Pagan races of the Malay Peninsula - Sabrizain.org

250 U'KA/'OXS AND IMPLEMENTS part ii
insular Malays.' The bamboo spear is still largely
used, especially by the wilder aborigines. The metal
spears, which are of several types (all of them
Malayan), are used for fishing as well as hunting.
The fact that no stone spear-head has yet been
found in the Peninsula is certainly a notable one, and
may point to the fact that the spear-heads used by the
men of the Malay stone age were made of bamboo
or of some other equally perishable material. There
is little differentiation of metal spear-types as between
the aborigines, doubtless owing to the fact that all
have borrowed alike froni the Malay. In war, spear-
heads are sometimes lashed to the muzzle-end of a
blowpipe.
Hatchets.
The hatchets now used by the wild tribes
throughout the Peninsula are obtained by barter or
purchase from the Malays, except, perhaps, in a few
cases in which some sort of rude substitute is roughly
forged. Even in the latter case, however, the blades
are, I believe, invariably copied from Malay models,
and there appears to be no record of the use of
an independent axe - type among either Sakai or
Semang, even though they may (and certainly do)
have non- Malay names for them.
On the other hand, there is, I believe, a good
deal still to be learnt from the nature of the rattan
1 Cp. J. Bradley, p. 298 : "Outside sticks, intended, apparently, as missile
the (tree-) huts a number of spears weapons. Several of them had traces
were laid amongst the branches of the of blood and feathers adhering to
trees. They consisted merely of long them, as if they had been used for
sticks of hard wood sharpened at both knocking down birds."
ends." And cp. also zA p. 320: "Some - Capt. J. Bradley (p. 298) alone
of them (the wild men) seized their mentions finding in a tree-hut " a sort
spears, or pointed sticks." Also p. of tomahawk, formed by fixing a
331 : "In the interior of one of the pointed stone upon a stick."
huts were a number of short thick
'