ction, by a wilful perjury, not himself
only, but all, even the remotest branches, of a family which constitutes
his greatest pride, and of which the deceased heads are regarded with the
veneration that was paid to the dii lares of the ancients, has doubtless
restrained many a man from taking a false oath, who without much
compunction would suffer thirty or a hundred compurgators of the former
description to take their chance of that fate. Their strongest prejudices
are here converted to the most beneficial purposes.

CEREMONY OF TAKING AN OATH.

The place of greatest solemnity for administering an oath is the krammat
or burying-ground of their ancestors, and several superstitious
ceremonies are observed on the occasion. The people near the sea-coast,
in general, by long intercourse with the Malays, have an idea of the
Koran, and usually employ this in swearing, which the priests do not fail
to make them pay for; but the inland people keep, laid up in their
houses, certain old reliques, called in the Rejang language pesakko, and
in Malayan, sactian, which they produce when an oath is to be taken. The
person who has lost his cause, and with whom it commonly rests to bind
his adversary by an oath, often desires two or three days' time to get
ready these his swearing apparatus, called on such occasions sumpahan, of
which some are looked upon as more sacred and of greater efficacy than
others. They consist of an old rusty kris, a broken gun barrel, or any
ancient trumpery, to which chance or caprice has annexed an idea of
extraordinary virtue. These they generally dip in water, which the person
who swears drinks off, after having pronounced the form of words before
mentioned.* The pangeran of Sungei-lamo has by him certain copper bullets
which had been steeped in water drunk by the Sungei-etam chiefs, when
they bound themselves never to molest his districts: which they have only
done since as often as they could venture it with safety, from the
relaxation of our government. But these were political oaths. The most
ordinary sumpahan is a kris, and on the blade of this they sometimes drop
lime-juice, which occasions a stain on the lips of the person performing
the ceremony; a circumstance that may not improbably be supposed to make
an impression on a weak and guilty mind. Such would fancy that the
external stain conveyed to the beholders an image of the internal. At
Manna the sumpahan most respected is a gun barrel. When prod