Notes on the Orang Laut of Ulu Kepasing, Pahang
A brief ethnographic note by Edna Windsor documenting the physical characteristics, subsistence practices, and linguistic features of a small group of aborigines known as the “Orang Liar” in the Kepasing area of Ulu Rompin, eastern Pahang, based on information provided by a Sakai jelutong headman in 1947.
Summary
Windsor records that the group numbers twenty to thirty people, are shorter in stature than neighbouring Sakai groups, have short woolly hair, and wear only bark-cloth breech clouts (p. 137). They are nomadic, living in caves and leaf shelters in the headwaters of the Kepasing, and subsist on monkeys, fish, and a large tuber, using blow-pipes, iron spears, and pit traps (p. 138). Notably, they do not eat salt, have no concept of money, and leave their dead unburied in the jungle (p. 138).
Linguistically, Windsor collected forty-four words, of which thirty-three were identified by H. D. Collings as Semelai (a Mon-Khmer group from Tasek Bera), with the remaining eleven of uncertain origin (p. 139). Collings suggested the group may be a branch of the Temo’ Negrito, with some Jakun admixture indicated by personal naming conventions and the rotan-bound blowpipe (p. 139).