7 ° 
FASCICULI MALATENSES 
During the process of recovery from circumcision boys wear a stiff 
loop of rattan with an outward flexure ; this is fastened to a short stick, which 
is secured below the clothes under the belt, and prevents anything coming in 
contact with the wound. At night they sleep with their legs passed through 
loops of cane fixed, some little way apart from one another, in a bamboo, which 
is suspended from the rafters by a string of just sufficient length to keep it 
an inch or two above their sleeping mat. 
Until circumcision, the Patani Malays, and also those of Upper Perak, 
shave the head, except for a single lock on or near the vertex. It is believed 
that if this were cut before a youth had 1 entered the vernacular’ he would 
suffer from fever. Although just such a lock is retained throughout life by 
certain Semang and bastard Semang tribes, the custom among the Malays is 
possibly derived from the Siamese, seeing that it is only occasionally practiced 
in those parts of the Peninsula which have not been subject to continued 
Siamese influence. Among the Siamese, children of both sexes wear a lock of 
hair on the top of their head until they reach the age of twelve or fourteen, 
when it is shaved off with much ceremony, in which the monks from the 
nearest monastery, and, if possible, one or more Pram or 4 Brahmins T are 
invited to take part. (There are no members of this sacred caste in the 
Patani States, but in Senggora and Patalung their presence at the rite of 
cutting the topknot is regarded as obligatory, at any rate among the upper 
classes). The Malays regard this ceremony as in some way analogous to 
circumcision, and talk of it as * masok Siam, 1 i.e., ‘entering Siamese,’ just as 
they often talk of circumcision as * masok Malayu 1 or 4 masok Islam' A little 
son of the ex-raja of Patani, a devout Mahommedan, wore two locks of hair 
instead of one, very much in the fashion of Chinese children, but this may 
have been because the present royal family of Patani rather boasts of Chinese 
descent, probably without historical justification, because a famous queen of that 
state, who withstood the Siamese with great vigour in the seventeenth century, 
was a Chinese woman converted to Mahommedanism. 
Marriage 
The age of marriage differs very much, both among the Malays and 
among the Siamese, according to economic conditions, family and local custom. 
Among the Mahommedan Inhabitants of the country a girl’s marriage is not 
legal before the age of twelve, though parturition is said to have occurred at 
ten,' or a boy’s before he is circumcised, though this ceremony rarely takes 
place, at any rate in the Patani States, until some years after puberty. Among 
i. Mart % 1902, Art, No. 86, p. 119. 
