A bomoh (Jawi: توء بوموه) is a Malay shaman and traditional medicine practitioner. The term is used mainly in Malaysia and parts of Sumatra and Borneo, whereas most Indonesians use the word dukun. It is often mistranslated into English as medicine man or witch doctor. In colloquial usage, the term bomoh is often interchangeable with another type of shaman or dukun, the pawang, but they generally serve different functions. The bomoh is primarily a healer, herbalist, geomancer, and sorcerer. The pawang on the other hand usually specialises in rituals involving weather, nature, animals, and a goo
A bomoh (Jawi: توء بوموه) is a Malay shaman and traditional medicine practitioner. The term is used mainly in Malaysia and parts of Sumatra and Borneo, whereas most Indonesians use the word dukun. It is often mistranslated into English as medicine man or witch doctor. In colloquial usage, the term bomoh is often interchangeable with another type of shaman or dukun, the pawang, but they generally serve different functions. The bomoh is primarily a healer, herbalist, geomancer, and sorcerer. The pawang on the other hand usually specialises in rituals involving weather, nature, animals, and a good harvest. Their roles do overlap, however, and both claim to act as intermediaries for the spirits and gods.
==Etymology== The word bomoh (at times spelled bomo or bomor) has been in common usage since at least classical times. This word can mean either doctor or sorcerer. Prior to the later introduction of the English-derived "doktor" or the Arabic word "tabib", the bomoh served as healers and physicians in Malay society. Thai shamans or bomoh Siam are traditionally held in high regard in Malaysia. Malay texts such as the Hikayat Aceh (1600-1625) record the word bomoh simply as mo or moh. Hikayat Aceh 127:7 "... gajah tuanku ini. Diperhamba suruh ubati kepada [bo]mo gajah tuanku. Berilah makanannya." Hikayat Aceh 127:7 "... this king's elephant. The king asked it to be treated by the elephant [bo]moh. Give it food."
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).