Cati Bilang Pandai is the wise counselor of the tambo, a figure of intellect set beside the royal figure of Maharaja Diraja. He marries the ancestress Puti Indo Jalito and fathers Datuk Perpatih nan Sabatang, founder of the egalitarian Bodi Caniago custom, so that the more democratic of the two adat systems springs from the line of the sage rather than the king. Tradition credits him with the arts of calculation, the reckoning of days and the earliest framing of communal rule, and some recensions identify or pair him with the priestly ancestor Suri Dirajo. His name itself, 'the all-reckoning skilled one,' encodes this role.