MALAY SLAVERY LAW. 251 
debt unless it were incurred with their knowledge, and that the 
widow of a debt-bondsman should not be liable for more than 
a third of her husband’s debt, it has gradually become usual 
for creditors to claim and enforce a right to hold the wife and 
family of a debtor in bondage for the full amount of any debt, 
during his lifetime and after his death. This cannot be justified 
by law or custom. 
The daughters of a debt-bondsman, being in a manner the 
property of thecreditoror master, were given in marriage by him, 
the dower (ist £awin or mas kawin) being paidto him It sel- 
dom happens among Malays of the lower orders that the dower 
is paid at the time of marriage; the man, therefore, who mar- 
ried a woman from the house of her creditor usually became 
liable to the latter for the dower (say about $30), and was 
thus himself reduced to the condition of a bondsman. 
No part of the dower was, however, credited to the original 
debtor towards the extinction of his debt. Thus, if a debt- 
bondsman owing $100 had four daughters, all of whom were 
given in marriage by the creditor to men of his selection, the 
master would receive four dowers in cash, or would get four 
more debt-bondsmen in lieu thereof. But the original $100 
would still remain. This monstrous injustice must be of mo- 
dern introduction, or there would be few but debt-bondsmen 
among the population. It has been imitated from the analo- 
gous practice in the case of the slaves (‘abdi), but it is an un- 
just and illegal innovation. 
Another rule, which has, I believe, been frequently evaded 
in Perak, gave to any female debtor with whom her master co- 
habited, an absolute right to the cancelment of her debt, and 
made the latter punishable by fine if he did not give her her 
freedom. * 
In the district of Kinta, the most important mining district 
in old dsys before the discovery of the Larut tin fields, debts 
were swelled in amount by a species of compound interest 
hardly conceivable among a people who profess to regard 
usury as sinful. Debts were usually calculated in tin, and 
* See s.59 of the Malacca Code transtated in NEwWBOLD’s Account of the 
Straits Settlements, II, p. 293. 
