[78] Ellis, Polynesian Researches, i. 323 sqq.
[79] Tylor, op. cit. ii. 344 sqq. Hoffmann, La notion de l’Être suprême chez les peuples non civilisés, p. 70 sqq.
[80] Gudgeon, in Jour. Polynesian Soc. xiv. 108.
[81] Guppy, Solomon Islands, p. 53.
The Sea Dyaks of Borneo have a great good god called Batara, or Petara, who created the world and rules over it, and is the cause of every blessing. He is not susceptible to human influence, and therefore receives no worship. But he approves of industry, honesty, purity of speech, and skill in word and work. He punishes theft, injustice, disrespect for old persons, and adultery; and immorality among the unmarried is supposed to bring a plague of rain upon the earth as a punishment inflicted by Petara. In general, says Mr. Perham, he is against man’s sin; but over and above moral offences many sins have been invented which are simply the infringement of pemate, or tabu.[82] Like many other great gods of savages, Petara is lacking in individuality. He is at all events not now supposed to be one supreme god, but the general belief is that there are many Petaras—in fact as many Petaras as men. Each man, the people say, has his own peculiar Petara, his own tutelary deity, and if a person is miserable it is because his Petara is miserable.[83] This account, however, loses much of its interest when we find that the name Batara or Petara has obviously been borrowed from Sanscrit, where the word bhaṭṭâra means “lord” or “master.”[84] The great gods of some other peoples in the Malay Archipelago, again, have names which are derived from Arabic—Lahatala, Latala, or Hatalla, from Allah taʿâla. Hence when the Alfura of Bura are heard to say that their highest god, Opo-geba-snulat or Lahatala, writes down in a book the actions of men so as to be able to reward the virtuous and punish the wicked as they deserve, there is every reason to think of influence from Muhammedanism.[85]
[82] Perham, ‘Petara,’ in Jour. Straits Branch Roy. Asiatic Soc. no. 8, p. 149 sq. St. John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, i. 69 sq. Selenka, op. cit. p. 97 sqq.
[83] Perham, in Jour. Straits Branch Roy. Asiatic Soc. no. 8, p. 134 sq.
[84] Ibid. p. 133. Wilken, Het Animisme, p. 162.
[85] Wilken, op. cit. pp. 162, 240 sq.
The Andaman Islanders are reported to believe in a supreme being, Pūluga, who was never born and is immortal, who has created the world and all its objects, who is omniscient when it is day, knowing even the thoughts of their hearts. Whilst pitiful to those in distress, he is angered by the commission of certain sins—falsehood, theft, grave assault, murder, adultery, and burning wax. He is the judge from whom each soul receives its sentence after death. The “spirits” of the departed are sent by him to a place comprising the whole area under the earth, to await the resurrection. The “souls” of the departed, again, pass either into paradise or to another place which might be described as purgatory, a place of punishment for those who have been guilty of heinous sins, such as murder. At the resurrection the soul (from which evil emanates) and the spirit (from which all good emanates) will be reunited and will henceforth live permanently on the new earth, since the souls of the wicked will then have been reformed by the punishments inflicted on them during their residence in the “purgatory.”[86] Mr. Man, who has given us this account, thinks it is extremely improbable that the legends about Pūluga, about the powers of good and evil, and about a world beyond the grave, are the result of the teaching of missionaries or others.[87] But his assumption that they are indigenous seems hardly justified by the very scanty knowledge we possess of the past history of these islanders. Considering their low state of culture, the metaphysical subtlety in some of the notions recorded by Mr. Man would certainly be more astonishing if India were not so near.