NO NAME FOR THE DEITY.

The clearest proof that they never entertained an idea of Theism or the belief of one supreme power is that they have no word in their language to express the person of God, except the Allah tala of the Malays, corrupted by them to Ulah tallo.  Yet when questioned on the subject they assert their ancestors’ knowledge of a deity, though their thoughts were never employed about him; but this evidently means no more than that their forefathers as well as themselves had heard of the Allah of the Mahometans (Allah orang islam).

IDEA OF INVISIBLE BEINGS.

They use, both in Rejang and Passummah, the word dewa to express a superior invisible class of beings; but each country acknowledges it to be of foreign derivation, and they suppose it Javanese.  Radin, of Madura, an island close to Java, who 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.*