304 MALAY LAW IN NEGRI SEMBILAN. 
which often and often are unknown to Malays of the present 
day. It is a usual thing for a Malay to exclaim when a Rai‘at 
is talking “ pandet sekali chakap’’—“ how clever he is at talk- 
ing ’’—and he looks at him in admiration. The Malay, however, 
knows the Rai‘at’s intense simplicity, and if he wants any ad- 
vantages from him he will get all he requires. He will also 
laugh at him, though in a friendly chaffing way and it is often 
amusing to hear the Rai‘at get by far the best of the laugh. 
The Rai‘ats never object to the collection of revenues by 
British Officers. They say that the English know how to do 
it and that they do it rightly and that it should be so, but they 
say the Malays know nothing about it and that when money 
comes into a Malay country it makes nothing but difficulties 
and trouble. They are lookers on, and it is hardly necessary 
to say how correct their views are. 
A Rai‘at has the greatest dread of a grant for land; nothing 
will persuade him to take out a grant and if pressed, which in 
the Native States is unnecessary, he will leave the country and 
travel away into the mountains of the interior. Anything 
binding, any direct taxation or registration drives them 
away. 
Their real objection to taking out grants for land is because 
of their custom that if there is a death in the house, they must 
leave the place and settle elsewhere generally many miles 
away. 
The origin of land tenure here is very curious and probably 
unknown in any other State of the Malay Peninsula. When 
the original settlers arrived, they ingratiated themselves with 
the aborigines and first of all no doubt got free gifts of forest 
land from the Baten. Later on there probably was competi- 
tion for waste lands in fertile valleys and presents were given 
to the Baten for the land. This resulted later in the sale of 
land to the Muhammadan settlers. The price was a knife or a 
weapon, a piece of cloth or some article valued by the Rai‘at, 
but it became an actual sale. According to Muhammadan law, 
land cannot be sold, it is God’s land and man cannot sell it. 
Thus here we have distinctly the aboriginal origin in the sales 
of waste lands. Later, as the Muhammadans became powerful 
