Handbook of the federated Malay states - Sabrizain.org

104 Handbook of the
sprang from the same source. Words to express any
numerals higher than three are are not found in either of
these dialects.
The Sakai used not to love the Malay, and with good
reason. Countless years of tyranny and ruthless oppression
on the part of the Malays would seem to have entirely
broken the spirit of the jungle-dwellers, who, in consequence
of the ill-treatment which they been obliged to passively
suffer, are still very shy, and avoid strangers with the
instinct of wild animals. Of recent years, however, these
people, hitherto enslaved and trampled upon to an extent
that baffles description, are beginning to realise the fact that
even a Sakai cannot, under the existing regime, be in any
way ill-treated with impunity.
The real Sakais wear no clothes, a strip of bark being all
that they consider necessary.
Their weapons are bows and arrow and blowpipes with
poisoned darts. The bow used is about six feet long, made
of " Penaga " wood, and strung with twisted strips of the
same " Terap " bark as is used for their waist-cloths, whilst
the arrows are about two feet six inches in length, made of
bamboo, tipped with barbed iron, poisoned with " Ipoh, "
and feathered with the tailfeathers of the " Enggang, " or
larger horn-bill. Sakais are seldom or never seen in the
vicinity of towns or villages and live entirely in the jungle.
They are not Muhammadans and such religion as they
possess is a rude kind of pantheism, but they behove in an
after-life and in the power of good and evil spirits.
As regards the general condition of the Malays of Pahang,
it has vastly improved and they are infinitely better off in
every way now than they were under the Grovernment of the
Sultan and his Chiefs prior to 1889. They are, in fact, on
the whole, so well-to-do that even the high rate of wages
that now obtains in this State seldom serves as a sufficient
inducement to them to accept any but temporary employment,
and that only at intervals. The Pahang Malay does
not differ to any marked degree from his fellows in the other
States of the Federation, and all that has been written about
the natives of the Peninsula in the First Part of this Plandbook,
can be held to apply to the natives of this State as well.
Of the 180 Europeans and Eurasians returned at the
recent Census, 134 are Europeans and the remainder
Eurasians. About a hundred of the former a.re in the
employ of the mining companies in the State, the remainder
being Grovernment officers. Practically all the Eurasians are