Javanese and Hindu Influences.
Indian Origin of the Malaysian Alphabets.
The survival of an Indonesian group on the western verge of Malaysia is all the more remarkable since the Nias islanders, a little farther north, are of Mongol stock, like most if not all of the inhabitants of the Sumatran mainland. Here the typical Malays of the central districts (Menangkabau, Korinchi, and Siak) merge southwards in the mixed Malayo-Javanese peoples of the Rejang, Palembang, and Lampong districts. Although Muhammadans probably since the thirteenth century, all these peoples had been early brought under Hindu influences by missionaries and even settlers from Java, and these influences are still apparent in many of the customs, popular traditions, languages, and letters of the South Sumatran settled communities. Thus the Lampongs, despite their profession of Islam, employ, not the Arabic characters, like the Malays proper, but a script derived from the peculiar Javanese writing system. This system itself, originally introduced from India probably over 2000 years ago, is based on some early forms of the Devanagari, such as those occurring in the rock inscriptions of the famous Buddhist king As'oka (third century B.C.)[528]. From Java, which is now shown beyond doubt to be the true centre of dispersion[529], the parent alphabet was under Hindu influences diffused in pre-Muhammadan times throughout Malaysia, from Sumatra to the Philippines.
But the thinly-spread Indo-Javanese culture, in few places penetrating much below the surface, received a rude shock from the Muhammadan irruption, its natural development being almost everywhere arrested, or else either effaced or displaced by Islam. No trace can any longer be detected of graphic signs in Borneo, where the aborigines have retained the savage state even in those southern districts where Buddhism or Brahmanism had certainly been propagated long before the arrival of the Muhammadan Malays. But elsewhere the Javanese stock alphabet has shown extraordinary vitality, persisting under diverse forms down to the present day, not only amongst the semi-civilised Mussulman peoples, such as the Sumatran Rejangs[530], Korinchi, and Lampongs, the Bugis and Mangkassaras of Celebes, and the (now Christian) Tagalogs and Visayas of the Philippines, but even amongst the somewhat rude and pagan Palawan natives, the wild Manguianes of Mindoro, and the cannibal Battas[531] of North Sumatra.
The Battas—Cultured Cannibals.
These Battas, however, despite their undoubted cannibalism[532], cannot be called savages, at least without some reserve. They are skilful stock-breeders and agriculturists, raising fine crops of maize and rice; they dwell together in large, settled communities with an organised government, hereditary chiefs, popular assemblies, and a written civil and penal code. There is even an effective postal system, which utilises for letter-boxes the hollow tree-trunks at all the cross-roads, and is largely patronised by the young men and women, all of whom read and write, and carry on an animated correspondence in their degraded Devanagari script, which is written on palm-leaves in vertical lines running upwards and from right to left. The Battas also excel in several industries, such as pottery, weaving, jewellery, iron work, and house-building, their picturesque dwellings, which resemble Swiss chalets, rising to two stories above the ground-floor reserved for the live stock. For these arts they are no doubt largely indebted to their Hindu teachers, from whom also they have inherited some of their religious ideas, such as the triune deity—Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer—besides other inferior divinities collectively called diebata, a modified form of the Indian devaté[533].
Cannibalism.
In the strangest contrast to these survivals of a foreign culture which had probably never struck very deep roots, stand the savage survivals from still more ancient times. Conspicuous amongst these are the cannibal practices, which if not now universal still take some peculiarly revolting forms. Thus captives and criminals are, under certain circumstances, condemned to be eaten alive, and the same fate is or was reserved for those incapacitated for work by age or infirmities. When the time came, we are told by the early European observers and by the reports of the Arabs, the "grandfathers" voluntarily suspended themselves by their arms from an overhanging branch, while friends and neighbours danced round and round, shouting, "when the fruit is ripe it falls." And when it did fall, that is, as soon as it could hold on no longer, the company fell upon it with their krisses, hacking it to pieces, and devouring the remains seasoned with lime-juice, for such feasts were generally held when the limes were ripe[534].
The Achinese.
Early Records.