[9] Isa = The hour of evening prayer.

THE AMOK OF DÂTO KÂYA BÎJI DĔRJA

I have done for ever with all these things,
—Deeds that were joyous to knights and kings,
In the days that with song were cherish'd.
The songs are ended, the deeds are done,
There's none shall gladden me now, not one,
There is nothing good for me under the sun,
But to perish as these things perish'd.

The Rhyme of the Joyous Garde.

The average stay-at-home Englishman knows very little about the Malay, and cares less. Any fragmentary ideas that he may have concerning him are, for the most part, vague and hopelessly wrong. When he thinks of him at all, which is not often, he conjures up the figure of a wild-eyed, long-haired, blood-smeared, howling and naked savage, armed with what Tennyson calls the 'cursed Malayan crease,' who spends all his spare time running âmok. As a matter of fact, âmok are not as common as people suppose, but false ideas on the subject, and more especially concerning the reasons which lead a Malay to run âmok, are not confined to those Europeans who know nothing about the natives of the Peninsula. White men, in the East and out of it, are apt to attribute âmok running to madness pure and simple, and, as such, to regard it as a form of disease, to which any Malay is liable, and which is as involuntary on his part as an attack of smallpox. This, I venture to think, is a mistaken view of the matter. It is true that some âmok are caused by madness, but such acts are not peculiar to the Malays. Given a lunatic who has arms always within his reach, and the result is likely to be the same, no matter what the land in which he lives, or the race to which he belongs. In independent Malay States everybody goes about armed; and weapons, therefore, are always available. As a consequence, madmen often run âmok, but such cases are not typical, and do not present any of the characteristic features which distinguish the âmok among Malays, from similar acts committed by people of other nationalities. By far the greater number of Malay âmok results from a condition of mind which is described in the vernacular by the term sâkit hâti—sickness of liver—that organ, and not the heart, being regarded as the centre of sensibility. The states of feeling which are described by this phrase are numerous, complex, and differ widely in degree, but they all imply some measure of anger, excitement, and mental irritation. A Malay loses something he values; he has a bad night in the gambling houses; some of his property is wantonly damaged; he has a quarrel with one whom he loves; his father dies; or his mistress proves unfaithful; any one of these things causes him 'sickness of liver.' In the year 1888, I spent two nights awake by the side of Râja Haji Hamid, with difficulty restraining him from running âmok in the streets of Pĕkan, because his father had died a natural death in Sĕlângor. He had no quarrel with the people of Pahang, but his 'liver was sick,' and to run âmok was, in his opinion, the natural remedy. This is merely one instance of many which might be cited, and serves to illustrate my contention that âmok is caused, in most cases, by a condition of mind, which may result from either serious or comparatively trivial causes, but which, while it lasts, makes a native weary of life. At such times, he is doubtless to some extent a madman—just as all suicides are more or less insane—but the state of feeling which drives a European to take his own life makes a Malay run âmok. All Malays have the greatest horror of suicide, and I know of no properly authenticated case in which a male Malay has committed such an act, but I have known several who ran âmok when a white man, under similar circumstances, would not improbably have taken his own life. Often enough something trivial begins the trouble, and, in the heat of the moment, a blow is struck by a man against one whom he holds dear, and the hatred of self which results, causes him to long for death, and to seek it in the only way which occurs to a Malay—namely, by running âmok. A man who runs âmok, too, almost always kills his wife. He is anxious to die himself, and he sees no reason why his wife should survive him, and, in a little space, become the property of some other man. He also frequently destroys his most valued possessions, as they have become useless to him, since he cannot take them with him to that bourne whence no traveller returns. The following story, for the truth of which I can vouch in every particular, illustrates all that I have said:

In writing of the natives of the East Coast, I have mentioned that the people of Trĕnggânu are, first and foremost, men of peace. This must be borne in mind in reading what follows, for I doubt whether things could have fallen out as they did in any other Native State, and, at the time when these events occurred, the want of courage and skill shown by the Trĕnggânu people made them the laughing stock of the whole of the East Coast. To this day no Trĕnggânu man likes to be chaffed about the doings of his countrymen at the âmok of Bîji Dĕrja, and any reference to it, gives as much offence as does the whisper of the magic words 'Rusty buckles' in the ears of the men of a certain cavalry regiment.

When Băginda Ümar ruled in Trĕnggânu there was a Chief named To’ Bĕntâra Haji, who was one of the monarch's adopted sons, and early in the present reign the eldest son of this Chief was given the title of Dâto’ Kâya Bîji Dĕrja. At this, the minds of the good people of Trĕnggânu were not a little exercised, for the title is one which it is not usual to confer upon a commoner, and Jûsup, the man now selected to bear It, was both young and untried. He was of no particular birth, he possessed no book-learning—such as the Trĕnggânu people love—and was not even skilled in the warrior's lore which is so highly prized by the ruder natives of Pahang. The new To’ Kâya was fully sensible of his unfitness for the post, and determined to do all that in him lay to remedy his deficiencies. He probably knew that, as a student, he could never hope to excel; so he set his heart on acquiring the ëlĕmu hûlubâlang or occult sciences, which it behoves a fighting man to possess. In Trĕnggânu there were few warriors to teach him the lore he desired to learn, though he was a pupil of Tŭngku Long Pĕndêkar, who was skilled in fencing and other kindred arts. At night-time, therefore, he took to haunting graveyards, in the hope that the ghosts of the mighty dead—the warriors of ancient times—would appear to him and instruct him in the sciences which had died with them.

Women are notoriously perverse, and To’ Kâya's wife persisted in misunderstanding the motives which kept him abroad far into the night. She attributed his absences to the blandishments of some unknown lady, and she refused to be pacified by his explanations, just as other wives, in more civilised communities, have obstinately disregarded the excuses of their husbands, when the latter have pleaded that 'business' has detained them.