Corporal punishment of any kind is rare.  The chain, and a sort of stocks, made of the pinang tree, are adopted from us; the word pasong, now commonly used to denote the latter, originally signifying and being still frequently applied to confinement in general.  A kind of cage made use of in the country is probably their own invention.  “How do you secure a prisoner (a man was asked) without employing a chain or our stocks?” “We pen him up,” said he, “as we would a bear!” The cage is made of bamboos laid horizontally in a square, piled alternately, secured by timbers at the corners, and strongly covered in at top.  To lead a runaway they fasten a rattan round his neck, and, passing it through a bamboo somewhat longer than his arms, they bring his hands together and make them fast to the bamboo, in a state rather of constraint than of pain, which I believe never is wantonly or unnecessarily inflicted.  If the offender is of a desperate character they bind him hands and feet and sling him on a pole.  When they would convey a person from accident or otherwise unable to walk they make a palanquin by splitting a large bamboo near the middle of its length, where they contrive to keep it open so that the cavity forms a bed, the ends being preserved whole, to rest upon their shoulders.

The custom of exacting the bangun for murder seems only designed with a view of making a compensation to the injured family, and not of punishing the offender.  The word signifies awaking or raising up, and the deceased is supposed to be replaced, or raised again to his family, in the payment of a sum proportioned to his rank, or equivalent to his or her personal value.  The price of a female slave is generally more than that of a male, and therefore, I heard a chief say, is the bangun of a woman more than that of a man.  It is upon this principle that their laws take no cognizance of the distinction between a wilful murder and what we term manslaughter.  The loss is the same to the family, and therefore the compensations are alike.  A dupati of Laye, in an ill hour, stepped unwarily across the mouth of a cannon at the instant it was fired off for a salute, and was killed by the explosion, upon which his relations immediately sued the sergeant of the country-guard, who applied the match, for the recovery of the bangun; but they were cast, and upon these grounds:  that the dupati was instrumental in his own death, and that the Company’s servants, being amenable to other laws for their crimes, were not, by established custom, subject to the bangun or other penalties inflicted by the native chiefs, for accidents resulting from the execution of their duty.  The tippong bumi, expiation, or purification of the earth from the stain it has received, was however gratuitously paid.  No plea was set up that the action was unpremeditated, and the event chance-medley.