252 MALAY SLAVERY LAW. 
were nominally payable in six montnos. Let it be supposed. 
that a man in Kinta owed a bahara of tin ( equivalent in value 
on the spot to $30, more or less), if he did not pay in six 
months he was liable by local custom for a bhara of tin at the 
Penang price, say three times its value at Kinta. The debt 
was then put down at three d/ara, and a further time of six 
months given. If still unpaid at the expiration of the second 
period, the debt was again increased by the difference between 
the local price and that of Penang,* and so on indefinitely. 
The failure to pay a small debt in six months resulted com- 
monly, therefore, in the reduction of the debtor to hopeless 
bondage for life. 
Debt-bondsmen do not labour under the legal disabilities 
which in Muhammedan law are incidental to the condition of 
slave (‘abdi), but they are toa certain extent the object of 
contumely. 
Slaves of the reigniny family especially privileged.—The royal 
slaves (hamba Raja), or the slaves of the household of the 
reigning Sultan, were a special class, regarding whom certain 
peculiar rules and customs were in force. ‘To strike one of 
them wrongfully, involved the penalty of death, and any per- 
son who enticed one away had to make good fourteen times 
his value. 
Besides the slaves purchased or inherited by the Raja, those 
born in his household and those taken under his protection 
under the law of hu/ur, he became the master of a large num- 
ber (especially females) by a most iniquitous custom which 
permitted him to forcibly carry off all the young women of 
certain districts, where there was no influential Chief or fami- 
ly toresist such tyranny (e. g., Kampar, Sungkei, and Pulau 
Tiga ), to become attendants in the royal household. A royal 
marriage or the birth of a child in the royal family was the 
signal for the despatch of messengers to drag from their homes 
all the girls and young married women of suitable age to be 
found in the selected district. These, under the name of 
dayang-dayang (maid servants), izang and pengasoh ( nurses ) 
*The Penang price was the local price, p/us freight and export duties. 
