Tuan Tata: Song of Uda - I

Part Two shrinking you again within our ruwai though always fearing, always cringeing at the thought of the day when his brothers would come in numbers bearing fire-spitting engines over the sodden earth in search of you « My people… my PEOPLE… Will avenge this dastardly deed… This foul and bloody deed ! » I have not slept these past years And Anjang heaves murmuring in a strange tongue I cannot understand « But then, do not forget you murdered too for someone else’s cause down from 5th Corps at Lasah !» « Remember what you wrote your parents : ‘Now if I become a Temiar by marriage there would be no barriers. I would be party then to their most intimate secrets. TOHAT NA MED: SAKA SENOI SELAMAT !’ » NOTES Patrick Noone, a British anthropologist, discovered the Ple-Temiar tribe living isolated in the jungle highlands in the State of Perak on the west coast of the Malayan peninsula in the early nineteen-thirties. The tribe was so cut away from civilization that the notion of crime did not exist in their society. The shaman leader of the tribe welcomed « Pat » and gave him his sixteen-year old daughter Anjang in mariage. She was betrothed to Uda, a young Temiar. Unable to bear the separation, Uda murdered Pat - the very first crime in their history. This poem – one of the cantos – commemorates this event. Glossary of Ple-Temiar terms ruwai : group protective soul of the Temiar community. gunig : the guiding soul of the Temiar shaman which often takes the shape of a tiger. buloh seworr : (Malay) the best of the blow-pipe bamboo to be found on the slopes of the high mountains in Ulu Perak. Tohat na med : saka senoi selamat ! : Our Master is well : the Senoi country is safe ! saka : each Temiar community’s agricultural domain. halak : shaman rokap : a tree whose branches are especially tough. ladang : the land on which shifting cultivation is practised. chinchem : the Temiar shaman’s dance learnt in a dream from his gunig (cf.). © T. Wignesan, 1977 (from the collection: tell them i'm gone, 1983)