FASCICULI MALATENSES 
33 
even narrower. Not infrequently it is so exiguous that it does not properly 
conceal the genital organs ; Mr. Leonard Wray, of the Perak State Museum, 
showed us photographs of men belonging to the Batang Padang district in 
which it was evident, as he pointed out, that slits had been cut in the bandage 
so that the testicles projected on each side. The Mai Darat men consider that 
the requirements of decency are satisfied by the concealment of the penis ; but 
children commence to wear some clothing among them earlier than among the 
Malays of the less cultivated districts of the Peninsula. The women, as a 
rule, dress in the Malay sarong, which covers their persons from the waist to 
the ankles, and wear, in addition, a cloth disposed diagonally across the breasts. 
This also serves as a convenient receptacle for objects of various kinds. Up 
in the mountains, however, we saw some women who wore nothing but a narrow 
wrapper of bark cloth round the waist. Mai Darat men, who are in the habit 
of visiting Chinese villages, are noted for the richness of their costumes, which 
often include silk trousers and jackets ; but these refinements are only for 
town wear, and are discarded in the jungle. Not infrequently the women 
wear girdles of teazed-out bark and leaves, with great bunches of the same 
materials standing out from the hips (c.f. Plate IX, fig. 3). Young married 
women wear beneath their sarong or petticoat a belt formed of a number of 
strands of twisted vegetable fibre — probably derived from a palm — of a glossy 
black colour. These are discarded when the child-bearing age is past. It is 
curious that the substance out of which the belts are made bears a superficial 
resemblance to that used by the Semangs, though its origin is quite different. 
Both sexes often wear on the forehead a fillet of bark cloth, which is tied 
behind the head. The substance used for this purpose is made from the bark 
of the young Upas tree ( Antiaris toxicaria ), and is cut into strips some three 
inches broad and two feet long. As a rule, the fillets (Plate XII, fig. B) are 
decorated with rough geometrical patterns and patches painted in red or yellow, 
the cloth itself being of a pale cream colour. The coloured lines form a ground- 
work for designs stamped on them in black, and consisting of dots arranged in 
rosettes or thinner lines. It is probable that these dots are produced by means 
of a stamp, for the surface has obviously been compressed where they occur, and 
a careful examination of our specimens leads us to believe that certain series of 
them are reproduced in facsimile over and over again in the same design. Other 
fillets are made of short lengths of grass and vegetable fibre of different natural 
colours strung together in bands. Garlands of sweet-scented grass, shredded 
banana leaves, flowers, and other vegetable substances are sometimes seen on 
the heads of men and women. The women of the country round Bidor wear 
strands of cotton thread, dyed by themselves with what is probably a species of 
F 
6/2/03 
