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The bimbangs are often given on occasions of business only, and, as they are apt to be productive of cabals, the Europeans require that they shall not be held without their knowledge and approbation. To give authority to their contracts and other deeds, whether of a public or private nature, they always make one of these feasts.
The circumstances of this disgraceful affair are preserved in a book entitled A Voyage to the East Indies in 1747 and 1748. This Raddin Tamanggung, a most intelligent and respectable man, died at Bencoolen in the year 1790. The bimbangs are conducted with great decorum and regularity.
They amuse all their leisure hours, including the greater portion of their lives, with the repetition of songs which are, for the most part, proverbs illustrated, or figures of speech applied to the occurrences of life. Some that they rehearse, in a kind of recitative, at their bimbangs or feasts, are historical love tales like our old English ballads, and are often extemporaneous productions.
They preserve a degree of delicacy and respect towards the sex, which might justify their retorting on many of the polished nations of antiquity the epithet of barbarians. The opportunities which the young people have of seeing and conversing with each other are at the bimbangs, or public festivals, held at the balei, or town hall of the dusun.
Professed story-tellers are sometimes introduced, who are raised on a little stage and during several hours arrest the attention of their audience by the relation of wonderful and interesting adventures. The assembly seldom breaks up before daylight, and these bimbangs are often continued for several days and nights together till their stock of provisions is exhausted.
At bimbangs the women often put on their dancing dress in the public hall, letting that garment which they mean to lay aside dexterously drop from under, as the other passes over the head, but sometimes, with an air of coquetry, displaying as if by chance enough to warm youthful imaginations.
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