Pagan races of the Malay Peninsula - Sabrizain.org

NEGRITOS OF PERAK 427
comb above the "was" (i) is called " tepi," the
bottom border below the eighth panel (" nos ") is
called "mos."^]
Looking at the prevalent patterns of the first and
second panels, it is easy to see that many of them are
identical with or form parts of the patterns which
represent the Disease in the fifth panel. [The ex-
planation given was that when the charm patterns were
being made, Pie wished, whilst assigning a pattern to a
particular Disease, to make known at the same time
what flower was blooming most freely when the
Disease prevailed, and hence gave both a similar form.
But when both the first and second panel patterns
' These names are in part certainly
of Malay origin, and not pure Scmang,
e.g. (i) = Mai. " tapak," a palm's-
breadth; (2) = Mai. "jari," a finger;
*
' mad " may 1 )e connected , through I ndo-
Chinese, with Malay "mata" = eye or
blade of an instrument. So too "kahii'
saleg" (Mai. " salak ") = fruit of the
" salak "-palm ; " kabii' padi " (Mai.
" padi ") = rice-fruit; " "' tcpi = Mai.
" tSpT,"
" ning,'"
edge. On the other hand,
" bie," "nos" (?) = one, two,
four (in Semang).
The passage {Z.f.E. xxv.79 ) in which
v. -St. defines his flower-lheor)' (7'. p.
397) runs as follows : — " ' Was' and
' pawer ' are the protecting designs, the
power of which keeps off the sickness.
' I'awcr,' ' kos,' and ' tepi " are
parts of a flower, of which ' was ' is
the smell, and ' tepi ' the pistil and
stamens, hence a supplementary line
above a ' wiis ' has the same name.
The projecting spike above the green
sepals is called ' pawcr,' the sepals ' mos.
To give the rest of the names : the
flower it self is called ' bakau,' the
petals ' tapak '
; of a flower that has a
sweet .smell, ' ber-pen-hat ' (becr-pcnhat
') is the word used by the Semang
; if a disagreeable smell, ' hlhid
' ('hee-heed') is the word. Two
distinct jungle flowers are now
"
considered as 'pawer' — 'Mos,'
really a kind of Ixora, which
corresponds to the ' pawer,' and a
flower called by the Malays ' tetawar
bintang,' or ' star tetawar,' whose
botanical name is not yet known,
but which resembles the 'mos.'
All slight
- scented flowers of the
Ixora kind are called ' pawer,' with
the addition of a specific seconil name."
On the foregoing tissue of errors I
wouldremark that "tepi"isa pure Malay
word ( =: edge or border), and does not
mean pistil or stamens, for which there
is no name in Semang, nor could be.
The "projecting spike" can only
be the pistil, which X^aughan-Stevens
has already told us is called (with the
stamens) "tepi." "Pawer "and "mos,"'
on the other hand, are probably the
names of flowers, not parts of a flower,
as explained below. " Bakau " =
"flower" in Semang = Mai. "bunga,"
a "flower" or '^ patterit."'
The drawing of the Ixora (given
in Ciriinwedel's text) is, as he there
states, a hypothetical one of the writer's,
serving only to help to determine the
technical expressions.
As regards the plant "tetawar bin-
tang " (5/