THE MALAYAN RACE.
Physical Conformation of the Malays—Betel Chewing—Their Moral Character—Limited Intelligence of the Malays—Their Maritime Tastes—Piracy—Gambling—Cock-fighting—Running A-muck!—Fishing—Malayan Superstitions—The Battas—Their Cannibalism—Eating a Man alive—The Begus—Aërial Huts—Funeral Ceremonies—The Dyaks—Head-hunting—The Sumpitan—Large Houses.
Unlike the apathetic Indian hunter, whose wishes are bounded by the forest or the savannah, where the chase provides him with a scanty subsistence, or the good-humoured Negro who, fond of agriculture, and attached to the soil on which he was born, never thinks of wandering of his own free will to distant countries, the roving race of the Malays has scattered its colonies far and wide over the Indian Archipelago.
The colour of the various tribes of this remarkable people is a yellowish-brown, and varies but little throughout the numerous islands extending from Sumatra and the peninsula of Malacca to the Moluccas. The hair is black, coarse and straight, the beard scanty. The stature is below the average European size,254 the breast well developed, the limbs meagre. The face is broad and somewhat flat, with high cheek-bones, a small nose, a large mouth with broad lips, and black eyes with angular orbits. The children and young people of both sexes are often really handsome in face and graceful in figure, but as they advance in age their features become hard, and frequently present a repulsive appearance.
Like most nations in a rude state of society, they are in the habit of permanently disfiguring parts of the body under the idea of ornament. Considering blackness a becoming colour for the teeth—for dogs, they say, have them white—they file the enamel so that the bone may be tinged by the juice of the pungent betel, which, wrapped round the nut of the areca palm, and mixed with lime, they are in the habit of chewing from morning till night. This combination, besides discolouring the teeth, has the disgusting property of dyeing the saliva of so deep a red that the lips and gums appear as if coloured with blood; yet it is in universal use throughout the whole Indian Archipelago, and, as excuses are never failing to justify bad habits, is said to have tonic effects and to promote digestion.
The Malays are not a demonstrative people; their behaviour towards strangers is marked by a reserve, a distrust, or even a timidity which inclines the observer to tax with exaggeration the wild and bloodthirsty character which is generally ascribed to their race. The feelings of astonishment, admiration, and fear are never openly expressed, and their slow and considerate speech shows how careful they are not to give offence.
To indulge in a joke is quite contrary to their natural disposition, and they deeply feel, and are ever ready to resent, a breach of etiquette or a personal affront. The higher classes are extremely polite, and have all the quiet manners and dignity of the best educated Europeans. But this external polish is united with a reckless cruelty and contempt for human life which forms the dark side of their character. Hence it is not to be wondered at that different authors give us such totally contradictory accounts of them.
An old traveller, Nicolo Conti, who wrote in 1430, says that ‘the inhabitants of Java and Sumatra surpass all other people in cruelty,’ while Drake praises their love of truth and justice.255 Mr. Crawfurd describes the Javanese as a peaceable and industrious people, but Barbosa, who visited Malacca about the year 1660, informs us that they are extremely cunning and great cheats; that they seldom speak the truth, and are ever ready for a villanous deed.
Their intelligence seems to be incapable of any higher flight. They comprehend nothing which goes beyond the simplest combination of ideas, and have little taste and energy to obtain an increase of knowledge. The civilisation they possess shows no traces of original growth, but is entirely confined to those nations or states which have adopted the Mahometan religion, or in still earlier times received their culture from India.
It must, however, be remarked in their favour that the curse both of domestic tyranny and of a foreign yoke weighs heavily upon them, and that the extension of European domination in the Indian Ocean has been as fatal to their race as it has been in America and Africa to the Red-skin and the Negro.
‘The first voyagers from the west,’ says Rajah Brooke, ‘found the natives rich and powerful, with strong established governments, a flourishing literature, and a thriving trade with all parts of the eastern world. The rapacious European has reduced them to their present abject condition. Their governments have been broken up; the old states decomposed by treachery, by bribery, and intrigue; their possessions wrested from them under flimsy pretences, their trade restricted, their vices encouraged, and their virtues repressed.’
‘Among the Malays of the present day,’ says Newbold, ‘we look in vain for that desire of knowledge which excited their ancestors to transplant the flowers of Arabian literature among their own forests. Works of science are now no longer translated from the Arabic, and creations of the imagination have almost ceased to appear. The few children educated among them learn nothing but to mumble in an unknown tongue a few passages from the Koran, entirely neglecting arithmetic and the acquirement of any useful manual art or employment. Painting, sculpture, architecture, mechanics, geography, are totally unknown to the Malays. Their literature declined with the fall of their empire in the Archipelago, nor could it256 well be expected to flourish under the Upas trees of Portuguese intolerance, Dutch oppression, and British apathy.’
Essentially maritime in their tastes, the Malays have been named the Phœnicians of the East; but not satisfied with the peaceful pursuits of the fisherman or the merchant, many of them infest the Indian Ocean as merciless pirates.
Encouraged by the weakness and distraction of the old-established Malay governments, the facilities offered by natural situation, and the total absence of all restraint from European nations, except now and then the destruction of some mud fort or bamboo-village, which is soon rebuilt, the Illanuns, the Balagnini, and other sea-robbing tribes, issue forth like beasts of prey, enslave or murder the inhabitants on the coasts or at the entrance of rivers, and attack ill-armed or stranded European vessels.
The Illanuns of Mindanao are particularly noted for their daring and long-protracted piratical excursions, which they undertake in large junks with sails, netting, and heavy guns. On one occasion the ‘Rajah Brooke’ met eighteen Illanun boats on neutral ground, and learned from their two chiefs that they had been two years absent from home; and from the Papuan slaves on board it was evident that their cruise had extended from the most eastern islands of the Archipelago to the north-western coast of Borneo.
The Balagnini inhabit a cluster of small islands in the vicinity of Sooloo, where they probably find encouragement and a slave market. They cruise in large prahus, and to each of these a fleet boat or ‘sampan’ is attached, which on occasion can carry from ten to fifteen men. They seldom have large guns like the Illanuns, but, in addition to their other arms, brass pieces, carrying from a one- to a three-pound ball. They use long poles with barbed iron points, with which, during an engagement or flight, they hook their prey. By means of their sampans they are able to capture all small boats; and it is a favourite device with them to disguise one or two men, whilst the rest lie concealed in the bottom of the boat, and thus to surprise prahus at sea, and fishermen or others at the mouths of rivers. Their cruising grounds are very extensive; they frequently make the circuit of Borneo; Gillolo and the Moluccas lie within their range, and it is probable that Papua is257 occasionally visited by them. The Borneans, from being so harassed by these freebooters, who yearly take a considerable number of this unwarlike people into slavery, call the easterly monsoon ‘the pirate wind.’ Their own native governments are probably without exception participators in or victims to piracy, and in many cases both—purchasing from one set of pirates and enslaved and plundered by another; and whilst their dependencies are abandoned, the unprotected trade goes to ruin. Thus piracy rests like a blighting curse upon lands pre-eminently blessed by Nature, and proves as ruinous to the welfare of the Eastern Archipelago as the black stain of the African slave trade to that of the Negroes.
The Malays are inveterate gamblers, and, perhaps for want of some nobler object on which to expend their mental energies, carry the mania of betting at cock-fights to a ruinous excess. Passionately addicted to this favourite amusement, they will lose all their property on a favourite bird, and having lost that, stake their families, and after the loss of wife and children, their own personal liberty, being prepared to serve as slaves in case of losing. Whole poems are devoted to enthusiastic descriptions of cock-fighting, which is regulated by universally acknowledged laws as minute as those of the Hoyleian Code.
The birds are not trimmed as in England, but fight in full feather, armed with straight or curved artificial spurs, sharp as razors and about two and a half inches long. Large gashes are inflicted by these murderous instruments, and it rarely happens that both cocks survive the battle. One spur only is used, and is generally fastened near the natural spur on the inside of the left leg. Cocks of the same colour are seldom matched. The weight is adjusted by the setters-to, passing them to and from each other’s hands as they sit facing each other in the cock-pit. Should there be any difference, it is brought down to an equality by the spur being fixed so many scales higher on the leg of the heavier cock, or as deemed fair by both parties. In adjusting these preliminaries the professional skill of the setters-to is called into action, and much time is taken up in grave deliberation, which often terminates in wrangling. The birds, after various methods of irritating them have been practised, are then set to. During the continuance of the battle the excitement and interest taken by the gambling spectators in258 the barbarous exhibition is vividly depicted in their animated looks and gestures.
The Malays who are not slaves go always armed; they would think themselves disgraced if they went abroad without their crees or poniards, which, to render them more formidable, are often steeped in poison. These weapons, which thus afford them the ready means for avenging an affront, are probably the chief cause which renders their outward deportment to each other remarkably punctilious and courteous, but they sometimes become highly dangerous in the hands of a people whose nervous temperament is liable to sudden explosions of frantic rage. Like the old Berserks of the heroic ages of Scandinavia, a Malay is capable of so far working himself into fury, of so far yielding to some spontaneous impulse, or of so far exciting himself by stimulants, as to become totally regardless of what danger he exposes himself to. In this state, which is called ‘running a-muck,’ he rushes forth as an infuriated animal and attacks all who fall in his way, until he is either struck down like a wild beast, or having expended his morbid rage he falls down exhausted.
The Malays are bad agriculturists and artisans but excellent sportsmen. From the small birds which they entangle in their snares to the large animals of the forest, which they shoot or entrap in pit-falls, or destroy by spring-guns, nothing worth catching escapes their attention. Such is their delight in fishing, that even women and children may be seen in numbers during the rains angling in the swampy rice grounds. Spearing excursions against the swordfish are undertaken during the dark of the moon by the light of torches. A good eye, a steady hand are necessary, and a perfect knowledge of the places where the fish are to be found. Each canoe carries a steersman, a man with a long pole to propel the vessel, and a spearsman, who, armed with a long slender javelin having a head composed of the sharpened spikes of the Nibong palm, and holding in his left hand a large blazing torch, takes his station at the stern of the canoe. They thus glide slowly and noiselessly over the still surface of the clear water, till the rays of the flambeau either attract the prey to the surface or discover it lying seemingly asleep at a little depth below. The sudden splash of the swiftly descending spear is heard, and the fish is the next moment seen glittering in the air, either transfixed259 by the spikes or caught in the interstices as the weapon is withdrawn.
As a natural consequence of their extreme ignorance, the Malays, even the best educated, are inordinately superstitious, and people the invisible world with a host of malignant spirits. The Pamburk roams the forest, like the wild huntsman of the Haruz, with demon dogs, and the storm fiend Hantu Ribut howls in the blast and revels in the whirlwind. Tigers are considered in many instances to be the receptacles of the souls of departed human beings, and they believe that some men have the faculty of transforming themselves at pleasure into tigers, and that others enjoy the privilege of invulnerability. They rely firmly on the efficacy of charms, spells, amulets, talismans, lucky and unl............