JELEBU CUSTOMARY SONGS AND SAYINGS. 5 



came the slave of his creditor : he paid his debts in his body. The- 

 settlement of his debts alone preserved his free life and hence be- 

 came a duty of his mother's family. The obligation of payment 

 extended not only to the private debts of the bachelor, his unpaid 

 bills, his less happy speculations and his losses at the gaming tablo 

 — but also to the utang adat (and utang pesaka.)" Nbw this is 

 true still so far as utang adat and utang pesalca are involved. Is it 

 true to-day of a bachelor's irresponsible debts? Certainly the adat 

 tang gong-menang gong is not so construed in Jo'hol or in Jelebu or 

 in Minangkabau itself. Yet judgment was once given on appeal 

 against a Eembau's man's unfortunate female relation, the judge 

 being loathe to reject evidence collected by the " intelligent enquiry 

 of the local magistrate : " though in a later case of the same kind, 

 another judge derided such an interpretation as ludicrous and 

 opposed to principles of equity, adding caustic comments on the 

 adat in general. 



The Court, unlike the authors of " Eembau," did not recog- 

 nize that honest involvency does not now entail imprisonment or 

 affect the liberty of the debtor, so that the axiom nyawa darah 

 pulang Jca-iuaris no longer applies. Apart from that, where land 

 speculations have undone a man, one might contend that rules 

 framed by a frugal pastoral people did not contemplate compara- 

 tively large speculations in rubber or tin. And again private in- 

 dividualistic dealings in land would have been quite impossible in 

 a strictly communal society. And the adat is not an inelastic code 

 of law but bows to altered conditions.* In any case, so far from 

 conserving the adat whole, our criminal courts daily give judgments 

 anathema to its principles. But is any of this special pleading- 

 necessary ? Let us hear, what Willinck writes about the adat tang- 

 gong-menanggong as interpreted in Minangkabau itself : — 



" A Minangkabau Malay at all times can bind himself validly 

 ex contractu only so far as his harta pencharian go : ex delicto not 

 only he but his whole family were bound in adat times — his family 

 only if he himself could not pay for his misdeed or crime, in which 

 case his family became liable for the smart-money according to the 

 adat tang gong-menang gong. So a whole tribe or negeri could be- 

 come liable for smart-money, when one of its people had committed 

 a crime, and the criminal's relatives even might become debt-slaves 



of the avenger A Minangkabau Malay can never validly 



of his own self conclude bargains ex contractu, which affect harta 

 pesaka: if he contracts a bargain, no action thereon can be taken 

 by the creditor against the man's family, but always only against 



the debtor and even then only against his harta pencharian 



The principle difference the adat makes between debts ex contractu 

 and debts ex delicto is this : a man's family is liable for the former 

 only if they are incurred properly, that is, contracted by the head 



* Vide "Rembau," p. 69,70; and with the growth of population in the 

 tribes [suku), tribal exogamy is no longer observed everywhere. 



K. A. Soc, No. 78. 



