Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/114

90 British Museum, in their several departments, have most kindly identified them for me. I give them in the order in which they appear on the string:—four vertebras of the Python reticulatus (this is the famous ulwar sawa of the Malays), a piece of metal, portions of a tiger's tooth, a deer's horn and a human bone, four portions of hornbill bones, too much cut and worn to name any particular species, of which there are several, and nine vertebrae of Dendrophis, one of the tree-snakes. With the exception of the last (which, so far, I have been unable to identify with any of the native names of omen or medicinal snakes), all the animals are among those taking a prominent position in Siamese, Malayan, &c., folklore. Myths and folklore of man, tiger, deer, and snakes are constantly presented to us in one form or another; but I do not recollect that the hornbill has as yet been before the Society. A familiar bird over its own region of South-eastern India, including Burma, Siam, the Malay Peninsula, and the great islands of the archipelago, where it is reverenced as one of the most important omen-birds; to kill it brings down certain vengeance on the sacrilegious murderer. It plays an imposing part as Malayan war-god—a position it disputes with a large white and brown hawk. Numbers of miniature effigies of the hornbill are met as spirit-collectors at harvest-feasts; and at harvest and head-hunting festivals a large wooden effigy of the bird is worshipped under the name of Tenyalang with food-offerings and invocations. This effigy is said on occasions to be worshipped as Singalang Burong, the great bird-ancestor of some of the wild tribes of Borneo. The folklore of the hornbill is represented by several specimens in the British Museum, and in the Indian Art Museum at South Kensington. I am sorry I cannot assign what particular functions are given it to perform in the bone charm.

Out of some sixty utensils and symbolic ornaments used in the Siamese tonsorial rite commonly known as the Kon Chuk or Topknot-cutting, I am only able to show two—the shears and mangala stand. These are closely connected with the actual removal of the hair, at which astrologers, Buddhist monks, and Brahmin priests take part. A full description of the rite is given in G. E. Gerini's Chulakantamangala, or Tonsure Ceremony as per-