Legends of Langkawi

As promised…

Mahsuri

This is the least fun, and also the most prevelant of the Island’s legends. It’s the one people genuinely do believe it, and I think there must be some historical record it is based on, with features either built around it – or  maybe things really did happen exactly this way.  Who  knows. Langkawi is the kind of place where you might imagine that if supernatural moments, curses and magic did indeed exist, it would have to be here.

Mahsuri was an exquisitely beautiful girl in a small  town. There is some suggestion that even her birth had a little of the supernatural in it, her father having found her in a field of burned rice. Either way, she grew up to be uncommonly graceful, well mannered and accomplished as well as stunningly beautiful. This is a  potent combination, and, as you can imagine, and especially in a small town, brings you as many secret enemies as  it does sworn suitors.

Mahsuri fell in love and married a man of some prestige. The two were deeply in love and very happy together, until they were torn apart by her husband being called to his duty to fight in the place of another, fallen dignitary in a war away from home.

Mahsuri missed her husband, but continued quietly, to live her life, nurse her child, and enchant everyone who met her.

But not all. The exact nature of how the accusation came about is now known The most common story is that the accusation was made by another local woman, jealous of Mahsuri’s beauty and her marriage. There is another theory that it was raised instead by a jealous man, hoping to win her affections  for himself, but having been politely rebuffed.

Either way an accusation was made, based on an innocent conversation between Mahsuri and a passing traveller, that Mahsuri had been adulterous to her husband and thus, under the law of the time, should be sentenced to death.

In some rather striking parrellels to the Christ story, the ruler did not initially want to sentence Mahsuri, but was swayed by the voice of the people, Mahsuri having her loyal friends, but also many jealous rivals. Eventually he had Mahsuri arrested and tied to a tree to await her  punishment but, still unsure he delayed. Perhaps, he suggested, Mahsuri’s sentence should wait for the return of her husband?

This delay did not save Mahsuri’s life, rather prolonging her suffering as she remained tied to the tree for several days, suffering the various torments of the extreme weather conditions. She bore it courageously and with immense dignity, always claiming her innocence and her life for her husband. Finally the ruler broke down and attempted to carry out Mahsuri’s sentence, death by impaling, himself. However, whichever weapon he used, nothing would pierce Mahsuri’s skin.

Growing paler, he nevertheless continued, to uphold his reputation as a strict ruler, until she herself pleased with him to end her suffering, telling him that only the Kerris knife owned by her husband and contained in her house, would kill her. Fetching this, the ruler stabbed  her with it, and  out flowed perfectly white blood, signifying her innocence.

At this the watching townspeople and the ruler himself grew uneasy, especially as  the sky darkened and the air was full of deep thunder. Raising her dying head, Mahsuri used her last breath to curse the island of Langkawi to suffer and fail to prosper for as long as seven generations.

As the engraved writing in Legenda Park, gravely tells us, Langkawi did indeed suffer for a long time after  that. There was war, famine, privation, natural disaster and failed harvest. Only recently has Langkawi’s fortune improved, as it became designated a tourist island, was declared duty free and began, accordingly, to flourish in the tourist trade, simultaneous improving its harvests.

As the engraved wording at the park implies, seemingly in hushed tones  before  the carved stone relief which depicts the story of Mahsuri, the curse has been lifted. And with the recent discovery of seventh generation descendants of Mahsuri, it is believed that the curse of the innocent young woman has, finally, been lifted.

Gunung Raya and Gunung Matchinchang

These two mountains now standing proud and tall and covered in lush foliage were not, it is said, always mountains. They began life as Mat Raya and Matchinchanng, two huge and powerful giants, transformed into mounds of earth. Attending a wedding feast the two giants were celebrating the nuptials of two members  of their separate families. However, at some stage the dispute  between the two, born of age old jealousy of another woman’s affections, fuelled with alcohol and the atmosphere of the wedding party, spilled over into an angry fistfight, and the kind of damage you can imagine two giants having a bar brawl might create.

Either as punishment, or as a result of the movement in the earth caused by two such large opponent, the fight ended when they were each transformed into a mountain. If you look very carefully, and at the right angle, you can still see the giant Matchinchang’s face in the summit of Gunang Matchinchang.

Ayer Hangat

At the same wedding feast, as the fighting between the two giants escalated, the families began to fight amongst themselves, women hurling pots and pans at each other, until, eventually, an enormous gravy pot was overturned, and smashed on the ground, hot gravy spilling out and flowing over the countryside to come to rest in the land now known as ‘Ayer Hangat’, meaning ‘Hot Springs’.

Paulau Kentet Besar and Paulau Kentet Kecil

A young man ate undercooked rice at a wedding feast (these, it seems, have a lot to answer for), and subsequently had  indigestion. He had indigestion at two places, creating Paulau Kentet Besar (Big Fart Island) and Paulau Ketet Kecil (Small Fart Island).

I kid you not.

We were rather intrigued as to how the Legenda sculptures might deict this one but it was disappointingly abstract. A collection of sticks. We weren’t uite sure what it meant but it was certainly a bit of light relief, after all that fighting.

That wasn’t all the legends, only a choice few that really stuck in my mind. There were also warring phoenixes, angels dropping heavenly instruments on the ground, shipwrecked princes  and fairies dwelling in the Seven Wellls Waterfall. I remember those features, but not the surrounding stories for other others.

What strikes me though, is that among both these and the ones I don’t remember well enough to write down for you, there was often a common theme of love and hatred, and the one so quickly, and so unexpectedly, giving rise to another.

Such positive emotions as love and loyalty can so easily cause so much death and destruction. And it’s not just in fiction, look at every war, every large dispute, and many, many domestic murders. The more fervently you love some one, some thing or some cause, the more  you open the possibility, through the very depth of emotion you give to that subject, of it all turning very nasty.

Or at the very least, giving you indigestion.