“be.” The tree would appear to be identifiable (vide App. i., iii.) with that mentioned in the first
account. ↑
9
Sakais are certain of the non-Malayan heathen (i.e. not Muhammadan) inhabitants of the hills
and jungles of the Peninsula. ↑
10
Some say a bullock (lĕmbu), but the most usual version gives the buffalo. In the Ramayana,
which has largely influenced some departments of Malay folk-lore, it is an elephant which
supports the earth. So, too, Vishnu in the boar-incarnation raised the earth from the bottom of
the sea upon his tusks. ↑
11
This island (for which a tortoise or the fish “Nun” is occasionally substituted) may be
compared with the Batak (Sumatran) belief concerning the raft which was made by Batara
Guru for the support of the earth at the creation of the world (J.R.A.S., N. S. vol. xiii. part i. p.
60); and vide Klinkert’s Malay-Dutch Dict., s.v. Nun. ↑
12
Newbold, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 359. The spelling of “Jangi” is incorrect. It should be spelt
“Janggi.” ↑
13
This tree appears to be a tradition of the Cocos Maldiva, of which Sir H. Yule, s.v. Coco-de-
Mer, gives the following interesting account:—
“Coco-de-Mer, or Double Coco-nut, the curious twin fruit so called, the produce of the
Lodoicea Sechellarum, a palm growing only in the Seychelles Islands, is cast up on the shores
of the Indian Ocean, most frequently on the Maldive Islands, but occasionally also on Ceylon
and S. India, and on the coasts of Zanzibar, of Sumatra, and some others of the Malay Islands.
Great virtues as medicine and antidote were supposed to reside in these fruits, and extravagant
prices were paid for them. The story goes that a ‘country captain,’ expecting to make his
fortune, took a cargo of these nuts from the Seychelles Islands to Calcutta, but the only result
was to destroy their value for the future.
“The old belief was that the fruit was produced on a palm growing below the sea, whose
fronds, according to Malay seamen, were sometimes seen in quiet bights on the Sumatran
coast, especially in the Lampong Bay. According to one form of the story among the Malays,
which is told both by Pigafetta and by Rumphius, there was but one such tree, the fronds of
which rose above an abyss of the Southern Ocean, and were the abode of the monstrous bird
Garuda (or Rukh of the Arabs). The tree itself was called Pau-sengi, which Rumphius seems to