7 6 
FASCICULI MALATENSES 
are said to have had a local origin ; all the members of the Kaum Ikan Lelayang , 
for example, claim descent from the people of a small village on the Patani 
coast that has now disappeared, while another fish family , 1 * now extinct in Patani, 
is said to have come from Kelantan. My first knowledge of the existence of the 
fish cults was derived from a Malacca man, who was in our service at Patani, and 
who stated, in answer to a question whether the flesh of the hammer-headed 
shark was good to eat, that he himself was prevented from eating it by a curse 
{sump ah'). On being further interrogated he said that his grandfather had 
warned him, as a boy, against eating hammer-headed shark, the reason given 
being that a Bugis ancestor of the family had been saved from drowning by 
that fish. It will be seen that the legend is identical with that subsequently 
told me, quite independently, by Patani fishermen. It is curious that these 
families call their ancestor a Bugis man, though, the Bugis men having been 
at one time the great traders of all the Malay region, this need mean no more, 
perhaps, than that he was a foreign merchant. With regard to the now extinct 
whale family, it is also worthy of notice that the Patani fishermen say that 
the Ikan Pans is an enormous fish, with teeth of white ivory, out of which kris- 
handles can be made : it is, therefore, a toothed whale. Moreover, they say that 
they have never seen an Ikan Paus, and that it does not occur off the coast, 
though probably it was found there formerly. Whales of all kinds are rare in 
the waters of the Malay Peninsula, though they are occasionally stranded at 
Singapore ; but toothed whales are, or were, common round Celebes and the 
Sulu Islands. The evidence, such as it is, points to the system of the fish 
cults having come from further east. 
Crocodile Cult 
While questioning people regarding the fish cults at Patani, I heard that 
there was also a family whose members might not kill, or even be present at 
the capture of, a crocodile, and was so fortunate as to meet a very old 
woman belonging to this family who had a clearer idea of her family obliga- 
tions than any other observer of an animal cult whom I came across. She told 
me that her family was called Kaum Lomak , and that it was a branch of ‘ ’Toh 
Sri Lam’s Family,’ and she gave me the following legend to account for the 
latter name and the origin of the family. At a village on the Patani River, 
formerly called Parek, but now known as Petiaw (Petioh), there once 
lived a maiden whose name was Betimor. Here father’s name was Jusuf, the 
descendant of Maw Mi. She had three sisters, who were named Bedjitam, 
Berbunga, and Meh Sening. Her two brothers were called Maw Mi and 
i. Kaum Ikan Kdkachang kachang-kachang). It still exists in certain villages of the State of Jhering. 
Its members call the fish Sudaru, ‘brother’ or ‘ cousin,’ not Datoh. 
