HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
497 
u And I moreover announce this to you, saith Ranavalomanjaka, 
Here are your slaves, that you have been teaching to write, and 
who have gone to the separate houses of prayer, and others who 
have gone to the schools also, and especially that have been 
baptized ; all these must also come and accuse themselves. 
“ I announce to you, scholars, my command : so long as you are 
scholars, and remain under the instruction of the Europeans in 
their houses, observe the Sabbath ; nevertheless, it is as to writing 
only, in which you are to observe it, but not in anything else 
whatever : and further, from the moment that you go out of their 
houses, even on the Sabbath, you are not to use or observe it, for I, 
the sovereign, do not observe it at all: and it shall not be done in 
my country, saith Ranavalomanjaka. 
“ And again, as to your mode of swearing, the answer you are 
giving is, ‘ True/ and when you are asked, ‘ Do you swear it?* you 
reply, 4 True/ 
“ I wonder at this ! What, indeed, is that word ‘ True V 
“ And then, in your worship, yours is not the custom of our 
ancestors; you change that, and you are saying, ‘Relieve/ 
4 Follow the customs / and again you say, e Submit to him/ 
‘ Fear/ 
“ Remember, it is not about that which is sacred in heaven and 
earth, that which is held sacred by the twelve sovereigns, and all 
the sacred idols, that you are now accused ; but it is that you are 
doing what is not the custom of our ancestors ;* that I abhor, saith 
Ranavalomanj aka.” 
As soon as the impression produced by the message had 
partially subsided, some of the chiefs, and especially one 
military officer, not himself personally favourable to Chris¬ 
tianity, but influenced by a sense of justice and a feeling of 
honour, remonstrated against the censure conveyed in the 
* Meaning by this, “ It is not respecting mere unimportant circum¬ 
stances in established usages, that I accuse you, but of the grave offence 
that these changes are radical, and overthrow the very character of our 
national religion altogether.”—It was not a change from one idol to 
another, but from idolatry altogether, to the service of Jehovah. 
2 K 
II. 
