The Stone Age in the Malay Peninsula

Abstract

IN NATURE, vol. xxxiii. p. 377, there is a notice of a paper by M. de Morgan, published in Cosmos, on the Stone Age in the Malay Peninsula. Will you permit me to offer a few remarks with reference to this matter. In the first place, it is said that M. de Morgan came into contact with three native races, which he respectively names Sakayes [Sakai], Seumangs [Sěmang], and Rayats [Ryot]. I have put in brackets the commonly accepted spelling in the Straits. It is funny what peculiar mistakes travellers make when passing through a country the language of which they do not understand, ryot being the word used in the Straits to express those followers or retainers of a native chief who are not actually his debt slaves, but who owe him more or less of feudal allegiance; Malays here invariably use the word when speaking of the following of a Sakai chief. The word ryot is, I believe, also used in the same sense in India. With reference to the tribes of whom M. de Morgan speaks as living in the recesses of the mountains, and whom the Sakaies called “fire apes,” I cannot help remarking that I have never heard the Sakaies speak of them myself, nor can I find that any other Government servant here has heard of them either; still we are in pretty constant communication with certain of the Sakaies of these hills, and for my part I have at different times stayed for longer and shorter periods at the clearings of some of the chiefs whom M. de Morgan visited, and moreover I have employed most of the same Malays who followed M. de Morgan. By the bye, these were Sumatran Malays, and they told me some very extraordinary tales about the wild tribes before I started up country with them; these foreign Malays are especially addicted to telling marvellous tales of the wild tribes of the mountains, but so far I have not been able to verify their information in the least degree either from the Sakaies themselves or from native Malay sources. It would be interesting to know what equivalent was used for the expression “fire apes.” Was it a Malay word or a Sakai word? With reference to the Stone Age I quite agree with M. de Morgan in believing that at a not very late period—probably just before the Malay invasion—there were tribes living in the interior who were not acquainted with the use of iron; up to the present moment I have been able to collect twenty-two stone implements. I have sent drawings and notices of these to the Anthropological Institute. I may, however, here mention that of these twenty-two specimens one is the half of a stone bracelet; the rest are all chopping-tools of different descriptions, used, I think we may fairly conclude, by a race of boat-builders, who most likely constructed dug-outs, much like the Malays of the present day. I adduce this supposition from the fact that of my twenty-one specimens two are perfect gouges, and six others are of the description which Dr. Evans has classed under adzes. The cutting-edges of nearly all my specimens have been considerably damaged by use. The high polish which M. de Morgan's specimens—and mine also—exhibit is, I think, accounted for in a great measure by the fact that they are used and very highly prized by the Malays as whetstones; the women preserve them, especially to sharpen their razors on, with which they shave the heads of their children during the periods ordered by custom or religious law; and the men were, until lately, very anxious to procure them to sharpen the iron spurs used in cock-fighting. As almost all of the specimens procured by me have been purchased of Malays who have inherited them from their ancestors, and prized them as heir-looms, it is, I think, reasonable to suppose that in their original condition some of them, at least, were considerably rougher than when they came into our hands; this supposition is further confirmed by a remark made to me the other day by a Malay chief. He said that he once had a thunderstone given to him which was so rough that he had to wear it down on his emery-wheel before he could use it as a whetstone. I have one specimen which has no cutting-edge, but is squared off at each end and is almost spindle-shaped. I have also seen another specimen of the same description. Can it be that these two specimens have been manufactured by Malays for whetstopes out of the so-called thunder-stones? I cannot account for them in any other way; they are too slight for hammers.