CHAPTER V.
BRITISH DEPENDENCIES IN THE MALAYAN PENINSULA.—THE OCEANIC STOCK AND ITS DIVISIONS.—THE MALAY, SEMANG, AND DYAK TYPES.—THE ORANG BINUA.—JAKUNS.—THE BIDUANDA KALLANG.—THE ORANG SLETAR.—THE SARAWAK TRIBES.—THE NEW ZEALANDERS.—THE AUSTRALIANS.—THE TASMANIANS.
Our isolated and small settlements in the Malayan Peninsula,[63] the depôt at Labuan, Sir James Brooke's Rajahship of Sarawak, New Zealand, the joint protectorate of the Sandwich Islands and Tahiti, Australia, and Van Dieman's Land, bring us to a new division of the human species, which is conveniently called the Oceanic.
Its divisions and subdivisions are as follows:—
| { | Protonesians | { | Micronesians | |||
| { | Amphinesians | Polynesians | Polynesians | |||
| Malagasi | Proper. | |||||
| Oceanic | ||||||
| { | Papuans | |||||
| Kelænonesians | Australians | |||||
| Tasmanians. | ||||||
Our settlements are limited to the Protonesian, Proper Polynesian, Australian, and Tasmanian sections: and we have no political authority over any of the Malagasi, Micronesians, or Papuans.
With the exception of the occupants of the Malayan Peninsula, all the Oceanic population occupy islands. This explains the term Oceanic.
Their distribution is as remarkable as their extension. The Amphinesian[64] stream of population, originating in the peninsula of Malacca, is continued through Borneo, the Moluccas, and the Philippines, Lord North's Island, Sonsoral, the Pelew group, the Caroline and Marianne Isles, the Ralik and Radack chains, the Kingsmill group and the Gilbert and Scarborough Islands, to the Navigators', Society, Friendly, Marquesas, Sandwich, and New Zealand groups; having become Micronesian rather than Protonesian, after passing the Philippines, and Proper Polynesian rather than Micronesian, after passing the Scarborough and Gilbert Archipelagoes. In this course it passes round New Guinea and Australia; in each of which islands the population is Kelænonesian.
The Malay of the Malacca peninsula is no longer either monosyllabic or uninflectional, although[205] in immediate contact with the southern dialects of the Siamese. Hence, the transition is abrupt; although by no means conclusive as to any broad and trenchant line of ethnological demarcation.
The differences of physical form are less than those of language. No one has denied that the Malay configuration is a modification of the Mongolian—at least in some of its varieties.
I say at least in some of its varieties, because within the narrow range of the Malaccan peninsula and the island of Borneo we find no less than three different types. In Polynesia one of these, and in Kelænonesia another becomes exaggerated—so much so, as to suggest the idea of a different origin for the populations.
a. The Malays are referable to the first type. Mahometans in religion, they partake of the civilization of the Arab and Indian, and differ but slightly from the Indo-Chinese nations; the complexion being dark and the hair straight. The Mahometan Malays, however, are no true aborigines. They are not only a new people on the peninsula, but they consider themselves as such; and those occupants which they recognize as older than themselves, they call Orang Binua, or men of the soil. Of these some have a darker complexion and crisper hair than the intruding population:[206] and when we reach a particular section called—
b. The Semang, we find them described as having curly, crisp, matted, and even woolly hair, thick lips, and a black skin. These, like most of the other Orang Binua, are Pagans. Still their language is essentially Malay; and their physical conformation passes into that of the Malays by numerous transitions.
c. Thirdly, we find in Borneo the Dyaks. Many of these are as much fairer than the Malays as the Semang are darker. Their language, however, belongs to the Malay class; whilst their religion and civilization may reasonably be supposed to be that of the Malays previous to the influences of Brahminism from India, Mahometanism from Arabia, and the changes effected in their habits, language, and appearance effected thereby.
It is not too much to say that within the peninsula of Malaya, the Johore Archipelago, and the island of Borneo, each of these types, and every intermediate form as well, is to be found.
Malacca.—The town of Malacca is a town of Mahometan Malays, but I believe that the eastern parts of Wellesley province are on the frontier of the Jokong, Jakon, or Jakun. These are Orang Binua, or aborigines—at least as compared with the true Malays.[207]
In the eighth century—I am drawing an illustration from the history of our own island, and its relations to continental Germany—the Anglo-Saxons of Great Britain, themselves originally Pagan Germans, took an interest in the spiritual welfare of the so-called Old Saxons, a tribe of Westphalia, immediately related to their own continental ancestors, these Old Saxons having retained their primitive Paganism. The mission partly succeeded, and partly failed.
Now, if in addition to this partial success of the Anglo-Saxon mission, there had been a partial Anglo-Saxon colonization as well, and if, side by side with this, fragments of the old unmodified Paganism had survived amongst the fens and forests up to the present time, we should have had, in the relations of England and Germany, precisely what I imagine to have been the case with the Malayan peninsula and the island of Sumatra. Like Germany, the peninsula would have supplied the original stock to the island; but, in the island, that stock would have undergone certain modifications. With these modifications it would—so to say—have been reflected back upon the continent—re-colonizing the old mother-country. Now just what the Old Saxons of Westphalia were to the Anglo-Saxons of the eighth century, are the Jakun to the true Malays. They differ from them in being something other than Mahometan;[208] i.e., in being nearly what the Mahometan Malays were before their conversion.
The Jakun are Malays, minus those points of Malay civilization which are referable to the religion of the Koran.
But the Jakun are only a few out of many; a single branch of a great stem.
The most convenient term for the members in general of this class is Orang Binua—a term already explained.
The Biduanda Kallang.—The next, then, of the Orang Binua that comes in contact with a British dependency—many others not thus politically connected with us being passed over—are the Biduanda Kallang of the parts about Sincapore. Their present locality is the banks of the most southern of the rivers of the peninsula, the Pulai. Thither they were removed when the British took possession of the island of Sincapore; of which they were previously the joint occupants—joint occupants, because they shared it with the tribe which will be next mentioned. They were an Orang Laut in one sense of the word, but not in another. Orang means men or people, and laut means sea in Malay; and the Biduanda Kallang were boatmen rather than agriculturists. But they were only freshwater sailors; since, though they lived on the water, they avoided the open sea. They formerly consisted of one hundred[209] families; but have been reduced by small-pox to eight.
Their priest or physician is called bomo, and he invokes the hantu, or deities, the anito of the Philippine Islanders, the tii of the Tahitians; and, probably, the Wandong and Vintana of Australia and Madagascar respectively.
They bury their dead after wrapping the corpse in a mat; and placing on the grave one cup of woman's milk, one of water, and one of rice; when they entreat the deceased to seek nothing more from them.
Persons of even the remotest degree of relationship are forbidden to intermarry.
The accounts of their physical appearance is taken from too few individuals to justify any generalization. Two, however, of them had the forehead broader than the cheek-bones, so that the head was pear-shaped. In a third, it was lozenge-shaped. The head was small, and the face flat. The lower jaw projected; but not the upper—so that "when viewed in profile, the features seem to be placed on a straight line, from which the prominent parts rise very slightly."[65]
The Orang Sletar.—The original joint-occupants of Sincapore with the Biduanda Kallang, were the Orang Sletar, or men of the river Sletar; differing but little from the former. Of the two[210] families they are the shyer, and the more squalid; numbering about two hundred individuals and forty boats. Their dialect is Malay, spoken with a guttural pronunciation, and with a clipping of the words.
At the birth of a child they have no ceremonies; at marriage a present of tobacco and rice to the bride's mother confirms the match; at death the deceased is wrapped in his garments and interred.
Skin diseases and deformities are common; nevertheless, many of their women are given in marriage to both the Malays and Chinese; but I know of no account of the mixed progeny.
A low retreating forehead throws the face of the Orang Sletar forwards, though the jaw is rather perpendicular than projecting.[66]
Such are the Orang Binua originally, or at present, in contact with the small and isolated possessions of the British in the Malayan peninsula.
Of the proper Malays I have said next to nothing. Excellent works give full accounts of them;[67] whilst it is not through them that the true ethnological problems are to be worked.
I believe that when we reach Borneo, the equivalents to the Orang Binua, or the original populations[211] in opposition to the Mahometan Malays, become referable to a fresh type, and that instead of being darker than the true Malays they are often lighter. At any rate, one thing is certain, viz., that, whether the skin be brown, blackish, or fair, the language belongs to the same stock.
Again—although in one area the darker tribes may preponderate, it is not to the absolute exclusion of the fairer. The Dyaks of Borneo are, generally speaking, light-complexioned; yet, there is special evidence to the existence of dark tribes in that island. On the other hand there is equal evidence to the existence of families lighter-skinned than the true Malays in the peninsula. Nevertheless, as a general rule, the departure from the type of that population is towards darkness of colour on the continent, and towards lightness in Borneo.
With what physical conditions these differences coincide is not always easy to be discerned. In the South Sea Islands, where in one and the same Archipelago, we find some tribes tall and fair, whereas others are dark and ill-featured, it has been remarked by Captain Beechy that this contrast of complexion coincides with the geological structure of the soil. The lower and more coralline the island, the blacker the islanders; the more elevated and volcanic, the lighter. In Africa, it is the low alluvia of rivers that favour[212] the Negro configuration. Mountains or table-lands, on the other hand, give us red or yellow skins, rather than sable.
The Dyaks, then, are light-coloured Pagans, speaking languages allied to the Malay; little touched by Arabic, and less by Hindú influences; with manners and customs that, more or less, re-appear amongst the Battas (or ruder tribes of Sumatra), and the so-called Harafuras of Celebes—and not only here but elsewhere. In other words, in all the islands, where Indian and Arabic civilization have not succeeded in wholly changing the primitive character, analogues of the Orang Binua are to be found; their greatest differences being those of stature and complexion—differences upon which good judges have laid great stress; but differences which will probably be found to coincide with certain geological conditions in the way of physical, and with a lower level of civilization in the way of moral causes—these moral causes having indirectly a physical action.
The Dyaks, in general, use the sumpitan, or blow-pipe, about five feet long; out of which some tribes shoot simple, others poisoned arrows. The utmost distance that the sumpitan carries is about one hundred yards. At twenty it is sure in its aim. The differences between the Dyak weapon, and one in use with the Arawaks[213] of Guiana is but trifling—perhaps it amounts to nothing at all.
Some Dyak tribes tattoo their bodies; others do not.
Before a Dyak youth marries he must lay at the feet of the bride-elect the head of an enemy. This makes head-hunting a normal item of Dyak courtship.
Traces of the Indian mythology—measures of the Indian influence in other respects—just exist amongst the Dyaks—e.g., Battara is a name in their Pantheon, and this is an alteration of the Brahminic Avatar.
The pirates who harass the coasts of Borneo and the Chinese Seas—destined, at some future time to be, like the Kaffres, but too well-known to the English tax-payers—are Malays rather than Orang Binua, or their equivalents; the navigation of the Dyaks being chiefly confined to rivers.
The particular tribes of Sarawak are the following—the Lundu, the Sarambo, the Singé, the Suntah, the Sow, and the Sibnow. It is almost unnecessary to name the great fountain-head for all our recent knowledge of Borneo—Sir James Brooke.
The Dyak type predominates amongst the Orang Binua of Borneo. In the Philippines the Semang complexion re-appears. But the prolongation[214] of the eastward line of migration takes us through the Mariannes and Ladrones to Polynesia; and here the magnitude of the islands decreases; in other words, the influences of the sea-air become greater. The aliment becomes almost wholly vegetable. The separation from the civilizational influences of Asia amounts to absolute isolation. Of the general ethnology of the South Sea Islanders I say nothing. The reasons which took me over China, Arabia, and the Malayan peninsula, sicco pede, spare the necessity of details here.
In the Sandwich Islands there is a constitution. In Tahiti, a school of native Christian Missionaries.
New Zealand exhibits the contrast between the darker and lighter-coloured Oceanic populations in so remarkable a manner as to have engendered the notion that two stocks occupy the island. If it were so, the fact would be remarkable and mysterious. How one population found its way to a locality so distant is by no means an easy question; whilst the assumption of a second family of immigrants just doubles its difficulty.[68]
In Java the proper Malay influences have been[215] so great as to leave but few traces of the Orang Binua; and, earlier even than these, those of India were actively at work.
East of Bali, however, the Orang Binua re-appear, and here the type is that of the Semangs. From Ombay, parts of Ende, and parts of Sumbawa, we have short vocabularies—short, but not too scanty to set aside the hasty, but accredited, assertion of the Australian language, having nothing in common with those of the Indian Archipelago.[69]
I feel as satisfied that Australia was peopled from either Timor or Rotti, as I do about the Gallic origin of the ancient Britons.
I believe this because the geographical positions of the countries suggest it.
I believe it, because the older and more aboriginal populations of Timor and Rotti approach, in physical character, the Australian.
I believe it, because the proportion of words in the vocabularies alluded to is greater than can be attributed to accident; whilst the words themselves are not of that kind which is introduced by intercourse. Besides which, no such intercourse either occurs at the present moment, or can be shown to have ever existed.
Australia agrees with parts of Africa, South[216] America, and Polynesia, in being partially intertropical and wholly south of the equator—no part of continental Asia or Europe coming under these conditions. But it differs from Polynesia in being continental rather than insular in climate; from South America in the absence of great rivers and vast alluvial tracts; and from Africa in being wholly isolated from the Northern Hemisphere. It is with South Africa, however, that its closest analogies exist. Both have but small water-systems; both vast tracts of elevated barren country; and both a distinctive vegetation. The animal kingdoms, however, of the two areas have next to nothing in common. The comparative non-existence of Australian mammalia, higher in rank than the marsupials, is a subject for the zoologist. Ethnology only indicates its bearing upon the sustenance of man. Poor in the vegetable elements of food, and beggarly in respect to the animal, the vast continental expanse of Australia supports the scantiest aboriginal population of the world, and nourishes it worst. The steppes of Asia feed the horse; the tundras, the reindeer; the circumpolar icebergs, the seal; and each of these comparatively inhospitable tracts is more kindly towards its Mongolian, its Samoeid, and its Eskimo occupant, than Australia with its intertropical climate, but wide and isolated deserts.[217]
Except that his hair (which is often either straight, or only crisp or wavy) has not attained its maximum of frizziness, and has seldom or never been called woolly, the Australian is a Semang under a South African climate, on a South African soil, and with more than a South African isolation.
Few Australians count as far as five, and fewer still beyond it. This paucity of numerals is South American as well—the Brazilian and Carib, and other systems of numeration being equally limited.
The sound of s is wanting in the majority of Australian languages. So it is in many of the Polynesian.
The social constitution is of extreme simplicity. Many degrees removed from the industrial, almost as far from the agricultural state, the Australian is hardly even a hunter—except so far as the kangaroo or wombat are beasts of chase. Families—scarcely large enough to be called tribes or clans—wander over wide but allotted areas. Nowhere is the approach to an organized polity so imperfect.
This makes the differences between section and section of the Australian population, both broad and numerous. Nevertheless, the fundamental unity of the whole is not only generally admitted, but—what is better—it has been well illustrated.[218] The researches of Captain Grey, Teichelmann, Schurrmann, and others, have chiefly contributed to this.
The appreciation of certain apparent characteristic peculiarities has been less satisfactory; differences having been over-rated and points of similarity wondered at rather than investigated.
The well-known instrument called the boomerang is Australian, and it is, perhaps, exclusively so.
Circumcision is an Australian practice—a practice common to certain Polynesians and Negroes, besides—to say nothing of the Jews and Mahometans.
The recognition of the maternal rather than the paternal descent is Australian. Children take the name of their mother. What other points it has in common with the Malabar polyandria has yet to be ascertained.
When an Australian dies, those words which are identical with his name, or (in case of compounds) with any part of it, cease to be used; and some synonym is adopted instead; just as if, in England, whenever a Mr. Smith departed this life, the parish to which he belonged should cease to talk of blacksmiths, and say forgemen, forgers, or something equally respectful to the deceased, instead. This custom re-appears in Polynesia, and in South America; Dobrizhoffer's account of[219] the Abiponian custom being as follows:—The "Abiponian language is involved in new difficulties by a ridiculous custom which the savages have of continually abolishing words common to the whole nation, and substituting new ones in their stead. Funeral rites are the origin of this custom. The Abipones do not like that anything should remain to remind them of the dead. Hence appellative words bearing any affinity with the names of the deceased are presently abolished. During the first years that I spent amongst the Abipones, it was usual to say Hegmalkam kahamátek, when will there be a slaughtering of oxen? On account of the death of some Abipon, the word Kahamátek was interdicted, and, in its stead, they were all commanded by the voice of a crier to say, Hegmalkam négerkatà? The word nihirenak, a tiger, was exchanged for apanigehak; peû, a crocodile, for Kaeprhak, and Kaáma, Spaniards, for Rikil, because these words bore some resemblance to the names of Abipones lately deceased. Hence it is that our vocabularies are so full of blots occasioned by our having such frequent occasions to obliterate interdicted words, and insert new ones."
The following custom is Australian, and it belongs to a class which should always be noticed when found. This is because it appears and re-appears[220] in numerous parts of the world, in different forms, and, apparently, independent of ethnological affinities.
A family selects some natural object as its symbol, badge, or armorial bearing.
All natural objects of the same class then become sacred; i.e., the family which has adopted, respects them also.
The modes of showing this respect are various. If the object be an animal, it is not killed; if a plant, not plucked.
The native term for the object thus chosen is Kobong.
A man cannot marry a woman of the same Kobong.
Until we know the sequence of the cause and effect in the case of the Australian Kobong, we have but little room for speculation as to its origin. Is the plant or animal adopted by a particular family selected because it was previously viewed with a mysterious awe, or is it invested with the attributes of sacro-sanctity because it has been chosen by the family? This has yet to be investigated.
Meanwhile, as Captain Gray truly remarks, the Australian Kobong has elements in common with the Polynesian tabu! Might he not have added that the names are probably the same? The change from t to k, and the difference between a[221] nasal and a vowel termination, are by no means insuperable objections.
He also adds that it has a counterpart with the American system of totem; although the exact degree to which the comparison runs on all fours is undetermined.
But the disuse of certain words on the death of kinsmen, and the Kobong are not the only customs common to the Australian and American.
The admission to the duties and privileges of manhood is preceded by a probation. What this is in the Mandan tribe of the Sioux Americans, and the extent to which it consists in the infliction and endurance of revolting and almost incredible cruelties, may be seen in Mr. Catlin's description—the description of an eye-witness. In Australia it is the Babu that cries for the youths that have arrived at puberty. Suddenly, and at night, a cry is heard in the woods. Upon hearing this, the men of the neighbourhood take the youths to a secluded spot previously fixed upon. The ceremony then takes place. Sham fights, dances, partial mutilations of the body, e.g., the knocking out of a front tooth, are elements of it. And this is as much as is known of it; except that from the time of initiation to the time of marriage, the young men are forbidden to speak to, or even approach a female.
Surely, it is the common conditions of a hunter[222] life which determine these probationary preparations for the hardships which accompany it in populations so remote as the Australian and the American of the prairie. I say of the prairie, because we shall find that in the proportion as the agricultural state replaces the erratic habits of the hunter, ceremonies of the sort in question decrease both in number and peculiarity of character.
A third regulation forbids the use of the more enviable articles of diet, like fish, eggs, the emu, and the choicer sorts of opossum and kangaroo to the Australian youth.
All that is known of the Australian religion is due to the researches of the United States Exploring Expedition. The most specific fact in this respect is the name Wandong as applied to the evil spirit. I believe this to be truly a word belonging to the Oceanic Pantheon in general, and—as stated above—to be the same as Vintana in Malagasi, and as the root anit in many of the Polynesian languages.
The Tasmanians.—A few families, the remains of the aborigines of Van Dieman's Land, occupy Flinder's Island, whither they have been removed.
I can give but little information concerning them.
From the Australians they differ but slightly in mental capacity, and civilizational development.[223] Perhaps their very low level in this respect is the lower of the two.
The language seems to have fallen into not less than four mutually unintelligible forms of speech.
Their hair constituted their chief physical difference. This was curled, frizzy, or mopped.
The a priori view of their origin is that they crossed Torres Straits from Australia. I have, however, stated elsewhere that a case may be made out for either Timor or New Caledonia being their mother countries; in which case the stream of population has gone round Australia rather than across it. Certain peculiarities of the Tasmanian language give us the ground for thus demurring to the primâ facie view of their descent. The same help us to account for the differences in texture of the hair.[70]
FOOTNOTES:
[63] Malacca, Wellesley Province, Penang, and Sincapore. For excellent information about the ethnology of these parts see Newbold's "British Settlements," and the "Journal of the Indian Archipelago."
[64] From ἀμφὶ (amfi) roundabout, and νῆσος (næsos) an island.
[65] Logan in "Journal of the Indian Archipelago," vol. i.
[66] Logan and Thompson in "Journal of the Indian Archipelago," vol. i.
[67] Especially Crawfurd's "Indian Archipelago," Sir Stamford Raffles' "History of Java," and Marsden's "Sumatra."
[68] Dr. Dieffenbach's work on New Zealand is the repertory of details here—a valuable and standard book.
[69] The collation of these may be seen in the Appendix to Mr. Jukes' "Voyage of the Fly."
[70] In the Appendix to Jukes' "Voyage of the Fly," and in "Man and his Migrations."