“Not only does general censure follow any criminal act, but severe penalties, such as slavery or exile, are imposed for lying. Even suicide—instances of which you occasionally find among them—has a stigma affixed to it in their penal code; any one who perishes by his own hand is buried in a corner of the forest far from the graves of his brethren, and all who have assisted in the sepulture are required afterwards to purify themselves in a special manner.
“This legislation is far from being deficient in morality and wisdom, but unfortunately on certain points it is tainted with superstition, and has opened a large door to numberless injustices, and sometimes provoked cruel strife. On the subject of witchcraft they are particularly credulous: nearly every misfortune is attributed by them to the malice of certain persons whom they believe gifted with the power of influencing their fate; superstition serves as a guide to seek out the guilty individual, and when he is supposed to be discovered, he is usually sold for a slave, or a heavy ransom is exacted.
“The Bannavs believe in the existence of a multitude of spirits, some mischievous to man, others beneficent. According to their creed, every large tree, every mountain, every river, every rock, almost everything, has its particular genius; but they seem to have no idea of a superior being, sovereign and Creator of all things.
“If you ask them respecting the origin of mankind, all they tell you is, that the father of the human race was saved from an immense inundation by means of a large chest in which he shut himself up; but of the origin or creator of this father they know nothing. Their traditions do not reach beyond the Deluge; but they will tell you that in the beginning one grain of rice sufficed to fill a saucepan and furnish a repast for a whole family. This is a souvenir of the first age of the world, that fugitive period of innocence and happiness which poets have called the golden age.
“They have no very fixed ideas on the subject of rewards and punishments in a future life. They believe in the immortality of the soul, which, after leaving the body, they imagine wanders about the tombs and adjacent mountains, often terrifying the living by nocturnal appearances, and finally loses itself for ever in the shadowy depths of the regions of the south.
“All their religion consists of sacrifices and vows, vain and endless observances performed in the hope of warding off misfortune, alleviating suffering, and retarding the hour of death; for, as with all Pagans, the foundation of their religion is terror and egotism.”
DIALECTS OF THE SAVAGE TRIBES.
On my return from my excursion amongst the Stiêns, M. Fontaine, whom I met at Pinhalú, was so kind as to present me with his journal, kept during a residence of twenty years among various savage races, and which I hope some day will see the light; and he likewise favoured me with the following remarks on the dialects of several of these tribes:—
“The language of the Giaraïe and that of the Redais bear a strong resemblance to each other: the two tribes are only separated from each other by the river Bong, which flows between them in a westerly direction, after running for some distance from south to north and watering the lands of the Candians or Bihcandians, whose language also resembles in some degree that of the tribes just mentioned. The dialect of the Bonnavs or Menons does not appear to me to have any similitude to the others, nor even to those of the tribes farther north.
“After a sojourn of several years among these tribes, I was forced, on account of my health, to go to Singapore. I was astonished, after a little study of Malayan, to find in that language a number of Giaraïe words, and many more bearing a strong resemblance to words in that dialect; and I doubt not this similarity would be found still more remarkable by any one who thoroughly studied both languages. The resemblance also of the language of the Thiâmes, the ancient inhabitants of Isiampa, now in the province of Annam, to that of these tribes, leads me to believe that they must all have sprung from the same root.”