RELIGION.
In works descriptive of the manners of people little known to the world the account of their religion usually constitutes an article of the first importance. Mine will labour under the contrary disadvantage. The ancient and genuine religion of the Rejangs, if in fact they ever had any, is scarcely now to be traced; and what principally adds to its obscurity, and the difficulty of getting information on the subject, is that even those among them who have not been initiated in the principles of Mahometanism yet regard those who have as persons advanced a step in knowledge beyond them, and therefore hesitate to own circumstantially that they remain still unenlightened. Ceremonies are fascinating to mankind, and without comprehending with what views they were instituted the profanum vulgus naturally give them credit for something mysterious and above their capacities, and accordingly pay them a tribute of respect. With Mahometanism a more extensive field of knowledge (I speak in comparison) is open to its converts, and some additional notions of science are conveyed. These help to give it importance, though it must be confessed they are not the most pure tenets of that religion which have found their way to Sumatra; nor are even the ceremonial parts very scrupulously adhered to. Many who profess to follow it give themselves not the least concern about its injunctions, or even know what they require. A Malay at Manna upbraided a countryman with the total ignorance of religion his nation laboured under. "You pay a veneration to the tombs of your ancestors: what foundation have you for supposing that your dead ancestors can lend you assistance?" "It may be true," answered the other, "but what foundation have you for expecting assistance from Allah and Mahomet?" "Are you not aware, replied the Malay, that it is written in a Book? Have you not heard of the Koran?" The native of Passummah, with conscious inferiority, submitted to the force of this argument.
If by religion is meant a public or private form of worship of any kind, and if prayers, processions, meetings, offerings, images, or priests are any of them necessary to constitute it, I can pronounce that the Rejangs are totally without religion and cannot with propriety be even termed pagans, if that, as I apprehend, conveys the idea of mistaken worship. They neither worship God, devil, nor idols. They are not however without superstitious beliefs of many kinds, and have certainly a confused notion, though perhaps derived from their intercourse with other people, of some species of superior beings who have the power of rendering themselves visible or invisible at pleasure. These they call orang alus, fine, or impalpable beings, and regard them as possessing the faculty of doing them good or evil, deprecating their wrath as the sense of present misfortunes or apprehension of future prevails in their minds. But when they speak particularly of them they call them by the appellations of maleikat and jin, which are the angels and evil spirits of the Arabians, and the idea may probably have been borrowed at the same time with the names. These are the powers they also refer to in an oath. I have heard a dupati say, "My grandfather took an oath that he would not demand the jujur of that woman, and imprecated a curse on any of his descendants that should do it: I never have, nor could I without salah kapada maleikat--an offence against the angels." Thus they say also, de talong nabi, maleikat, the prophet and angels assisting. This is pure Mahometanism.
NO NAME FOR THE DEITY.
The clearest proof that they never entertained an idea of Theism or the belief of one supreme power is that they have no word in their language to express the person of God, except the Allah tala of the Malays, corrupted by them to Ulah tallo. Yet when questioned on the subject they assert their ancestors' knowledge of a deity, though their thoughts were never employed about him; but this evidently means no more than that their forefathers as well as themselves had heard of the Allah of the Mahometans (Allah orang islam).
IDEA OF INVISIBLE BEINGS.
They use, both in Rejang and Passummah, the word dewa to express a superior invisible class of beings; but each country acknowledges it to be of foreign derivation, and they suppose it Javanese. Radin, of Madura, an island close to Java, who was well conversant with the religious opinions of most nations, asserted to me that dewa was an original word of that country for a superior being, which the Javans of the interior believed in, but with regard to whom they used no ceremonies or forms of worship:* that they had some idea of a future life, but not as a state of retribution, conceiving immortality to be the lot of rich rather than of good men. I recollect that an inhabitant of one of the islands farther eastward observed to me, with great simplicity, that only great men went to the skies; how should poor men find admittance there? The Sumatrans, where untinctured with Mahometanism, do not appear to have any notion of a future state. Their conception of virtue or vice extends no farther than to the immediate effect of actions to the benefit or prejudice of society, and all such as tend not to either of these ends are in their estimation perfectly indifferent.
(*Footnote. In the Transactions of the Batavian Society Volumes 1 and 3 is to be found a History of these Dewas of the Javans, translated from an original manuscript. The mythology is childish and incoherent. The Dutch commentator supposes them to have been a race of men held sacred, forming a species of Hierarchy, like the government of the Lamas in Tartary.)
Notwithstanding what is asserted of the originality of the word dewa, I cannot help remarking its extreme affinity to the Persian word div or diw, which signifies an evil spirit or bad genius. Perhaps, long antecedent to the introduction of the faith of the khalifs among the eastern people, this word might have found its way and been naturalized in the islands; or perhaps its progress was in a contrary direction. It has likewise a connexion in sound with the names used to express a deity or some degree of superior being by many other people of this region of the earth. The Battas, inhabitants of the northern end of Sumatra, whom I shall describe hereafter, use the word daibattah or daivattah; the Chingalese of Ceylon dewiju, the Telingas of India dai-wundu, the Biajus of Borneo dewattah, the Papuas of New Guinea 'wat, and the Pampangos of the Philippines diuata. It bears likewise an affinity (perhaps accidental) to the deus and deitas of the Romans.*
(*Footnote. At the period when the above was written I was little aware of the intimate connexion now well understood to have anciently subsisted between the Hindus and the various nations beyond the Ganges. The most evident proofs appear of the extensive dissemination both of their language and mythology throughout Sumatra, Java, Balli (where at this day they are best preserved), and the other eastern islands. To the Sanskrit words dewa and dewata, signifying divinities in that great mother-tongue, we are therefore to look for the source of the terms, more or less corrupted, that have been mentioned in the text. See Asiatic Researches Volume 4 page 223.)