NOTES ON SOME ABORIGINAL TRIBES OF PAHANG. 



By Ivor H. N. EVANS, b.a., Assistant Curator and Ethnographical 

 Assistant, F.M.S. Museums. 



(Plates XXVI-XXXVUI), 



n^HE folloTving short papers are the results of a month's work in 

 Pahang carried out in September and October, 1913. Three 

 parties of Jakun-like people * were met with as well as two small 

 divisions of Pangan (eastern Negritos). Kuala Tembeling was the 

 point from which various expeditions were made, short v^isits being 

 paid to the Cheka river, the Tekai river and the mouth of the 

 Retang. 



The Jelai or Pahang, the largest river in the country, is known 

 by the former name above Kuala Tembeling, where a small stream 

 called the Pahang joins it, and by the latter below this point, though 

 actually the Jelai and the Pahang are one, the stream which gives 

 .the river its name in its lower reaches being merely a small 

 tributary. t The Cheka joins the main stream on its right bank not 

 far above Kuala Tembeling, and the Retang just below Kuala 

 Tembeling on its left bank. The Tekai is a tributary of the 

 Tembeling. The Tembeling enters the Jelai at Kuala Tembeling 

 as the name shows (Kuala, river mouth). 



The two divisions of Pangans were living on the Cheka, one 

 about its head- waters and the other not far from its mouth. Of the 

 Jakun, sections of two tribes had settled close together on the Tekai, 

 and a portion of another near the mouth of the Retang. There has 

 evidently been a great re-shuffling of tribes in this part of Pahang, 

 and attention is di'awn to the recent wanderings of the Tekai and 

 Retang aborigines in the sections dealing with these peoples. In the 

 small district of Pahang under review we have the Jakun tribes of 

 the Tembeling living some miles to the north of the Cheka Pangan, 

 whereas properly the Pangan country, comprising very roughly the 

 eastern Siamese States of the Peninsula, Trengganu, Kelantan and 

 N.E. Pahang, lies north of that inhabited by Sakai and Jakun tribes, 

 except along the line of the main mountain range of the Peninsula 

 to the west, which forms a rough boundary, .between Jakun, Sakai, 

 and Semang and the eastern Negritos (Pangan). In the district 

 with which these papers deal Sakai and Pangan and Jakun meet 

 and overlap, if not fuse. 



* These Jakun-like people, have probably a small admixture of Sakai 

 blood, and speak Sakai dialects. In this paper, for the sake of convenience, 

 they are elsewhere referred to as Jakun. 



t For further reference to this Malay mclhod of naming rivers .see " Kelantan, 

 a State of the Malay Peninsula " by W. A. Graham (Page 8). 



