Pagan races of the Malay Peninsula - Sabrizain.org

598
DECORATIVE ART
know that a common secondary meaning of "bunga"
was a pattc7'n, he was, most unfortunately, started
upon the wrong tack from the very outset. The fact
of the word " bunga," which he thought meant
" flower," being appHed to the whole pattern, naturally
suggested to him the idea that the series of horizontal
lines might perhaps be intended to divide the
various panels which (he expected) would represent
the various parts of the flower in question. He asked
his questions, we feel sure, in perfect bona fides, but
nevertheless he must have had some such idea as
this in his mind, and his accommodating informants
naturally supplied him with the very information that
he thought he wanted. Thus Vaughan-Stevens, in
falling into the trap, has furnished us with yet one more
of those awful object-lessons which are provided from
time to time by ethnologists who rely too much upon
the answers given by " question-worried savages." As
he is not the first, so he will not be the last, and there
are perhaps none of us who can tread this thorny path
so securely as never to come into danger of a fall.
Up to this point we know, I think, quite enough
to be able to state definitely what the " mos " and the
" pawer " are not; but our duty does not stop here,
and a little further consideration of Vaughan-Stevens'
material will show us, I am inclined to think, what
Vaughan-Stevens himself must have narrowly missed
discovering, viz. that the "mos" and "pawer" were
probably the names of two flowers—as indeed, with
that courageous inconsistency which in such a case may
he regarded as a proof of honesty, he himself has
informed us in the very same passage in which he
states his general flower-theory of the combs. The
"mos" is, if as I hope we may trust Vaughan-