From the folklore of the Mantra
The Lord of the Underworld (Tuhan Di-bawah) made the earth, and lives beneath it. The earth is supported by an iron staff, which is strengthened by iron cross-bars; and beneath these again is a place called the Land of Nyayek (Tanah Nyayek), which is inhabited by a race of fiends (Setan), whose children are not born in the ordinary way, but pulled out of the pit of the stomach. This interesting race was visited by Mertang, the First Magician (Poyang), who brought back this account of them.
The Lord of the Underworld (Tuhan Di-bawah) dwells beneath the Land of Nyayek, and by his power supports all above him.
It was through Mertang, the first Poyang, and Belo (or B’lo), his younger brother, that the earth was first peopled. Their mother was called Handful of Earth” (Tanah Sa-kepal), and their father “Drop of Water” (Ayer Sa-titik).
They came from a place called “Rising Land” (Tanah Bangun) in the sky, and returned thither, taking back with them, however, a house from the sources of the Kenaboi river, on the further side of Jeleby, which flows into the Pahang. B’lo having died and been buried, a skink or grass-lizard (meng-karong) approached the grave, and Mertang threw his parang at it and cut off its tail, whereupon the skink ran away leaving its tail behind, and B’lo came to life again forthwith, and left the grave and returned home to his own house.
When Mertang took his house away with him to “Rising Land,” a dog, the first of the species, appeared on the spot where the house had formerly stood, but was prevented by Mertang’s power from attacking mankind. Then a dog appeared at the house of B’lo; and from this dog came the tiger, which devours mankind as well as animals. We are also told that when Mertang left the earth for “Rising Land,” he flew away, house and all, through the air.
When B’lo went to “Rising Land” he crossed the sea on foot; for he was so tall that the water only just reached to his knees.
Originally the sky was very low and near to the earth, but B’lo raised it with his hands, because he found it stopped is pestle whenever he raised the latter in husking his rice.
Mertang took his youngest sister to wife, and from them the Mantra are descended. B’lo married the other sister, but they had no offspring.
In course of time the descendants of Mertang multiplied to such as extent that he was forced to go to the Lord of the Underworld and represent the state to which things had come, and the Lord of the Underworld remedied it by turning one-half of mankind into trees.
In those days men did not die, but grew thin at the waning of the moon, and waxed fat again as she neared the full, and hence when their numbers had again increased to an alarming extent, To’ Entah, a son of Mertang and the First of the Batins, brought the matter to his father’s notice. The latter wished things to remain as they were, but B’lo said it would be better if they died off like the banana, which leaves its young shoots behind it, and die leaving their children behind them, and the matter was submitted to the Lord of the Underworld, who decided in favour of the view held by B’lo, so that even since men have died and left their children behind them as B’lo proposed.
In the earliest times there used to be three Suns – husband, wife, and child – and hence there was no night, since there was always one Sun left in the sky when the others had set. In those days, too, people slept as they felt inclined, and there were no divisions of time.
After a long time To’ Entah thought the heat was too great, and he devised a plan for reducing it, in pursuance of which he went to the Moon, which in those days gave no light, and told her to summon Bintang Tunang, the Evening Star (her husband), and the other starts her children, and to put them into her mouth, but not to swallow them, and to await his return. When she had carried out his wishes, he then went to the Female Sun, and by representing that the Moon had swallowed her own husband and children, induced her to swallow (in reality) her husband and child – the other two Suns – likewise. “Lord-knows-who” having thus gained his end, returned to the Moon and told her that she might now release her own husband and children, which she did by flinging them out into the sky again.
As soon as the sole remaining Sun discovered the deception that had been practised upon her, she waxed very wroth and withdrew in dudgeon to the other side of the heavens, declaring that when the Moon came across her path she would devour her, a promise which she still performs at the season of an eclipse.
It was from this period – this separation between the Sun and the Moon – that the present division of time between day and night, and the rule of the Moon and the Stars over the latter first took place.
Source:
Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, Walter Skeat, Charles Blagden, 1906
Kotharian Lightning 