SAKAIS. 117 



strong enough to enter the jungle to find their daily food are 

 permitted to approach the child. All others are excluded for a 

 certain period, as there is a certain superstition among them 

 that able bodied persons approaching a newly born baby will 

 contract its smell and take it to the jungle with them when out 

 looking for food. The evil spirits, it is said, are always on the 

 look-out for persons with this smell, and will follow them on 

 their return to their huts to the birth place of the child. At the 

 end of that time the child receives what may be called a ceremonial 

 purification of water, and is presented to him at the village. 



Habits. 



The Sakais are essentially nomadic, and clear only very 

 limited areas in the hill forests for cultivation ; of rice culture 

 they know little, for corn or maize and the Sikoi, sweet potatoes, 

 and tapioca, are their principal crops. The most primitive of 

 the Sakais still subsist by the chase, using the Sumpitan, or 

 blow-gun, and poisoned darts to kill wild animals and birds. 

 As is well-known, the darts are poisoned by being dipped in a 

 gummy or glutinous extract of Ipoh which hardens on the tips, 

 and of another and more dangerous poison extracted from the 

 roots of a kind of creeper named by the Sakais Legop. 



The Sakai dies as he lives, surrounded by powers of nature 

 which he understands not. If a disease be regarded as con- 

 tagious, a noise is made on rude drums made of big bamboo to 

 drive away the evil spirits. It is remarkable that there are not 

 musical instruments to express grief ; but in expression of jo} r 

 a flute played through the nose, and a kind of mandoline made 

 also of bamboo, are performed upon particularly by women. 

 After death comes burial in a deep grave, the body generally 

 standing erect in the grave about 4 feet deep or in a sitting 

 posture with tobacco, betel-nut, potatoes, fruits and also with 

 his blow-pipe and poisoned darts by his side. The grave is closed 

 by felling some jungle surrounding it and for about a week 

 they bring the usual food, if a female also seme flowers, and 

 afterwards abandon the neighbourhood ; for a dead person fre- 

 quently drives the timid Sakais miles awayfrom promising slopes 

 on which they were beginning to grow their necessary food, 



R. A. Soc, No. 41, 1904, 



