in prose, but they are neither numerous nor refined,
being chiefly a few fragments from the Hindu
Sastras, and some unimportant ones of native production,
rude and incongruous, and valuable only
in so far as they now and then contribute to afford
some happy illustrations of the state of society.
The Javanese are not in that state of society in
which nice points of casuistry and subtle reasonings
on abstract and useless questions are agitated and become
the favourite pursuit of men. They have no
controversies, no scholastic disputations like the
Brahmans of India, or the Doctors of Arabia, and
of the middle ages of Europe. They take no interest
in such subtleties, and are perhaps unable to
comprehend them. Their very language has never
been tried on such topics, and wants words to
express them. In furnishing examples of the
works in question, I shall pursue the principle a-
dopted in respect to historical composition, to select
the best, and while I warn the reader how
little he has to expect, not disgust him by contemptible
and frivolous quotations.
From a work called, in imitation of the Hindus,
Niti-Sastra, I extract the following fable, the best
and most sensible specimen of the literature of the
Javanese that has ever occurred to me in the course
of my reading.
“ Make choice of an equal friend, and do not
l
act like the tiger and the forest. A tiger and a forest
had united in close friendship, and they afforded
each other mutual protection. When men
wanted to take wood or leaves from the forest, they
were dissuaded by their fear of the tiger, and when
they would take the tiger, he was concealed by the
forest. After a long time, the forest was rendered
foul by the residence of the tiger, and it began to
be estranged from him. The tiger, thereupon, quitted
the forest, and men having found out that it
was no longer guarded, came in numbers and cut
down the wood, and robbed the leaves, so that, in
a short time, the forest was destroyed, and became
a bare place. The tiger, leaving the forest, was
seen, and although he attempted to hide himself in
clefts and valleys, men attacked him, and killed
him, and thus, by their disagreement, the forest
was exterminated, and the tiger lost his life. ”
The same work affords the following ;
“ The poison of a centipede is in its head ; the
poison of a scorpion in its tail; the poison of the
snake is in its tooth, and one knows where to find
them. But the venom of a bad man is fixed to no
one spot, but,' dispersed over his Whole body, cannot
be reached at.”
If we reflect that the Javanese have professed
the Mahomedan religion for between three and
VOL, II, C