Pagan races of the Malay Peninsula - Sabrizain.org

1 SUMMARY
OF SA VA GE MALAY C UL TURK 9 5
Mantra employ a bamboo flute and a kind of guitar/
though others are recorded. From their position it
follows that all the trade of the Jakun is in the hands of
the Malays, who give them cloth, pots, dishes, ironware,
etc., in exchange for jungle produce, but who at the
same time greatly oppress them by means of the debts
into which they lead them, as well as by their treachery
and unjust dealing," this treatment being in direct
contrast to that which they receive from the Chinese.^
At their tribal feasts they chant songs and perform
mimetic dances in imitation of the various denizens of
the jungle, the performer, who is dressed in leaves,
carrying a peculiar dance-wand, and the performances
themselves being apparently a form of productive
magic. They have a more advanced social organisa-
tion than the Sakai and Semang, and in some cases
their Batin or chief has a peculiar and unknown object
as part of his regalia.
They also practise peculiar marriage and burial
rites {e.g. the mound-ceremony, a species of marriage-
carnival at harvest-time, and the erection of a miniature
hut for the soul of the deceased), and have many
magic ceremonies and traditions which point to the
prevalence of ancestor- worship and Shamanism as
ingredients in their religion.
297, 332 ; Thomson, ibid. 347* ; cp. men also Logan in J. I. A. vol. i. p. 388,
where he remarks that " like the
" for pirates, or in some similar
motive. But these Henua may have
been Land Jakun after all.
northern tribes, the Benua have a 1 Borie, loc. cit. p. 424.
great dread of the sea," a characteristic
"^ Logan, loc. cit. pp. 261, 285.
which he attributes to "exaggerated ^ Waitz, pp. 176, 177. As Col.
ideas respecting waves, sea -sickness, R. C. Temple points out, what such
and pirates." On this it may be re- tribes get by barter may be of value to
marked that it is hard to believe that themselves ; what they give is of none,
any true Sea Jakun really dread the sea, But though the bargaining of the
and that formerly when they professed Chinese may jierhaps thus be defended,
themselves afraid of it, the reason might that of the Malays, who go far beyond
perhaps be sought in a fear of their the Chinese, can not. — Temple in
being themselves taken by the "white /. ./. /. vol. xxix. p. loi.