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Updated: May 2, 2025
In Passummah, if the race of a man is extinct, and some of these remain unpaid, the dusun or village to which the family belonged must make it good to the creditor; but this is not insisted upon amongst the Rejangs. The person who receives her disposes of her as his own child or marries her himself.
But a climax is not always perceptible in the change. This is a singular custom, and surely less conformable to the order of nature than that which names the son from the father. There it is not usual to give them a galar on their marriage, as with the Rejangs, among whom the filionymic is not so common, though sometimes adopted, and occasionally joined with the galar; as Radin-pa-Chirano.
If by religion is meant a public or private form of worship of any kind, and if prayers, processions, meetings, offerings, images, or priests are any of them necessary to constitute it, I can pronounce that the Rejangs are totally without religion and cannot with propriety be even termed pagans, if that, as I apprehend, conveys the idea of mistaken worship.
There is no word in the languages of the island which properly and strictly signifies law; nor is there any person or class of persons among the Rejangs regularly invested with a legislative power. The chiefs, in pronouncing their decisions, are not heard to say, "so the law directs," but "such is the custom."
Any accident that happens to a man who has been known to take a false oath, or to his children or grandchildren, is carefully recorded in memory, and attributed to this sole cause. The dupati of Gunong Selong and his family have afforded an instance that is often quoted among the Rejangs, and has evidently had great weight.
Their writing for common purposes is, like that already described in speaking of the Rejangs, upon pieces of bamboo. The bark for this purpose is shaved smooth and thin, and afterwards rubbed over with rice-water. The pen they use is a twig or the fibre of a leaf, and their ink is made of the soot of dammar mixed with the juice of the sugar-cane. The contents of their books are little known to us.
I must premise however that the Malay customs having made their way in a greater or less degree to every part of Sumatra, it will be totally impossible to discriminate with entire accuracy those which are original from those which are borrowed; and of course what I shall say of the Rejangs will apply for the most part not only to the Sumatrans in general but may sometimes be in strictness proper to the Malays alone, and by them taught to the higher rank of country people.
Having thus far spoken of the manners and customs of the Rejangs more especially, and adverted, as occasion served, to those of the Passummah people, who nearly resemble them, I shall now present a cursory view of those circumstances in which their southern neighbours, the inhabitants of the Lampong country, differ from them, though this dissimilitude is not very considerable; and shall add such information as I have been enabled to obtain respecting the people of Korinchi and other tribes dwelling beyond the ranges of hills which bound the pepper-districts.
About Pontiana and Sambas they are called Dayers; at Benjarmasing, Biajus; at Borneo Proper, Moruts; farther northward, Orang Idan. Their original history is as much enveloped in obscurity as that of the Monocaboes of Malaya, the Rejangs and Battas of Sumatra, or the Togals of the Philippines.
The children among the Rejangs have generally a name given to them by their parents soon after their birth, which is called namo daging. It is generally conferred by the old men of the neighbouring villages, when assembled; but instances occur of its being irregularly assumed by the persons themselves; and some never obtain any galar.
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