ho was well conversant with the religious
opinions of most nations, asserted to me that dewa was an original word
of that country for a superior being, which the Javans of the interior
believed in, but with regard to whom they used no ceremonies or forms of
worship:* that they had some idea of a future life, but not as a state of
retribution, conceiving immortality to be the lot of rich rather than of
good men. I recollect that an inhabitant of one of the islands farther
eastward observed to me, with great simplicity, that only great men went
to the skies; how should poor men find admittance there? The Sumatrans,
where untinctured with Mahometanism, do not appear to have any notion of
a future state. Their conception of virtue or vice extends no farther
than to the immediate effect of actions to the benefit or prejudice of
society, and all such as tend not to either of these ends are in their
estimation perfectly indifferent.

(*Footnote. In the Transactions of the Batavian Society Volumes 1 and 3
is to be found a History of these Dewas of the Javans, translated from an
original manuscript. The mythology is childish and incoherent. The Dutch
commentator supposes them to have been a race of men held sacred, forming
a species of Hierarchy, like the government of the Lamas in Tartary.)

Notwithstanding what is asserted of the originality of the word dewa, I
cannot help remarking its extreme affinity to the Persian word div or
diw, which signifies an evil spirit or bad genius. Perhaps, long
antecedent to the introduction of the faith of the khalifs among the
eastern people, this word might have found its way and been naturalized
in the islands; or perhaps its progress was in a contrary direction. It
has likewise a connexion in sound with the names used to express a deity
or some degree of superior being by many other people of this region of
the earth. The Battas, inhabitants of the northern end of Sumatra, whom I
shall describe hereafter, use the word daibattah or daivattah; the
Chingalese of Ceylon dewiju, the Telingas of India dai-wundu, the Biajus
of Borneo dewattah, the Papuas of New Guinea 'wat, and the Pampangos of
the Philippines diuata. It bears likewise an affinity (perhaps
accidental) to the deus and deitas of the Romans.*

(*Footnote. At the period when the above was written I was little aware
of the intimate connexion now well understood to have anciently subsisted
between the Hindus and the various nations be