INHABITANTS OF SUMATRA. 101 



On the day of their death a rice- field is sown, and at the harvest, presided over by 

 the corpse, a feast is given in honour of the departed, now assumed to have taken 

 his place amongst the benevolent genii. After the feast he is buried near the 

 house of which he has become the guardian spirit. 



To the Batta family are generally supposed to belong the little wild tribes of 

 Orang-Ulus and Orang-Lubus, who occupy the upland valleys north of Mount 

 Ophir, and who appear never to have been brought within Hindu influences. 

 They have been compared with the most savage inhabitants of Borneo, like them 

 going almost naked, dwelling in huts made of branches or in the hollow trunks 

 of trees, and armed with the blow-pipe and poisoned darts. They cultivate no 

 arts, not even that of husbandry, living mainly on fruits, roots, snakes, and insects, 

 besides the rice and salt deposited by the traders in certain fixed places in ex- 

 change for the local produce brought thither by the " men of the woods." They 

 have a large breed of dogs, who warn them of the approach of the traders, and 

 scent out any tigers lurking about. 



The Menangkabaos and other Simatran Malays. 



The ancient kingdom of Menangkabao, which succeeded the still older Hindu 

 empire of Adityavarma, comprises south of the Batta country the most densely 

 peopled part of Sumatra in the hilly region of the Padang uplands, and on the 

 west slope of the island. The true form of the word is Menang-Karbau, or the 

 " Victory of the Buffalo," which is explained by the local legend of a fight between 

 a Sumatran and a Javanese buffalo terminating in the triumph of the former. 

 This tradition may perhaps symbolise some conflict, or even a long struggle 

 between the natives and the intruders from the neighbouring island. The natives 

 ultimately triumphed, and their customs consequently prevailed over those of the 

 Javanese and Hindus. They are at present regarded as Malays in a pre-eminent 

 sense, and their speech is held to be the purest form of the Malay language. 



Despite their conversion to Islam and the conquest of Menangkabao by the 

 Dutch, the old institutions of confederate village communes and of matriarchy 

 still hold their ground. The population is divided into sul-us or clans, each wàth 

 its own chief, chosen from some privileged family, and its council, consisting of all 

 male adults. All the village chiefs are again grouped in a district council, the 

 district thus organised usually taking its name from the number of kotas or 

 villages of which it is constituted — the " Seven," the " Nine," the " Ten," the 

 " Twenty," the " Fifty " Kotas, and so on. 



No man can marry within his own kota or sutu, so that unions are all essen- 

 tially exogamous. The husband helps his wife or wives in the management of the 

 household and in cultivating the land, but his children belong to the mother, and 

 must remain in the maternal village to inherit the maternal property. The father's 

 inheritance, on the other hand, goes to his sister's children in his native village. 

 Such is the undang-undang, or matriarchal law, and the survival of these institu- 



