156 TWENTY-FIRST REPORT. 



1G3G) ffives us an account of the conversion of Asahan to Islam, following 

 the despoiling of the capital and the capture of the young queen of the pagan 

 Radja. The poet uses considerable licence in locating Asahan on the coast 

 of the Malay Peninsula, and in describing the paganism of the inhabitants as 

 "sun worship practiced by them under the laws of Moses." There is little 

 reason to doubt, however, that the epic gives a reasonably true idea of the 

 beginning of the Malay tradition in Asahan. 



The Malayan (Mohammedan) element of the population has absorbed 

 immigrants from many sources, notably from the Mandailing region of 

 Tapanoeli, on the West Coast of Sumatra, and from Bandjarmasin, in Borneo. 

 The so-called Mandailing Malays, however, are of Batak blood, like the indi- 

 genes. It is impossible to make any estimate of the number of the Bandja- 

 rese, or of the importance of their influence on the native culture, because 

 many Mohammedanized natives, of Batak descent, call themselves orang 

 handjar. Although this term is ordinarily used to designate the natives of 

 Bandjarmasin, it is generally and correctly applied, wherever the Malay 

 language is spoken, to dwellers in submerged river lands. (The geographic 

 name Bandjarmasin means swamp * lands inundated by brackish water.) 

 Bandjar is also used in Sumatra, among peoples as distant as the Karo Batak 

 and the Orang Kocuntan of Indragiri to designate subsidiary or temporary 

 agricultural settlements at a distance from the principal village of a juris- 

 diction. However, there are many Bornean Bandjarese in Asahan, as else- 

 where on the East Coast of Sumatra, who have been enumerated as Malays. 

 In Indragiri, south of Asahan, the census of 1916 gives the number of Band- 

 jarese, from the South and East districts of Borneo, as nearly 19,000, out of a 

 total population of 83,000. (==) 



The possibility of confusion in the interpretation of ''orang bandjar" is 

 worth noting in connection with the sugar industry, for the Bandjarese, as 

 well as the Batak, are sugar workers. The sugar is sold as gocla batak or 

 gocia bandjar, both names being used in Asahan, as well as the less significant 

 name goela itam (black sugar). There is no reason to l>elieve that the Band- 

 jarese brought the art of sugar making to Asahan, for that it is a Batak 

 industry of long standing is proved by its importance throughout the Batak 

 lands. The art would seem to have spread to the Indonesian area from 

 southern Asia, and to have been known longer in Sumatra than in flie islands 

 to the eastward. 



If proof were needed that the sugar-palm has held an important place in 

 the lives of the Batak since remote antiquity, it would be provided by the 

 Toba myth recounted by Kruijt. (') Si Boeroe Sorba Djati, they say, was 

 a chief's daughter, who was to be married against her will to Si Radja Inda- 

 Inda. To escape from the hated bridegroom, she jumped out of the house, 

 and disappeared into the ground. The sugar-palm grew from that spot. The 

 palm wine is her tears ; the black fibres, her hair ; the leaves are her ribs. 



