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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
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288
MARCO POLO BOOK III.
The form Ferlec shows that Polo got it from the Arabs, who having no p often replace that letter by f. It is notable that the Malay alphabet, which is that of the Arabic with necessary modifications, represents the sound p not by the Persian le
~, but by the Arabic fe (66 ), with three dots instead of one ( ~
(.10),).
t
A Malay chronicle of Achin dates the accession of the first Mahomedan king of that state, the nearest point of Sumatra to India and Arabia, in the year answering to A.D. 1205, and this is the earliest conversion among the Malays on record. It is doubtful, indeed, whether there were Kings of Achim in 1205, or for centuries after (unless indeed Lambri is to be regarded as A chin), but the introduction of Islam may be confidently assigned to that age.
The notice of the Hill-people, who lived like beasts and ate human flesh, presumably attaches to the Battas or Bataks, occupying high table-lands in the interior of Sumatra. They do not now extend north beyond lat. 3°. The interior of Northern Sumatra seems to remain a terra incognita, and even with the coast we are far less familiar than our ancestors were 25o years ago. The Battas are remarkable among cannibal nations as having attained or retained some degree of civilisation, and as being possessed of an alphabet and documents. Their anthropophagy is now professedly practised according to precise laws, and only in prescribed cases. Thus : (1) A commoner seducing a Raja's wife must be eaten ; (2) Enemies taken in battle outside their village must be eaten alive ; those taken in storming a village may be spared ; (3) Traitors and spies have the same doom, but may ransom themselves for 6o dollars a-head. There is nothing more horrible or extraordinary in all the stories of media val travellers than the facts of this institution. (SeeJung Kuhn, Die Battalrznder, II. 158.) And it is evident that human flesh is also at times kept in the houses for food. Junghuhn, who could not abide Englishmen but was a great admirer of the Battas, tells how after a perilous and hungry flight he arrived in a friendly village, and the food that was offered by his hosts was the flesh of two prisoners who had been slaughtered the day before (I. 249). Anderson was also told of one of the most powerful Batta chiefs who would eat only such food, and took care to be supplied with it (225).
The story of the Battas is that in old times their communities lived in peace and knew no such custom ; but a Devil, Nanalain, carne bringing strife, and introduced this man-eating, at a period which they spoke of (in 1840) as " three men's lives ago," or about 210 years previous to that date. Junghuhn, with some enlargement of the time, is disposed to accept their story of the practice being comparatively modern. This cannot be, for their hideous custom is alluded to by a long chain of early authorities. Ptolemy's anthropophagi may perhaps be referred to the smaller islands. But the Arab Relations of the 9th century speak of man-eaters in Al-Ramni, undoubtedly Sumatra. Then comes our traveller, followed by Odoric, and in the early part of the 15th century by Conti, who names the Batech cannibals. Barbosa describes them without naming them ; Galvano (p. 1oS) speaks of them by name ; as does De Barros. (Dec. III. liv. viii. cap. 1.)
The practice of worshipping the first thing seen in the morning is related of a variety of nations. Pigafetta tells it of the people of Gilolo, and Varthema in his account of Java (which I fear is fiction) ascribes it to some people of that island. Richard Eden tells it of the Laplanders. (Notes on Russia, Hak. Soc. II. 224.)
NOTE 4.—Basma, as Valentyn indicated, seems to be the PASEI of the Malays, which the Arabs probably called Basammz or the like, for the Portuguese wrote it PACEM. [Mr. J. T. Thomson writes (Prot. R. G. S. XX. p. 221) that of its actual position there can be no doubt, it being the Passier of modern charts.—H. C.] Pasei is mentioned in the Malay Chronicle as founded by Malik-al-Sálih, the first Mussulman sovereign of Samudra, the next of Marco's kingdoms. He assigned one of these states to each of his two sons, Malik al-Dháhir and Malik al-Mans-di- ; the former of whom was reigning at Samudra, and apparently over the whole coast, when Ibis
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