s8o 
FASCICULI MALATENSES 
ON THE USE OF BOWS AND ARROWS IN PERAK 
By LEONARD WRAY, C.M.Z.S., 
CURATOR OF THE PERAK STATE MUSEUM 
The use of bows and arrows in the State of Perak is confined, as far as 
my observation goes, to the Semangs of Selama and Upper Perak. I have 
heard that the mixed Sakai-Semang people of the Plus Valley sometimes use 
them, though I have never seen one in or from that district. In 1889, when 
I spent some four or five months exploring in Upper Perak, bows and arrows 
were not only in use but were being made there. The wood generally employed 
for the bows was that of the Ibnis palm, and the string was made from the bark 
of the Terap tree. The arrows were of bamboo, with detachable wooden 
foreshafts. The points were of iron, obtained from the Malays, but forged 
by the Semangs themselves. For this purpose they used double cylinder 
bellows made of one of the larger bamboos with feather or leaf pistons. 
At a place near the left bank of the Perak River, below Janing, I saw one of 
these forges, and obtained another in the Piak Valley ; this latter specimen is 
now in the Perak Museum. The bows were also made, not many years back, 
in Selama, and there is a good example in the British Museum, which I 
obtained there. The arrows were of two kinds, the one with hard wood 
points, and the other with points cut out of sheet-iron, probably derived 
from old meat or biscuit tins. These latter had a cleft wooden foreshaft, with 
the metal blade cemented into the cleft, so that the foreshaft formed a rib up 
the centre of each side of the thin metal blade ; in fact, they were mounted in 
the same way as the blade of the Malayan spear, known as Apit dendong. 
ON THE POSSIBLE EXISTENCE OF SAKAIS UNINFLUENCED 
BY MALAYS 
I should think it quite likely that there may still be some Sakais in the 
hill-country to the East of Kinta who have no communication with the 
Malays. Twenty years back very few of the Sakais had anything to do 
with the Malays. Prior to the English occupation of Perak, the Malays used 
to hunt the Sakais like wild beasts, and endeavour to catch and enslave them 
One of the chiefs in Kinta applied, in all good faith, to my brother, Mr. Chcil 
Wray, for a pass to catch seven Sakais to work in a mine of his. Sakai 
women were very common in the houses of the better class Malays before the 
emancipation of slaves in 1883, and many of them remained after that date in 
the houses of their former masters. 
The Semangs, on the other hand, appear to have been in communication 
with the Malays from a very early period ; they occupied the position of a 
subject race, and were made to clear jungle, plant rice, and collect jungle pro- 
duce, etc., for their Malay masters. 
L. W. 
