CHAPTER 16.
THE COUNTRY OF LAMPONG AND ITS INHABITANTS.
LANGUAGE.
GOVERNMENT.
WARS.
PECULIAR CUSTOMS.
RELIGION.
Having thus far spoken of the manners and customs of the Rejangs more especially, and adverted, as occasion served, to those of the Passummah people, who nearly resemble them, I shall now present a cursory view of those circumstances in which their southern neighbours, the inhabitants of the Lampong country, differ from them, though this dissimilitude is not very considerable; and shall add such information as I have been enabled to obtain respecting the people of Korinchi and other tribes dwelling beyond the ranges of hills which bound the pepper-districts.
LIMITS OF THE LAMPONG COUNTRY.
By the Lampong country is understood a portion of the southern extreme of the island, beginning, on the west coast, at the river of Padang-guchi, which divides it from Passummah, and extending across as far as Palembang, on the north-east side, at which last place the settlers are mostly Javans. On the south and east sides it is washed by the sea, having several ports in the Straits of Sunda, particularly Keysers and Lampong Bays; and the great river Tulang-bawang runs through the heart of it, rising from a considerable lake between the ranges of mountains. That division which is included by Padang-guchi, and a place called Nassal, is distinguished by the name of Briuran, and from thence southward to Flat Point, by that of Laut-Kawur; although Kawur, properly so called, lies in the northern division.
TULANG BAWANG RIVER.
Upon the Tulang-bawang, at a place called Mangala, thirty-six leagues from its mouth, the Dutch have a fortified post. There also the representative of the king of Bantam, who claims the dominion of the whole country of Lampong, has his residence, the river Masusi, which runs into the former, being the boundary of his territories and those of the sultan of Palembang. In the neighbourhood of these rivers the land is so low as to be overflowed in the rainy season, or months of January and February, when the waters have been known to rise many feet in the course of a few hours, the villages, situated on the higher spots, appearing as islands. The houses of those immediately on the banks are built on piles of ironwood timber, and each has before it a floating raft for the convenience of washing. In the western parts, towards Samangka, on the contrary, the land is mountainous, and Keyser's Peak, as well as Pugong, are visible to a great distance at sea.
INHABITANTS.
The country is best inhabited in the central and mountainous parts, where the people live independent, and in some measure secure from the inroads of their eastern neighbours, the Javans, who, from about Palembang and the Straits, frequently attempt to molest them. It is probably within but a very few centuries that the south-west coast of this country has been the habitation of any considerable number of people; and it has been still less visited by strangers, owing to the unsheltered nature of the sea thereabouts, and want of soundings in general, which renders the navigation wild and dangerous for country vessels; and to the rivers being small and rapid, with shallow bars and almost ever a high surf. If you ask the people of these parts from whence they originally came they answer, from the hills, and point out an inland place near the great lake from whence they say their forefathers emigrated: and further than this it is impossible to trace. They of all the Sumatrans have the strongest resemblance to the Chinese, particularly in the roundness of face and constructure of the eyes. They are also the fairest people of the island, and the women are the tallest and esteemed the most handsome.
LANGUAGE.
Their language differs considerably, though not essentially, from that of the Rejangs, and the characters they use are peculiar to themselves, as may be observed in the specimens exhibited.
GOVERNMENT.
The titles of government are pangeran (from the Javans), kariyer, and kiddimong or nebihi; the latter nearly answering to dupati among the Rejangs. The district of Kroi, near Mount Pugong, is governed by five magistrates called Panggau-limo, and a sixth, superior, called by way of eminence Panggau; but their authority is said to be usurped and is often disputed. The word in common signifies a gladiator or prizefighter. The pangeran of Suko, in the hills, is computed to have four or five thousand dependants, and sometimes, on going a journey, he levies a tali, or eighth part of a dollar, on each family, which shows his authority to be more arbitrary and probably more strictly feudal than among the Rejangs, where the government is rather patriarchal. This difference has doubtless its source in the wars and invasions to which the former people are exposed.
WARS.
The Javanese banditti, as has been observed, often advance into the country, and commit depredations on the inhabitants, who are not, in general, a match for them. They do not make use of firearms. Beside the common weapons of the island they fight with a long lance which is carried by three men, the foremost guiding the point and covering himself and his companions with a large shield. A compact body thus armed would have been a counterpart of the Macedonian phalanx, but can prove, I should apprehend, of but little use among a people with whom war is carried on in a desultory manner, and more in the way of ambuscade than of general engagement, in which alone troops so armed could act with effect.
Inland of Samangka, in the Straits of Sunda, there is a district, say the Lampongs, inhabited by a ferocious people called orang Abung, who were a terror to the neighbouring country until their villages were destroyed some years ago by an expedition from the former place. Their mode of atoning for offences against their own community, or, according to a Malayan narrative in my possession, of entitling themselves to wives, was by bringing to their dusuns the heads of strangers. The account may be true, but without further authentication such stories are not to be too implicitly credited on the faith of a people who are fond of the marvellous and addicted to exaggeration. Thus they believed the inhabitants of the island Engano to be all females, who were impregnated by the wind, like the mares in Virgil's Georgics.
MANNERS.
The manners of the Lampongs are more free, or rather licentious, than those of any other native Sumatrans. An extraordinary liberty of intercourse is allowed between the young people of different sexes, and the loss of female chastity is not a very uncommon consequence. The offence is there however thought more lightly of, and instead of punishing the parties, as in Passummah and elsewhere, they prudently endeavour to conclude a legal match between them. But if this is not effected the lady still continues to wear the insignia of virginity, the fillet and arm-rings, and takes her place as such at festivals. It is not only on these public occasions that the young men and women have opportunities of forming arrangements, as in most other parts of the island. They frequently associate together at other times; and the former are seen gallantly reclining in the maiden's lap, whispering soft nonsense, whilst she adjusts and perfumes his hair, or does a friendly office of less delicacy to a European apprehension. At bimbangs the women often put on their dancing dress in the public hall, letting that garment which they mean to lay aside dexterously drop from under, as the other passes over the head, but sometimes, with an air of coquetry, displaying as if by chance enough to warm youthful imaginations. Both men and women anoint themselves before company when they prepare to dance; the women their necks and arms, and the men their breasts. They also paint each others faces; not, seemingly, with a view of heightening or imitating the natural charms, but merely as matter of fashion; making fantastic spots with the finger on the forehead, temples, and cheeks, of white, red, yellow, and other hues. A brass salver (tallam) covered with little china cups, containing a variety of paints, is served up for this purpose.
Instances have happened here, though rarely, of very disagreeable conclusions to their feasts. A party of risaus among the young fellows have been known suddenly to extinguish the lights for the purpose of robbing the girls, not of their chastity, as might be apprehended, but of the gold and silver ornaments of their persons. An outrage of this nature I imagine could only happen in Lampong, where their vicinity to Java affords the culprits easier and surer means of escape, than in the central parts of the island; and here too their companies appear to be more mixed, collected from greater distances, and not composed, as with the Rejang people, of a neighbourly assemblage of the old men and women of a few contiguous villages with their sons and daughters, for the sake of convivial mirth, of celebrating a particular domestic event, and promoting attachments and courtship amongst the young people.
PARTICULAR CUSTOMS.
In every dusun there is appointed a youth, well fitted by nature and education for the office, who acts as master of ceremonies at their public meetings, arranges the young men and women in their proper places, makes choice of their partners, and regulates all other circumstances of the assembly except the important economy of the festival part or cheer, which comes under the cognizance of one of the elders. Both parts of the entertainment are preceded by long complimentary speeches, delivered by the respective stewards, who in return are answered and complimented on their skill, liberality, and other qualities, by some of the best bred amongst the guests. Though the manner of conducting, and the appendages of these feasts, are superior in style to the rustic hospitality of some of the northern countries, yet they are esteemed to be much behind those in the goodness and mode of dressing their food. The Lampongs eat almost all kinds of flesh indiscriminately, and their guleis (curries or made dishes) are said, by connoisseurs, to have no flavour. They serve up the rice divided into portions for each person, contrary to the practice in the other countries; the tallam being covered with a handsome crimson napkin manufactured for that use. They are wont to entertain strangers with much more profusion than is met with in the rest of the island. If the guest is of any consequence they do not hesitate to kill, beside goats and fowls, a buffalo, or several, according to the period of his stay, and the number of his attendants. One man has been known to entertain a person of rank and his suite for sixteen days, during which time there were not less than a hundred dishes of rice spread each day, containing some one, some two bamboos. They have dishes here, of a species of china or earthenware, called batu benauang, brought from the eastward, remarkably heavy, and very dear, some of them being valued at forty dollars a piece. The breaking one of them is a family loss of no small importance.
RECEPTION OF STRANGERS.
Abundantly more ceremony is used among these people at interviews with strangers than takes place in the countries adjacent to them. Not only the chief person of a party travelling, but every one of his attendants, is obliged, upon arriving at a town, to give a formal account of their business, or occasion of coming that way. When the principal man of the dusun is acquainted by the stranger with the motives of his journey he repeats his speech at full length before he gives an answer; and if it is a person of great consequence, the words must pass through two or three mouths before they are supposed to come with sufficient ceremony to his ears. This in fact has more the air of adding to his own importance and dignity than to that of the guest; but it is not in Sumatra alone that respect is manifested by this seeming contradiction.
The terms of the jujur, or equivalent for wives, is the same here, nearly, as with the Rejangs. The kris-head is not essential to the bargain, as among the people of Passummah. The father of the girl never admits of the putus tali kulo, or whole sum being paid, and thereby withholds from the husband, in any case, the right of selling his wife, who, in the event of a divorce, returns to her relations. Where the putus tali is allowed to take place, he has a property in her, little differing from that of a slave, as formerly observed. The particular sums which constitute the jujur are less complex here than at other places. The value of the maiden's golden trinkets is nicely estimated, and her jujur regulated according to that and the rank of her parents. The semando marriage scarcely ever takes place but among poor people, where there is no property on either side, or in the case of a slip in the conduct of the female, when the friends are glad to make up a match in this way instead of demanding a price for her. Instances have occurred however of countrymen of rank affecting a semando marriage in order to imitate the Malayan manners; but it has been looked upon as improper and liable to create confusion.
The fines and compensation for murder are in every respect the same as in the countries already described.
RELIGION.
The Mahometan religion has made considerable progress amongst the Lampongs, and most of their villages have mosques in them: yet an attachment to the original superstitions of the country induces them to regard with particular veneration the ancient burying-places of their fathers, which they piously adorn and cover in from the weather.
SUPERSTITIOUS OPINIONS.
In some parts, likewise, they superstitiously believe that certain trees, particularly those of a venerable appearance (as an old jawi-jawi or banyan tree) are the residence, or rather the material frame of spirits of the woods; an opinion which exactly answers to the idea entertained by the ancients of the dryads and hamadryads. At Benkunat in the Lampong country there is a long stone, standing on a flat one, supposed by the people to possess extraordinary power or virtue. It is reported to have been once thrown down into the water and to have raised itself again to its original position, agitating the elements at the same time with a prodigious storm. To approach it without respect they believe to be the source of misfortune to the offender.
The inland people of that country are said to pay a kind of adoration to the sea, and to make to it an offering of cakes and sweetmeats on their beholding it for the first time, deprecating its power of doing them mischief. This is by no means surprising when we consider the natural proneness of unenlightened mankind to regard with superstitious awe whatever has the power of injuring them without control, and particularly when it is attended with any circumstances mysterious and inexplicable to their understandings. The sea possesses all these qualities. Its destructive and irresistible power is often felt, and especially on the coasts of India where tremendous surfs are constantly breaking on the shore, rising often to their greatest degree of violence without any apparent external cause. Add to this the flux and reflux and perpetual ordinary motion of that element, wonderful even to philosophers who are acquainted with the cause, unaccountable to ignorant men, though long accustomed to the effects; but to those who only once or twice in their lives have been eyewitnesses to the phenomena, supernatural and divine. It must not however be understood that anything like a regular worship is paid to the sea by these people, any more than we should conclude that people in England worship witches when they nail a horseshoe on the threshold to prevent their approach, or break the bottoms of eggshells to hinder them from sailing in them. It is with the inhabitants of Lampong no more than a temporary sentiment of fear and respect, which a little familiarity soon effaces. Many of them indeed imagine it endowed with a principle of voluntary motion. They tell a story of an ignorant fellow who, observing with astonishment its continual agitation, carried a vessel of sea water with him, on his return to the country, and poured it into a lake, in full expectation of seeing it perform the same fanciful motions he had admired it for in its native bed.*
(*Footnote. The manners of the natives of the Philippine or Luzon Islands correspond in so many striking particulars with those of the inland Sumatrans, and especially where they differ most from the Malays, that I think no doubt can be entertained, if not of a sameness of origin, at least of an intercourse and connection in former times which now no longer exists. The following instances are taken from an essay preserved by Thevenot, entitled Relation des Philippines par un religieux; traduite d'un manuscrit Espagnol du cabinet de Monsieur Dom. Carlo del Pezzo (without date), and from a manuscript communicated to me by Alex Dalrymple, Esquire. "The chief Deity of the Tagalas is called Bathala mei Capal, and also Diuata; and their principal idolatry consists in adoring those of their ancestors who signalised themselves for courage or abilities, calling them Humalagar, i.e. manes: They make slaves of the people who do not keep silence at the tombs of their ancestors. They have great veneration for the crocodile, which they call nono, signifying grandfather, and make offerings to it. Every old tree they look upon as a superior being, and think it a crime to cut it down. They worship also stones, rocks, and points of land, shooting arrows at these last as they pass them. They have priests who, at their sacrifices, make many contortions and grimaces, as if possessed with a devil. The first man and woman, they say, were produced from a bamboo, which burst in the island of Sumatra; and they quarrelled about their marriage. The people mark their bodies in various figures, and render them of the colour of ashes, have large holes in their ears, blacken and file their teeth, and make an opening which they fill up with gold, they used to write from top to bottom till the Spaniards taught them to write from left to right, bamboos and palm leaves serve them for paper. They cover their houses with straw, leaves of trees, or bamboos split in two which serve for tiles. They hire people to sing and weep at their funerals, burn benzoin, bury their dead on the third day in strong coffins, and sometimes kill slaves to accompany their deceased masters.")
The latter account is more particular, and appears of modern date.
They held the caiman, or alligator, in great reverence, and when they saw him they called him nono, or grandfather, praying with great tenderness that he would do them no harm, and to this end, offered him of whatever they had in their boats, throwing it into the water. There was not an old tree to which they did not offer divine worship, especially that called balete; and even at this time they have some respect for them. Beside these they had certain idols inherited from their ancestors, which the Tagalas called Anita, and the Bisayans, Divata. Some of these were for the mountains and plains, and they asked their leave when they would pass them: others for the corn fields, and to these they recommend them, that they might be fertile, placing meat and drink in the fields for the use of the Anitos. There was one, of the sea, who had care of their fishing and navigation; another of the house, whose favour they implored at the birth of a child, and under whose protection they placed it. They made Anitos also of their deceased ancestors, and to these were their first invocations in all difficulties and dangers. They reckoned amongst these beings, all those who were killed by lightning or alligators, or had any disastrous death, and believed that they were carried up to the happy state, by the rainbow, which they call Balan-gao. In general they endeavoured to attribute this kind of divinity to their fathers, when they died in years, and the old men, vain with this barbarous notion, affected in their sickness a gravity and composure of mind, as they conceived, more than human, because they thought themselves commencing Anitos. They were to be interred at places marked out by themselves, that they might be discovered at a distance and worshipped. The missionaries have had great trouble in demolishing their tombs and idols; but the Indians, inland, still continue the custom of pasing tabi sa nano, or asking permission of their dead ancestors, when they enter any wood, mountain, or corn field, for hunting or sowing; and if they omit this ceremony imagine their nonos will punish them with bad fortune.
Their notions of the creation of the world, and formation of mankind, had something ridiculously extravagant. They believed that the world at first consisted only of sky and water, and between these two, a glede; which, weary with flying about, and finding no place to rest, set the water at variance with the sky, which, in order to keep it in bounds, and that it should not get uppermost, loaded the water with a number of islands, in which the glede might settle and leave them at peace. Mankind, they said, sprang out of a large cane with two joints, that, floating about in the water, was at length thrown by the waves against the feet of the glede, as it stood on shore, which opened it with its bill, and the man came out of one joint, and the woman out of the other. These were soon after married by consent of their God, Batkala Meycapal, which caused the first trembling of the earth; and from thence are descended the different nations of the world."