Japanese, each of whom promoted their own language curriculum, Malay was the preferred language of choice in doing business with other people outside of one's own community. It is therefore reasonable to expect that this language, as a primary index of acculturation and assimilation, should be spoken by any community which has achieved some degree of successful adaptation and accommodation within the larger Malay social world. Tan Che-Beng, in his study of the "rural Chinese" of Kelantan, notes.

Part of the reason for this assimilation has been the proximity and convenience of Malay schools and the lack of availability of Chinese or English-medium schools. But linguistic acculturation is also a normal and expected aspect of accommodation to a host society--children acquire the socially predominant language quite naturally through indirect means, whether it is spoken in the home as a primary language or not.

The early article by Chia Cheng Sit ("The Language of the Babas" in "The Straits Chinese Magazine" Vol. II, 1898) notes that though in religion, manners, customs and though the Babas remain Chinese, for the most part they speak Baba Malay with little Chinese infusion, except for the Penang Babas. The article claims that the Baba speaks a "patois" of Malay adulterated with many borrowed idioms and words. The grammar is greatly reduced, dropping the many particles of proper Malay speech, and, similar to Chinese, without prefixation or affixation and with the syntactical significance of words defined by their relative positioning. In somewhat condescending manner, Chia notes that the patois was sufficient for everyday business and practical matters, though insufficient for the expression of ideas on social, ethical and philosophical subjects.

A more informed linguistic analysis by Sonny Lim (1982 Baba Malay: The Language of the Straits Born Chinese Master's Thesis, Australia: Monash University), comparing Baba Malay to Pasar Malay Chitty and Portuguese Malay, places it along a continuum bridging the gap between Baba Malay and Standard Malay. Baba Malay is primarily used intra-communally--i.e., spoken between themselves. It is defined situationally by a number of elements, including accommodation, and is variably mixed with English and Chinese. Literacy and illiteracy has been an important factor in the history of the language. "The Rising Star" was an awkward Baba attempt at standard Malay. The rise of Baba Malay as a lingua franca in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries reflected the economic importance of the Chinese. It represented the growth of a pidginized Malay to a Creole Malay featuring a syntactic reduction and simplification. Thus Baba Malay is a special creolized form of the wider form of Bazaar Malay, arising from the latter as an early pidgin or pidginized variety.

According to Lim's analysis, Baba Malay has a reduced topic-comment structure featuring the "Punya" article meaning literally to "possess" and is semantically related to the Hokkien form "e". This particle has three functions, as a possessive marker, as a marker of temporal and locative modifiers and as a relativizer, all of which correspond exactly to the Hokkien word "e" but which are foreign to standard Malay. Similarly the particle "kasi" or "to give" is related to the Hokkien "ho" and has the same functions of benefactive, causative-benefactive, causative and passive marker. Also "kena" corresponds almost exactly to the Hokkien "tio?" with overlapping semantic fields. Similar particles include "Mau" (intention), "Pigi" (to go), "Nanti" (to wait) and the sentence final "la" which is originally a Hokkien form and which is an emphatic marker signaling "rapport, solidarity, familiarity and solidarity between speakers."

The word order of Baba Malay is Hokkien, in which noun phrases preceded by a marker will embed a sentence with an obligatory "punya" relativizer. Lim summarizes the admixture of Malay and Hokkien as strictly syntactic-semantic in nature--meanings and syntactic functions have been borrowed from Hokkien but not the forms, and mostly constitute direct substitutes for parallel and convergent Malay forms. Lexicon is mostly Malay with Hokkien elements borrowed which cover those Chinese aspects of Baba culture--kinship, marriage, religion, birth, death and some moral precepts. The pronomial system has also been modified by Hokkien.

"Baba Malay is essentially the Malay language pared down to the minimum, with the expected morphological and some syntactical features of Malay altered or missing, and with radically modified phonology" (Lim, 1982:p. 11) The sentence structure of Baba Malay reflects the pascification or topicalization, or a "topic-comment" structure of Standard Malay--in which information "is arranged such that the part of the information that is given, or the part that is already familiar, is placed at the front of the sentence (and thereby highlighting it as well)" (ibid., p. 116)

Robert Winzeler, in his study of the village-Chinese in Kelantan, notes that these communities never completely lost use of their Chinese dialects as the Baba and Peranakan communities of the Straits and Java had, but usually became bilingual or even trilingual. Code-switching and code-mixing is a common pattern in radically plural societies. In Penang, fused and independent bilinguals with competence in three or more languages are not unusual, but, on the contrary, are to be expected. Ann Pakir's linguistic study of the natural discourse patterns of members of a Baba community in Singapore reveals a pattern of code-switching between Malay, Hokkien and English in which speakers attempt to negotiate "a collective social identity" and accommodate to other speaker/hearers. I have observed extensively a similar pattern among Penang Chinese--many speakers being quite expert in code-switching/mixing between several different languages. Such linguistic skills seem to be acquired quite early and remain permanent part of speakers linguistic facility.

Several brief studies on "Baba Malay" are extant. There seems to be about as much linguistic variation across peranakan societies as anything else, and in general a "Peranakan" dialect can be said to rest along a continuum of creolization between mainly Hokkien, Malay or Indonesian, as well as a third or more languages, whether English, Dutch or another Chinese dialect or another regional language--for instance Siamese, or Dayak. It appears that the degree to which Chinese or Malay is the predominant language of discourse is a measure of the extent of acculturation of the particular peranakan community. But for the majority of Hokkien peranakans of Java and Malacca and Singapore, Malay appears to be the base language--"Baba Malay" is structurally and lexically the same as other vernacular dialects of Malay, with only a few phonological dialectical variations in the form of glottal stops, dipthongs, final alveolars and fricatives.

There are numerous Hokkien loan words, associated with Chinese-derived institutions, which has had otherwise relatively little effect on the phonological system (Anne Pakir, 1986) According to Pakir, Baba Malay stands as a unique dialect of Malay, in which the influence of Hokkien has been overestimated by other scholars. Hokkien borrowings are present in extent limited to certain semantic and cultural fields, including value judgments and emotive terms. Though other Malay dialects have incorporated Hokkien terms, the way that Baba Malay uses Hokkien is unique.

According to Tan Chee-Beng, Penang Hokkien is also unique due to its Baba cultural influence, by its incorporation of many Malay words. Baba Malay spoken in Penang is also held to be different from the variety spoken in Malacca and elsewhere because of the greater influence of Hokkien and English. The Hokkien of Kelantan that is spoken by the "village Chinese" is also dialectically distinct in intonational patterns, due to the alleged influence of Malay and Siamese.

Victor Purcell, in his book The Chinese in Malaya(1948), declares that Baba Malay is different from Malay in many important respects, and is "practically a different language". He states that a great many Malay words are unknown to the Babas, as well as the "more polished syntax of the Malay. They are ignorant of the words connected with the Mohammedan religion. Also they mispronounce many Malay words..." (pg. 294)

He goes on to state that the greatest divergence between Baba Malay and Malay is in its construction, in which the former follows the Chinese pattern in a reduced form. It is possible that the sources of data between Ann Pakir's analysis and that of Victor Purcell, or Rev. Shellabear's, are different, reflecting substantial areal variations in the pattern of the 'patois' as different speakers range along different parts of the continuum. If Purcell's interpretation is accurate, it would reflect speakers who are using Chinese as the basolect, and Malay as the mesolect. On the other hand, Pakir's source suggests just the reverse--Malay remains the base language only slightly modified by the superimposition of Hokkien lexicon.

It is evident that Purcell based part of his study on the earlier study made by Reverend W. G. Shellebear, published in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, (Vol. 65, 1913), which was reprinted as an appendix in John Clammer's work Straits Chinese Society(1980). Shellabear emphasizes the influence of the Chinese idiom, and the distinctiveness of Baba Malay from either the High Malay of the literature of the Malay peninsula, or the low Malay spoken in Indonesia. "It is true that the number of Chinese words which have become assimilated with this dialect is not very large, and that many words have been borrowed from English, Portuguese, Dutch and Tamil, and from other neighbouring tongues, but it is rightly called "Baba Malay", for it is largely the creation of the Baba Chinese, and is their mother tongue, so that it belongs to them in a sense that no other people can or do claim it as their own. " (ibid., pg. 156)

Tan Chee-Beng; takes a more restrictive definition of Baba Malay as that dialectic spoken by the Baba's of Malacca, that became the 'business dialect' of the three Straits Settlements--Penang, Malacca and Singapore. The Malay learned by members of each of these settlements was dialectically different--and the bazaar Malay, or "Melayu pasar" from which Baba Malay developed was a lingua franca for commerce.

Hokkien loan words are more salient in areas of customs, religion and kinship, for things related to the house, furniture, food, utensils, personal effects and other things. "In general it may be said that Chinese loanwords are used mostly for things and concepts which are of Chinese origin or which have no Malay equivalents." (Tan Chee-Beng,1980:156)

Maurice Freedman, who made an important study of the kin terms in Baba Malay, states that "in general, Malay words were used for junior relative and Hokkien-derived terms for senior. And this usage appears to correspond with that of the analogues of the Babas across the water in Java, the Peranakans, among whom both Malay and Javanese terms come into play for junior relatives."         ("Chinese Kinship and Marriage in Singapore," 1962)

Tan Chee Beng concludes by noting that "Linguistic acculturation does not necessarily mean that a people have to speak the same dialect or language of the "host" group. In fact, a new dialect may develop, giving the people a distinct dialect which also serves as a crucial symbol of ethnic identity..."(1980:165)

Language serves as one of the most important agents and vehicles social integration. In a plural context, it can be both a barrier and a facilitator to interethnic interactions. Racial, ethnic, and class differences are all reflected in linguistic differences, and linguistic difference is an important indicator of an individual's social status, orientation toward the larger social world, background, and ability to successfully interact in the world.

The contribution of a unique genre of Peranakan literature from Java is noteworthy--it is a genre of fictional novels, poems and plays which has not been well studied. The Baba's of Singapore made their own contribution to Peranakan literary development in the form of stories translated from the Chinese and English in Baba Malay, newspaper and journal articles, as well as a few original works in English. "Baba Malay literature continued to be printed in Singapore until about the Second World War." (Maurice Freedman,1962)

John Clammer points to several interrelated social factors in the relative paucity of this literature. Many Peranakans up until the turn of the century were basically illiterate. Furthermore, as an interstitial community, there was a fundamental ambivalence of cultural identity that precluded any such great literary florescence--even what language to primarily publish in Chinese, Baba Malay or English, remained a critical trilemma. Due to the basic ambiguity of their cultural identity "at the nexus of three civilizations" and their lack of any clear political culture, except that framed by the colonial administration, the Peranakans lacked the appropriate developmental or cultural context conducive to the cultivation of a refined literature. "The mutual reinforcement of socio-political-cultural and literary values of this kind was absent from Straits Chinese society at its outset. Indeed, what peranakan culture had to do was to find or create precisely such a nexus of interrelated influences.." (John Clammer,1980: 68)

Religious orientation has always been an important factor in the Southeast Asian setting, especially to the extent that religion becomes implicated in the mediation of cultural and ethnic boundaries. "Religion is one of the main mechanisms that defines and maintains ethnic boundaries in Southeast Asian societies." (John Clammer,1980: 45)

The negativity of the boundary to intermarriage and cultural assimilation which Islam has maintained, the fundamental incompatibility with basic Islamic values and Buddhist values, as well as basic differences between a Muslim cultural orientation and a traditional Chinese one, have all been pointed out as contributing to the maintenance of a separate Peranakan community. In this regard, religious conversion can be a mechanism of assimilation, just as religious orthodoxy can be a mechanism of boundary-maintenance.

A survey conducted in Malacca in 1976 (John Clammer, 1980) revealed that 70 percent of the Babas professed faith in the traditional Chinese Religious orientation. Twenty percent comprised a "no-religion/free thinker" category, eight percent were nominally Christian, and the remaining two percent "being members of minority religious movements." There were no Muslims. Of course, people who would have professed their faith in Islam would probably have become fully incorporated into the Malay community. One basic difference between the Peranakan communities of Java and the Baba communities of the Straits Settlements was the number of the former who were Muslim, in part constituting the basis of their peranakan identity. In L.A.P. Gosling's study of the assimilation and migration of rural Chinese of Trengganu, movement by Baba Chinese into the Malay community posed no real problem, as outwardly they were already very assimilated, genetically they were mixed. Because of their general social positioning at an attenuated and tenuous distance from their own Chinese cultural tradition, the geniality and general acceptance of the Baba's by the Malays, the rather simple process of conversion by professment of faith, the relaxed and secure pace of life among the Malays, all contributed to the pull of peranakans into the mainstream of the host society. "The major element in the loss of population was the increased assimilation of Babas into the Malay community.

Rates of assimilation between different religious communities vary--it is greater between Chinese and Christian, Hindu and especially for Theravada Buddhists, than it has been between Chinese and Muslims, or between any of the other faiths and Islam. Perhaps the most important difference is that in order for a Muslim to marry a person who is non-Muslim, then that partner must convert to the faith, even if only nominally. This alone creates a barrier around Islam such as does not exist for other religions. In this regard must also be noted the great degree of mutual tolerance, even respect, for the deities, temples and ritual practices of people of different faiths within the plural societies of Southeast Asia--people may be nominally one faith or another, and regular attend its ceremonies, and yet also frequently pay homage or attend ceremonies of other faiths. The degree of religious syncretism; commonly found in Southeast Asia is unusual in the World. In such religiously plural contexts, religiosity, holiness, spirituality and sacredness are common values recognized in the deities, icons, beliefs, and ritual practices of many different faiths. A local spirit, a kramat, or whether a deity that is in origin Hindu or Theravada Buddhist or Mahayana Buddhist or Taoist, is given the same degree of passing respect as any other.

The prevalence of new religious movements and minority religious cults, and their popularity in Malaysia, is another indication of the basically syncretic religious orientation to be found there. The only exception to this rule is the Mosque, which remains effectively closed off to outsiders participation or visitation. "Islam....has two leading characteristics which contrast with this--it is exclusivistic (as opposed to syncretic and eclectic), and it is closely tied to a particular social structure, so much so that in Malaysia the idea of a non-Muslim Malay is quite unthinkable." (John Clammer,1980:47)

Evidence of this syncretic orientation among the Peranakans is also available--part of what it means to become a good Malay and a good Moslem is in a sense to accept only one god, and to close the doors of one's imagination other possibilities. Traditional Chinese religious orientation can be defined by the "Conflation of the Three Teachings." Tan Giok-Lan, in her ethnography of the Perankan Sukabumi (1963, records an important peranakan religious organization --"Sam Kauw Hee"--one which is predominantly composed of peranakan Chinese families.
"Sam Kauw" means literally "Three Religions"--referring to Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. This organization was oriented towards the promotion traditional Chinese religious values. (Tan Giok-Lan 1963:158) A strong syncretic religious movement in Singapore, one of many organizations there, was called the "Red Swastika Society."

Baba religious orientation shares with other Chinese religious orientations its tolerance and syncretism, often under the same roof, of many, competing, often Non-Chinese religious orientations. Babas observe, but in general do not adhere as strictly to, the Chinese festival calendar, and they also regularly participate in other traditional magico-religious systems, such as temple worship, ancestor worship, consultation of the Chinese horoscope, geomancy, etc. They have also adopted a number of more indigenous Malay magico-religious beliefs and customs--worship of kramats or local deities, Dato Kramats, or spirit-mediums, consultation of Malay bomohs, or traditional medical practictioners, use of magical charms, etc. Malay elements, such as the offering of satay, sireh or lime, are also incorporated into Chinese religious rituals.

The first Chinese temple built in Malaya was the Cheng Hoon Teng Temple in Bukit China in Malacca. In 1704 Chan Li Lock built the main hall of the temple and placed there the figure of the Goddess of Mercy, or "Kwan yin" or "padma-pani." (Yeh Jen Fen; Historical Guide to Malacca, pg. 81-2) The preeminence of the Goddess of Mercy in the Straits settlements is important to a consideration of early Chinese religion in Malaysia. J. D. Vaughn details the design of the Goddess of Mercy temple in Pitt St. in Penang, which dates to 1848, still the principle and most active temple of worship by the Chinese in Penang. We had offering made during our wedding day there by my wife's God Mom, her old Amah who cared for her when she was a child.

Victor Purcell, in his work The Chinese in Malaya, gives the following account of Kwan Yin as " one of the most popular goddesses in the Chinese pantheon. "

The Chinese of the Straits must not be mistaken as taking their religion lightly or unseriously--the pragmatism of their religious devotions has fundamental spiritual, moral and utilitarian efficacy which is taken quite seriously by the Chinese.

In an uncertain world, conversion to Christianity has been increasingly seen as a viable option for many Straits Chinese. Conversion to Christianity actually "promotes interethnic marriage or inter-communal marriage, in the former case between Chinese and Eurasian, and in latter case between Baba and non-Baba." (John Clammer, pg. 55)

The religious component is separate from other components of language, culture, race in the ethno-cultural identity of the Chinese. Among the Malay, being Muslim is central to that identity."...the religious factor, far from being a peripheral one, is actually central to the study of the assimilation, integration or lack of assimilation of Chinese minorities to their "host cultures" throughout Southeast Asia. (ibid., pg.59)

Another aspect of religious syncretism notable among the Peranakans are particular beliefs, ritual-religious practices and ceremonies. A striking example is the use of water with flower petals and cut lime as a purfying or cleansing agent. A friend wanted to give us this ceremony while in Malaysia because of a small streak of misfortunes we had been having. My wife gave me a variant of the same bath during a later period in which we were having a run of hard times. She mixed the flower petals from seven different kinds of flowers, and cut half a lime, and poured the water over my head three times. "The client or the person on whose behalf the client sought the spirit medium's help, has to have a bath including a hair wash before taking a ritual bath. The lime is squeezed and the juice is then poured over the body of the person. The spirit medium stresses that the pulp of the lime must be thrown away after the ritual bath. (Cecilia Ng Siew Hua, "The Sam Poh Neo Neo Keramat: A Study of a Baba Chinese Temple", pg. 118) Ritual baths with water only are a common part of Malay animism--water is interpreted as a 'boundary weakener, which, therefore allows passage from one state to another. (J. Endicott, 1970)

The Chinese believe that the lime, petal and water concoction clean impurities from the body. Lime is seen also as a cleansing agent--the impurities becoming concentrated in the lime pulp. Lime is also used for divination by a spirit-medium in trance. In this case, seven lime pieces are cut, just as the petals of seven flowers are used--seven "transcends distinctions based on differences in colour" (Endicott 1970:pg. 137) It too, becomes a boundary weakener. "Though the Malays seem to have no unified symbolic classification based on colour, differences of colours are often used to establish or indicate particular boundaries between significant categories." (ibid.: pg. 137)

Cecilia Ng, in her analysis of the practices of a Baba temple, notes that the spirit deities of the temple are "ethnically ambiguous" which parallels the ethnic ambiguity of the Baba Chinese. "The consultation, however, is conducted in both the ways of the Malay Animist and the Chinese Religionist ritual paraphernalia limes, petals and benzoin are often used in Malay animism while the red dye, charm papers and the seal of the deities are characteristic of Chinese Religion. The Peranakans have accepted the "keramats" who "can be either people, animals or inanimate things which have supernatural powers" (pg. 124), but in the case of this particular study they are not inclined to seek the services of "bomohs" or healers, "who they perceive to be evil sorcerers conjuring spells and creating trouble." (pg. 124) Ng compares her study of the Baba temple with an earlier study, the only of its kind, by Rosie Tan of a spirit medium who was probably a peranakan and who served the Baba community.

Rosie Tan's study deals with "kramats" as local shrines dedicated to honored spirit deities, marking often the graves of local holy men or founding fathers, and the more popular of which attract a great many pilgrims and supplicants. Private "kramats" do not have a "Datu Kramat" and therefore require a spirit medium to call upon and intercede with the spirits on behalf of the worshippers. Worshippers beseech the advice and aid of the Datu Kramats for a variety of reasons--for husbands, for children, for health, or for information.

Ng concludes her study by stating that while the Datuk Shaik Ismail shrine had more overt Malay elements, the Sam Poh Neo Neo temple was Chinese religionist at the structural level, at the periphery of the Chinese religious system, with many borrowings from Malay animism--"the religious system under study is not syncretic, but borrows certain elements from Malay Animism and incorporates these into an essentially Chinese religious system." (ibid., pg.129)

The Baba's choose Malay rather than Chinese religious elements, because the important reference group against which they must distinguish themselves is not the Malay, but the Chinese. "It is therefore logical that Malay elements were used as emblems to accentuate their differences from the ethnic Chinese." (ibid., pg. 129) The earlier study of the more Malay shrine differed from the later example of the Sam Poh Neo Neo temple because "the Baba Chinese no longer enjoy the favoured position of social brokers and indeed with the multi-racial ideology which was widely publicised in recent years, the Baba Chinese are faced with either not fitting into the publicly accepted model of society or alternatively to redefine their ethnic boundaries and identify themselves with the Chinese." (pg. 129) The fact that the Baba's of the temple "bai" all the deities as if of the same "Chinese" pantheon is not convincing counterevidence against the thesis of the inherent syncretism of Chinese religious orientation--in fact if anything, it is a demonstration of just such syncretism that the Chinese would treat all deities as if their own. "It would appear that these Malay elements are but emblems to distinguish the ethnic Baba Chinese; from the ethnic Chinese....In more general terms it can be said that a section of the Baba Chinese population practice a religion which is the religion of many Chinese in Singapore." (ibid.:130)

While living in Penang, I attended with my wife and her friends a "Birthday Party" for a local Malay deity. The party went for three days straight and was attended by numerous Chinese, many of whom were quite respectable and well-off. The spirit medium was a Chinese man dressed in the outfit of a Malay bomoh. It was conducted in a Chinese home in which the Shrine had been erected. The Birthday was given for the benefit of children who had been born with handicaps. Many Chinese attended and gave offerings of donations in exchange for talismans. Food was served freely--nasi kunyit, chicken curry, bee hoon. No pork was served--the food was cooked in brand new pots and pans for purity. The Datuk smoked "Cheerot" a heavy Malay cigar, and went into a trance, danced the "ronggeng" with Malay dancing girls as well as with Chinese. There was a Malay band. He performed "automatic writing" on the ground--giving numbers which people kept note of what he would mark upon the ground--the number spreading through the crowd like wildfire. An older Chinese matron went into a trance and began dancing--becoming the focal point for the audience. The show would last from evening until 12:00. In the morning there were prayer sessions which people would randomly visit. Not all of these people were Peranakan--many were very traditionally Chinese, yet the Malay elements-- the structure of the whole ceremony, and the syncretism of the event, its spiritual importance for a larger urban community-- could not be ignored.

Tan Chee-Beng, in his description of the peranakan Chinese from the same area (1982), describes the same kind of celebration, but as a Hokkien ceremony, which, like with the Penang Hokkien, refer to the ceremony as "Ang Kong su" or "The Affairs of the Deities." The patron god of the local town has no temple, but is taken care of by different families in rotation. The ceremony takes place in the compound of the home that holds the altar. Each year divination is employed to select a committee to take care of the deities altar. "The celebration usually lasts for three or four days. Part of the celebration involves a spirit-medium going into trance. In the evening, menora drama is staged. This is a kind of Thai dance-drama in which songs are presented in Kelantan Thai but comic verses are usually presented in Kelantan Malay...."(ibid.,pg. 42)

The menora, or "Nora Chatri," is a local Thai-Malay folk dance form that derived from the Sudhana-Manohra tale of the Jatakas. Its features and associated beliefs are strongly linked to animistic and shamanistic orientations "upon which the Sudhana-Manohara" story has been planted." (Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof;, "Nora Chatri in Kedah: A Preliminary Report", JMBRAS Vol. 55, no. 1, 1982:pg. 53) The dance lasts for three consecutive nights, and is performed for ritual occasions as well as for entertainment. Part of the performance involves an opening trance session in which performers and non-performers participate to the rhythms of the Gamelan music which slowly and steadily increases its tempo. The trancer is possessed by a local spirit who descends to take possession of the trancers body. The trance state involves a noticeable change in behaviour--shivering, sometimes violent behavior, and the name of the possessing spirit is revealed. Following the trance session are the presentations of sets of Lakons, or plays, by the manora dancers. My wife had attended one of these dances in Penang, taken by her mother, held by Peranakans in a local town. She went every year. Mostly Chinese, except for a Malay man who had married a Chinese. They would attend all three days. The musical instruments would begin around 10:00 in the morning, breaking only for lunch and dinner, and quitting late, after 12:00. Everyday the "Gaku" in charge would go into trance, in the morning, and again in the evening, everyday of the performance. He would sit on the floor cross-legged, to enter the trance. This is a typical Malay way. He would wear a Malay shawl, chew sireh, and put Malay tobacco into his mouth. People would consult him for their problems. Donations were given voluntarily outside in a box. Different deities would possess him--speaking Thai or Malay for the respective deities. An older brother always acted as the interpreter. The last spirit to enter him would be a tiger--crawling around the floor, picking up food that is given as offerings, and pointing at people to give the food to--so that everyone who is related to him gets something.

Tan Chee-Beng also notes the presence of a "Chinese bomoh"--a spirit-doctor and magical practitioners who learned their art from the traditional Malay or Thai religious specialists. Tan expresses the conviction that "Perhaps the component of Peranakan Chinese culture which best expresses the Chineseness of the Peranakan is their Chinese religion." (ibid.,pg. 42)

Tan maintains that Chinese religion draws an ethnic boundary between the Peranakan Chinese and the Malays. Between the Chinese and the local Thai's, there is no such boundary between religions--"thus religion does not act as a barrier of interaction between the Chinese and the Thai." (pg. 49)

It is interesting in this regard that Tan Giok-Lan's study of the Peranakan Chinese of Sukabumi;, in Java, supports the thesis for the basically Chinese religious orientation of the peranakans in general. There, patrilineal descent and patrilocality; are still predominate, if flexible to local circumstances. No where among the peranakans are there deep lineage trees.

How much Chinese culture or religion presents a barrier to crossing ethnic lines, or Malay, or both, seems to be a matter of some conjecture--as well as what constitutes a genuinely syncretic orientation, versus a "non-exclusive" openness to incorporate diverse elements while preserving a traditional base in belief and ritual.

The study of trance and spirit possession within the Malaysian social context reveals the differential expression of states based upon a kind of "cognitive pluralism." Stereotypes help to maintain role expectations in the performance and reactions of actors within an interethnic context--stereotypes and categories facilitate the process of communication of intention and significance. Cognitive diversity reflects ethnic diversity. "Social actors can respond appropriately and predictably to each other without sharing the same meanings and interpretation of events. Complementary, reciprocal expectations of behavior--what Wallace has termed "equivalence structures"--emerge over time despite cognitive heterogeneity." (Susan K. Ackerman and Raymond Lee, "Communication and Cognitive Pluralism in a Spirit Possession Event in Malaysia", 1981:790) "All societies are, in a radical sense, plural societies." (A.F.C.Wallace, Culture and Personality 1970:109-110) The organization of cognitive diversity into stable role behaviors becomes problematic, and there is no necessary correspondence between collective representations and equivalence structures--participants with a diverse range of motives and orientations share equivalence structures, and a potentially unlimited number of such equivalence structures can be 'mapped' onto collective representations.

At one level of communication, the anticipation of role behavior implies that individuals create for themselves a model of common group structure which is based upon a conception of a generalized other. Participants can locate each other's position on a behavioral map. Although the behavioral gestures are mutually predictable, they do not require the participants to hold the same motivations, intentions or definitions of the behaviors performed. Upon another level, people internalize these enactments and evaluate them variously and differentially, giving rise to the cognitive diversity. Conversation between actors further modifies retrospective and on-going responses and role behaviors. "The sequences of complementary interaction performed on the primary level are continuously reconstructed through ongoing conversation between the participants. This reconstruction of accounts is the major mechanism by which primary-level interactions are objectified or made real, and it extends secondary-level communication indefinitely through time. Such events as spirit possession, and their social significance, emerge as ongoing possibilities of social action from this process of communication of "retrospective interpretations." (ibid. pg. 791)

Spirit possession in Malaysia has been interpreted as a traditional, and culturally elaborated style of stress-management. Such spirit-possession, a popular form of entertainment in Northern Malaysia, is viewed as a symbolic representation of personality and polity that connects illness and possession to other power-laden contexts. The symbolic language of spirit possession can be regarded as a conceptual system through which abstract power relationships (related to Malay royalty) are represented. (Kessler ,1977)

There are a number of reactions which belong to a broad category of spirit-possession in Malaysia which are not as contextually well-defined or formalized as the main puteri seance. Latah, running amok, Malay hysteria and mass hysteria are common instances of relatively spontaneous and uncontrolled possession which emerges suddenly in response to some discrete stimulus and involves the enactment of normally intolerable aggressive behavior "that can range from uncontrolled verbal abuse to physical violence." (Susan K. Ackerman and Raymond Lee, 1981:792)

Ethnic stereotypes emerge as inter-group equivalence structures in complex events of multi-ethnic spirit possession, which enable a degree of management and mutual adjustment to such events--they can be seen to function as self-fulfilling prophecies which mutually reinforce, and implicitly legitimize, such events. They do not direct decision-making, except perhaps indirectly, nor are they "instrumental in shaping the rules of the implicit contract." Whatever direction social process would take, alternative equivalence structures would emerge which allow for the mutual behavioral accommodation of the different groups--different sets of equivalence structures would emerge from the social interactive process.

We are left to consider the role of symbols, and their linguistic expression, in the articulation and mediation of experience upon several parallel levels of social reality--an internal dialectic of consciousness, meaning and affect, an internal/external dialectic between internalized frames and externally derived experience, and the dialectic between self and other in the construction and maintenance of psycho-social identity. Religious symbols largely mediate the boundaries between these different levels of experience, and provide an adaptive mechanism for the resolution of conflict and contradiction, in social relations, in phenomenologically derived experience, in one’s own internalized frames of reference/inference. In this regard, ethnic symbols, and the ascriptive labels which articulate these symbols, can be appropriated psychologically and culturally for service of maintenance of a sense of ego reality. Face-to-face discourse, and the discourse functions of code switching/mixing, serve to maintain and reinforced internalized/external frames, to bolster ones subjective orientation in the world, bringing this into alignment with the objective social world. Such symbol systems serve the function of the transmission and mediation of cultural forms, values and orientations. In the social construction of reality;, we can speak of primary and secondary socializations, and of possible discrepancies between these two levels of "basic" and derived experience--disjunction creates dissonance and potential conflict. We can see in this regard ethnicity and culture working simultaneously, culture in terms of primary identity, and ethnicity in the form of secondary and derivative forms of socialization that nevertheless become internalized and have a shaping influence upon one’s primary identity. It can be seen that several alternate, even contradictory secondary forms can become partially internalized without the concomitant level of commitment or affective, subjective identification which accompanies the "subjective inevitability" of primary socialization--allowing an individual to manipulate and alternate between different status-role identities and social realities. Also, it is important to understand that the socialization process itself is always open-ended, partial and never complete--only complementary cultural closure can provide a measure of completeness and unequivocal finality to one’s subjective sense of the world. It is this fundamental unfinishedness and partiality of socialization and identification which makes secondary processes influential upon the development of personality--allowing for the possibility of both adaptive change and regressive pathology. Finally, it is the very fact of its psychological internalization that confers such power and strength to the process. It has great realizing potency that it tends to be realized in the process of becoming internalized. Identification is likely to accompany closely internalization, and internalization is likely to accompany identification. The social construction of reality, via symbol systems which are normatively religious, ethnically referential, and linguistically encoded, becomes the psychological reconstruction of reality which is experiential, affective, perceptual, cognitive and normative in expression, and vice versa.