.504 Messrs. Burton and Wabd's Journey into the Batak Country. 



be immortal or not, they do not pretend to know, but speak of it as lost 

 when its memory is no longer cherished on earth. What precise influence 

 the absence of all ideas of a future state of retribution may have on their 

 moral character, is difficult to determine. That the opposite system, of an 

 immediate interposition of supernatural agents in human affairs, possesses 

 an unbounded dominion over thoir minds, will be readily conjectured from 

 the above observations : yet it may be safely affirmed, that honesty, upright- 

 ness, integrity, purity, and similar principles, are not to be found in the 

 list of their virtues ; and that the corruptions of the heart, so common to 

 uncultivated nature, exist amongst them without restraint. Indeed, they 

 ridicule the idea of forbearing to practise what may afford profit or pleasure, 

 where detection and the punishment of the law can be evaded with cer- 

 tainty : and although it may be hence inferred, that they assimilate 

 the nature of their presiding divinities to the practices and passions of 

 men, as exhibited immediately to their own observation, yet their actual 

 depravity convinces us that tiie system of supernatural interposition, of 

 whatever character, is not of itself adequate to the formation of an elevated 

 state of moral rectitude. 



iMnguage. 

 The language of the Bataks bears so great a resemblance to that of the 

 Malays, that we cannot but consider them dialects of the same origin. Of 

 the most common substantives, we suppose a proportion of one word in 

 three is cither precisely the same as in the Malay, or so similar as to be 

 immediately recognized by the Malay scholar : and although in the adjec- 

 tives, verbs, and adverbs, we find the difference somewhat greater, yet as 

 the Bataks form the various powers and modifications of the verb upon much 

 the same principle as the Malays, the similarity is here also very con- 

 spicuous. The language of common conversation, however, differs more 

 widely from the Malay than that usually written. These they distinguish 

 by the names Hata Haba-i-tan, or the fine language, and Hata Tohop, or 

 the common language ; the latter of which only is universally understood. 

 Of the prefixes, and particularly of tiie affixes to nouns and verbs, the Bataks 

 liave a greater number than the Malays ; or rather particles, substantially 

 the same in both languages, assume a greater variety of form, to meet 

 the Batak ideas of soft and agreeable articulation. This fastidiousness is 

 most observable in the changes undergone by the affix ho7i, which answers to 

 kan in the Malay. When the last syllable of the verb is pure, the annexed 



