Orang Asli

The Orang Asli religion is the animism of the indigenous peoples of the Malay Peninsula, best described among the northern Semang. They hold that people and all natural things have souls, and picture the earth as a disc resting on a huge snake or turtle and joined to the sky by stone pillars.

The chief god of the Semang, the thunder god Karey, is cruel rather than loved, and punishes those who break taboos with lightning or illness. Each group has a shaman, the hala, who in trance speaks with the spirits and heals with herbs; the greatest halas are said to turn into tigers.

In the early 1500s the Aceh sultanate sent expeditions to seize slaves. In the 1700s and 1800s Minangkabau and Batak raiders sacked Orang Asli villages.