Note 1 — Chapter VI · MAGIC RITES AS AFFECTING THE LIFE OF MAN

As regards true totemism, I am not sure that it can be traced among the Malays of the Peninsula, although a few elements of the system are to be found here and there among them. Thus, for instance, in certain districts (e.g. northern Malacca and the Negri Sembilan) there are clans descending in the female line among whom exogamy is still the rule, to the extent, at least, that intermarriage is forbidden between the children of sisters (J.R.A.S., S.B., No. 23, p. 143); and we also sometimes find tutelary or taboo animals, etc. more or less closely connected with certain families; but these two sets of facts do not seem to be interwoven as they appear to be among certain other races. Traces of animals, etc. being regarded as specially connected with particular families are not, I believe, very common: two instances occur in the Sĕjarah Malayu, viz. the man “Bat’h,” who emerged from foam vomited by a bull (Malay Annals, p. 23), and who is regarded as the progenitor of the still existing Malay tribe (Bangsa Muntah Lĕmbu) of hereditary bards, to whom beef, milk, etc. are taboo1; and the Indian prince “Mani Farendan” (ibid. p. 110), who on his voyage to Malacca was preserved from drowning by the alu-alu fish and the gandasuli tree, and on that account “forbade all his descendants to eat of the fish alu-alu or to wear the flower of the gandasuli.” His descendants formed a noble family in Malacca, the heads of which usually bore the title of S’ri Naradiraja, and during the 15th century A. D. often held the highest offices of state; so the legend may, probably enough, preserve the record of an actual custom peculiar to that family. Both the above cases, however, seem to be derived from a Hindu origin.