Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 1, 2025
Silk sârongs, in close imitation of those woven in Pahang and Kĕlantan, are made cheap, and sold as the genuine articles. Bales of the white turban cloths, flecked with gold thread, which are so much worn by men who have returned from the Haj, are annually exported to Mecca, where they are sold, as articles of real Arabic manufacture, to the confiding pilgrims.
The Kĕlantan man is, to the native of Pahang, what the water-buffalo is to a short-horn. To begin with, to the uninitiated he is wholly unintelligible. He grunts at one like the fatted pig at the Agricultural Shows, and expects one to understand the meaning which he attaches to these grunts. This proves him to be sanguine but unintelligent.
In vain have successive generations of Kĕlantan râjas cut off the hands, feet, and heads of detected or suspected burglars and robbers; in vain have all sorts of stratagems been adopted by travellers as precautions against thieves; and in vain have the families of convicted men been punished for the deeds of their relations.
In a rude, rough way, and without the swagger of the Pahang Malay, they are sportsmen. I shot over one of them for four years, and, until he went blind, he was as good a retriever as one would desire to possess. At Kôta Bharu bull fights, matches between rams, cocks, quails, and human prize fighters, are the chief amusement of the people. The latter sport is peculiar to Kĕlantan.
The women also dispense with an upper garment, and make up the deficiency by a lavish use of sârong and scarves. The shoulders and upper portion of the chest, however, are left bare. These and other practices, cause the Kĕlantan Malays to be much despised by the peoples of other Native States, who regard them as unmannerly and uncouth.
Thus, at the present time, the flag of the White Elephant floats at the mouth of the Kĕlantan river on State occasions, though the administration of the country is still entirely in the hands of the Râja and his Chiefs.
Pahang was placed under British Protection in 1888, and Johor is still independent, though its relations with the Government of Great Britain are very much the same as those which subsist between Siam and the Malay States of Kĕlantan and Trĕnggânu.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking