Halloween 2015 : The Langsuir

THE LANGSUIR

Variations: Langsuior, Langsuyar (Indonesia)

The Pontianak. Photo source unknown. 

It's Halloween again, so my contribution to this festival is a post on The Langsuir.

The Langsuir is a vampiric revenant in Malay folklore. According to Carol Laderman (Wives and Midwives: Childbirth and Nutrition in Rural Malaysia), "The langsuir or pontianak is a vampiric creature who was once a woman. She takes on a demonic form after dying from childbirth." The death could be due to a difficult childbirth or to the shock and heartbreak resulting from having a stillborn child.

In the past, women in rural Malay communities, who are about to give birth had to be protected from malevolent spirits such as the Jin Tanah (Djinn of the Land) and Jin Hitam (the Black Djinn). "They are attracted by the sweet blood of parturition, dripping through the floorboards to the ground below. The 'dirty' blood of menstruation does not appeal to hantu and small amounts of blood from wounds are beneath their notice, but a great deal of blood lost during childbirth... may prove irresistible."

Even more terrifying than these supernatural creatures are the once human revenants. If the proper rituals are not followed, forty days after death, the deceased will rise up as a langsuir or a pontianak. If the child died with her, then it too will come back in úndeath' as a blood sucking infant vampire called a toyol. According to information gleaned from the Internet, to prevent a woman from rising as a langsuir,  glass beads (glass marble?) must be placed in the corpse's mouth, a chicken egg placed under each armpit, and needles stuck into the palm of each hand. 

I tend to disagree about the interchangeability between the langsuir and the pontianak. I think the langsuir is created when an unmarried woman dies an unnatural death. Like the Yakshi of South India and the vampire in Western culture, she most likely took her own life or was murdered by a lover. 

Langsuir by ShadowFey  source: shadowfey.deviantart.com

The langsuir does not have fangs like all other types of vampires; instead, it drains the blood from its victims through a hole at the back of its neck, which is hidden by its long black hair.  One can only speculate that there must be a tube like structure which comes out of this hole! This creature has been described as having very long fingernails and commonly wears a green or white robe. By night, the langsuir shape-shifts into an owl and then flies out seeking its favorite prey, children (according to certain bloggers). Children are not easy prey to find because most of them will be indoors before sunset. Unless that is, they have a wicked stepmother who makes them draw water from a well after dark!

I rather think the langsuir is looking for men; it's the pontianak who seeks women about to give birth and their after-birth. These are vengeful spirits drawn to what they longed most in life - the langsuir wants to be wedded and the pontianak wants to be a mother. But their demonic nature and blood lust have twisted them.

As it flies, the langsuir occasionally lets out an eerie wail known as an ngilai; which will strike terror in the hearts of the bravest person. By day it can be found sitting in trees or by a river catching and eating fish (I also have doubts about this odd piece of information).

Here is an invocation to summon the Langsuir by R. O. Winstedt. 

(Thanks to Bert Tan, the Administrator of the Malaysian Heritage and History Club Facebook page, who brought this to my attention. The link to the MHHC page:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/malaysian.heritage.and.history.club/ )

Why would anyone want to summon a langsuir? According to folklore, the langsuir can be captured and domesticated.  And the 'tamed' langsuir makes for an incredibly beautiful wife and a devoted mother; this domesticated vampire wishing for nothing more than caring for her family. So there might be men out there who are arrogant and foolish or desperate enough to embark on such a course. 

However, they should beware, because if the langsuir is allowed to dance or show any signs of unbridled happiness, she will revert to her bloodthirsty and murderous ways. Once this happens, she must be re-captured. According to some modern bloggers, her hair and fingernails must be cut off and stuffed into the hole at the back of her neck. This will force the langsuir to change back into a mortal woman. This bit of information from the Internet is, of course, complete rubbish. I remember reading as a young adult that there is only one way of trapping a langsuir. Just like the yakshi, her weakness is iron. Placing an iron nail or spike at the back of her neck will change her into a mortal woman. Carol Laderman, mentions this as well. The best way to banish a langsuir is "piercing the demons neck with iron or steel while repeating the appropriate spell."

Like the yakshi and the pontianak, the langsuir is supposed to emit an overpoweringly sweet fragrance. The fragrance is due to her association with the Sundal tree - a tree which is named in Malay folklore as the abode of the pontianak. This tree could either be the Pala tree (Alstonia scholaris) or the Champaca tree (Michelia champaca). To find out more about this, refer to my previous blogpost, http://tutudutta.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-pala-and-sundal-tree.html 

According to folklore, one must never remark upon or mention this fragrance, should one come across a mysteriously sweet smell while walking in lonely places at night. Because this is tantamount to an invitation to a langsuir! The best thing to do is to leave the place as soon as possible!

Source: Laderman, Wives and Midwives, 126; Mc Hugh, Hantu-Hantu, 74; Skeat, Malay Magic, 325­28

Disclaimer: The administrator of this page is not responsible, should any harm befall anyone as a result from uttering this invocation out loud.

The Pala Tree and the Sundal Tree

In a previous post, 'Cracking the Sundal Tree Code,' published on 8/5/2013, I stated that the Sundal Harum Malam from Malay folklore was without doubt the Chempaka tree - Michelia champaca or Magnolia champaca. The Sundal Tree achieved notoriety by being associated with the pontianak; a female vampire (the pontianak is always female) who seeks shelter among its branches.

Apparently, I spoke (or wrote) too soon. A Facebook friend, Nadine Gregory, originally from the state of Kerala in India (she also lived in Kuala Lumpur for a number of years), informed me about a tree which grew in Kerala called the Pala tree. This tree bore night blooming flowers and had the reputation for being the abode of evil spirits and children were warned to stay away from the tree at night.

Alstonia scholaris, The Pala Tree

I thought, "Interesting, but the Pala is probably endemic to southern India."

I looked it up on Wikipedia and found out that the Pala, is also known as Ezhilam pala, Sharada, Yakshi pala, Daiva pala, Saptha parna in Sanskrit, and of all things, Devil tree in English!

More importantly, the plant is found throughout India and the Indomalaya region - all the way to Southern China (Hoa Sua), the Philippines and Queensland, Australia. In Thailand it is known as Phya Sattabahn. The scientific name is Alstonia scholaris. A member of the dogbane family, the milky sap of the tree is saturated with poisonous alkaloids.

The tree grows to a respectable 20 to 30 metres in height and bears masses of night blooming flowers, twice a year. The small greenish-white flowers give off a very strong fragrance, similar to that of Cestrum nocturnum, the Night Jessamine or Raat Ki Rani, which was my initial suspect for the title of The Sundal Tree. I had to discard this idea because C. nocturnum originates from South America.

According to Nadine, the fragrance of the Pala blooms is strong enough to produce headaches in susceptible people. Nadine Gregory's story: "Ezhilam paala. A seemingly innocuous tree with such a heady fragrance when in bloom at night that it invariably gave me a headache. It never helped that I'd heard hundreds of stories about beautiful long haired women in white who'd lurk under these trees asking young men for a match to light a beedi. Yes, you read it right. Beedi smoking femme fatale who'd morph into a vampire and suck young men's blood = yakshi. Women were always safe. Thank you, Malayalam movies for scarring me so deeply..." 
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I thought, 'This is it!' The local name of the tree itself, Yakshi pala, conjures up images of a blood thirsty seductress! In southern India, the yakshi is envisaged as an alluringly beautiful young woman who lure men to their death.

Blooms of  Pala/Sundal tree?

The traditional version of the story:
A man (usually from the upper castes) walking home at dusk, sees an extraordinarily beautiful woman who asks him for help. To add to her allure, the heady scent of a strange exotic flower fills the air around her. She is alone and afraid to walk home by herself. The man gallantly offers to escort her home. When they reach her house, which looks quite well appointed, the woman offers him a betel quid and asks for lime. They chew a betel quid each and enter her home. Once inside, the man is shocked to see her transform into a red-eyed fiend with claws and long nails. Even more terrifying, the house has disappeared and he is actually on the branches of a Pala tree (in some cases, palm tree, but I dismiss that idea offhand). In the morning, passersby are shocked to find teeth, nails and hair, all that is left of the man, on the ground below the tree, plus shoes and blood soaked clothes, of course.
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Does the story sound familiar? Exactly like the pontianak tales known throughout Malaysia a, Singapore and probably Indonesia too - just replace the yakshi with the pontianak and the Pala with the Sundal Tree. The yakshi from Kerala is a vengeful spirit of a woman who has been wronged, probably by an upper caste man, and who probably died before marriage or before childbirth. The pontianak is the vengeful spirit of a woman who died during childbirth. In more modern times, she is the vengeful spirit of a woman who has been through a tragic love affair. However, the pontianak, being a vampire, only drains the blood of men (in olden times, they feast on the afterbirth) while the yakshi actually devours them whole... Only one creature in folklore has an appetite like that, the wendingo of Native American folklore.

A Yakshi on the gateway to the Sanchi Stupa

However, we should note that in northern India, yakshi and yaksha (the male counterpart) are envisaged as nature sprites or tree spirits, closer to forest elves and dryads than to malevolent bloodthirsty vampires. They are fertility symbols and described as the 'fragrance under the bark or in the blossoms of flowers,' and completely vegetarian of course. Yakshas and Yakshis can even confer boons and blessings on the humans they favour...

Another Yakshi from Sanchi, this one is housed in the British Museum

So why is there such a discrepancy in the yakshi of the south and the north? Another Facebook friend, Jeeks Raj, mentioned the pisacha (literally 'eater of raw flesh'); a demon sometimes associated with night-blooming trees. This creature of the night is described as the vilest and most malignant order of malevolent beings. The pisacha haunts charnal grounds and cross-roads and feeds on human flesh and blood.  Is it possible that the yakshi of south India is in fact a pisacha, disguised as a yakshi?

Finally, is there any way to defeat or should we say, vanquish the yakshi/pisacha? Apparently they are undone by iron. An iron dagger or even a nail, will render them powerless, if not kill them outright. Oddly enough, there are folklore in Malaysia, that an iron nail, embedded into the nape of the neck of a pontianak will turn the vampire into an ordinary woman.

So is Alstonia scholaris the Sundal tree of folklore? Very likely...