Igi6.] 1. H. N. Evans: Upper Perak Aborigines. 



ail 



ordered a Sakai to fetch him some water, and the Sakai, much 

 to the surprise of the Malay turned round and told him that if 

 he wanted water he had better go and get it himself. Several 

 cases are known of the Hill Sakai of this region objecting to 

 the presence of strangers in their territories and ejecting them. 



Tattooing, called by the Sakai chenul, was observed on the 

 faces of a number of individuals, both on men and women. 

 In no case did I see tattoo marks on any other part of the 

 body. Since, though tattooing has been recorded among the 

 Sakai by various observers, there seems to be some doubt in 

 Skeat's mind as to how far evidence with regard to tattooing 

 was to be believed, I will state here — I have already done so 

 in other cases where I have met with the practice — that in 

 speaking of tattooing I invariably mean tattooing proper, i.e., 

 pricking colouring material into the skin by means of a pointed 

 instrument. Skeat sums up the evidence with regard to 

 tattooing, available at the time he wrote, as follows : 



" In spite of this apparently strong consensus of evidence, 

 I must still repeat the warning that (although there is clearly 

 soine form of real tattooing, i.e., skin-puncturation, practised in 

 the Peninsula), yet what many of the observers from whom I 

 have quoted, are wont to call tattooing, is certainly no more 

 than sacrificatioii * or even perhaps nothing but mere face- 

 paint after all."t 



The Sakai told me that the operation was performed with 

 a bertam thorn and soot or charcoal. The resulting patterns 

 were generally rather faint, not very much pigment having 

 been forced in under the skin. In the men the most usual 

 tattoo marks found were three pairs of parallel lines on either 

 side of the face, the topmost line usually running slanting 

 across the face from near the top of the ear to the nostril, the 

 lowest from rather below the ear to the corner of the mouth. 

 In one case a man, besides having this arrangement of tattoo 

 markings, was also ornamented with two parallel lines from 

 the top of the forehead in the centre, to the root of the nose. 



In the women the tattoo patterns were generally confined 

 to the forehead, one of the commonest forms being, roughl)^ a 

 reversed broad arrow composed of three pairs of parallel lines, 

 the centre pair reaching from the top of the forehead to just 

 above the root of the nose, the other two pairs from the top of 

 the forehead to above the eyebrows. One man, in addition to 

 the ordinary cheek pattern, had also this type -of forehead 

 design, but the two lines forming the shaft of the arrow 

 were prolonged to the tip of the nose. Several women, 

 whom I saw, had the face stained yellow with some vegetable 

 colouring matter resembling turmeric, which, they said, they 

 obtained from a fairly tall shrub. 



The custom of boring a hole in the septum of the nose 

 was common, but not universal: porcupine quills were worn 



* I have never yet seen scarification employed. 

 t Pagan Races: Vol. 2, p. 43. 



