Pagan races of the Malay Peninsula - Sabrizain.org

4o6 DECORATIVE ART tart a
uses, but might as easily be put to half a hundred
others. Hence the Semang " go' " at times served as
a quiver, at other times served to carry magic herbs
and roots, and the general paraphernalia of the Negrito
sorcerer. If the fact is once recognised that, from a
decorative point of view, there is absolutely no differ-
ence between the quiver (" goh ") and the charm-tube
(" gah "), and that both alike are really " go' " (the form
" gah" or " ga " being probably, if it has any authority
at all, a mere dialectal variant of *' go' "), the source of
endless confusion will be avoided.
Similarly, the word " gu' " also appears to be
applied indifferently both to bamboo quivers and
burial bamboos, etc. It probably signifies, like "goh,"
a bamboo tube or receptacle. There does not to
me appear sufficient evidence of the existence of what
Vaughan-Stevens calls " gi " to include it in this list.
Vaughan - Stevens himself could obtain no specimen
of
it, and himself says that they had been completely
forgotten and disused. What they purported to be
was a species of charm-tube carried by the women,
" on which all the seventy Disease-patterns were cut."
As, however, there are (not seventy but) a hundred
and forty of these patterns, and as it would be a
physical impossibility to crowd even the central panel
of seventy of these patterns upon the surface of a
bamboo that was meant to be portable, there can be
little doubt that this was one of the many cases in
which Vaughan-Stevens was led altogether astray.
Classification of the Patterns.
The charm-patterns employed by the wild tribes
of the Peninsula may be roughly classified according
to the objects that they are employed to adorn.