Pagan races of the Malay Peninsula - Sabrizain.org

SAKAI OF PERAK
Tembeh.i
The Tembeh (Temia or Tunimiyoi) in the intervals between the times for
feeding them leave their children by themselves on the floor of their airy
dwellings.
Very often, however, tliey depcjsil them in a hammock consisting of a stretched-
out " sarong " (Malay = cloth skirt, or wrapper) and sling them up under a screen
of leaves, which can be completely constructed in about twenty minutes. This
is partly done to set the mother free for cooking and preparing meals, but more
so because such a position makes it pleasanter and more comfortable for the
child, who is besides much better protected from the attacks of land-leeches,
ants, centipedes, and scorpions. It is therefore prompted by care for the child,
and is not due to any carelessness or neglect. At night the child's swinging
cradle is never (even among the Orang Taut) suspended from a tree, for fear of
leopards.
According to Vaughan-Stevens (iii. 102) the average number of children bor
to a Tembeh cannot be put higher than two per man.
II.
—
Sakal
A Sakai (Blandas) sage -fe^nme is, as might be
anticipated, more reluctant to give information about
her art than even the magician, although the latter is
far more secretive than the ordinary tribesman, the
getting of information from whom is in itself a suffi-
ciently hard task. The following account is from
Vaughan-Stevens :
^
—
The sage-femvie's house is easily recognisable, since it is invariably built on a
level with the ground, whereas all the other houses of the tribe are raised from 4
ft. to 6 ft. (1.2 m. to 1.8 m.) above the soil.^ If she has a husband still living
(which very seldom happens), she has two huts, one of the ordinary type in which
she and her husband live together, and the other which serves as her medicinehut
and which is invariably built upon the ground. No man may on any pretence
enter her medicine-hut or even approach it too closely, and even in passing it he
must do so at a little distance. Women, however, may enter it whenever they
happen to be invited, but children again are forbidden to do so, for fear of their
doing some mischief.*
Nevertheless these huts are not intended solely for the sage-femme, since they
also serve as a special retreat for women at child-birth, and the latter are allowed
to remain there for fourteen days after delivery. In the days when the Sakai
were more numerous, these medicine-huts were much larger.
^ Z.f.E. xxviii. 201. in order to distinguish it from other
- Ibid. p. 164-197. houses and so protect it from trespass.
2 Ibid. Y). 165. Various reasons were Vaughan-Stevens further remarks that
given to Vaughan-Stevens for this, e.g. the door (in this class of hut alone)
(I) that the sage-femme was old and was lower than the head of a grownweak;
(2) that when the hut was built on up person, and that the walls and roof
the ground, the demons ("hantu") could were contracted in size and thick, to
not insinuate themselves under the floor. prevent men from seeing into it.
More probably, however, it was so built * Z. f. E. xxviii. 165.