No one knows who invented the sarong. When the great Sir Francis
Drake skirted the beautiful jungle-bound shores of that strange Asian
peninsula which seems forever to be pointing a wondering finger into
the very heart of the greatest archipelago in the world, he found
its inhabitants wearing the sarong. After a lapse of three centuries
they still wear it,--neither Hindu invasion, Mohammedan conversion,
Chinese immigration, nor European conquest has ever taken from them
their national dress. Civilization has introduced many articles of
clothing; but no matter how many of these are adopted, the Malay,
from his Highness the Sultan of Johore, to the poorest fisherman of
a squalid kampong on the muddy banks of a mangrove-hidden stream,
religiously wears the sarong.
It is only an oblong cloth, this fashion-surviving garb, from two
to four feet in width and some two yards long; sewn together at the
ends. It looks like a gingham bag with the bottom out. The wearer
steps into it, and with two or three ingenious twists tightens it
round the waist, thus forming a skirt and, at the same time, a belt
in which he carries the kris, or snake-like dagger, the inevitable
pouch of areca nut for chewing, and the few copper cents that he dares
not trust in his unlocked hut. The man's skirt falls to his knees,
and among the poor class forms his only article of dress, while the
woman's reaches to her ankles and is worn in connection with another
sarong that is thrown over her head as a veil, so that when she is
abroad and meets one of the opposite sex she can, Moslem-like, draw
it about her face in the form of a long, narrow slit, showing only
her coal-black eyes and thinly pencilled eyebrows.
In style or design the sarong never changes. Like the tartan of the
Highlanders, which it greatly resembles, it is invariably a check
of gay colors. They are all woven of silk or cotton, or of silk and
cotton mixed, by the native women, and no attap-thatched home is
complete without its hand-loom.
One day we crawled up the narrow, rickety ladder that led into the
two by four opening of old Wahpering's palm-shaded home. The little
punghulo or chief, touched his forehead with the back of his open
palm as we advanced cautiously over the open bamboo floor toward his
old wife, who was seated in one corner by a low, horizontal window,
weaving a sarong on a hand-loom. She looked up pleasantly with a soft
"Tabek" (Greeting), and went on throwing her shuttle deftly through the
brilliantly colored threads. The sharp bang of the dark, kamooning-wood
bar drove the thread in place and left room for another. Back and
forth flew the shuttle, and thread after thread was added to the
fabric, yet no perceptible addition seemed to be made.
"How long does it take to finish it?" I asked in Malay.
"Twenty days," she answered, with a broad smile, showing her black,
filed teeth and syrah-stained lips.
The red and brown sarong which she wore twisted tightly up under her
armpits had cost her almost a month's work; the green and yellow one
her chief wore about his waist, a month more; the ones she used as
screens to divide the interior into rooms, and those of the bevy
of sons and daughters of all ages that crowded about us each cost
a month's more; and yet the labor and material combined in each
represented less than two dollars of our money at the Bazaar in
Singapore.
I had not the heart to take the one that she offered the mistress,
but insisted on giving in exchange a pearl-handled penknife, which
the chief took, with many a touch of his forehead, "as a remembrance
of the condescension of the Orang American Rajah."
Wahpering's wife was not dressed to receive us, for we had come swiftly
up the dim lagoon, over which her home was built, and had landed
on the sandy beach unannounced. Had she known that we were coming,
she would have been dressed as became the wife of the Punghulo of
Pulo Seneng (Island of Leisure). The long, black hair would have been
washed beautifully clean with the juice of limes, and twisted up as a
crown on the top of her head. In it would have been stuck pins of the
deep-red gold from Mt. Ophir, and sprays of jasmine and chumpaka. Under
her silken sarong would have been an inner garment of white cotton,
about her waist a zone of beaded cloth held in front by an oval plate,
and over all would have been thrown a long, loose dressing-gown, called
the kabaya, falling to her knees and fastened down the front to the
silver girdle with golden brooches. Her toes would have been covered
with sandals cunningly embroidered in colored beads and gold tinsel.
Wahpering, too, might have added to his sarong a thin vest, buttoned
close up to the neck, a light dimity baju, or jacket, and a pair of
loose silk drawers. They made no apology for their appearance, but
did the honors of the house with a native grace, regaling us with
the cool, fresh milk of the cocoanut, and the delicious globes of
the mangosteens.
The glare of the noonday sun, here on the equator, is inconceivable. It
beats down in bald, irregular waves of heat that seem to stifle
every living being and to burn the foliage to a cinder. Even the
sharp, insistent whir of the cicada ceases when the thermometer on
the sunny side of our palm-thatched bungalow reaches 155 deg.. If I am
forced to go outside, I don my cork helmet, and hold a paper umbrella
above it. Even then, after I have gone a half-hour, I feel dizzy and
sick. I pass native after native, whose only head covering, if they
have any at all save their short-cut black hair, is a handkerchief,
stiffened, and tied with a peculiar twist on the head, or a rimless
cap with possibly a text of the Koran embroidered on its front. It is
only when they are on the sea from early morning to sunset, that they
think it worth while to protect their heads with an umbrella-shaped,
cane-worked head frame like those worn by the natives of Siam and
China. The women I meet simply draw their sarongs more closely about
their heads as the sun ascends higher and higher into the heavens, and
go clattering off down the road in their wooden pattens, unconscious
of my envy or wonderment.
The sarong is more to the Malay than is the kilt to the Scotchman. It
is his dress by day and his covering at night. He uses it as a sail
when far out from land in his cockle-shell boat, or as a bag in which
to carry his provisions when following an elephant path through the
dense jungle.
The checks, in its design, although indistinguishable to the European,
differ according to his tribe or clan, and serve him as a means of
identification wherever he may be on the peninsula.
The sarong and kris are distinctly and solely Malayan; they are shared
with no other country; they are to be placed side by side with the
green turban of the Moslem pilgrim and the cimeter of the Prophet.
A history of one, like the history of the other, embraces all that
is tragical or romantic in Malayan story.