Manchester Memoirs, Vol. I. (1906), No. 4. 



IV. Battack Printing in Java, with Notes on the 

 Malay Kris and the Bornean Sumpitan and 

 Upas Poison. 



By John Allan. 



Received and Read, January i6th, rgo6. 



In these days of extended foreign travel there are 

 very few parts of the world which at some time or 

 another are not visited by travellers. It was my good 

 fortune to spend the greater part of the year 1905 in 

 journeying through some of the lands which are far out 

 of the beaten track, and in which there is much with 

 which we are unfamiliar. Of the Malay Peninsula, Java, 

 Borneo, and Sumatra, much has been written at various 

 times, but there are still many things of more than 

 ordinary interest pertaining to these far off countries and 

 their inhabitants about which little and, in many cases 

 nothing, is known. 



Many of the native industries are certainly worthy of 

 greater attention than has so far been bestowed upon 

 them, and, certainly to us in Manchester, none of these 

 should be of greater interest than the process of Battack- 

 ing which has been practised by the natives of India 

 and the Further East for centuries, and which exhibits 

 the simplest form which calico-printing can possibly 

 take. 



The commonest articles of wearing apparel amongst 

 the 30 million native inhabitants of Java, indeed through- 

 out the whole of Malaysia, are the Battack-printed 

 sarongs and slendangs and pieces of the same printed 

 material are almost universally used as a covering for the 

 head. 



April ytk, igo6. 



