Part 20 (1/2)
Their ma.n.u.scripts of any bulk and importance are written with ink of their own making on the inner bark of a tree cut into slips of several feet in length and folded together in squares; each square or fold answering to a page or leaf. For more common occasions they write on the outer coat of a joint of bamboo, sometimes whole but generally split into pieces of two or three inches in breadth, with the point of the weapon worn at their side, which serves the purpose of a stylus; and these writings, or scratchings rather, are often performed with a considerable degree of neatness. Thus the Chinese also are said by their historians to have written on pieces of bamboo before they invented paper. Of both kinds of ma.n.u.script I have many specimens in my possession. The lines are formed from the left hand towards the right, contrary to the practice of the Malays and the Arabians.
In Java, Siam, and other parts of the East, beside the common language of the country, there is established a court language spoken by persons of rank only; a distinction invented for the purpose of keeping the vulgar at a distance, and inspiring them with respect for what they do not understand. The Malays also have their bhasa dalam, or courtly style, which contains a number of expressions not familiarly used in common conversation or writing, but yet by no means const.i.tuting a separate language, any more than, in English, the elevated style of our poets and historians. Amongst the inhabitants of Sumatra in general disparity of condition is not attended with much ceremonious distance of behaviour between the persons.
(TABLE OF SUMATRAN ALPHABETS.)
(TABLE OF SPECIMENS OF LANGUAGES SPOKEN IN SUMATRA.)
CHAPTER 11.
COMPARATIVE STATE OF THE SUMATRANS IN CIVIL SOCIETY.
DIFFERENCE OF CHARACTER BETWEEN THE MALAYS AND OTHER INHABITANTS.
GOVERNMENT.
t.i.tLES AND POWER OF THE CHIEFS AMONG THE REJANGS.
INFLUENCE OF THE EUROPEANS.
GOVERNMENT IN Pa.s.sUMMAH.
COMPARATIVE STATE OF SUMATRANS IN SOCIETY.
Considered as a people occupying a certain rank in the scale or civil society, it is not easy to determine the proper situation of the inhabitants of this island. Though far distant from that point to which the polished states of Europe have aspired, they yet look down, with an interval almost as great, on the savage tribes of Africa and America.
Perhaps if we distinguish mankind summarily into five cla.s.ses; but of which each would admit of numberless subdivisions; we might a.s.sign a third place to the more civilized Sumatrans, and a fourth to the remainder. In the first cla.s.s I should of course include some of the republics of ancient Greece, in the days of their splendour; the Romans, for some time before and after the Augustan age; France, England, and other refined nations of Europe, in the latter centuries; and perhaps China. The second might comprehend the great Asiatic empires at the period of their prosperity; Persia, the Mogul, the Turkish, with some European kingdoms. In the third cla.s.s, along with the Sumatrans and a few other states of the eastern archipelago, I should rank the nations on the northern coast of Africa, and the more polished Arabs. The fourth cla.s.s, with the less civilized Sumatrans, will take in the people of the new discovered islands in the South Sea; perhaps the celebrated Mexican and Peruvian empires; the Tartar hordes, and all those societies of people in various parts of the globe, who, possessing personal property, and acknowledging some species of established subordination, rise one step above the Caribs, the New Hollanders, the Laplanders, and the Hottentots, who exhibit a picture of mankind in its rudest and most humiliating aspect.
FEW IMPROVEMENTS ADOPTED FROM EUROPEANS.
As mankind are by nature so p.r.o.ne to imitation it may seem surprising that these people have not derived a greater share of improvement in manners an arts from their long connection with Europeans, particularly with the English, who have now been settled among them for a hundred years. Though strongly attached to their own habits they are nevertheless sensible of their inferiority, and readily admit the preference to which our attainments in science, and especially in mechanics, ent.i.tle us. I have heard a man exclaim, after contemplating the structure and uses of a house-clock, ”Is it not fitting that such as we should be slaves to people who have the ingenuity to invent, and the skill to construct, so wonderful a machine as this?” ”The sun,” he added, ”is a machine of this nature.” ”But who winds it up?” said his companion. ”Who but Allah,” he replied. This admiration of our superior attainments is however not universal; for, upon an occasion similar to the above, a Sumatran observed, with a sneer, ”How clever these people are in the art of getting money.”
Some probable causes of this backwardness may be suggested. We carry on few or no species of manufacture at our settlements; everything is imported ready wrought to its highest perfection; and the natives therefore have no opportunity of examining the first process, or the progress of the work. Abundantly supplied with every article of convenience from Europe, and prejudiced in their favour because from thence, we make but little use of the raw materials Sumatra affords. We do not spin its cotton; we do not rear its silkworms; we do not smelt its metals; we do not even hew its stone: neglecting these, it is in vain we exhibit to the people, for their improvement in the arts, our rich brocades, our timepieces, or display to them in drawings the elegance of our architecture. Our manners likewise are little calculated to excite their approval and imitation. Not to insist on the licentiousness that has at times been imputed to our communities; the pleasures of the table; emulation in wine; boisterous mirth; juvenile frolics, and puerile amus.e.m.e.nts, which do not pa.s.s without serious, perhaps contemptuous, animadversion--setting these aside it appears to me that even our best models are but ill adapted for the imitation of a rude, incurious, and unambitious people. Their senses, not their reason, should be acted on, to rouse them from their lethargy; their imaginations must be warmed; a spirit of enthusiasm must pervade and animate them before they will exchange the pleasures of indolence for those of industry. The philosophical influence that prevails and characterizes the present age in the western world is unfavourable to the producing these effects. A modern man of sense and manners despises, or endeavours to despise, ceremony, parade, attendance, superfluous and splendid ornaments in his dress or furniture: preferring ease and convenience to c.u.mbrous pomp, the person first in rank is no longer distinguished by his apparel, his equipage, or his number of servants, from those inferior to him; and though possessing real power is divested of almost every external mark of it. Even our religious wors.h.i.+p partakes of the same simplicity. It is far from my intention to condemn or depreciate these manners, considered in a general scale of estimation. Probably, in proportion as the prejudices of sense are dissipated by the light of reason, we advance towards the highest degree of perfection our natures are capable of; possibly perfection may consist in a certain medium which we have already stepped beyond; but certainly all this refinement is utterly incomprehensible to an uncivilized mind which cannot discriminate the ideas of humility and meanness. We appear to the Sumatrans to have degenerated from the more splendid virtues of our predecessors. Even the richness of their laced suits and the gravity of their perukes attracted a degree of admiration; and I have heard the disuse of the large hoops worn by the ladies pathetically lamented. The quick, and to them inexplicable, revolutions of our fas.h.i.+ons, are subject of much astonishment, and they naturally conclude that those modes can have but little intrinsic merit which we are so ready to change; or at least that our caprice renders us very incompetent to be the guides of their improvement. Indeed in matters of this kind it is not to be supposed that an imitation should take place, owing to the total incongruity of manners in other respects, and the dissimilarity of natural and local circ.u.mstances. But perhaps I am superfluously investigating minute and partial causes of an effect which one general one may be thought sufficient to produce. Under the frigid, and more especially the torrid zone, the inhabitants will naturally preserve an uninterrupted similarity and consistency of manners, from the uniform influence of their climate. In the temperate zones, where this influence is equivocal, the manners will be fluctuating, and dependent rather on moral than physical causes.
DIFFERENCE IN CHARACTER BETWEEN THE MALAYS AND OTHER SUMATRANS.
The Malays and the other native Sumatrans differ more in the features of their mind than in those of their person. Although we know not that this island, in the revolutions of human grandeur, ever made a distinguished figure in the history of the world (for the Achinese, though powerful in the sixteenth century, were very low in point of civilization) yet the Malay inhabitants have an appearance of degeneracy, and this renders their character totally different from that which we conceive of a savage, however justly their ferocious spirit of plunder on the eastern coast may have drawn upon them that name. They seem rather to be sinking into obscurity, though with opportunities of improvement, than emerging from thence to a state of civil or political importance. They retain a strong share of pride, but not of that laudable kind which restrains men from the commission of mean and fraudulent actions. They possess much low cunning and plausible duplicity, and know how to dissemble the strongest pa.s.sions and most inveterate antipathy beneath the utmost composure of features till the opportunity of gratifying their resentment offers.
Veracity, grat.i.tude, and integrity are not to be found in the list of their virtues, and their minds are almost strangers to the sentiments of honour and infamy. They are jealous and vindictive. Their courage is desultory, the effect of a momentary enthusiasm which enables them to perform deeds of incredible desperation; but they are strangers to that steady magnanimity, that cool heroic resolution in battle, which const.i.tutes in our idea the perfection of this quality, and renders it a virtue.* Yet it must be observed that, from an apathy almost paradoxical, they suffer under sentence of death, in cases where no indignant pa.s.sions could operate to buoy up the mind to a contempt of punishment, with astonis.h.i.+ng composure and indifference; uttering little more on these occasions than a proverbial saying, common among them, expressive of the inevitability of fate--apa buli buat? To this stoicism, their belief in predestination, and very imperfect ideas of a future, eternal existence, doubtless contribute.
(*Footnote. In the history of the Portuguese wars in this part of the East there appear some exceptions to this remark, and particularly in the character of Laksamanna (his t.i.tle of commander-in-chief being mistaken for his proper name), who was truly a great man and most consummate warrior.)
Some writer has remarked that a resemblance is usually found between the disposition and qualities of the beasts proper to any country and those of the indigenous inhabitants of the human species, where an intercourse with foreigners has not destroyed the genuineness of their character. The Malay may thus be compared to the buffalo and the tiger. In his domestic state he is indolent, stubborn, and voluptuous as the former, and in his adventurous life he is insidious, bloodthirsty, and rapacious as the latter. Thus also the Arab is said to resemble his camel, and the placid Hindu his cow.
CHARACTER OF NATIVE SUMATRANS.
The Sumatran of the interior country, though he partakes in some degree of the Malayan vices, and this partly from the contagion of example, possesses many exclusive virtues; but they are more properly of the negative than the positive kind. He is mild, peaceable, and forbearing, unless his anger be roused by violent provocation, when he is implacable in his resentments. He is temperate and sober, being equally abstemious in meat and drink. The diet of the natives is mostly vegetable; water is their only beverage; and though they will kill a fowl or a goat for a stranger, whom perhaps they never saw before, nor ever expect to see again, they are rarely guilty of that extravagance for themselves; nor even at their festivals (bimbang), where there is a plenty of meat, do they eat much of anything but rice. Their hospitality is extreme, and bounded by their ability alone. Their manners are simple; they are generally, except among the chiefs, devoid of the Malay cunning and chicane; yet endued with a quickness of apprehension, and on many occasions discovering a considerable degree of penetration and sagacity.
In respect to women they are remarkably continent, without any share of insensibility. They are modest; particularly guarded in their expressions; courteous in their behaviour; grave in their deportment, being seldom or never excited to laughter; and patient to a great degree.
On the other hand, they are litigious; indolent; addicted to gaming; dishonest in their dealings with strangers, which they esteem no moral defect; suspicious; regardless of truth; mean in their transactions; servile; though cleanly in their persons, dirty in their apparel, which they never wash. They are careless and improvident of the future, because their wants are few, for though poor they are not necessitous; nature supplying, with extraordinary facility, whatever she has made requisite for their existence. Science and the arts have not, by extending their views, contributed to enlarge the circle of their desires; and the various refinements of luxury, which in polished societies become necessaries of life, are totally unknown to them. The Maka.s.sar and Bugis people, who come annually in their praws from Celebes to trade at Sumatra, are looked up to by the inhabitants as their superiors in manners. The Malays affect to copy their style of dress, and frequent allusions to the feats and achievements of these people are made in their songs. Their reputation for courage, which certainly surpa.s.ses that of all other people in the eastern seas, acquires them this flattering distinction. They also derive part of the respect paid them from the richness of the cargoes they import, and the spirit with which they spend the produce in gaming, c.o.c.k-fighting, and opium-smoking.
GOVERNMENT.
Having endeavoured to trace the character of these people with as much fidelity and accuracy as possible, I shall now proceed to give an account of their government, laws, customs, and manners; and, in order to convey to the reader the clearest ideas in my power, I shall develop the various circ.u.mstances in such order and connection as shall appear best to answer this intent, without confining myself, in every instance, to a rigid and scrupulous arrangement under distinct heads.
REJANGS DIVIDED INTO TRIBES.