SAKAI  , an aboriginal

people of the Malay peninsula found chiefly in south Perak, Selangor and Pahang . Representatives are widely scattered among Malayan villages, but these are so crossed with the Malays as to be no longer typical . An attempt has been made to identify the Sakai with the Mon-Annam group of races, i.e. the tribes which till 600 years ago possessed what is now Siam, and some of whom still occupy Pegu and Cambodia . Professor Virchow suggested that the Sakai belong to what he calls the Dravido-Australian race, the chief representatives of which he finds in the Veddahs of Ceylon, the civilized Tamils of south India and the aborigines of Australia . In essential characteristics of hair and head there is a remarkable agreement . The difficulty in accepting the theory is in the colour of the skin, which among the Sakais is often a light shade of yellowish brown, whereas among Tamils black is the prevailing colour . Vilchow meets this by pointing out that Sinhalese, though admittedly Aryans, are often so dark as to be practically black . The Sakais are, however, it is now generally held, kinsmen of their Negrito neighbours, the Semangs (q.v.), and are, like the latter, dwarfish, seldom exceeding 4 ft . 9 in . Their skins are usually a darkish brown, but showing a reddish tinge about the breast and extremities . The head is long, and the hair a black brown, rather wavy then woolly . The face inclines to be long, and would be hatchet-shaped but for the breadth of the cheek bones .

The

chin is long and pointed, the forehead high and flat, the brows often beetling . The nose is small, slightly tilted or rounded off at the tip, but broad and with deep-set nostrils . The beard is usually scanty . The arm-stretch is almost always greater than their height . Their food is varied; the wilder tribes living on jungle fruits and game they hunt with the blow-pipe, while the more civilized grow yams, sweet potatoes, maize, sugar cane, rice and tapioca . The Sakai blow-pipe is a tube 6 to 8 ft. long formed of a single joint of a rare species of bamboo (Bambusa Wrayi) . This tube is inserted into another for protection . The darts are made of fine slivers from the mid-rib of the leaf of certain palms, and are about the size of a knitting needle . The point is usually coated with poison compounded from the sap of the Upas tree (Antiaris toxicaria) and of a species of strychnos . Each dart is carried in a separate reed, thirty to fifty of these latter being rolled up and carried in a bamboo quiver . The Sakais can kill at thirty paces with these blow-pipes . They are nomads, building mere leaf-shelters in or under the trees .

Their

dress is of bark-cloth and they scar their faces, as do the Semangs . They are skilful in mat-making and basket-work, but they have no kind of weaving or pottery . They are musical, using a rough lute of bamboo and a nose-flute, and they sing well in chorus . They have in common with the Semangs curious marriage ceremonies . The dead are slung from a pole and carried to a distant spot in the jungle . Here, wrapped in new bark-cloth, the body is buried in a shallow trench, the clothes worn by the deceased being bullied in a fire lighted nea; the grave . When filled up, rice is sown on the grave and watered, and some herbs and bananas are planted round it for the soul to feed on . Afterwards a three-cornered hutch, not unlike a doll's-house but mounted on high piles, is built at the foot, in which the soul may live . This soul-house is about 1 ft. high, is thatched with leaves and has a ladder by which the soul can climb in .