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INDONESIA
HISTORY
In 1894, Dr Eugene Dubois
discovered, on the island of Java, remains of a primate which he
named ithecanthropus erectus, the erect apeman, also called
Java-man, one of the oldest species of apeman ever found. This find proved
that Java was inhabited by some type of human being a million years ago.
It is 'only' 50,000 years ago
- very roughly - as palaeontologists now assume, that the Australids
(the first people to populate Australia) lived in Indonesia, in transit,
as it were, from South-East Asia to Australia. Gradually spreading out
towards Australia, they were superseded in Indonesia by later arrivals.
After them came the
'Proto-Malays', displaying a markedly different appearance from the later
Malayo-Polynesians as we know them in western Indonesia, the type normally
associated with the Malays. It should be noted that some of the Javanese
display features of a yet more advanced human type. It has been said that
such Javanese people descend from Indian Brahmins.
The Malayo-Javanese brought
with them rice and the system of its cultivation: the submergeable field
surrounded by a dam, the sawah. Sawahs are the most characteristic
aspect of the landscape in South-East Asia.
The Malayo-Polynesians were
also great seafarers, inventors of the perahu, the sea-worthy canoe
which can be fitted with one or two outriggers. With these they sailed to
the far corners of two oceans, to Madagascar. Taiwan, the
Philippines, Hawaii, Rapanui and New Zealand, where closely
related languages are still spoken. That great expansion may have
begun in the second millennium BC.
The oldest surviving
Indonesian race, the Weddids, are found today in the darkest
forests of Sulawest (the Toalas, Tomunas, Tokeas) and in southern Sumatera
(official Indonesian spelling of Sumatra) are found the Kubus.
From an early date the
Indonesian peoples were influenced by the great cultures of India
and to a lesser degree, China. Statues of the Buddha have been found in
places as far apart as Sumatera and Sulawesi, dating from the third
century AD, sculpted in the Indian style.
The oldest known inscriptions
in Indonesia, found on Borneo and Java, both datable at c.400 AD,
are composed in the Sanskrit language. In the seventh century, the Chinese
pilgrim I Tsing, on his way to India, praised the high standards of
?Buddhist scholarship in the South-East Asian islands. In that century
there existed a kingdom in eastern Sumatera called Sriwijaya (Shri-Vijaya).
Further north there was the kingdom of Malayu, with its capital where the
city of Jambi now stands. The people of Malayu were great seafarers. They
gave their name to the language which they spread to the far corners of
the archipelago and to the Malay peninsula, which is named after them. The
first inscriptions in an Indonesian language, in a Sanskrit-derived
script, are composed in Malay.
Great temple complexes were
built for the worship of the Hindu god Siwa (Shiva) on the Dieng plateau
and in the valley of Prambanan in Java before 900 AD. The splendid
Buddhist centre of pilgrimage called Borobudur was built not far
from Jogyakarta c.800 AD by the kings of the Shailendra dynasty of Mataram.
Learning and literature flourished as the old Javanese language was
cultivated, with its own script. Powerful kings ruled Java, bearing
Sanskrit names, from Purnavarman, C.415, to Vikramavardhana, 1389-1429,
1,000 years later.
By the late Middle Ages, Islam
had begun to spread in the Indonesian cities, apparently arriving from
India, carried by merchants from Gujerat. When a local ruler on Sumatera
was converted, he would style himself henceforth Sulltan, and the
inscriiption on his tomb (many of which can still be seen today) would be
composed in Arabic, and later in Malay in Arabic script.
In 1511, the Portuguese
captain Gomes d'Abreu visited the Moluccas, the first European in
Indonesian waters after Marco Polo stayed on Sumatera in 1293. The next
Portuguese captain visited Halmahera. He was Magellan (Fernao de Magalhaes),
who in 1521 sailed along the Moluccas, having traversed the Great Ocean,
which he called Oceano Pacifico (because it was calm then), on his
way to the Philippines, where he would later be killed. The
Portuguese built a fortress at Termate (1522) near Halmahera and by 1540
had established their authority over the Moluccas (Amboina).
Meanwhile, Islam gained ground
in many towns of Indonesia, including Jacatra, now Jakarta. Senapati
(d.1601) was the last great Hindu king of Java. The next great ruler was
Sultan Agung Abudur Rahman, 1613-45, a Muslim.
The first explorers to arrive
from Holland were the brothers Houtman (1596). One of them perceived the
relationship between the Malay, Achinese and Madagascar languages.
Gradually the Dutch merchants expanded their power over what was to become
Indonesia. They were not interested in conquering land, since the Republic
of the Netherlands had no king to conquer for, unlike the Spaniards and
Portuguese. The Dutch were determined, however, to protect their
commercial interests at sea. They interfered in the wars between
local rulers only if their lines of transport and their port facilities
were threatened. By so doing however, they had to occupy the Moluccas and
most of Java. As Sumatra and Borneo were of only peripheral interest, only
the port cities were occupied.
This commercial empire ended
when Holland was occupied by Napoleon (1795), and Java by Thomas S.
Raffles for the British East India Company (1811). After the Napoleonic
wars, a series of treaties between the British and Dutch governments
settled the numerous claims of both parties, some justified, some less so.
In this way, the British acquired all the territories which now form part
of Malaysia, although its population is ethnically identical with
most of the western Indonesians. On the eastern side, the Netherlands
retained western New Guinea, even though its population is
ethnically and linguistically completely distinct from the Indonesians.
During the second half of the
nineteenth century, the Dutch East Indies prospered, becoming one of the
richest countries in the world, with the cultivation of coffee (since
c.1700), quinine (since 1815), tobacco (since 1863), sugar cane (since
1870), tea, cocoa, rubber, oil palm and groundnuts.
The last 20 years of
Dutch rule were marked by the evolution of the Indonesian peoples'
political consciousness.
Modern
History After the liberation from the Japanese (late
1945) and the colonialists (late 1949), Indonesia was faced with a task
for which the government was ill prepared; keeping the country together.
There was no national coherence in a country speaking over 200 languages
using 6 alphabets, living on 300 islands, belonging to all the world's
great religions: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and the
original local Indonesian religions. So the government had to send troops
to all the districts outside East Java to impose its will by force, so
that some people whispered that one bunch of colonialists had replaced
another.
Sukarno, well known for his
anti-Europeanism and his sympathies for the new communist China, became
president. He sought to create unity by his slogan: Tanab satu, rakyat
satu, bahasa satu (One country, one people, one language!) A vigorous
campaign was organized to teach the people the national language and to
use it, even at home, instead of Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese and the
rest, including Dutch, which many educated people still spoke. This
campaign succeeded: today the Bahasa Indonesia, the national
language, based on Malay, is spoken on all the islands except in the
remote forests of Borneo and New Guinea. In 1972 a final agreement was
reached with the Malaysian government, to unify the spelling of the two
Bahasas, the two national forms of Malay, which now has well over 200
million speakers, making it the seventh language of the world. Out of
this, an entirely new literature arose.
Less easy to achieve was the
revival of the economy, ruined after years of warfare and Japanese
rapaciousness. The old plantations were overgrown, and the demand for
their products had been satisfied by other countries. It was only the
rising oil price after 1973 that lifted the nation out of its poverty.
Tourism only became gradually a top industry. Sukarno pursued a policy of
'guided economy', a sort of semi-nationalization, and 'guided democracy',
permitting only agreement. By 1964, after 15 years in power, he made
himself president for life and styled himself the 'Great Leader of the
Revolution'. This revolution was being prepared by the PKI, the Indonesian
Communist Party, with his full cooperation. It would remove the last
vestiges of democracy and of the free economy, and align the country with
North Vietnam and North Korea into an Asian Axis. On 1 October 1965, the
Communists kidnapped six of the seven leading generals of the army and
murdered them. (The one who escaped was General Nasution, the defence
minister.) The army quickly regrouped under General Suharto, then
commander of the Army Reserve, and mounted a counter-attack across the
country. In the fighting of the next few weeks half a million people are
said to have died. This abortive coup is known as the Gestapu Affair.
After the failure of the coup,
Sukarno's position became untenable, so he had to retire. Huharto has
ruled the country ever since, gradually improving the economy, which was
dangerously inflationary, by admitting foreign experts to rebuild the
means of production.
Indonesia is an incredibly
rich country. It has everything, from oil and tin to tea and timber, rice
and rubber. It can feed itself, in spite of a population increase of four
per cent annually. The last Sumatran elephants are having to give way to
expanding fields for cultivation. The nation as a whole still needs more
schools, more textbooks, more teachers, more colleges, more science and
more technicians. At heart the Indonesians are gentle and friendly people,
though the majority are still poor. Only the militant Achinese have not
been integrated. The proud natives of New Guinea do not wish to be
'Islamized', which is a process that some government officials equate with
Indonesianization.
IN SUMATRA
Leaving Hoodjoong in the end
of January, I proceeded north eastward towards Mount Siminung and the Ranau
lake district; repassing on the way Kenali and Batu-brah, I crossed the
Semangka river near its head-waters, as a small stream running in a very deep
valley of soft sandstone. In descending the face of the valley the gigantic
results of denudation were very striking, where the rain of only one season
had been sufficient to excavate enormous ravines. Even the rain of a few days
had newly washed down thousands of tons' weight from its slopes. From this
cause the whole country was exceedingly picturesque, sculptured out into
singular and rugged outlines, steep gorges and precipitous valleys. From such
a landscape one is able to picture faintly the effect of this vast leveling
agent working ceaselessly through cycles of time, in carving and changing the
face of the country and in planing down the mountains and table-lands, even
where protected by virgin forest.
From the crossing of the
Semangka river the road to the northward rises to the watershed of the rivers
which fall on the one hand south to the Semangka Bay, and on the other into
the lake Ranau and thence eastward by arm of that immense river system which
drains the whole eastern side of the Barisan range for more than 200 miles due
north, and discharges itself into the Java sea below the queer half-floating
town of Palembang. This mountain road, 3000 feet above the sea, led me across
as pretty and picturesque a piece of country as one could wish to travel
through, winding round the head of deep glens, with occasional gorges to right
and left which have left only three feet of ridge-path between them, and along
th4e face of forest=clad precipices, hundreds of feet deep below which flowed
hidden streams whose murmur bubbled up from among the trees as a pleasant
music. In descending from the plateau I found at about 2500 feet, growing in
sand soil where it seems best to flourish, several stems of the giant arum (Amorphophallus
titanum) one of the largest known herbs. The biggest of these specimens
measured seventeen feet in height.
Descending from the northern
face of the plateau, I was met by the chief and under-chiefs of the marga, at
some distance from the village of Sukau, where I was to spend the night; and
at the boundary of the village I was greeted by a crowd of the inhabitants and
a band consisting of three youths - one in the middle fingered a flute which
he had newly cut from a bamboo, the two others each beat a small bronze gong
both of them cracked, which they carried in one hand suspended before them by
a cord, tinkling it with a short twig in the other - who played me to the
Balai to the notes perhaps of their margal anthem. Providentially the
stateliness of the occasion made conversation out of place, otherwise, had it
been necessary to open my compressed lips, I would have shocked the fathers of
the people by the heartiness of my mirth, for never have I taken part in so
ludicrous a procession with so solemn a countenance. Consider its composition:
the musical advance-guard as I have described; the central figure under a hat
as big as an umbrella, in garments the worse of repeated conflicts with the
thorns and thickets of the forest, seated on a small steel caparisoned in a
bridle with more knotted cords than leather in its composition and in a saddle
that required every artful device to keep it from falling to pieces, his long,
great-booted legs, almost trailing on the gr9ound; alongside on either hand
the mute chiefs in duly solemn countenances, followed by a rear-guard of
cookies with my baggage, and the general crowd of men, women and children -
and who would not have desired to relieve his twitching pent-up risorius
muscles?
Next morning I continued my
way towards the Lake Ranau, and at the marches of the Kroe and Palembang
Residencies, the confines of their territory, my hosts of Sukau took farewell,
and I was welcomed by the chiefs of the neighbouring marga, who conducted me
to Tandjongajati, the village where I purposed to spend some time. If I was
the day before inclined somewhat to levity at the general appearance of the
procession that greeted me, I felt embarrassed the other way on meeting those
chiefs of the Ranau district. Sedate-looking men of middle age they were,
dressed in neat black official coats, spotlessly clean collars, white starched
trousers with a sarong girt about their loins, patent leather boots, and on
their heads the imposing official cap, which I saw them for the first time,
mitre-like in shape, covered with cloth of gold, while each carried in his
hand a gold-topped stick bearing the arms of his Majesty of Holland, the
insigna of the office. They looked such aristocratic personages and so
faultlessly attired that I felt that I ought to descend from y horse and bow
myself to the ground in return for the profound salaam with which they
received me.
After the usual festivities
given on the visit of a white man, in which the dancing of the maidens,
attired in their best attire and jewels, is always a conspicuous feature, I
settled into possession of my new home with a light and hopeful heart, for it
was situated in a district considered to be one of the prettiest in 'Sumatra,
by the margin of the lake looking out on the cone of the Siminung; but the
very night of my arrival, whether by accident or by design in doubtful, some
poisonous drug was placed in one or other dish of my evening meal, which
induced profuse internal haemorrhage that nearly proved fatal to me. Happily a
strong emetic rid me of the noxious ingredient, and a few days of care
restored me to my normal condition; but it is not a very pleasant reminiscence
of the place.
The Ranau Lake lies 1700 feet
above the sea level at the foot of the now quiescent - if ever within
historical times active - volcano of the Siminung. From its shape, which is
that of two irregular circles run together, it appears to occupy the site of
an old crater. In the centre it is of extreme depth. At various points round
the margin nearest the Siminung, hot springs of 127 degrees F. of temperature
bubble u, and warm the greater portion of the western end from 7 degrees to 10
degrees higher than that of the air. It is abundantly stocked with fish and
bivalve mollusca; but when they approach too near the warmer shore, where the
temperature is above 100 degrees F., the water instantly proves fatal to them.
These springs and the very frequent earthquakes - no fewer than three occurred
during my short stay - attest that, though the volcano is now quiescent, the
interior of the earth here is in a very unquiet state.
Tall forest trees clothed the
high margins of the lake, which descended here and there to grassy bays and
level green swamps; on the sandy margins flourished fig-trees and Erythrinas
with large bright scarlet flowers, on whose crooked stems flocks of blue
herons (Butorides javanica) and pure white egrets (Bubuleus
coromandus) constantly sat dozing out the heat of the day. In the early
mornings they had busied themselves in gathering the leeches and insects from
the backs of the buffaloes, by whom their kind offices seemed highly
appreciated. On the high solitary trees perched clumsy, bald-headed adjutants
(Leptoptilus), whose thin long legs always suggested the idea that they
had escaped from some taxidermist's hands when he had just got the length of
running the wires up their shanks. In the marshes snipe abounded in great
plenty; grey ajoo-jooats (Tringoides) on the sandy beaches, and shy
water-hens (Hypotaenidia striata) among the tall flags. The lake teemed
with fish of many kinds, the best being the semah (Leobarbus) which,
when full-grown, is as large as the largest salmon, and the katjubang (Batia
macranthus), a small but most beautiful scarlet- and black-banded fish.
A few interesting captures of
insects, many of them quite new species, were made here by the margins of the
lake; especially may be mentioned Xeropteryx simplicior, previously
known only from Borneo, and Heterodes ansonialis, described before from
the far-distant Duke of York Island, east of New Guinea; and two splendid new
species of Papilio, P. itamputi of Mr. Butler, and P. forbesi of
Smith, allied to P. aleiabiades.
The village of Banding Agong, whither I moved for a
short time as the guest of Mr. Hisgen, the Controller of the district, was a
delightful spot, situated at the south-east angle on a high but sheltered
spot, commanding one of the finest views of the lake that can be had, exactly
fronting the volcano and the peaks of the Tapa Skandri, or Footsteps of (no
less a hero than) Alexander the Great, whom the chiefs of these regions claim,
singularly enough, as their illustrious stem-father. The industry of the lake
borders, for which it is famed throughout the Archipelago, is its tobacco
culture, which is grown on a loose porous earth composed of the detritus of
pumicestone mixed with humus. The finest quality is made from none but the
very topmost leaves of the plant, and commands a very high price.
From the lake, on my next stage towards the Dempo,
the road descended through the same picturesque country (in former ages
probably the bottom of the Ranan lake greater than now) all the way to
Muara-dua. This town, "at the mouth of two rivers" as its name signifies, is
situated at the union of the Sako with the broad Komering river, and is the
seat of a large trade by river with Palembang in cotton, tobacco, rice,
timber, and "birds' nests" - the edible swifts' nests - gathered from dark
calcareous grottoes in the neighbourhood. The town, though distant 200 miles
in a direct line from the sea, is only 400 feet above its level, and stands
really on the edge of the great alluvial plain which lies along the entire
eastern shores of Sumatra, formed by the detritus washed down from the Parisan
range into a sea whose coastline, retreating by a slight elevation of the
land, left dry this broad plain, which rises nowhere throughout its vast
extent more than 600 feet above the level of the sea. Before its upheaval,
South Sumatra could not have been more than 100 miles board. Several great
river systems, running in a general west-to-east direction fan-shape in form,
traverse it, and are laying down along the margin of the land a further
deposit, the slight elevation of which, for some thirty feet only between
Palembang and the Island of Banka, would raise the shallow sea into dry land.
Near the town of Muara-dua I was surprised to net a European moth (Phragmataeia
arundinis).
My further course northward traversed the sources of
the great arms of the southern of these systems.
Sending my baggage on to Pengandonan by the level
road on the low lands, I proceeded on foot thither over the Kisam Hills. Just
above Muara-dua the Slabung river was crossed by a very high suspension-bridge
of a most picturesque construction. In the form of a segment of a great
circle, its floor was of cylindrical logs securely tied to three gigantic
rattan calbes the true supports of the bridge, fixed to the shore pillars;
over these logs was a close bamboo basket-work pleasant to the nude foot of
the pedestrian, railed on both sides, and protected overhead by a close
thatched roof - the whole forming a long hanging cage, which swayed freely as
it was traversed. From this bridge I again ascended abruptly on to what was
once in all probability the bed of the Ranau lake before its dimensions were
interfered with by upheavals. The rivers I passed had cut deep rocky gorges,
down which it required some care to pick one's steps, through the straits of
150 to 200 feet in depth, showing the pumicestone tuff tuff superincumbent on
Tertiary rocks of Eocene age containing fossil Cyprava, Teredina,
and Peeten shells. The whole country was undulating, and full of
alang-alang grass, and low second-growth forest which presented in itself
little of interest, and prevented any view of the surrounding country.
The houses of the Kisam people were of a pattern of
their own. They were mostly of bamboo wickerwork fitted into a framework of
wood, and slated with little boards of cedrilla wood. Each house had built out
from it a chamber on the same level with it under a slightly lower roof, which
was used as a lounging place for the owner and a sleeping room for visitors.
The door was reached - as the houses stood on tall piles - by a slanting
tree-trunk, in which a series of notches only large enough to admit the toes
served as steps, and up which a booted traveller found it no easy matter to
ascent. The space below the house was blocked with chopped-up wood, whose
primary use was, doubtless, as a protection against the entrance of thieves or
attack from below by enemies, as it is apparent how easy it would be to thrust
a spear or other instrument through the bamboo floor into the bodies of the
sleepers resting on it. The beneath of the man's house is considered almost as
sacred as its interior, and their laws attached supreme penalties to the crime
of being found at night there. The house framework in most of the villages was
elaborately carved in intricate patterns executed with the most patient care.
In Padjar-bulan, a very old village which I passed through, the decorative
carving far exceeded in profusion and excellence that in any of the others,
especially in its Balai, where I was greatly interested in finding what I may
call a veritable coat of arms, carved out of an immense block of wood and
erected in the central position, where one would expect an object with the
significance of a coat of arms to be placed. From what I could learn it had
such a significance in the estimation of the chief of the village; for he told
me that only such villages as could claim origin from some distant village
could erect such a carving in their Balai. I am not, however, master enough of
the terms of the blazonry current in the College of Arms to describe it
in fitting language.
The shield had double supporters; on each side a
tiger rampant bearing on its back a snake defiant, upheld the shield, in whose
centre the most prominent quartering was a floral ornament, which might be a
sunflower shading two deer, one on each side - the dexter greater than the
sinister. Above the floral ornament was a central and to me unintelligible
halfmoon-like blazoning, but on either side of it was an "ulai lidai"), but of
what it was the similitude among creat4d things, beyond suggesting faintly the
lineaments of a scorpion, I was not pursuivant enough to recognise; on the
sinister of the two, however, was a man "tandacking" (dancing). Below the tips
of the conjoined tails of the supporting tigers were two ornate triangles, the
upper balanced on the apex of the lower, which might with truth be described
as the supporter of the whole, but whether these bear any reference to the
mystic signs recognised by the Worshipful Lodges is a question that I must
leave for the Chief Mason to settle as best he can with the Chief Herald. I
feel inclined, however, to assert that it was as good as escut-cheon and as
well as honourably emblazoned, as any that ever emanated from the College; and
who dare say that it is less ancient? The sight of that emblazoned board and
its carved surroundings, hid away in a small little-known hamlet in the Kisam
hills among a half-savage and pagan people, astonished me not a little, and
added respect to my farewell salutation to its chief.
The Kisam people write in a character called, from
its being inscribed on bamboos with a pointed knife, rentjong,
differing only slightly from that used in the Lampongs, which nearly all of
them - women included - can read and write. During my journey I was able to
obtain several interesting bamboos inscribed with their songs. These pantuns
are metrical compositions consisting of line of eight to ten feet in length,
sometimes rhyming and sometimes not; but they are curious in that after every
few lines one or two others which have absolutely no meaning in themselves, or
connection with the composition, are interpolated; some euphonious word being
caught up and added to others more or less alliterating with it, to make a
good jingle of sounds.
The dress of the women is remarkable for its
shortness and scantiness. As a rule their single garment is made by themselves
in the pattern peculiar to their district, from their own home-grown cotton or
silk. but the cultivation of the silk-worm is now almost abandoned, since
unrestricted intercourse with Palembang, and through it with the outside
world, brings the products of foreign looms to their out-of-the-way doors with
less trouble than they can make them for themselves. Thus are the waves of
civilisation sweeping away the indigenous industrial arts of the people, and
flooding out their manufactures, turning the hereditary crafts people to other
occupations.
The people are pagan, believing in the influence of
the spirits of their dead forefathers. Near the village of Gunung Megang I
came on their burial-ground, laid out in the forest by the pathside - a great
elevated quadrangular mound, in length just enough to admit a full-grown body.
A rough stone at head and foot indicated where each person lay side by side
with his neighbour. Only the married people are interred in this common
burying-place, in the right, perhaps, of their being parents of the people;
all others, youths and infants - useless off-shoots of their race - are buried
anywhere in the forest, and always some distance from where their elders lie.
An unmarried woman about to give birth to a child is compelled to leave the
village and retreat to the forest, whence after some forty days of solitary
sojourn she returns - never with her offspring - and the village is purified
by the sacrifice of a buffalo. Their most
sacred oath is sworn by placing a hand over the grave of their forefathers
amid the incense of benzoin, or in a circle drawn on the ground: "May the
spirit of my forefathers afflict me if I have spoken falsely," being the
formula. The same manner of swearing obtains, I am told, among the inhabitants
of the Makakau, Komering (Muara-dua), Semindo, and Blalau (Hoodjoong) regions.
The Kisam people swear also by drinking the water in which a kriss has been
dipped, as well as by the spirit of Tuan Raja Gnawo, who has his
dwelling-place on Mount Dempo.
SOJOURN IN THE PALEMBANG RESIDENCY
(continued)
Taking my departure from Gunnung Megang, and crossing
the watershed into the Ogan valley at 2000-3000 feet above sealevel, I
descended towards Pengandonan. Passing through the village of Luntar, I found
the chiefs of the marga and a great concourse of people from all the region
assembled on the third anniversary of the death of the Headman's father, to
secure the welfare of his soul by feasts and sports. Here was waiting for me
the Pangeran of Pengandonan, which was the adjacent marga. After a liberal
refreshment of tea, with the ubiquitous Huntley and Palmers' biscuits, and a
Palembang baked comfit, made principally of sago and the hushed up flesh of a
fish (whose large scales, dyed of various colours, are extensively used - and
admirably adapted for the purpose they are - to cover or "tile" over the large
leaf hats used in the district), and some ripe juicy oranges, I set out with
my host for Pengandonan lower down on the opposite side of the Ogan. We
crossed the river on a raft at a very beautiful spot at the confluence of the
Labam and the Ogan. On our left were several curiously formed, abrupt hills;
facing us was the bare-topped, calcareous peak of the Riang rising sheet from
the bank, and just above the ferry was moored a flotilla of rakits - those
picturesque floating houses by which the produce of the region is transported
to the coast, which to the trader are ship and comfortable house for many days
together on these great rivers.
A short intercourse with the Pangeran served to show
that he was a native far superior in intelligence and ability to most of the
chiefs about him. Though dressed no better than the ordinary native, and
preferring his sandals - whose possession is always a mark of superiority -
carried behind him to wearing them, he had even more than usual of the easy
dignified politeness and gentlemanly bearing of the higher Malaya. Yet when, a
few yards from the river bank, below a shade of trees, we suddenly came on a
neat carriage evidently waiting for some one, so little was I prepared for his
reply to my surprised query, "Whose is the carriage?" that it almost 'took
away my breath' when he quietly but not without a little pride, said, "It is
mine." The carriage was drawn by a pair of well-kept black ponies, furnished
with every European appurtenance. It certainly was incongruous, one felt, this
spanking pair, with bright silver harness, whirling through villages of
poor-looking cottages without one refined taste to match this specimen of high
civilisation in their midst. Every village we passed through poured out its
inhabitants to see the bright equipage, which, though housed quite near, was
evidently a by no means common apparition. The women stared with open mouth,
and the children, in all the clothing nature had given them, raced us for a
long way, shouting with all their might. It was evident that the Pangeran,
satisfied with the honour of having purchased such a possession, was not much
given to indulging himself in the use of it, if one may judge by the undaunted
way, utterly regardless of dynamical principles, in which he took the most
rectangular pieces of a road never made for a carriage. Perhaps I may misjudge
him, and he may have so accurately known these principles as to be able to
drive within an inch or so of the centre of gravity without dislodging it. He
never eased up to a corner; even a double right-angled "hook" was described
with wonderful precision, if not with the utmost comfort. Holes or no holes,
longs or no logs in the way, he never drew rein till we halted for good at the
door of the Pasanggrahan, a rest-house which he himself had erected on the
right bank of the river for the benefit of officials visiting the district.
From the verandah of the house the scene, which could
be leisurely watched as I comfortably rested, was one of great interest.
Across the river the village of Pengandonan glinted through the palms; the
villagers were constantly going to or returning with loads of fruit and
vegetables from the fields in little boats, or poling up and down or across
the river on narrow rafts of five or six short bamboos lashed together; there
was a constant stream of women and children either to bathe or to wash rice or
to fill with water the basketful of bamboos slung behind them. As every one
wore more or less brightly-coloured garments and cylindrical hats painted with
dragon's=blood red, the scene had no lack of colour or life to make it a
pleasing one. When the rain-torrents brought the river down in flood, as it
did about once a day, the scene was still more lively. The whole population,
men, women, and children, swarming out like a disturbed ants' nest, with
creels, hampers, baskets and nets, dashed in up to the very eyes, where the
fores of the stream was broken a little, to scrape the bottoms and sides of
the river for the fish (which have taken refuge there out of the current)
allowing themselves the while to be floated down the stream for some distance;
then, running up stream again, shouting and laughing, they dashed in for
another and another bout. These floods sometimes quite cut me off from
communication with the opposite side; and as my cooking was all performed in
the village, I was constrained sometimes to go dinnerless to bed. When a few
hours' rain is sufficient to flood the river so as to bring down fruits,
branches, large trees and (as I saw on one occasion) a broad slice of ground
with the bamboos growing on it, one who has not seen it can but faintly
imagine the volume and power of such a river after the incessant rain of
several days.
A curious feature of this place was the abrupt hills
of which I have spoken. Composed of calcareous crystalline rocks, probably of
Eocene age, they appear to have been in ancient times the boundaries of the
ocean in which was laid down what is now the plain of Eastern Sumatra. The
Peak of the Riang, the most abrupt of them all, is the highest land between
itself and the coast, distant in a direct line one hundred and twenty miles,
and commands a magnificent panorama of a long stretch of the Ogan valley,
running between deep barriers, the sun-flash on whose surface guided the eye
all along the winding course till it disappeared through a narrow rocky
gateway into the blue sea-like plain of Palembang. Below, fields of young
corn, dotted with small watch-huts which were so utterly embowered in
Convolvulaceae that they seemed to be simply immense bunches of yellow and
purple flowers, covered the rich flats all along both banks, and might
themselves have marked out the course of the river by their luxuriant verdure.
The Pangeran owned rice-fields, partly inherited, partly purchased, which he
informed me were worth 20,000 pound sterling. He reckoned, however, that his
income, from cotton and coffee and other fruits, but princially from
buffaloes, was greater than from his rice-fields.
The houses of the Ogan people were all richly carved,
and the ornamentation is said to be peculiar to their own valley. The Semindo
men (a district lying about a day's journey to the west) are credited with the
invention of the designs; but the Palerabangera, who are famous workers in
wood, are generally the builders, and accommodate each district with the style
of "tata" or ornamentation peculiar to itself, which it has retained for
generations. The accompanying sketches will illustrate the designs most in
vogue. On the lowermost beam or Tailan-luan, that resting on the
pillars, we have the carving (represented below), and called tata
bubur-talam; the second figure represents the carving on the Pahatan, or
the lower beam of the framework of the house; where the tata simbar
commences the designs, followed by the tata awan, which either
continues the whole length of the beam alternately reversed till it is closed
again by a second tata simbar, or both are used throughout alternately
erect and reversed. The interior of the raised portion is either left uncarved
or is adorned with the foliage and flowers, of which the outlines appear in
the design. This is the Ogan pattern par excellence. On the door-posts I found
in some houses tata ramoramo(ramo means, wild beast) which is
not true Ogan, but adopted from the Semindo people, and it is extremely
interesting to observe how effective an ornament has resulted from the
representation of a tiger or some such animal, in which the eye has become a
floral ornament, and the legs and tail have developed into scrolls.
On the last day of my stay here I spent a forenoon
with my host in seeing the sports still going on at the neighbouring village
of Luntar, which were preliminary to a fest which was to close the some twenty
days' festivities - a sort of high pagan mass for the rest of the soul of its
Chief's father. In the village was collected a large crowd from surrounding
margas and even from as far as Palambang, the scene resembling a village
feeling fair at home. At the outskirts we came on small booths for the sale of
eatables, fruits, and sweetmeats; but everywhere else each little crowd had in
its nucleus a gaming-table of some sort. First favourite was a stall where a
mat spread on the ground was marked off into various denominations of staking,
odd or even, and on any number up to five. Its presiding genius, with a
countenance as stolid as the most approved banker at a roulette table,
squatted on the ground with a saucer before him, on which he twirled the fatal
teetotum, and with a most professional air covered it up with half a cocoa-nut
shell so that it might run fair. When the "gentlemen" had all done staking, he
lifted the lid with a flourish, declared the fates, paid his losses, and
gathered in his little pile of gains, without moving a muscle of his face. He
was a Palem anger, this sedate banker, with a sharp eye and cruel expression
of countenance, and, having learned wisdom, doubtless, among the comers and
goers of that great commercial centre, he had come up the water to operate on
the simple natives here. His stall was constantly surrounded by an eager crowd
of patrons, ranging in age from eight years to forty harvests, who staked with
untiring zeal various sums from the two-fifths part of a penny up to two of
three shillings. Games of chance of a like nature were going on in all
directions; but I moved on to witness the heroic sport - the noble and
national game of the country - Nyabung, or cock-fighting.
The cock-pit, or Galanggan, was a large enclosure
some twenty feet square, railed in by stakes twelve to fourteen feet high,
sufficiently far apart to enable those outside to see all that went on within.
the cocks about the flight were handed over to the care of two officials,
whose office is to direct affairs in the ring. By them were attached with
scrupulous care long double-edged steel spurs, sharp as lances. As soon as the
sound of the bedoog announced that this arena was to be occupied again, all
other sports were instantly deserted, and the crowd pressed round the
Galanggan. The cocks were brought into the ring by the proper officials, each
holding his bird carefully with its leg armatures sheathed. Into this
enclosure no one but the officials, the owners, and some favourite few were
admitted. The two cocks were then held up before each other by the gulangs,
who ruffled for them their neck feathers, tugged their combs, patted them on
the breast and sides, and shook them with a tremulous sort of instigating
motion, performed with a knack and neatness which indicated the professional
hand. This manoeuvre whose execution is the envy of onlookers, is imitated by
the children in the miniature cockerel fights that they get up before they are
old enough to speak. When the fowls had been thus irritated they were allowed,
while still in the hand, to have one dig at each other just to put them on
their mettle, and with their terrible armatures bared, they were set facing
each other, a few feet apart; and then came the charge. I shall never forget -
for I was utterly unprepared for it from the stolid Malay - the yell and
deafening shout of savage delight and excitement that arose from the up to
that moment mute and eager but, to all appearance, unexcited crowd as the
combatants rushed at each other, and which was kept up all the time the
conflict lasted; nor how the gulangs, following on hands and knees, each close
behind his fowl, watched each movement in silence with a glaring and excited
eye - the rules of the ring prohibiting them from touching or reinstigating
the cock during the continuance of a round - like nothing I can think of so
much as the intense motions of a pointer close behind a warm scent, and
at every onset they scanned their bird from side to side to see if it had
sustained any injury. In the first combat that I witn3essed both cocks were
badly wounded in the first round; one even fainted away. The seconds and
supporters carried each their bird aside to apply restoratives, if possibly
they might be able to continue the contest to a final issue. They bathed its
head with cold water and administered some with a feather down its throat; a
cloth was held over it to keep off the sun, and smoking pieces of wood held
under its nostrils and over its comb. For a time it seemed as if the worst
wounded would have to be declared vanquished, as it was unable to enter the
lists, but his spirit came again on instigating him with a strange cock for a
few minutes. After the same preliminary patting and facing and the solitary
dig, they were again allowed to rush at each other; but after a few skirmishes
the badly wounded bird turned tail and was declared the loser. In the second
of the only two fights I ever witnessed the combat was very short, but very
fierce. Both birds were sorely wounded at the commencement, but in a short
space one rolled over mortally wounded, with a gash in its side through which
the four fingers could be passed. After both fights there was immediately
heard the clinking of money, and a general rush to the Balai was made to
settle their bets. Often 40 pound sterling may be laid on a cock; and in a
day's gaming as much as 250 pound sterling has been known to change hands.
Cock-fighting is now strictly prohibited by the
Government, which, only on special occasions, gives for a limited number of
days permission to the chief of a marga to hold a tournament within his
district, and for whose good conduct he is responsible. He is allowed to
charge five per cent, on all transactions which take place, and a fee from all
stall-holders as a sort of recompense for directing the affair and keeping
order. With this percentage the Pangeran is able to provide a buffalo at
little cost to himself, which is slain on the last day of this Vanity Fair,
and followed by a general gormandising. From the nature of this whole
entertainment one may hope that the dead Pangeran advance a full stage in
bliss.
The heavy rains that had delayed me several days here
having cleared somewhat, I proceeded on my way northwards; and, crossing the
watershed of the Ogan, descended into the valley of the Inim, a large
tributary of the Lamatang, another of the great branches of the Palembang
river. The village customs in each of these great valley systems differ but
slightly from each other; yet each has some distinctive characteristic; each
has its own style of architecture; and each its own pattern of garments and
hat-ornamentation. In religion the Inim people are Mahomedians. They bury
their dead, however, in one large mound with the head eastwards; the women lie
alongside their husbands, but the children are buried anywhere their parents
may wish, only never in the village mound.
It was interesting to note how the navigability of
the rivers influence the people even far inland. In these reaches I found
Islamism of a purer form, and the people more learned in civilised ways; while
in the upland regions not geographically distant, such as Kisam, Makakau,
Semindo and the Blalau districts, which I had just traversed - high plateaus
with which communication is difficult - the people still followed the pagan
superstitions of past ages, and continued the customs and rites of their
great-great forefathers with little change.
Passing through the village of Darma, where I noted
with curiosity the skulls of divers species of animals nailed to the gable end
of a house, which pertained, I was informed, to its Pangeran's
Tukang-binatang, or gamekeeper - a fact I might have guessed without
asking (had I imagined that Pangerons had among their retinue such an
official), since I was myself an inhabitant of a land where his professional
brother hangs out as marks of his prowess a signboard just as barbarously
garnished with the bodies of owls and hawks, weasels and inoffensive little
squirrels, and every rare feathered bird that visits his neighbourhood.
I halted for the night at Muara Inim, a large village
at the confluence of the Inim with the Lamatang and one of the important
centres of commerce and civilisation in the Residency. Once a week a small
steamer comes here - 120 miles from the coast - bringing mails and passengers
and all the merchandise for the north-western Highlands of Palembang. It is
the starting-point of the main cross-country road to Bencoolen and Padang,
which after crossing the Inim ascends the western bank of the Lamatang through
a rather monotonous strip of country, which I beguiled by examining the coal
bands (of Pliocene age) that crop out at various points in the clayey marls on
the roadside. Suddenly turning the corner near the village of Merapi, the
traveller comes face to face with one of the most singular and picturesque
mountains of Sumatra - the Cerillo Peak - which, though high, is, owing to the
configuration of the country, not seen till one is close at its base.
The Cerillo is a tall conical mountain on a somewhat
narrow base, rising irregularly till about 800 or 1000 feet from its summit,
when it suddenly contracts into an inaccessible acute spire, like a gigantic
finger pointing heavenward. I was not surprised to be told that among an
ignorant people its singular shape had invested it with superstitions dread.
The natives make long pilgrimages to it to speak with the Dewa that they
believe resides there, ascending to the highest accessible spot, where incense
is offered and other ceremonies performed.
A little further on, as I neared the village of Lahat,
the summit of the volcano of the Dempo whither I was bound, raised its head in
the distance. After resting for a couple of days in the town, enjoying the
hospitality of Mr. Van Houten, the Resident of the district, I pressed on
north-westward. After a journey of a few hours up the Lamatang valley I
entered, on climbing out of the gorge on to its high bank, a landscape with
entirely new features. I looked out on what appeared to be an immense white
sandy plain, which in reality was the plateau of the Passumah Lands, covered
with grass, but with scarcely a trace of a tree anywhere - one of the singular
features of this region, and one by no means common in the tropics. It is said
that for at least 300 years there has been no forest here; but that
previously, however, there were trees which had been destroyed by a great
fire. That a conflagration should have burned up such an immense tract,
leaving no clumps or uninjured seeds of any kind in the soil to start a second
crop of arboreal vegetation, seems very doubtful. In Ceylon however, in the
midst of great forest regions, there occur tracts, marked off with singular
sharpness from the surrounding forest, in which no trees are to be found.
Perhaps the bareness of this plateau may be the result of some such train of
circumstances, or perhaps it may owe its peculiarity to the effect of
eruptions of the overshadowing volcano, towards which the plateau slopes
gently upwards.
At noon I reached the first of those singular gorges
which are another characteristic feature of the plateau. Its sides descended
precipitously to the bed of a small river which was running in a narrow
channel cut through the solid rock, on which the marks of the former levels of
its water were plainly graved, and descended under a narrow bridge that
spanned it in a series of pretty cascades. A few miles farther, on taking a
sharp turn of the road, I suddenly found myself on the brink of a precipice
over whose edges I could dizzily see, more than 500 feet sheer below me, the
foaming Endicat river spanned by a picturesque roofed bridge. Till close on
the edge of the precipice it was impossible for the eye to detect the
slightest sign of a gorge; it roamed over what seemed a nearly level country.
The descent and ascent were made by long difficult corkscrew paths cut in the
face of cliffs, that were densely clung close to its sides. On again gaining
the level of the plateau, and looking back from a little distance, the eye
ranged over the chasm without perceiving any trace of it. This scenery
recalled the descriptions I had read of the singular canons of the Yellowstone
River in North America. At frequent intervals over all the plateau I passed
tabats or lakelets of various sizes, the result probably of slight subsidences
of the ground which, curiously enough, are full of fish, though they have
often no river running out of them. The same afternoon I reached Bandar, and
the next day held on to the village of Pagar Alam.
From Pagar Alam to my destination at the little
village of Pau, lying 3500 feet above the sea level on the slope of the Dempo,
where it begins to raise its majestic mass more erectly, was but a forenoon's
march. The village of Pau was very small, and its Balai of minute dimensions.
Without an hour's delay, however, I set about enlarging and rendering it
habitable. By the combined efforts of the greater portion of the inhabitants,
of two villages which lay within a few minutes' walk, we floored the place,
railed off a part for a sleeping apartment and fitted a bed into it, furnished
the outer portion with a table and a door, which we made out of that
blessedest of all the vegetable productions of a toolless and saw-mill-less
land, the bamboo; and before night I had unpacked all my baggage, books, and
apparatus, and settled into my neat abode with feelings of the utmost
satisfaction and contentment after my thirty-five days' march. The village lay
on the road leading to Bencoolen, and as once a week a large market was held
near Pagar Alam, I had an opportunity of seeing not a few of the people of the
districts towards the sea-coast, as they came often to the markets in the way
of trade, and often passed a night in the village. As a sort of goodwill
exhibition towards the villagers, and a return for their hospitality they
would often give a musical performance, or engage in a dance. One of the
latter interested me much. The dance itself was very much like the Lampong
dances, calm and attitudinal, but with the addition of lighted tapers, fixed
in small saucers held in the hands. The seriousness, however, of the
performance was enlivened by the introduction of a comical element. Closely
imitating in an exaggerated manner all the motions of the dancer, but
affecting to keep in his rear and out of sight, was another dancer simulating
the fool, who was quite ignored as if entirely unperceived by the principal
performer, but at whose remarks, gestures, and grimaces, all the people
laughed heartily. Here we had the simple elements of the theatrical
performance - an embryo play with two performers.
When one asks a Passumah man whence his forefathers
came in the Tempo-dulu, in the days of yore, the reply is often either
from Dewa, or from the sun, or from Alexander the Great (Sekander Alam); but
to most of them the matter is shrouded in mystery. Hearing, how4ever, of a
chief of a distant village specially learned in these matters, I went for him
to come to visit me. He was the son of a very high chief in their independent
days, and as such, the history of the Passumah Lands had been instilled into
him from a boy, as part of the education that belonged to his rank. I found
him wonderfully versed in all the old ways and customs of the Passumah people,
and my only regret is that I had not then the knowledge on which to found many
questions which I should now like to know replies to. I wrote down from his
lips many of their strange ceremonial formulas, which are difficult to find
nowadays save inscribed on some old bamboo or longer-leaf, which may have
happily survived the ravages of the boring beetle and the frequent village
fires. Not the least curious was his account of the creation: How different
sorts of birds, with curious but not meaningless names, produced eggs from
which in the fullness of time escaped the solid earth and the sky, the moon,
the stars and the sun; then the grass plains and the forests, the sandy shore
and the coral; how the sky wept and there came the rains and the deep sea; how
then the Dewas were, and the hierarchy of good gods and the company of evil
spirits; how the Dewas reproduced and marriage was; Adam married with Uwo
(Eve?), the earth married with the sky, and the mist with the clouds and Allah
gave conception to all things.
The Passumah people are a tall strong race, with well
and intelligently moulded faces; the nose with a rather prominent and straight
dorsum, the eyes sunk deeply in the head, the cheek-bones projecting, but
without the prominent thick lips so distinctive of the Malay face. They are
very independent, somewhat surly in heart and desperately lazy people; not
very friendly inclined to their neighbours in the adjoining districts. They
are by no means dishonest, and live peacefully among themselves. Their
children are lively and amused with little; but neither of their parents
trouble themselves much about them after they are old enough to run about by
themselves. They were rather afraid to allow me to submit their length and
breadth to the test of the measuring-line, dreading lest the measure of their
bodies should bear some sinister relation to the span of their existence.
After giving, however, the most pacifying assurances, I found ten men and five
women bold enough to risk the danger. The avenge height of the men was 5 feet
4-15 inches, the length of his arm 11-23 inches, and of his forearm to the tip
of his longest finger 2 feet 5-1 inches, while in the women the corresponding
measurements were, 5 feet 0-75 inches in stature, 11-35 inches in length of
arm, and 2 feet 3-85 inches of forearm. The tallest man was 5 feet 8-25
inches, and the most herculean of the women 5 feet 2-75 inches.
The men dress as in other districts. The women,
especially the maidens, are strong, well proportioned and well developed; many
of them are very good-looking, having, what is rare among the Malay races,
characteristically marked red cheeks. They wear usually only one garment, a
loin-cloth fastened below the breasts and reaching to the middle of the thigh.
Their arms are decked from the wrist to the elbow with tiers of silver
bracelets, and the lower joint of every finger with as many rings as it can
hold, but they did not exhibit any delicate ideas about spoiling their lustre,
and, notwithstanding the incongruity of the combination, I have often seen
them grubbing up roots with their jewelled fingers, and filling baskets with
earth to the clang of their bracelets.
Marriage between members of the same village or
village cluster is prohibited among the Passumah people; in some districts
even those of the same marga are within the bombs of consanguinity recognised
by them. The two forms already described at page 151 as practised in the
Lampongs I found existing here also; the one by simple purchase; the other (ambil-anak)
by which the father of the bride adopts his son-in-law into his family, more
as a slave, however, than as a son. The position of the man married by the
latter arrangement recalls in his utter subserviency to the woman - her
properly never passing to him as long as the marriage bond remains, and his
children always hers - the insignificant and pitiable position of the
paterfamilias among the Egyptians under the Ptolemies, in which "the woman
owned all and ruled all; the man was a helpless dependant. As a child he was
the property of his mother and as a married man the pensioner of his wife."
On the day of the marriage the youth and his bride
come before the Head of the village, who is as it were both king and priest.
After offering to the Dewa incense of bensoin, and sprinkling over them rice
yellowed with curcuma powder, he reads what may in truth be called their
marriage service, a long and singular formula of great interest, called "Sawe
berdundun," which I had the good fortune to obtain a copy in the rentjong
character inscribed on a bamboo. It is a sort of invocation to all their
pagan pantheon, among whom one is invoked as dwelling within the Nine Mists,
to bestow their blessing on the union.
Another of their curious customs I saw performed
during my stay in the village. It happened that a young girl had fallen
clandestinely with child (an offence of great magnitude among them) whose
father it was incumbent on the chief of the village to discover and report to
the chief of his marga. A court, consisting of these two officials with the
chiefs of the two neighbouring villages, was consequently called together in
the Balai in which I was staying. The girl was summoned to appear, and,
accompanied by her mother, she took her place on a mat before the chiefs. The
head of her village, having seated himself on the ground, prostrated himself
before a little incense-holder of burning benzoin, and chanted an invocation
to various of their deities, concluding with - "Ye Beings who regulate the
universe, make it clear whose is the fault." Then, in the midst of dead
silence, he scattered over the girl some handifuls of yellowed rice-grains,
and demanded the name of the partner of her crime. She replied, giving the
name of some one in a distant village, and, being warned to speak the truth,
she declared: "Banish me if you will, hang me if you will, kill me if you
will, I can say no other - that is the truth." This finished the inquisition.
Next morning a commission consisting of the chiefs who had formed the court
with several armed villagers, set out, accompanied by the girl, to bring her
charge against the village whose member had brought disgrace on theirs. If the
person named by the girl should on his oath deny the charge, the case nowadays
is carried before the magistrate of the district. In other days it was
referred to the arbitrament of war or of the Dewa, who would certainly afflict
the perjurer or his (or her) village; but, for the purification of the
disgraced Kampong, the deity had to be invoked over a sacrificed buffalo. The
woman would secretly as her time approached disappear from the village; and
when, after a space, she returned she would come alone. If the person named by
the girl accepted the charge, as he did in this case, and was willing by
either of the modes of marriage practised among them to make her his wife,
both villages, as well as the Dewa, are supposed on hs paying a small fine to
be satisfied.
The people of the Passumah are pagans; but their
paganism is throughout tinged in form and utterance with Mahomedanism, which
in former times may have spread to a medanism, which in former times may have
spread to a slight extent among them. They have no priests. They believe in
Dewas, who inhabit the volcanoes and the deep forests, and also in the evening
power of the spirits of their forefathers if they transgress the old customs
set by them. In times of difficulty and perplexity they ascent to the margin
of the crater, and in the cold of that elevated spot they pass one or more
nights; and once in every three years a company from the village repairs to
burn incense, and sacrifice to the Dewa some animal on the Sawah (as they name
a spot just below the present cone), which must have been the floor of an old
crater before the upheaval of the present one. They believe in the power of
forms of words, and in the possession of spells. When a youth goes away on a
journey he leaves with the object of his affections an inscribed bamboo, which
she daily reads (if she is able to do so) to secure his fidelity to her and
success in his undertaking; she then drinks a draught of water from it, sot
hat the spell may amalgamate with her own self. In the roofs of their
houses they secrete bamboos with various inscriptions to ward off sickness,
and to cure it when it enters the dwelling. The surat bantal, a prayer
inscribed on blades of bamboo, placed below the pillow, will insure for a
mother safe delivery; and, when her infant will not cease crying, the
repeating of its contents will still it. When an aged person is very sick, and
cannot possibly recover, but yet lingers long at the threshold of death, they8
possess another formula, whose reading will release the dying spirit in peace.
The place they hold in most reverence is the grave of
the Nene Poyang, or stem father of the Passumah, over which their most
binding oaths are taken; to perjure themselves on it would be equal to sealing
their doom. If there be a dispute between two people of the same or of
different villages, both retire, accompanied by their respective chiefs, to
this sacred spot, where a fowl or a sheep or a buffalo, according to the
gravity of the affair, is killed, which after being cut up into small pieces,
is cooked in a great pot. Then he who is to take the oath holding his hand, or
a long kriss of the finest sort, over the gravestone and over the cooked
animal says: "If such and such be not the case, may I be afflicted with the
worst evils." The whole of the company then partake of the food. If the man
has sworn falsely they believe that in a short time after he will be seized
with some dire sickness, and will die; if he plants his fields they will not
grow, or will produce barren stems; but not only will he himself be crushed by
misfortune, but, in an affair of magnitude, all who were of his village who
ate of the feast, if not the village also, will be overtaken by disaster. The
people of Passumah Ulu Manna, which lies between the broad Passumah and the
town of Manna on the sea-coast, have the same origin as those of the broad
Passumah, and consequently their most solemn oath must be taken over the same
grave. Now where a cause is before the magistrate, and it is necessary to
swear a witness, it costs a journey of some twenty days. There has been
brought, however, I am told, a stone from the grave of their ancestor to the
court of the magistrate, which the people respect and swear over. One can
perceive that ere long th4e oath of the district may be sworn over any stone,
and in time to come it may be forgotten why they swear over a stone at
all.
When a man dies his body is brought into the Balai
and there laid out by the head man of the village, with various ceremonial
observances, accompanied by a certain form of words, differing with, and
appropriate to, each act, their ritual for the dead. Having wound a cord about
the body, he takes the dead man's head between his hands, and rolls it gently
from side to side; the teeth are rubbed with a piece of sapotaceous wood; the
tongue is pulled forward and touched with it, the nostrils and the ears also;
the eyelid is raised to permit a last look; the arm is rotated by turning the
forefinger; each toe and finger is flexed; the nails are gently scraped; the
juice of a lemon is squeezed over the body, which is finally sprinkled with
water and wrapped in white cloth. The dead are buried without the village in a
square plot quite in the wilderness. "Are they not dead? That is the end of
them, and what is the good of knowing more about them."
On inquiring where the dead go, I received the
following answer: "We Ulu men (living near the sources of the rivers) do not
follow the custom of the sea-coast people. They say that when their people die
they go to a great field, flat and without any trees, on which the hot sun
pours day and night. There they have to remain day and night, roasting (pangang),
for a long, long time, reading day and night the Koran. After a time Allah
comes along with a great umbrella over him, attended by a large company. Those
that have learned best he calls to walk with him in the shade of his umbrella;
those that have failed to learn all that they ought are beaten up in a great
mortar, and sent back somewhere on earth, whence after a trial they are again
transported to the baking field, where a time is allowed to them to perfect
themselves, when, if they have made proper use of their opportunities they are
at last called under the great shade; but if, after all these trials, they
have failed to learn, they are beaten to dust in the mortar and blown away.
We Ulu men do not know if this is so or not, and wonder how they know, for we
have never heard of any one who has come back to tell them. We Ulu men do not
know whither we go, but the breath that goes out of the mouth is lost two
arms' length away, and we believe that we mix with the wind and follow it
whenever it goes; and our bodies certainly not away."
Some of the most interesting objects in the Passumah
Lands are the sculptured figures found in so many parts of it. The greater
number of these are so broken and defaced that no satisfactory result can come
from their examination. They have been ascribed to Hindoo origin by at least
one writer. Hearing that there existed two of these "men turned to stone" at
Tangerwangi not far from my camp, I paid them a visit. I found them to be
immense blocks of stone, in excellent preservation, which could certainly
never have been seen by the writer to whom I refer. They are carved into a
likeness of the human figure, in a posture between sitting and kneeling, but
which it is not quite easy to make out from the way in which the stones are
lying. Besides the two of which I had heard, I discovered by clearing the
forest, first a third and then a fourth, both prostate on the ground in such a
way as to indicate that they probably fell from the result of earthquakes; or
by stones ejected from the volcano at whose base they had stood. Each figure
has a groove down the back and they had apparently stood on a flat pedestal,
with their backs towards one centre, with their faces more or less accurately
to the cardinal points of the compass. The features of all four are of the
same type of countenance; but the race now living in this region did not form
that model, and it is equally beyond question that the Hindoo features are not
represented. It is not certain that the Hindoos, who, as it is well known,
settled in some parts of Sumatra at the time of their gr3eat occupation of
Java about 1000 B.C. ever were in the Passumah lands; but if they ever were,
there is no reason for supposing that they should depart from their wont in
Java and elsewhere, and figure in their sculptures the lineaments of another
race than their own. If these stones are not the work of the Hindoos, they
must have been carved by either the then people of the district or by foreign
sculptors. If by Passumahers, did thy depict their own features or those of
another race? But who these former inhabitants of the Passumah were, whence
these foreign artificers came, and for what these sculp0tures were used, is
shrouded in deep mystery. It is quite certain also that the present
inhabitants could not conceive, much less execute, such works of art.
The postures are peculiar; the figures have the
appearance of persons bound, bearing burdens on their backs. The ringing of
the arms, which the natives call bracelets, must be taken, I think, to
represent cords, as the same marks occur also below the shoulder, where it is
not the custom of the Passaumahers to wear armlets. The eyes are immense and
protruding to a great degree, lending weight to this idea. The sex of the
persons represented is also doubtful. There is almost no tradition respecting
them, beyond that they are the handiwork of Sarung Sakti and Lidah Pait
(Bitter Tongue), who, wandering about the country, turned all who displeased
them into stone; or that they represent the people who in the far, far back
time used to inhabit this land, and who possessed tails, which the renowned
ancestor of the Passumah people, Atum Bungsu, cut off. Near Pagar Alam, I saw
also two stones, but quite of a different kind of sculpture; one was the
representation of a woman sitting in native fashion, with an infant on her hip
in th4e way that their children are generally carried about. Both hands
support the breasts, which are apparently turgid. Her features might represent
a Passumah woman. The other, distant a few yards only, is a spirited sculpture
representing two children attached by a python. The reptile is coiled about
the children, one of whom has fallen, while its head is partly in its mouth.
The action of the smaller boy, in thrusting off the snake with all his
strength, is natural and well designed, though somewhat wanting in execution.
These stones differ in character so much from the others at Tangerwangi, and
have besides so little relation one to another, that it is impossible to
conceive for what purpose they can have been made. The only conclusion is that
a superior race, possessing considerable knowledge and refined taste, and with
technical skill not possessed by the natives of any part of the island at
present occupied this region; but who they were and when they dwelt here in
absolutely shrouded in oblivion.
During my stay in the Passumah lands, the news that I
was an Englishman spread far, and I was several times visited by people from
the Passumah Ulu Manua district, which about the year 1820 was under the rule
of the English, having been annexed to the East India Company's dominions when
Sir Stamford Raffles held the Lieutenant-Governorship of Bencoolen. the
original document, formally recognising them as "subjects of the Honourable
Company, and entitled to all the privileges of that condition," was brought to
me by the grandson of one of the chiefs with whom the treaty was then
concluded, carefully preserved in a bamboo case. He had heard, he said, that I
was English, and he had come several days' journey to see me, for he had heard
both his grandfather and his father tell of the greatness of the "orang Ingris."
It was at least flattering to one's national pride to find how deep a hold
their rule had taken on the gratitude of the people, when those of the third
generation had come to extol to one of their countrymen their merciful and
just government, and with wonderful, and of course exaggerated, tales of their
liberality and of the profuseness, richness, and grandeur of the Governor's
court. One old fellow came arrayed in one of his most precious heirlooms, the
English-made coat, of his grandfather, of a purplish serge with steel-ring
epaulets and with a curved sabre bearing King George's monogram worked on the
handle. He sadly bemoaned that the present Government had not continued to him
the chieftainship of his father's marga, and with the present Passirahs it was
evidently a sore matter that they received no pay from the Government, when
under the English rule they received seventy-five rupees a month )75 pound
sterling a year), a great sum to these people. I was very amused by the way
one Passirah showed me his official dress. The "Company." that is, the present
government, for the designation still continues - "The Company gives me this"
('this' with a most contemptuous curl of the lips), as he exhibited his own
alongside the English uniform of his companion (the costume did not really
deserve such a curl); "and I have to pay five rupees for this" (a narrow gold
band on the right arm), "and five rupees for this" (its fellow on the left),
"and five for this" (on the neck). "The Ingris gave a costume like that, with
a sword and seventy-five rupees a month besides!" They were always anxious to
learn from me when the English were coming back again. I dare say that if the
English were back, they would possibly sigh for the return of the Dutch, their
supposed grievances against the dominion for the time present doubtless being
always sorest. It is not all lip praise, however, there exists throughout the
country a real belief in the absolute justice in word and deed of the English
people and of the surpassing greatness of their nation. All the documents
which they showed me that were given by Raffles to their fathers had
invariably lost their wax seals, and, on asking what had become of them, the
unfailing reply was:-"We have eaten them" Each document they believed was the
token of rights and privileges which could never be revoked, but which would
one day, though at present in abeyance, come again to them; and as the seal in
their estimation is the most effectual and the potentest part of a Deed, they
had eaten it; and somehow, should the writing itself get lost, the seal at any
rate had become part of themselves and its potency would descend to their
heirs.
