s 
FASCICULI MALATENSES 
Luar. It was in secondary jungle, where the tribe were said to have been en¬ 
camped at the time of the death, and was also a shallow pit. It had been 
covered over with sticks, above which were a few inches of earth. Some 
beast had evidently abstracted the remains from under the sticks. In two 
instances we found that dead bodies had been exposed in caves, where one of 
them had been eaten, with the exception of the calvarium, by porcupines. 
The other was in so perfect a condition, the skin having dried over the bones, 
that our Malays suggested that it had been preserved by magical art ; but 
there is no reason to believe that any process of embalming had been used. 
A Siamese medicine-man (fWr), who procured us this body, had told us 
previously that when a Semang died his friends tied the body by the neck to a 
sapling, which was bent down into an arc and then suddenly released, whereupon 
they said, * his soul has gone above 1 (semangat dia sudah naik ka-atas). This 
statement would hardly be worth recording—for it must be noted that it was not 
even made in the medicine-man’s own language—-but for the fact that a long 
cord was attached to the string tied round the neck of the body when found. 
Both at Mabek and at Ban Kassot, the Siamese part of the village of 
Tanjong Luar, there was a man who claimed to have a hereditary lordship 
over the Semangs of his district. In one case he was a Malay and in the 
other a Siamese. The latter was called by his Malay neighbours Gambala 
Sakai (herdsman of Sakais), the jungle folk being regarded not as human 
beings, but as intermediate between beasts and spirits. It seemed certain that 
both these men had the power of summoning their Semang slaves at will, but 
they were both most unwilling to do so for our benefit, as they probably sus¬ 
pected that we wished to steal them. The Hami were employed to collect 
jungle produce for their master, to clear jungle, and to get in the harvest 
On one occasion we all but surprised the Mabek tribe working in a jungle 
clearing. It did not appear, however, that they practised any form of 
agriculture on their own account. We saw numerous places in the jungle 
where they had recently been digging for roots, probably with a pointed stick, 
and in one spot we came across some wild fruits that had just been hidden 
in a hole in the ground, as was evident from the tracks in their vicinity. 
The Hami do not appear to be exogamous, for the father-in-law of the 
chief ( rit-beb ) lived in the same camp as he did. The chief had bought his 
wife from her parents for two lengths of cloth. 
The Malay and Siamese legends regarding the Panghan throw no light 
upon their true origin. The Raja of Patani told us that the jungle tribes were 
the offspring of an incestuous union between a brother and a sister, who were 
cast out of the community. It is interesting to compare this story with 
