Malaysian museum turns to spiritual means to lure visitors
Malaysian museum turns to spiritual means to lure visitors
Carolyn Lim, Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Kuala Lumpur
Faced with competition from Kuala Lumpur's spanking new shopping malls, lush parks and other newer museums, Malaysia's national museum Muzium Negara is counting on ghosts and goblins to help lure visitors.
On June 26, the 39-year-old museum launched its "Exploring Ghosts" exhibition featuring a goblin, known in Malay folklore as a toyol, as its star exhibit. If you are hoping to cast your eyes on a live toyol, be prepared for disappointment.
Though recognizable from its frail and tiny skeletal structure, the anak keruak or toyol in question is very much dead and preserved for "security reasons", said Museum and Antiquity Director-General Adi Taha.
Shrunken and dried over the past 70 years, the toyol, which hails from Pattani in southern Thailand, is housed in a glass case with all sorts of paraphanelia to keep it happy, Adi said.
Lying on a tiny mattress, the toyol is flanked by two bottles of infant milk and two tiny bolsters. Also in the display case is a cradle, a mosquito netting to keep bugs away, and a pillow for the toyol to lie on.
The paraphanelia are aimed at appeasing the spirit of this toyol, which is believed to be the foetus of a first-born baby of first-time parents. The toyol in this case can be used for healing rituals and evil spells, Adi added.
Apart from the shrunken toyol, the exhibition paints a good picture of the cross-cultural influences on Malaysians' spiritualism.
For instance, Chinese worshippers are shown praying at shrines to the Malay ancestors of the country, known as Datuk-Gong, literally Grandfather Gods, which is unusual because Malays are mostly Moslems while most Chinese are Buddhists, Taoists or Christians.
The exhibition also includes recent "sightings", including most famously, a "langsuir" or vampire-ghost which preyed on young women in certain rural areas.
Newspapers had reported as recently as late last year of a so- called langsuir which a shamanistic healer, or bomoh, had captured and tricked into a tiny bottle. Looking like a benign Mogwai from the Star Wars series, the langsuir is featured in a photograph at the exhibition. Since the incident, the bomoh claimed the langsuir had been thrown lock, stock and bottle into the sea.
The de facto Islamic affairs minister, Abdul Hamid Othman, condemned the langsuir coverage then as archaic and unbefitting of an age where technology was dominant.
But Muzium Negara's Adi is adamant that visitors should judge for themselves whether creatures featured at the exhibition are real or not.
Asked if the two-month exhibition, which is expected to draw about 250,000 more visitors in addition to about half a million who come to the museum each year, contradicted Islamic teachings, Adi was ambivalent.
In Islam, ghosts or jinns are recognized as creatures that God created just as men were, said Adi, a trained archaeologist. "Some jinns are evil, such as Iblis or Satan, while others are good."
But he also praised his Western counterparts for their ability to ignore spiritual aspects when working with artifacts such as bones and skulls. "That's progress," he said.
Still, judging by the turnout at the exhibition's first weekend, fear of ghosts and spirits might be just what Muzium Negara needs. Some 10,000 people visited the exhibition each day at the weekend, museum spokesperson Janet Tee said, far exceeding even her expectations.