(*Footnote. The circumstances of this disgraceful affair are preserved in a book entitled A Voyage to the East Indies in 1747 and 1748. This Raddin Tamanggung, a most intelligent and respectable man, died at Bencoolen in the year 1790. His sons possess the good qualities of their father, and are employed in the Company's service.)
The bimbangs are conducted with great decorum and regularity. The old women are very attentive to the conduct of the girls, and the male relations are highly jealous of any insults that may be shown them. A lad at one of these entertainments asked another his opinion of a gadis who was then dancing. "If she was plated with gold," replied he, "I would not take her for my concubine, much less for my wife." A brother of the girl happened to be within hearing, and called him to account for the reflection thrown on his sister. Krises were drawn but the bystanders prevented mischief. The brother appeared the next day to take the law of the defamer, but the gentleman, being of the risau description, had absconded, and was not to be found.
NUMBER OF WIVES.
The customs of the Sumatrans permit their having as many wives by jujur as they can compass the purchase of or afford to maintain; but it is extremely rare that an instance occurs of their having more than one, and that only among a few of the chiefs. This continence they in some measure owe to their poverty. The dictates of frugality are more powerful with them than the irregular calls of appetite, and make them decline an indulgence that their law does not restrain them from. In talking of polygamy they allow it to be the privilege of the rich, but regard it as a refinement which the poor Rejangs cannot pretend to. Some young risaus have been known to take wives in different places, but the father of the first, as soon as he hears of the second marriage, procures a divorce. A man married by semando cannot take a second wife without repudiating the first for this obvious reason that two or more persons could not be equally entitled to the half of his effects.
QUESTION OF POLYGAMY.
Montesquieu infers that the law which permits polygamy is physically conformable to the climate of Asia. The season of female beauty precedes that of their reason, and from its prematurity soon decays. The empire of their charms is short. It is therefore natural, the president observes, that a man should leave one wife to take another: that he should seek a renovation of those charms which had withered in his possession. But are these the real circumstances of polygamy? Surely not. It implies the contemporary enjoyment of women in the same predicament; and I should consider it as a vice that has its source in the influence of a warm atmosphere upon the passions of men, which, like the cravings of other disordered appetites, make them miscalculate their wants. It is probably the same influence, on less rigid nerves, that renders their thirst of revenge so much more violent than among northern nations; but we are not therefore to pronounce murder to be physically conformable to a southern climate. Far be it from my intention however to put these passions on a level; I only mean to show that the president's reasoning proves too much. It must further be considered that the genial warmth which expands the desires of the men, and prompts a more unlimited exertion of their faculties, does not inspire their constitutions with proportionate vigour; but on the contrary renders them in this respect inferior to the inhabitants of the temperate zone; whilst it equally influences the desires of the opposite sex without being found to diminish from their capacity of enjoyment. From which I would draw this conclusion, that if nature intended that one woman only should be the companion of one man, in the colder regions of the earth it appears also intended a fortiori that the same law should be observed in the hotter; inferring nature's design, not from the desires, but from the abilities with which she has endowed mankind.
Montesquieu has further suggested that the inequality in the comparative numbers of each sex born in Asia, which is represented to be greatly superior on the female side, may have a relation to the law that allows polygamy. But there is strong reason to deny the reality of this supposed excess. The Japanese account, taken from Kaempfer, which makes them to be in the proportion of twenty-two to eighteen, is very inconclusive, as the numbering of the inhabitants of a great city can furnish no proper test; and the account of births at Bantam, which states the number of girls to be ten to one boy, is not only manifestly absurd, but positively false. I can take upon me to assert that the proportion of the sexes throughout Sumatra does not sensibly differ from that ascertained in Europe; nor could I ever learn from the inhabitants of the many eastern islands whom I have conversed with that they were conscious of any disproportion in this respect.
CONNEXION BETWEEN POLYGAMY AND PURCHASE OF WIVES.
But from whatever source we derive polygamy its prevalence seems to be universally attended with the practice of giving a valuable consideration for the woman, instead of receiving a dowry with her. This is a natural consequence. Where each man endeavours to engross several, the demand for the commodity, as a merchant would express it, is increased, and the price of course enhanced. In Europe on the contrary, where the demand is small; whether owing to the paucity of males from continual diminution; their coldness of constitution, which suffers them rather to play with the sentimental than act from the animal passion; their corruption of manners leading them to promiscuous concubinage; or, in fine, the extravagant luxury of the times, which too often renders a family an insupportable burden--whatever may be the cause it becomes necessary, in order to counteract it and produce an additional incitement to the marriage state, that a premium be given with the females. We find in the history of the earliest ages of the world that, where a plurality of women was allowed of, by law or custom, they were obtained by money or service. The form of marriage by semando among the Malays, which admits but of one partner, requires no sum to be paid by the husband to the relations of the wife except a trifle, by way of token, or to defray the expenses of the wedding-feast. The circumstance of the rejangs confining themselves to one, and at the same time giving a price for their wives, would seem an exception to the general rule laid down; but this is an accidental and perhaps temporary restraint, arising, it may be, from the European influence, which tends to make them regular and industrious, but keeps them poor: affords the means of subsistence to all, but the opportunity of acquiring riches to few or none. In their genuine state war and plunder caused a rapid fluctuation of property; the little wealth now among them, derived mostly from the India Company's expenditure, circulates through the country in an equal stream, returning chiefly, like the water exhaled in vapours from the sea, to its original source. The custom of giving jujurs had most probably its foundation in polygamy; and the superstructure subsists, though its basis is partly mouldered away; but, being scarcely tenantable, the inhabitants are inclined to quit, and suffer it to fall to the ground. Moderation in point of women destroying their principle, the jujurs appear to be devoid of policy. Open a new spring of luxury, and polygamy, now confined to a few individuals amongst the chiefs, will spread throughout the people. Beauty will be in high request; each fair one will be sought for by many competitors; and the payment of the jujur be again esteemed a reasonable equivalent for possession. Their acknowledging the custom under the present circumstances to be a prejudicial one, so contrary to the spirit of eastern manners, which is ever marked with a blind veneration for the establishments of antiquity, contributes to strengthen considerably the opinion I have advanced.
GAMING.