This poor language that seems to be composed of short coughs does not even lose its roughness in song, if I may so term the musical (?) sounds that proceed from the Sakais' mouths, because real songs they have none. They are accustomed, however, to improvise something of the sort in which they always allude to facts of the day but as there is nobody to collect these fragments of extemporaneous ballads they disappear from the world of memories as quickly as they have been put together.
It is for this that all my endeavours have been in vain to find amongst them some song transmitted from father to son which by referring to an event more or less remote might serve as a clue to the legends or history of this mysterious people. But nothing of the kind exists and not even in talking can they narrate anything farther, back than three or four generations. They could not tell you if the sun and the forest were in existence before their great-grandfather lived. One cannot wonder much at this, though, when it is known that these poor inhabitants of the wildest parts of the jungle can scarcely reckon beyond three and have no means of counting time.
With them the first three numbers are not followed by a series of others which always increase by one but from neer (three) it is rare that they pass to neer nahnò (three one) jumping instead to neer neer (three three), and by this addition they express number six. They use the words neer neer nahnò for seven and then jump again to neer neer neer which means nine.
When a birth, a death or any other event takes place which requires the exact period of seven days for the accomplishment of certain ceremonies according to their habit, the Sakai takes a strip of reed or rattan (splitting it into parts to make it flexible) with which he ties two groups of three knots each and a single one apart. Every day he undoes one of these knots and so knows when the time prescribed is finished.
If you ask him whether it would not be better for him to learn to count at least as far as seven, a number that for one thing or another is frequently necessary in his life, he answers you invariably:
"We know nothing. Our fathers did so and we too will do the same without being too fantastical".
Thus we see that the saying: "My father did so", may be an inveterate enemy of arithmetic whilst it establishes a close relationship between those who in civilized society put it into practice and the savages dwelling on the heights of Perak.
The Sakai renounces all attempts at counting more than nine, and his total abstention from commercial persuits permits him to spare his brain this fatigue.
