The Pridi Banomyong Library Rare Book Room, Thammasat University, Tha Prachan campus, owns a number of rare and useful items of potential interest to students and researchers, especially those interested in history, political science, ASEAN studies, literature, diplomacy, ethnography, linguistics, anthropology, and related subjects.
Among them is Among the Forest Dwarfs of Malaya by Paul Schebesta.
Paul Schebesta was Catholic ethnographer, linguist, anthropologist, and missionary.
Born in Moravia, Schebesta went to British Malaya in 1924 to study the Semang, an ethnic-minority group of the Malay Peninsula.
They are ethnologically described as nomadic hunter-gatherers.
He also took research trips to the Philippines in 1938/39.
This proved to be the beginning of his life’s work, the study of the cultures, languages, and racial traits of tribes throughout the world.
The TU Library circulating collection also includes several books about different aspects of Malaysian ethnicities.
Here is an excerpt from his book about studying one group:
We had agreed that I was to live among these people day and night, at my pleasure. The Jahai kept their word, for when I entered the encampment the following morning the framework was already built. I was to have something rather better than the others, a small pile hut. Poles were laid across forked posts driven into the ground as a base upon which to lay a floor of bamboos. This floor was covered with karob, i.e. the split bamboos I have already described.
The gabled framework for the roof rested on tall poles, the rafters being bamboo canes broken in the middle and bent over the roof beam. While the roof was being erected two men had plaited hapoi into great leaf-mats which were laid over the rafters and made fast with rattan. Walls of karob and a bamboo staircase completed the erection and I was able to move in.
I had a view of the camp on all sides and could watch the little people at their occupations. I accompanied the expedition into the jungle to fetch the hapoi for my hut. Under the slope of a hill thickly grown with chachuh Ramogn and Jelei halted.
The pair sat down on a rotten tree trunk and began to split rattan. This reed coils itself like long lianas over the ground. With the taji (the knife used for the purpose) the reed is split lengthways into two halves, which are further divided into two or three strips and cleaned of pith.
This is how the toughest binding material of the tropics is made; a task not arduous but tiresome, and calling for care and skill. The youths dragged the hapoi to the bottom of the hill, where it was tied into bundles and carried to the encampment to be woven into roof mats. The women next break off the leaves at one side and remove the thorns.
The men lay the leaves side by side at a distance of about three centimetres apart, but all in the same direction, and weave them skilfully into mats with rattan. The mats are then rolled in bundles and put aside ready to be hoisted to the roof and laid over the rafters.
The weaving of hapoi mats and splitting of rattan are the chief occupations of the Semang. From time to time they appear in the Malay kampongs to sell or barter these products.
Little by little we began to get used to one another. Only the children and the dogs, which always greeted my appearance with loud barking, avoided me.
The sick came to ask for medicine. Old Bersiak complained of headache. I gave him aspirin and told him to take it with water. Although I took some, to show him how, he refused to imitate me. It was the same with another man to whom I offered medicine for his child, who had fever.
True, they wanted medicine, but it must be for rubbing on, not swallowing. It was a considerable time before anyone could accustom himself to swallowing quinine.
As we sat together — the women always apart — I was plied with questions such as I had never heard among the Africans, among whom I had lived years before. The dwarfs were more eager for information and more alert. They inquired eagerly about my family circumstances ; whether my parents and brothers and sisters were still living, and why I had deserted my wife.
When I told them that I was not married, they were very astonished, and when I added that I did not want to get married they all laughed aloud. The little people never believed that I was unmarried. When, later, one of them came to Grik, to take me and my baggage into the interior, they surprised me in the act of turning over the leaves of a magazine.
The pictures delighted them, especially one large picture of a woman. That must be my wife. The first thing they related in the camp was that they had seen my wife. It was impossible to dissuade them of this.
I had regarded the Semang as dirty folk who never washed themselves. This I had read, and at first I thought it was true. It was, however, only a few days before I learned better. Before long I saw a woman bathing her baby ; a delightful picture ! It was about noon and the jungle was hot. The mother stood the child before her, held it by its little arm to prevent its falling, took a bamboo filled with water, and douched the grinning Orang-Utan.
The vigorous rubbing that followed only produced sounds of delight. A few days later there was a general washing of all the babies. Three mothers soused their offspring with water, which the latter with screams of protest tried to ward off with their hands. I often stood on the river bank with men, women and children and watched them. The Bersiak Jahai were good swimmers, and in the warm summer season often plunged into the deep water.
It was very amusing to see the mothers repeatedly ducking their children and rubbing them with their hands. The women never bathed in my presence, and the men always kept their loin cloth on while bathing if I was there.
Neither the Semang nor any of the other tribes I came to know were afraid of water. They bathe and wash with enjoyment, except in the early morning, when it is still cold; and then it is fear of catching cold that prevents them, not any liking for uncleanliness. […]
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)