Jean de Picquigni, vidame of Amiens, to make an investigation, which lasted several months. Saisset was on the point of escaping to Rome when the vidame of Amiens surprised him by night in his episcopal palace. He was brought to Senlis, and on the 24th of October 1301 appeared before Philip and his court. The chancellor, Pierre Flotte, charged him with high treason, and he was placed in the keeping of the archbishop of Narbonne, his metropolitan. Philip IV. tried to obtain from the pope the canonical degradation of Saisset. Boniface VIII., instead, ordered the king in December 1301 to free the bishop, in order that he might go to Rome to justify himself. At the same time, he sent the famous bulls Salvator mundi, a sort of repetition of Clericis laicos, and Ausculta fili, which opened a new stage of the quarrel between the pope and king. In the heat of the new struggle Saisset was forgotten. He had been turned over in February 1302 into the keeping of Jacques des Normands, the papal legate, and was ordered to leave the kingdom at once. He lived at Rome until after the incident at Anagni. In 1308 the king pardoned him, and restored him to his see. He died, still bishop of Pamiers, about 1314.
There is no proof for the legend that Bernard Saisset earned Philip IV.'s hatred in 1300-1301 by boldly sustaining the pope's demand for the liberation of the count of Flanders, and by publicly proclaiming the doctrine of papal supremacy.
See Dom Vaissete, Histoire générale de Languedoc, ed. Privat, t. ix. pp. 216-310; Histoire littéraire de la France, t. xxvi. pp. 540-547; E. de Rozière, Le Passage de Pamiers, in Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes (1871); Ch. V. Langlois in Lavisse's Histoire de France, t. iii., pt. ii., pp. 142-146.
SAISSET, EMILE EDMOND (1814-1863), French philosopher, was born at Montpellier on the 16th of September 1814, and died at Paris on the 17th of December 1863. He studied philosophy in the school of Cousin, and carried on the eclectic tradition of his master along with Ravaisson and Jules Simon. He was professor of philosophy at Caen, at the École Normale in Paris and later at the Sorbonne.
His chief works are a monograph on Aenesidemus the Sceptic (1840); Le Scepticisme: Ænésidème, Pascal, Kant (1845); a translation of Spinoza (1843); Précurseurs et disciples de Descartes (1862); Discours de la philosophies de Leibnitz (1857)—a work which had great influence on the progress of thought in France; Essai de philosophie religieuse (1859); Critique et histoire de la philosophie (1865).
SAKA, or Shāka, the name of one or more tribes which invaded India from Central Asia. The word is used loosely, especially by Hindu authors, to designate all the tribes which from time to time invaded India from the north, much as all the tribes who invaded China are indiscriminately termed Tatars. Used more accurately, it denotes the tribe which invaded India 130-140 B.C. They are the Sacae and Sakai of classical authors and the Se of the Chinese, which may represent an original Sek or Sök. The Chinese annalists state that they were a pastoral people who lived in the neighbourhood of the modern Kashgar. About 160 B.C. they were driven southward by the advance of the Yue-Chi from the east. One portion appears to have settled in western Afghanistan, hence called Sakasthāna, in modern Persian Sejistan. The other section occupied the Punjab and possessed themselves of the territory which the Graeco-Bactrian kings had acquired in India, that is Sind, Gujarat and Malwa. The rulers of these provinces bore the title of Satrap (Kshatrapa or Chhatrapa) and were apparently subordinate to a king who ruled over the valley of Kabul and the Punjab. In 57 B.C. the Sakas were attacked simultaneously by Parthians from the west and by the Malava clans from the east and their power was destroyed. It should be added that what we know of Saka history is mostly derived from coins and inscriptions which admit of various interpretations and that scholars are by no means agreed as to names and dates. In any case their power, if it lasted so long, must have been swept away by the Kushan conquest of Northern India.
Nothing is known of the language or race of the Sakas. Like most of the invaders of India at this period they adopted Buddhism, at least partially. They can be traced to the neighbourhood of Kashgar, but not like the Yue-Chi to the frontiers of China. They may have been Turanians akin to that tribe, or they may have been Iranians akin to the Iranian element in Transoxiana and the districts south of the Pamirs. They cannot be the same as the Scythians of Europe, though the name and original nomadic life are points in common.
See Vincent Smith, Early History of India (1908); O. Franke, Beiträge aus chinesischen Quellen zur Kenntnis der Türkvölker und Skythen (1904); P. Gardner, Coins of Greek and Scythian Kings in India (1886); and various articles by Vincent Smith, Fleet, Cunningham, A. Stein, Sylvain Levi and others in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Journal asiatique, Indian Antiquary, Zeitsch. der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, &c. (C. El.)
SAKAI, an aboriginal people of the Malay peninsula found chiefly in south Perak, Selangor and Pahang. Representatives are widely scattered among Malayan villages, but these are so crossed with the Malays as to be no longer typical. An attempt has been made to identify the Sakai with the Mon-Annam group of races, i.e. the tribes which till 600 years ago possessed what is now Siam, and some of whom still occupy Pegu and Cambodia. Professor Virchow suggested that the Sakai belong to what he calls the Dravido-Australian race. the chief representatives of which he finds in the Veddahs of Ceylon, the civilized Tamils of south India and the aborigines of Australia. In essential characteristics of hair and head there is a remarkable agreement. The difficulty in accepting the theory is in the colour of the skin, which among the Sakais is often a light shade of yellowish brown, whereas among Tamils black is the prevailing colour. Virchow meets this by pointing out that Sinhalese, though admittedly Aryans, are often so dark as to be practically black. The Sakais are, however, it is now generally held, kinsmen of their Negrito neighbours, the Semangs (q.v.), and are, like the latter, dwarfish, seldom exceeding 4 ft. 9 in. Their skins are usually a darkish brown, but showing a reddish tinge about the breast and extremities. The head is long, and the hair a black brown, rather wavy then woolly. The face inclines to be long, and would be hatchet-shaped but for the breadth of the cheek bones. The chin is long and pointed, the forehead high and flat, the brows often beetling. The nose is small, slightly tilted or rounded off at the tip, but broad and with deep-set nostrils. The beard is usually scanty. The arm-stretch is almost always greater than their height. Their food is varied; the wilder tribes living on jungle fruits and game they hunt with the blowpipe, while the more civilized grow yams, sweet potatoes, maize, sugar cane, rice and tapioca. The Sakai blow-pipe is a tube 6 to 8 ft. long formed of a single joint of a rare species of bamboo (Bambusa Wrayi). This tube is inserted into another for protection. The darts are made of line slivers from the mid-rib of the leaf of certain palms, and are about the size of a knitting needle. The point is usually coated with poison compounded from the sap of the Upas tree (Antiaris toxicaria) and of a species of strychnos. Each dart is carried in a separate reed, thirty to fifty of these latter being rolled up and carried in a bamboo quiver. The Sakais can kill at thirty paces with these blow-pipes. They are nomads, building mere leaf-shelters in or under the trees. Their dress is of bark-cloth and they scar their faces, as do the Semangs. They are skilful in mat-making and basketwork, but they have no kind of weaving or pottery. They are musical, using a rough lute of bamboo and a nose-flute, and they sing well in chorus. They have in common with the Semangs curious marriage ceremonies. The dead are slung from a pole and carried to a distant spot in the jungle. Here, wrapped in new bark-cloth, the body is buried in a shallow trench, the clothes worn by the deceased being burned in a fire lighted near the grave. When filled up, rice is sown on the grave and watered, and some herbs and bananas are planted round it for the soul to feed on. Afterwards a three-cornered hutch, not unlike a doll's-house but mounted on high piles, is built at the foot, in which the soul may live. This soul-house is about 1½ ft. high, is thatched with leaves and has a ladder by which the soul can climb in.
SAKÉ, the national beverage of Japan. In character it stands midway between beer and wine. It is made chiefly from rice (see Brewing). Saké contains 12 to 15% of alcohol and about 3% of solid matter (extractives), 0.3% of lactic
