Pagan races of the Malay Peninsula - Sabrizain.org

CHAP. VI GENERAL REMARKS 263
though it certainly is used for apes. And this is
probably, as Geiger suggests, the reason why the
part struck by a poisoned arrow is usually excised
before the game so killed is cooked and eaten—
practice which is doubtless of far more importance in
the case of some of these poisons {e.g. tieute) than it
is in the case of the others.
The arrow and dart poison called " Ipoh " by the
Malays has obtained its native name from the fact that
the two chief substances which (either separately or
in combination) form its basis are derived from plants
distinguished, the one as the Ipoh tree (Antiaris), and
the other as the Ipoh creeper [Strycknos). Derris
elliptica or " tuba," on the other hand, is but rarely
used, so that the poison-mixture almost invariably
contains one or other of the Ipoh's as its main
ingredient. The action of these two chief poisons is
very different, and the choice of one or the other is,
as has already been pointed out, dictated by the
circumstances of supply. Incomparably the most
famous of these two ingredients is, however, the sap
of the Ipoh or Upas tree, which owes its notoriety
to the inventions or exaggerations with w'hich Foersch
once " amused the credulity of Europe."
The deadly exhalations attributed to the Ipoh tree
{Antiaris) certainly have, as has long been proved, r.o
foundation whatever in fact, at all events so far as the
tree itself is concerned.
But it seems, on the other hand, well worlh
pointing out that the sap of the " Rengas " tree
certainly produces at the least contact (as is well
known locally) an extraordinary inflammation of the
skin. When I was residing at Klang in Selangor,
there was a fine Rengas tree growing at the back of
a