54 
PAPERS ON MALA¥ SUBS^ECTS, 
tliat the Central Sakai, with all their dirt, are gi*eat 
dandies in their own original stylo- They keep hairinesa 
within bounds by the use of pincers, run a porcupino- 
quill through the cartilage of the nose, tattoo their 
foreheads and paint their faces with streaks of various 
dyes, wear garlands of flowers ronnd their heads, paint 
their bark-clothes with different patterns, and put leaf- 
girdles round their waists. A line of these painted 
savages passing silently and in single file through the 
jungle is a very striking sight, strangely reminiscent of 
the stories of Fenimore Cooper, Moreover, the Sakai is a 
devotee of fine art in his way. He is musical, using three 
instruments — ^the nose-flute,^ the bamboo-zither/" and the 
bamboo-drum or sounding-board.^ He has regular tunes 
named and associated with these instruments i " plaintive 
longing" and "dear recollections" are the significant 
titles of two of his flute-pieces, while the zither-tunes 
are named after bird-notes, tree-felling, and other forest- 
soimds. The player on the chentoh is a mere accom- 
panist; love-songs and oratorios are not for his unaided 
eiforts. In oral literature the Sakai are weak, even for 
a primitive tribe. The Semang sings of his monkey and 
the Besisi has his songs about the rhinoceros; but the 
Central Sakai can only string words together without 
rhyme or meaning or any use except that of displaying 
the power and range of his voice. Kor has he any 
proverbs or proverbial sayings. The Mai Burnt of the 
plains have a fev7 riddles (probably taken from the 
Malay) and a few polite metaphors of obvious foreign 
origin, such as *^ her beauty is like the newly-risen sun, 
she dazzles." Doubtless the young and travelled Mai 
Davat finds expressions of this sort very effective with 
