Journal of the Federated Malay States museums - Sabrizain.org

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1916.] I. H. N. Evans: Upper Perak Aborigines. 217
There seems to be some prejudice against a man mentioning
his own name, but it
a tabu.
can scarcely be said to amount to
When a woman is about to give birth to a child a small
hut is built on the ground, and in this the event takes place.
For three days after her delivery the mother may not eat rice
or fish ; sengkuai or ubi are allowable.
The flesh of the sambhur, the muntjac or wild pig is not
eaten by women, as it is thought that it would cause sickness
either in themselves or in their children.
Toh Stia told me that it was customary to take the
semangat sengkuai (soul of the millet) and that the ceremony
was performed by an old woman. On the first day of the
proceedings, before reaping had been begun, she went into the
crop and cut about a gantang measure of the sengkuai heads,
and, on the second day, she again took the same amount. On
the third day no reaping might be done, but on the fourth
harvesting was started. Flowers, water and sireh were
placed near the semangat which was hung up in the house.
The semangat was finally mixed with the grain reserved
for seed purposes.
The lunar eclipse is thought to be caused by an animal, or
spirit, called Pud, which swallows the moon.
The custom in force among many Sakai tribes of never
going out into the jungle with any craving unsatisfied, which I
have referred to in previous papers on the Sakai of the Ulu
Sungkai and on the Aborigines of Negri Sembilan, is also
observed by the Sakai Bukit. Thus it is thought that if
a Sakai were to start on a journey without chewing sireh,
though he had wished to do so, some misfortune would be
sure to overtake him.
The same belief (the evil effects following the breakage
of the custom being called kenipunan*) seems to be held by
the Malays of Upper Perak and other districts. In connection
with this belief the Sakai mentioned the word shelentap, and
though I could not definitely find out its meaning—they said
shelentap means "there is not"— it may possibly be equivalent
to the kempnnan of the Malays.
In marriage exogamy is usual, but not invariable, since
whether or not a man takes a wife from another community
partly depends on the presence or absence of girls of marriageable
age and of a sufficiently distant degree of consanguinity
in his own settlement. As far as I could ascertain, first
cousins are within the prescribed degrees, but second cousins
are not. When exogamy takes place the husband very
frequently goes to live with his wife's family. This was so in
the case of Toh Stia, a Sakai from the Plus River, who on my
* A Johore Malay, whom I recently questioned about the meaning of the
word Kempunan, immediately said "going out without having eaten something
you wanted to." Wilkinson translates the word as a " dilemma."
February, 1916. , 3