ABORIGINAL TRIBES; THE CENTRAL SAKAL 
47 
appears in the form of a tiger, carries off the body, tears 
iti open and releases the soul. If the heir of the dead 
man elects to keep vigil over his father's body and if he 
shows no fear, the tiger-spirit may initiate him into his 
father's black arts. He becoraes a sorcerer there and 
then. But the supply of sorcerers by this process is 
not great; the death-rate is too higli. The ordinary 
na^halftu prefers some safer system of apprenticeship. 
Moreover, the position of a na-kalau. has its responsibili- 
ties as well as its hononrs. A wizard should know 
neither pain nor fear. If he utters a groan during his 
last illness he loses the honour of tree-bnrial : the tiger- 
spirit will have none of him. Indeed, many a wizard 
has lost his reputation when dead owing to the tigers 
declining to touch his body. 
The strange dual system of burial, the ablutions, the 
alien type of hut used by the ija-hahtn and the allusions 
to special foi^raula?- in an unknown tongue seemed to 
suggest a foreign origin for these elements in the Sakai 
religion. In reply to repeated enquiries I was assured 
that the words used in invocations are Malay and that 
the power invoked is described invariably as Sah-Sidikt 
But whatever may be the Malay veneer over these 
practices the idea of tree-burial is too widespread in the 
north of the Peninsula — even in Siamese districts — to 
be explained as some abandoned Malay cnstora. * The use • 
of foreign formiilte tends to show that these aboriginal 
tribes, however great their isolation, are not superior 
to the adoption of foreign customs and beliefs. Signer 
Cerruti gives a vivid account of the panic excited by an 
^ ** The last chap ta be biiriPE^ in a tvue tti Perak," wricca one of my infoMnants, 
" was Pawang Kwa, wlio was stack Tip in a bniiffor tree half u mile from the vi]]aoxJ 
of Raja Kaja Ijetween 1870 and 1S75, ns near as T can judge. Pei-liapa a Irttle 
later. Ho is now a tij^er wiUi ft white patch." This, of coarsp, Ift nf MalavB, 
