Of this singular race of Malays, the Orang-Lauts, “Men of the Seas,” or “Sea-Gipsies,” it is said that they do not seem to know anything of a Creator. “A fact so difficult to believe,” says Mr. Thomson, “when we find that the most degraded of the human race, in other quarters of the globe, have an intuitive idea of this unerring and primary truth imprinted on their minds, that I took the greatest care to find a slight image of the Deity within the chaos of their thoughts, however degraded such might be, but was disappointed. They knew neither the God nor the Devil of the Christians or Mohammedans, although they confessed they had been told of such; nor any of the demi-gods of Hindu mythology, many of whom were recounted to them.”
The three great epochs of individual life, birth, marriage, death, pass unnoticed by them. At birth, the mother’s joy is the only welcome to a world it is not likely to find very bright or happy. At marriage, the sole solemnity is the exchange between the male and the female of a mouthful of tobacco and a cheepah, or gallon, of water. At death, the body of the deceased is wrapped in his rags and tatters, and with, perhaps, a few tears from the attendant women, committed to the earth. They have none of that exquisite enjoyment of life which is felt by a cultured race; and neither the entrance upon it nor the passage from it seems to them an event calculated to awaken any emotion of interest. And as they are absolutely without religion, so are they wholly free from superstition; the solemn influences of Nature seem to produce no effect upon their stolid dispositions. Of the pârus, and dewas, and nambangs, and other phantom forms which, in the quick imagination of the Malay, haunt each mountain, rock, and tree, they nothing know; and knowing nothing, they do not fear. Terror is as often the result of knowledge as of ignorance. The mind that has no conception of an unseen world or a supernatural force, must necessarily be free from all apprehension of it.
Passing on to the Philippine Islands, we meet there with the Ahetas, who, like the Orang-Lauts, have no religious system, but, unlike the Orang-Lauts, cherish at least a religious sentiment. It appears that they have learned from—or have taught—the Tanguianes, a brave race dwelling in the vicinity, the practice of worshipping—for a day—the trunk of a distorted tree, or a fragment of rock, in which they trace some fancied resemblance to an animal. Then they turn away from it, and think no more about gods until they encounter another strange and fantastical form, for the existence of which they are unable to account: this, in turn, they make the object of a fugitive devotion. For the dead their reverence is pathetic. Year after year they visit their graves, with as much fidelity as a Christian mourner, though without the Christian’s faith in a future reunion, and place there a modest offering of tobacco and betel. The bows and arrows of the departed are suspended above his grave on the day of interment, and the Ahetas fondly believe that every night he rises from his resting-place to pursue the shadowy hunt in the haunted glades of the forest.
In the case of an aged person afflicted with a mortal illness, they adopt too often a summary procedure, not waiting for him to die before they bury him. But no sooner has the body been deposited in the grave, than it becomes imperative, according to their traditions, that his death should be avenged; and, accordingly, the warriors of the tribe sally forth, with lance and arrow, to slay the first living creature they encounter,—whether man, or stag, or wild hog, or buffalo. When thus in quest of an expiatory victim, they take the precaution of breaking off the young shoots of the shrubs as they pass by, and leave the broken ends hanging in the direction of their roots, as a warning to travellers or neighbours to shun the path they are taking; for were one of their own people to be the first to come across the avengers, they dare not suffer him to escape any more than Agamemnon could spare his daughter Iphigenia. As she suffered for her father’s vow, so must the ill-fated Aheta suffer for the custom of his tribe.
Their superiority to many savage races is attested by their faithfulness in marriage; they practise monogamy. When a young man has chosen his future partner, his friends or relatives ask the consent of their parents, which is never refused. The marriage day is fixed, and in the morning, before sunrise, the maiden is despatched into the forest, where she conceals herself or not, according to her inclinations towards her suitor. An hour’s grace is allowed, and the young man then goes in search of her: if he succeed in finding her, and bringing her back to her friends before sunset, she becomes his wife; but if he fail, he is required to abandon all further claim to the damsel. A strange custom! But there is this much at least to be said for it, that it allows the maiden more liberty of choice than she always enjoys in civilised society!
Whether the Ahetas (or Negritos) sprang from a mixture of Malay and Papuan blood, or are of purely Papuan origin, our ethnologists do not seem to have determined. But in their present development they are certainly superior to the Papuan races.[36]