Who could not abide Englishmen but was a great admirer of the
Battas, tells how after a perilous and hungry flight he arrived in a
friendly village, and the food that was offered by his hosts was the flesh
of two prisoners who had been slaughtered the day before (I. 249).
Anderson was also told of one of the most powerful Batta chiefs who would
eat only such food, and took care to be supplied with it (225).
The story of the Battas is that in old times their communities lived in
peace and knew no such custom; but a Devil, Nanalain, came bringing
strife, and introduced this man-eating, at a period which they spoke of
(in 1840) as "three men's lives ago," or about 210 years previous to that
date. Junghuhn, with some enlargement of the time, is disposed to accept
their story of the practice being comparatively modern. This cannot be,
for their hideous custom is alluded to by a long chain of early
authorities. Ptolemy's anthropophagi may perhaps be referred to the
smaller islands. But the Arab Relations of the 9th century speak of
man-eaters in Al-Ramni, undoubtedly Sumatra. Then comes our traveller,
followed by Odoric, and in the early part of the 15th century by Conti, who
names the Batech cannibals. Barbosa describes them without naming them;
Galvano (p. 108) speaks of them by name; as does De Barros. (Dec. III. liv.
viii. cap. I.)
The practice of worshipping the first thing seen in the morning is related
of a variety of nations. Pigafetta tells it of the people of Gilolo, and
Varthema in his account of Java (which I fear is fiction) ascribes it to
some people of that island. Richard Eden tells it of the Laplanders.
(Notes on Russia, Hak. Soc. II. 224.)
NOTE 4. - Basma, as Valentyn indicated, seems to be the PASEI of the
Malays, which the Arabs probably called Basam or the like, for the
Portuguese wrote it PACEM. [Mr. J.T. Thomson writes (Proc.R.G.S. XX.
p. 221) that of its actual position there can be no doubt, it being the
Passier of modern charts. - H.C.] Pasei is mentioned in the Malay
Chronicle as founded by Malik-al-Salih, the first Mussulman sovereign of
Samudra, the next of Marco's kingdoms. He assigned one of these states to
each of his two sons, Malik al-Dhahir and Malik al-Mansur; the former of
whom was reigning at Samudra, and apparently over the whole coast, when
Ibn Batuta was there (about 1346-47). There is also a Malay History of the
Kings of Pasei to which reference has already been made.
Somewhat later Pasei was a great and famous city. Majapahit, Malacca, and
Pasei being reckoned the three great cities of the Archipelago. The
stimulus of conversion to Islam had not taken effect on those Sumatran
states at the time of Polo's voyage, but it did so soon afterwards, and,
low as they have now fallen, their power at one time was no delusion.
Achin, which rose to be the chief of them, in 1615 could send against
Portuguese Malacca an expedition of more than 500 sail, 100 of which were
galleys larger than any then constructed in Europe, and carried from 600
to 800 men each.
[Dr. Schlegel writes to me that according to the Malay Dictionary of Von de
Wall and Van der Tuuk, n. 414-415, Polo's Basman is the Arab
pronunciation of Paseman, the modern Ophir in West Sumatra. Gunung
Paseman is Mount Ophir. - H.C.]
[Illustration: The three Asiatic Rhinoceroses, (upper) Indicus, (middle)
Sondaicus, (lower) Sumatranus.[2]]
NOTE 5. - The elephant seems to abound in the forest tracts throughout the
whole length of Sumatra, and the species is now determined to be a
distinct one (E. Sumatranus) from that of continental India and identical
with that of Ceylon.[3] The Sumatran elephant in former days was caught
and tamed extensively. Ibn Batuta speaks of 100 elephants in the train
of Al Dhahir, the King of Sumatra Proper, and in the 17th century Beaulieu
says the King of Achin had always 900. Giov. d'Empoli also mentions them at
Pedir in the beginning of the 16th century; and see Pasei Chronicle
quoted in J. As. ser. IV. tom. ix. pp. 258-259. This speaks of elephants
as used in war by the people of Pasei, and of elephant-hunts as a royal
diversion. The locus of that best of elephant stories, the elephant's
revenge on the tailor, was at Achin.
As Polo's account of the rhinoceros is evidently from nature, it is
notable that he should not only call it unicorn, but speak so precisely
of its one horn, for the characteristic, if not the only, species on the
island, is a two-horned one (Rh. Sumatranus),[4] and his mention of the
buffalo-like hair applies only to this one. This species exists also on
the Indo-Chinese continent and, it is believed, in Borneo. I have seen it
in the Arakan forests as high as 19 deg. 20'; one was taken not long since
near Chittagong; and Mr. Blyth tells me a stray one has been seen in Assam
or its borders.
[Ibn Khordadhbeh says (De Goeje's Transl. p. 47) that rhinoceros is to
be found in Kameroun (Assam), which borders on China. It has a horn, a
cubit long, and two palms thick; when the horn is split, inside is found
on the black ground the white figure of a man, a quadruped, a fish, a
peacock or some other bird. - H.C.]
[John Evelyn mentions among the curiosities kept in the Treasury at St.
Denis: "A faire unicorne's horn, sent by a K. of Persia, about 7 foote
long." Diary, 1643, 12th Nov. - H.C.]
What the Traveller says of the animals' love of mire and mud is well
illustrated by the manner in which the Semangs or Negritoes of the Malay
Peninsula are said to destroy him:
