Agama Asal Beliefs and Practices

This assignment delves into the rich cultural traditions of the Agama Asal, an indigenous Malaysian community deeply connected to nature. It examines their unique beliefs regarding spirits within nature, healing rituals, communication with deities, and communal ownership principles. The text highlights the significance of dreams, ceremonies, and sacred objects in their spiritual practices.

Running head: COMPARATIVE RELIGIONS
Comparative Religions & Primal Traditions
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COMPARATIVE RELIGIONS
Question1.
Revelation
Revelation is an important part of Christian theological practice. In the Christian revelation
doctrine it is considered to be the basis of human’s knowledge of God and church’s affirmations
(Migliore, 2014). Literally revelation means God’s disclosure of his existence and will to his
followers. Revelation is most prominent in the context of Jesus of Nazareth’s life, death and
resurrection.
On the other hand, in Judaist tradition, God’s disclosure is more personal in many occasions as
seen in the Hebrew Scriptures (Hunt, 2017). Like in Genesis God’s Covenant with Abraham for
disclosing is one such event.
Grace
Grace can be defined as God’s favor to those who do not deserve it and are not entitled to except
any (Scott, 2015). Many religions have this theological concept of divine grace. God’s grace
helps those undeserving souls to purify, regenerate virtuous impulses and offers them power to
resist the immoral temptation. The followers believe that without God’s grace achieving
salvation is impossible. Noah’s story offers us a significant example of God’s grace in the Old
Testament. The evil and sins of earthly creatures disheartened God so much that his regret of
creating them encouraged him to destroy all the creatures. God chose Noah, though he was not a
perfect to save the human kind from destruction:“ Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord”
(Andersen, 2015).

COMPARATIVE RELIGIONS
Verification
Vienna Circle from 1920’s Logical Positivism movement developed the principle of Verification
(Stadler, 2015). They believed in order to become meaningful religion has to be verified through
mathematical or scientific principles. Verification evaluates a statement and proves its existential
truth. So it can be considered by the verification principle that God’s existence is a factual truth.
The verification method is popularly applied by the atheists in their denial of God’s existence.
John Hick offers an effective metaphor regarding verification. The two men walking together
gives them a similar experience, the believer sees it as the preparation but the one believed the
road was leading towards nowhere finds the experience worthless.
Embodiment
Embodiment of God is largely believed and celebrated in Christian theology (Sigurdson, 2016).
The theologicians believe that the human beings’ believe in disembodiment is capable of causing
more violence, inequality and injustice. God has already proved his radical embodiment in the
past. God embodied and made the humans realize the pure spiritual existence. The incarnation of
Jesus Christ is considered to be the strongest God’s humanly presence on earth.

COMPARATIVE RELIGIONS
Primary tradition of Australian Aboriginals
There are many significant indigenous communities in Australia. They follow their own unique
customs, beliefs, rituals and tradition. The indigenous community Banaka of northwest Australia
is one such community (Bates, 2014). Their concept of time is circular and dreaming has always
been a big part of their cuture. They believe the civilization has been created from one man and
woman. They call their creator as Gnurker. The four tribal names created from Gnurker are
Boorung, Banaka, Kymera and Paljarri (Sacred-texts.com, 2017). Tarlow is a stone that is very
precious to them which the master of the house keeps them in their homes if they are planning to
produce children. The tarlow has been passing on to generation after generation. The head of the
family from the Banaka community carry the Tarlow to the shrine along with other family
members. The spot where they keep the stone should be kept secret, as they believe that if other
communities come to know about the spot their spell will be broken. So in this tradition of
Australian indigenous community the presence of nature is prominent. They mostly depend on
the animals for natural food. They organize an annual ceremony named “Corroborie” where
every member from the community attends it. If any death occurs in the community they tend to
follow a difficult ritual. They men and women throw run, throw themselves and hit beat their
heads with Bulga. They lie on the body as they crave for the person to be alive again. The dead
person’s hair and preserve it. In every month when the moon reaches the same stage, they gather
and moan for the dead and remember him. As they cannot count the time, they marke the time by
the moon and identify seasons as different time period. They maintain few customs like
refraining themselves from eating fish or Kangaroo meat till a certain period after death, which
they call “Chadgie”. Few important festivals are Yeperenye Dreaming or barunga festival.

COMPARATIVE RELIGIONS
Primary tradition of Malaysian Indigenous People
The indigenous communities of Malaysia are called “Orang Asli” or natural people. The
paganism or old native religion named “Agama Asal” is practiced by a large indigenous
community of Malaysia (Liven, 2014). As any other primal indigenous community Agama Asal
has strong deep rooted connection with nature and earth. The symbols of nature like trees, rivers,
soil and creatures all possess life like any other human being. They believe that trees have spirits
like human beings and they should be treated with equal care and respect as any human. They
claim to understand and communicate with nature in a nonverbal language like the Dusun Tindai
tribe. They practice their own customs like applying “Wonod” or water from a tree’s roots to
heal physical diseases. The tree is generally surrounded by a big tree. Their traditional ritual is
called “Tombilon”, where ceremony is for communicating with the ‘Himbou’s as they possess
healing power. The named nature’s most powerful spirit as “Kinorohingan”, in their native
language it means God. Dream has a significant role in the rituals as the healer determines the
causes of pain through the dreams. The society believes in collective ownership or
“Mitatabong”, the harmony is given the most importance. The crops they grow is believed to be
granted by the Himbous. The deep relationship with nature is expressed in every aspects of life.
They also use stone tool for various purposes, curing and magical purpose are also there
(Chauhan, Ozarkar & Kulkarni, 2014). The crystal stone found in the roots of Chenduai plant is
used to gain affection from someone.

COMPARATIVE RELIGIONS
Reference
Andersen, N. L. (2015). A Compensatory Spiritual Power for the Righteous. Brigham Young
University Education Week devotional.
Bates, D. (2014). Section III, 3a-Genealogies. Article on social organisation of some tribes of
WA.
Chauhan, P. R., Ozarkar, S., & Kulkarni, S. (2014, December). Genes, Stone Tools, and Modern
Human Dispersals in the Center of the Old World. In Proceedings of the Symposium on
the Emergence and Diversity of Modern Human Behavior in Palaeolithic Asia.
November (pp. 94-113).
Hunt, S. (Ed.). (2017). Judaism and Islam. Routledge.
Livan, L. (2014). Native Religion in Malaysia: An Introduction · Article 19. Article19.org.
Retrieved 30 August 2017, from
https://www.article19.org/resources.php/resource/37428/en/native-religion-in-malaysia:-an-
introduction
Migliore, D. L. (2014). Faith seeking understanding: An introduction to Christian theology. Wm.
B. Eerdmans Publishing.
Scott, R. S. (2015). Covenant, Kingship, Grace, Sacrifice, and Prophetism in the Old
Testament. The Kabod, 2(1), 5.

COMPARATIVE RELIGIONS
Sigurdson, O. (2016). Heavenly Bodies: Incarnation, the Gaze, and Embodiment in Christian
Theology. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing.
Stadler, F. (2015). The Origins of Logical Empiricism—Roots of the Vienna Circle Before the
First World War. In The Vienna Circle (pp. 1-25). Springer International Publishing.
The Customs and Traditions of the Aboriginal Natives of North Western Australia.
(2017). Sacred-texts.com. Retrieved 30 August 2017, from http://www.sacred-
texts.com/aus/cat/cat.htm