VILLAGES.
BUILDINGS.
DOMESTIC UTENSILS.
FOOD.
I shall now attempt a description of the villages and buildings of the
Sumatrans, and proceed to their domestic habits of economy, and those
simple arts on which the procuring of their food and other necessaries
depends. These are not among the least interesting objects of
philosophical speculation. In proportion as the arts in use with any
people are connected with the primary demands of nature, they carry the
greater likelihood of originality, because those demands must have been
administered to from a period coeval with the existence of the people
themselves. Or if complete originality be regarded as a visionary idea,
engendered from ignorance and the obscurity of remote events, such arts
must be allowed to have the fairest claim to antiquity at least. Arts of
accommodation, and more especially of luxury, are commonly the effect of
imitation, and suggested by the improvements of other nations which have
made greater advances towards civilisation. These afford less striking
and characteristic features in delineating the picture of mankind, and,
though they may add to the beauty, diminish from the genuineness of the
piece. We must not look for unequivocal generic marks, where the breed,
in order to mend it, has been crossed by a foreign mixture. All the arts
of primary necessity are comprehended within two distinctions: those
which protect us from the inclemency of the weather and other outward
accidents; and those which are employed in securing the means of
subsistence. Both are immediately essential to the continuance of life,
and man is involuntarily and immediately prompted to exercise them by the
urgent calls of nature, even in the merest possible state of savage and
uncultivated existence. In climates like that of Sumatra this impulse
extends not far. The human machine is kept going with small effort in so
favourable a medium. The spring of importunate necessity there soon loses
its force, and consequently the wheels of invention that depend upon it
fail to perform more than a few simple revolutions. In regions less mild
this original motive to industry and ingenuity carries men to greater
lengths in the application of arts to the occasions of life; and these of
course in an equal space of time attain to greater perfection than among
the inhabitants of the tropical latitudes, who find their immediate wants
supplied with facility, and prefer the negative pleasure of inaction to
the enjoyment of any conveniences that are to be purchased with exertion
and labour. This consideration may perhaps tend to reconcile the high
antiquity universally allowed to Asiatic nations, with the limited
progress of arts and sciences among them; in which they are manifestly
surpassed by people who compared with them are but of very recent date.
The Sumatrans however in the construction of their habitations have
stepped many degrees beyond those rude contrivances which writers
describe the inhabitants of some other Indian countries to have been
contented with adopting in order to screen themselves from the immediate
influence of surrounding elements. Their houses are not only permanent
but convenient, and are built in the vicinity of each other that they may
enjoy the advantages of mutual assistance and protection resulting from a
state of society.*
(*Footnote. In several of the small islands near Sumatra (including the
Nicobars), whose inhabitants in general are in a very low state of
civilisation, the houses are built circularly. Vid Asiatic Researches
volume 4 page 129 plate.)
VILLAGES.
The dusuns or villages (for the small number of inhabitants assembled in
each does not entitle them to the appellations of towns) are always
situated on the banks of a river or lake for the convenience of bathing
and of transporting goods. An eminence difficult of ascent is usually
made choice of for security. The access to them is by footways, narrow
and winding, of which there are seldom more than two; one to the country
and the other to the water; the latter in most places so steep as to
render it necessary to cut steps in the cliff or rock. The dusuns, being
surrounded with abundance of fruit-trees, some of considerable height, as
the durian, coco, and betel-nut, and the neighbouring country for a
little space about being in some degree cleared of wood for the rice and
pepper plantations, these villages strike the eye at a distance as clumps
merely, exhibiting no appearance of a town or any place of habitation.
The rows of houses form commonly a quadrangle, with passages or lanes at
intervals between the buildings, where in the more considerable villages
live the lower class of inhabitants, and where also their padi-houses or
granaries are erected. In the middle of the square stands the balei or
town hall, a room about fifty to a hundred feet long and twenty or thirty
wide, without division, and open at the sides, excepting when on
particular occasions it is hung with mats or chintz; but sheltered in a
lateral direction by the deep overhanging roof.
(PLATE 19. A VILLAGE HOUSE IN SUMATRA.
W. Bell delt. J.G. Stadler sculpt.
Published by W. Marsden, 1810.
PLATE 19a. A PLANTATION HOUSE IN SUMATRA.
W. Bell delt. J.G. Stadler sculpt.)
BUILDINGS.
In their buildings neither stone, brick, nor clay, are ever made use of,
which is the case in most countries where timber abounds, and where the
warmth of the climate renders the free admission of air a matter rather
to be desired than guarded against: but in Sumatra the frequency of
earthquakes is alone sufficient to have prevented the natives from
adopting a substantial mode of building. The frames of the houses are of
wood, the underplate resting on pillars of about six or eight feet in
height, which have a sort of capital but no base, and are wider at top
than at bottom. The people appear to have no idea of architecture as a
science, though much ingenuity is often shown in the manner of working up
their materials, and they have, the Malays at least, technical terms
corresponding to all those employed by our house carpenters. Their
conception of proportions is extremely rude, often leaving those parts of
a frame which have the greatest bearing with the weakest support, and
lavishing strength upon inadequate pressure. For the floorings they lay
whole bamboos (a well-known species of large cane) of four or five inches
diameter, close to each other, and fasten them at the ends to the
timbers. Across these are laid laths of split bamboo, about an inch wide
and of the length of the room, which are tied down with filaments of the
rattan; and over these are usually spread mats of different kinds. This
sort of flooring has an elasticity alarming to strangers when they first
tread on it. The sides of the houses are generally closed in with palupo,
which is the bamboo opened and rendered flat by notching or splitting the
circular joints on the outside, chipping away the corresponding divisions
within, and laying it to dry in the sun, pressed down with weights. This
is sometimes nailed onto the upright timbers or bamboos, but in the
country parts it is more commonly interwoven, or matted, in breadths of
six inches, and a piece, or sheet, formed at once of the size required.
In some places they use for the same purpose the kulitkayu, or coolicoy,
as it is pronounced by the Europeans, who employ it on board ship as
dunnage in pepper and other cargoes. This is a bark procured from some
particular trees, of which the bunut and ibu are the most common. When
they prepare to take it the outer rind is first torn or cut away; the
inner, which affords the material, is then marked out with a prang,
pateel, or other tool, to the size required, which is usually three
cubits by one; it is afterwards beaten for some time with a heavy stick
to loosen it from the stem, and being peeled off is laid in the sun to
dry, care being taken to prevent its warping. The thicker or thinner
sorts of the same species of kulitkayu owe their difference to their
being taken nearer to or farther from the root. That which is used in
building has nearly the texture and hardness of wood. The pliable and
delicate bark of which clothing is made is procured from a tree called
kalawi, a bastard species of the bread-fruit.
The most general mode of covering houses is with the atap, which is the
leaf of a species of palm called nipah. These, previous to their being
laid on, are formed into sheets of about five feet long and as deep as
the length of the leaf will admit, which is doubled at one end over a
slip or lath of bamboo; they are then disposed on the roof so as that one
sheet shall lap over the other, and are tied to the bamboos which serve
for rafters. There are various other and more durable kinds of covering
used. The kulitkayu, before described, is sometimes employed for this
purpose: the galumpei--this is a thatch of narrow split bamboos, six feet
in length, placed in regular layers, each reaching within two feet of the
extremity of that beneath it, by which a treble covering is formed:
iju--this is a vegetable production so nearly resembling horse-hair as
scarcely to be distinguished from it. It envelopes the stem of that
species of palm called anau, from which the best toddy or palm wine is
procured, and is employed by the natives for a great variety of purposes.
It is bound on as a thatch in the manner we do straw, and not
unfrequently over the galumpei; in which case the roof is so durable as
never to require renewal, the iju being of all vegetable substances the
least prone to decay, and for this reason it is a common practice to wrap
a quantity of it round the ends of timbers or posts which are to be fixed
in the ground. I saw a house about twenty miles up Manna River, belonging
to Dupati Bandar Agung, the roof of which was of fifty years standing.
The larger houses have three pitches in the roof; the middle one, under
which the door is placed, being much lower than the other two. In smaller
houses there are but two pitches, which are always of unequal height, and
the entrance is in the smaller, which covers a kind of hall or cooking
room.
There is another kind of house, erected mostly for a temporary purpose,
the roof of which is flat and is covered in a very uncommon, simple, and
ingenious manner. Large, straight bamboos are cut of a length sufficient
to lie across the house, and, being split exactly in two and the joints
knocked out, a first layer of them is disposed in close order, with the
inner or hollow sides up; after which a second layer, with the outer or
convex sides up, is placed upon the others in such manner that each of
the convex falls into the two contiguous concave pieces, covering their
edges; the latter serving as gutters to carry off the water that falls
upon the upper or convex layer.*
(*Footnote. I find that the original inhabitants of the Philippine
Islands covered their buildings in the same manner.)
The mode of ascent to the houses is by a piece of timber or stout bamboo,
cut in notches, which latter an European cannot avail himself of,
especially as the precaution is seldom taken of binding them fast. These
are the wonderful light scaling-ladders which the old Portuguese writers
described to have been used by the people of Achin in their wars with
their nation. It is probable that the apprehension of danger from the
wild beasts caused them to adopt and continue this rude expedient, in
preference to more regular and commodious steps. The detached buildings
in the country, near to their plantations, called talangs, they raise to
the height of ten or twelve feet from the ground, and make a practice of
taking up their ladder at night to secure themselves from the destructive
ravages of the tigers. I have been assured, but do not pledge myself for
the truth of the story, that an elephant, attempting to pass under one of
these houses, which stand on four or six posts, stuck by the way, but,
disdaining to retreat, carried it, with the family it contained, on his
back to a considerable distance.
In the buildings of the dusuns, particularly where the most respectable
families reside, the woodwork in front is carved in the style of
bas-relief, in a variety of uncouth ornaments and grotesque figures, not
much unlike the Egyptian hieroglyphics, but certainly without any mystic
or historical allusion.
FURNITURE.
The furniture of their houses, corresponding with their manner of living,
is very simple, and consists of but few articles. Their bed is a mat,
usually of fine texture, and manufactured for the purpose, with a number
of pillows, worked at the ends and adorned with a shining substance that
resembles foil. A sort of canopy or valance, formed of various coloured
cloths, hangs overhead. Instead of tables they have what resemble large
wooden salvers, with feet called dulang, round each of which three or
four persons dispose themselves; and on these are laid the talams or
brass waiters which hold the cups that contain their curry, and plantain
leaves or matted vessels filled with rice. Their mode of sitting is not
cross-legged, as the inhabitants of Turkey and our tailors use, but
either on the haunches or on the left side, supported by the left hand
with the legs tucked in on the right side; leaving that hand at liberty
which they always, from motives of delicacy, scrupulously eat with; the
left being reserved for less cleanly offices. Neither knives, spoons, nor
any substitutes for them are employed; they take up the rice and other
victuals between the thumb and fingers, and dexterously throw it into the
mouth by the action of the thumb, dipping frequently their hands in water
as they eat.
UTENSILS.
They have a little coarse chinaware, imported by the eastern praws, which
is held a matter of luxury. In cooking they employ a kind of iron vessel
well-known in India by the name of quallie or tauch, resembling in shape
the pans used in some of our manufactures, having the rim wide and bottom
narrow. These are likewise brought from the eastward. The priu and
balanga, species of earthen pipkins, are in more common use, being made
in small quantities in different parts of the island, particularly in
Lampong, where they give them a sort of glazing; but the greater number
of them are imported from Bantam. The original Sumatran vessel for
boiling rice, and which is still much used for that purpose, is the
bamboo, that material of general utility with which bountiful nature has
supplied an indolent people. By the time the rice is dressed the utensil
is nearly destroyed by the fire, but resists the flame so long as there
is moisture within.
FIRES.
Fire being wanted among these people but occasionally, and only when they
cook their victuals, there is not much attention paid in their buildings
to provide conveniences for it. Their houses have no chimneys, and their
fireplaces are no more than a few loose bricks or stones, disposed in a
temporary manner and frequently on the landing-place before the doors.
The fuel made use of is wood alone, the coal which the island produces
never being converted by the inhabitants to that purpose. The flint and
steel for striking fire are common in the country, but it is a practice
certainly borrowed from some other people, as that species of stone is
not a native of the soil. These generally form part of their travelling
apparatus, and especially with those men called risaus (spendthrifts that
turn freebooters), who find themselves often obliged to take up their
habitation in the woods or in deserted houses. But they also frequently
kindle fire from the friction of two sticks.
MODE OF KINDLING THEM.
They choose a piece of dry, porous wood, and cutting smooth a spot of it
lay it in a horizontal direction. They then apply a smaller piece, of a
harder substance, with a blunt point, in a perpendicular position, and
turn it quickly round, between the two hands, as chocolate is milled,
pressing it downwards at the same time. A hole is soon formed by this
motion of the smaller stick; but it has not penetrated far before the
larger one takes fire. I have also seen the same effect produced more
simply by rubbing one bit of bamboo with a sharp edge across another.*
(*Footnote. This mode of kindling fire is not peculiar to Sumatra: we
read of the same practice in Africa and even in Kamtschatka. It is
surprising, but confirmed by abundant authority, that many nations of the
earth have at certain periods, been ignorant of the use of fire. To our
immediate apprehension human existence would seem in such circumstances
impossible. Every art, every convenience, every necessary of life, is now
in the most intimate manner connected with it: and yet the Chinese, the
Egyptians, the Phoenicians, and Greeks acknowledged traditions concerning
its first discovery in their respective countries. But in fact if we can
once suppose a man, or society of men, unacquainted with the being and
uses of this element, I see no difficulty in conceiving the possibility
of their supporting life without it; I mean in the tropical climates; and
of centuries passing before they should arrive at the important
discovery. It is true that lightning and its effects, volcanoes, the
firing of dry substances by fortuitous attrition, or of moist, by
fermentation, might give them an idea of its violent and destructive
properties; but far from being thence induced to appropriate and apply it
they would, on the contrary, dread and avoid it, even in its less
formidable appearances. They might be led to worship it as their deity,
but not to cherish it as their domestic. There is some reason to conclude
that the man who first reduced it to subjection and rendered it
subservient to the purposes of life procured it from the collision of two
flints; but the sparks thus produced, whether by accident or design,
might be observed innumerable times without its suggesting a beneficial
application. In countries where those did not present themselves the
discovery had, most probably, its origin in the rubbing together of dry
sticks, and in this operation, the agent and subject coexisting, flame,
with its properties and uses, became more immediately apparent. Still, as
no previous idea was conceived of this latent principle, and consequently
no search made, no endeavours exerted, to bring it to light, I see not
the impossibility a priori of its remaining almost as long concealed from
mankind as the properties of the loadstone or the qualities of
gunpowder.)
Water is conveyed from the spring in bamboos, which for this purpose are
cut, either to the length of five or six feet and carried over the
shoulder, or into a number of single joints that are put together in a
basket. It is drunk out of the fruit called labu here, resembling the
calabash of the West Indies, a hole being made in the side of the neck
and another at top for vent. In drinking they generally hold the vessel
at a distance above their mouths and catch the stream as it falls; the
liquid descending to the stomach without the action of swallowing.
Baskets (bronong, bakul) are a considerable part of the furniture of a
man's house, and the number of these seen hanging up are tokens of the
owner's substance; for in them his harvests of rice or pepper are
gathered and brought home; no carts being employed in the interior parts
of the island which I am now describing. They are made of slips of bamboo
connected by means of split rattans; and are carried chiefly by the
women, on the back, supported by a string or band across the forehead.
FOOD.
Although the Sumatrans live in a great measure upon vegetable food they
are not restrained by any superstitious opinion from other aliments, and
accordingly at their entertainments the flesh of the buffalo (karbau),
goat, and fowls, are served up. Their dishes are almost all prepared in
that mode of dressing to which we have given the name of curry (from a
Hindostanic word), and which is now universally known in Europe. It is
called in the Malay language gulei, and may be composed of any kind of
edible, but is generally of flesh or fowl, with a variety of pulse and
succulent herbage, stewed down with certain ingredients, by us termed,
when mixed and ground together, curry powder. These ingredients are,
among others, the cayenne or chili-pepper, turmeric, sarei or
lemon-grass, cardamums, garlick, and the pulp of the coconut bruised to a
milk resembling that of almonds, which is the only liquid made use of.
This differs from the curries of Madras and Bengal, which have greater
variety of spices, and want the coconut. It is not a little remarkable
that the common pepper, the chief produce and staple commodity of the
country, is never mixed by the natives in their food. They esteem it
heating to the blood, and ascribe a contrary effect to the cayenne; which
I can say, my own experience justifies. A great diversity of curries is
usually served up at the same time, in small vessels, each flavoured to a
nice discerning taste in a different manner; and in this consists all the
luxury of their tables. Let their quantity or variety or meat be what it
may, the principle article of their food is rice, which is eaten in a
large proportion with every dish, and very frequently without any other
accompaniment than salt and chili-pepper. It is prepared by boiling in a
manner peculiar to India; its perfection, next to cleanness and
whiteness, consisting in its being, when thoroughly dressed and soft to
the heart, at the same time whole and separate, so that no two grains
shall adhere together. The manner of effecting this is by putting into
the earthen or other vessel in which it is boiled a quantity of water
sufficient to cover it, letting it simmer over a slow fire, taking off
the water by degrees with a flat ladle or spoon that the grain may dry,
and removing it when just short of burning. At their entertainments the
guests are treated with rice prepared also in a variety of modes, by
frying it in cakes or boiling a particular species of it mixed with the
kernel of the coconut and fresh oil, in small joints of bamboo. This is
called lemmang. Before it is served up they cut off the outer rind of the
bamboo and the soft inner coat is peeled away by the person who eats.
FLESH-MEAT.
They dress their meat immediately after killing it, while it is still
warm, which is conformable with the practice of the ancients as recorded
in Homer and elsewhere, and in this state it is said to eat tenderer than
when kept for a day: longer the climate will not admit of, unless when it
is preserved in that mode called dinding. This is the flesh of the
buffalo cut into small thin steaks and exposed to the heat of the sun in
fair weather, generally on the thatch of their houses, till it is become
so dry and hard as to resist putrefaction without any assistance from
salt. Fish is preserved in the same manner, and cargoes of both are sent
from parts of the coast where they are in plenty to those where
provisions are in more demand. It is seemingly strange that heat, which
in a certain degree promotes putrefaction, should when violently
increased operate to prevent it; but it must be considered that moisture
also is requisite to the former effect, and this is absorbed in thin
substances by the sun's rays before it can contribute to the production
of maggots.
Blachang, a preservation, if it may be so termed, of an opposite kind, is
esteemed a great delicacy among the Malays, and is by them exported to
the west of India. The country Sumatrans seldom procure it. It is a
species of caviar, and is extremely offensive and disgusting to persons
who are not accustomed to it, particularly the black kind, which is the
most common. The best sort, or the red blachang, is made of the spawn of
shrimps, or of the shrimps themselves, which they take about the mouths
of rivers. They are, after boiling, exposed to the sun to dry, then
pounded in a mortar with salt, moistened with a little water and formed
into cakes, which is all the process. The black sort, used by the lower
class, is made of small fish, prepared in the same manner. On some parts
of the east coast of the island they salt the roes of a large fish of the
shad kind, and preserve them perfectly dry and well flavoured. These are
called trobo.
When the natives kill a buffalo, which is always done at their public
meetings, they do not cut it up into joints as we do an ox, but into
small pieces of flesh, or steaks, which they call bantei. The hide of the
buffalo is sometimes scalded, scraped, and hung up to dry in their houses
where it shrivels and becomes perfectly hard. When wanted for use a piece
is chopped off and, being stewed down for a great number of hours in a
small quantity of water, forms a rich jelly which, properly seasoned, is
esteemed a very delicate dish.
The sago (sagu), though common on Sumatra and used occasionally by the
natives, is not an article of food of such general use among them as with
the inhabitants of many other eastern islands, where it is employed as a
substitute for rice. Millet (randa jawa) is also cultivated for food, but
not in any considerable quantity.
When these several articles of subsistence fail the Sumatran has recourse
to those wild roots, herbs, and leaves of trees which the woods
abundantly afford in every season without culture, and which the habitual
simplicity of his diet teaches him to consider as no very extraordinary
circumstance of hardship. Hence it is that famines in this island or,
more properly speaking, failures of crops of grain, are never attended
with those dreadful consequences which more improved countries and more
provident nations experience.