A Vocabulary of the Jakuns of Batu 



Pahat, Johore, together with some 



remarks on their customs 



and peculiarities. 



By a. D. Machado. 



At the headwaters of the Sembrong, the Bekok and the 

 Simpang Kiri in the interior of Johore, three large streams 

 which, draining- one into the other, form lower down the Batu 

 Pahat River, are to be found scattered families of Jakuns, 

 These people live by agriculture, are employed by the Chinese 

 pepper and gambler cultivators in clearing jungle for them, and 

 furnish the Malays through barter, their stock of jungle pro- 

 duce. Years of contact with the Chinaman have robbed them 

 of much of their primitiveness. {So great is their assimilation to 

 the Chinaman, that when cadging a bowlful of rice from him, 

 they have been often seen manipulating a pair of chopsticks with 

 a dexterity unequalled by the Chinaman himself. They now 

 profess an abhorrence for monkeys, snakes, lizards and similar 

 delicacies, and it is sometimes amusing to behold their studied look 

 of consternation at any one suggesting the possibility of any- 

 thing so loathsome forming part of their daily menu. Yet the 

 Malays declare that in the privacy of their own homes, they 

 will devour anything, from a snail to an elephant. They do 

 not regard with disfavour the giving of their daughters in mar- 

 riage to Chinese planters, such unions usually assuring to them 

 and their relations some measure of certainty of a regular sup- 

 ply of food. They are thus a somewhat mixed people to-day. 

 In general appearance they are not unlike up-country Malays. 

 There is still however that peculiar lustre in their eyes, an ap- 

 pearance of independence and yet of timidity, an indefinable 

 something in fact, which to a practiced observer, at once pro- 

 claims them their primitive origin and their probable connexion 

 with the other wild tribes further north in the peninsula. They 



E. A. Sue. No. 38, 1902. 



