e
still living) with equal facility; but the Rejang he esteemed his mother
tongue.

Attempts to ascertain from what quarter Sumatra was peopled must rest
upon mere conjecture. The adjacent peninsula (called by Europeans or
other foreigners the Malayan Peninsula) presents the most obvious source
of population; and it has accordingly been presumed that emigrants from
thence supplied it and the other islands of the eastern Archipelago with
inhabitants. By this opinion, adopted without examination, I was likewise
misled and, on a former occasion, spoke of the probability of a colony
from the peninsula having settled upon the western coast of the island;
but I have since learned from the histories and traditions of the natives
of both countries that the reverse is the fact, and that the founders of
the celebrated kingdoms of Johor, Singapura, and Malacca were adventurers
from Sumatra. Even at this day the inhabitants of the interior parts of
the peninsula are a race entirely distinct from those of the two coasts.

Thus much it was necessary, in order to avoid ambiguity, to say in the
first instance concerning the Malays, of whom a more particular account
will be given in a subsequent part of the work.

As the most dissimilar among the other classes into which I have divided
the inhabitants must of course have very many points of mutual
resemblance, and many of their habits, customs, and ceremonies, in
common, it becomes expedient, in order to avoid a troublesome and useless
repetition, to single out one class from among them whose manners shall
undergo a particular and full investigation, and serve as a standard for
the whole; the deviation from which, in other classes, shall afterwards
be pointed out, and the most singular and striking usages peculiar to
each superadded.

NATION OF THE REJANGS ADOPTED AS A STANDARD OF DESCRIPTION.

Various circumstances induce me on this occasion to give the preference
to the Rejangs, though a nation of but small account in the political
scale of the island. They are placed in what may be esteemed a central
situation, not geographically, but with respect to the encroachments of
foreign manners and opinions introduced by the Malays from the north, and
Javans from the south; which gives them a claim to originality superior
to that of most others. They are a people whose form of government and
whose laws extend with very little variation over a considerable part of
the island, and princip