468 



who were educated in two schools: at present tlierc 

 are six schools, four of which are supported by the 

 LoodoD Missionary Society, and two by a private 

 ^ fund. Five of these contain twenty each on an 

 average, whilst the sixth, under the care of an 

 intelligent Malay of Arabic def^cent, is very flour- 

 ishing, and contains double the nuntber. in 1819 

 the whole of the iDslruction, imparted to the scho- 

 lars, consisted in teaching them to recite the Ko- 

 ran in Arabic, and occasionally, tho' rarely, teach- 

 ing them to write. The Malays at that period 

 had a rooted aversion to admitting within their 

 schools any printed works touching upon the doc- 

 triiie:^ of chrislianity, whereas, at present, the 

 Scriptures have superseded entirely the Koran 

 as a class book in all the schools. 



The means by whichtbis great change has been 

 effected have been simply as follows. The method 

 ot writing in the Malay schools is by a hollow reed, 

 (resam), or a Ktdam, (fausor), made of the Sago, 

 or Kaboifg, tree, upon a thin board of a very fine 

 grained wood called pitiutf, whose surface is whit- 

 ened with pipe clay. The ink is made of rice 

 burnt to charcoal, mingled with pure water, and 

 then strained. As the Malay teachers said that 

 their principal objection lay against the use of 

 printed books, they were directed to write the 

 copy at the top of each boy s board, and the sen- 

 tence was usually a Scripture phrase, or else bore 

 a reference to it. The teachers soon discovered 

 that this was no slight task imposed upon them, 

 and, of their own accord, requested the introduc- 

 tion of the books. The prejudice against print 



