OATHS.

As their manner of giving evidence differs from ours so also does the nature of an oath among them differ from our idea of it.  In many cases it is requisite that they should swear to what it is not possible in the nature of things they should know to be true.  A. sues B. for a debt due from the father or grandfather of B. to the father or grandfather of A. The original parties are dead and no witness of the transaction survives.  How is the matter to be decided?  It remains with B. to make oath that his father or grandfather never was indebted to those of A.; or that if he was indebted the debt had been paid.  This, among us, would be esteemed a very strange method of deciding causes; but among these people something of the kind is absolutely necessary.  As they have no sort of written accounts, nor anything like records or registers among them, it would be utterly impossible for the plaintiff to establish the debt by a positive proof in a multitude of cases; and were the suit to be dismissed at once, as with us, for want of such proof, numbers of innocent persons would lose the debts really due to them through the knavery of the persons indebted, who would scarce ever fail to deny a debt.  On the side of the defendant again; if he was not permitted to clear himself of the debt by oath, but that it rested with the plaintiff only to establish the fact by a single oath, there would be a set of unprincipled fellows daily swearing debts against persons who never were indebted to any of their generation.  In such suits, and there are many of them, it requires no small discernment to discover, by the attendant circumstances, where the truth lies; but this may be done in most instances by a person who is used to their manners and has a personal knowledge of the parties concerned.  But what they mean by their oath, in those cases where it is impossible they should be acquainted with the facts they design to prove, is no more than this; that they are so convinced of the truth of the matter as to be willing to subject themselves to the paju sumpah (destructive consequences of perjury) if what they assert is believed by them to be false.  The form of words used is nearly as follows:  “If what I now declare, namely” (here the fact is recited) “is truly and really so, may I be freed and clear from my oath:  if what I assert is wittingly false, may my oath be the cause of my destruction.”  But it may be easily supposed that, where the punishment for a false oath rests altogether with the invisible powers, where no direct infamy, no corporal punishment is annexed to the perjury, there cannot fail to be many who would makan sumpah (swallow an oath), and willingly incur the guilt, in order to acquire a little of their neighbour’s property.