In Java, Siam, and other parts of the East, beside the common language of the country, there is established a court language spoken by persons of rank only; a distinction invented for the purpose of keeping the vulgar at a distance, and inspiring them with respect for what they do not understand.  The Malays also have their bhasa dalam, or courtly style, which contains a number of expressions not familiarly used in common conversation or writing, but yet by no means constituting a separate language, any more than, in English, the elevated style of our poets and historians.  Amongst the inhabitants of Sumatra in general disparity of condition is not attended with much ceremonious distance of behaviour between the persons.

(TABLE OF SUMATRAN ALPHABETS.)

(TABLE OF SPECIMENS OF LANGUAGES SPOKEN IN SUMATRA.)

CHAPTER 11.

COMPARATIVE STATE OF THE SUMATRANS IN CIVIL SOCIETY.  DIFFERENCE OF CHARACTER BETWEEN THE MALAYS AND OTHER INHABITANTS.  GOVERNMENT.  TITLES AND POWER OF THE CHIEFS AMONG THE REJANGS.  INFLUENCE OF THE EUROPEANS.  GOVERNMENT IN PASSUMMAH.

COMPARATIVE STATE OF SUMATRANS IN SOCIETY.

Considered as a people occupying a certain rank in the scale or civil society, it is not easy to determine the proper situation of the inhabitants of this island.  Though far distant from that point to which the polished states of Europe have aspired, they yet look down, with an interval almost as great, on the savage tribes of Africa and America.  Perhaps if we distinguish mankind summarily into five classes; but of which each would admit of numberless subdivisions; we might assign a third place to the more civilized Sumatrans, and a fourth to the remainder.  In the first class I should of course include some of the republics of ancient Greece, in the days of their splendour; the Romans, for some time before and after the Augustan age; France, England, and other refined nations of Europe, in the latter centuries; and perhaps China.  The second might comprehend the great Asiatic empires at the period of their prosperity; Persia, the Mogul, the Turkish, with some European kingdoms.  In the third class, along with the Sumatrans and a few other states of the eastern archipelago, I should rank the nations on the northern coast of Africa, and the more polished Arabs.  The fourth class, with the less civilized Sumatrans, will take in the people of the new discovered islands in the South Sea; perhaps the celebrated Mexican and Peruvian empires; the Tartar hordes, and all those societies of people in various parts of the globe, who, possessing personal property, and acknowledging some species of established subordination, rise one step above the Caribs, the New Hollanders, the Laplanders, and the Hottentots, who exhibit a picture of mankind in its rudest and most humiliating aspect.

FEW IMPROVEMENTS ADOPTED FROM EUROPEANS.