inferior officers, down to the chiefs of large villa-
g e S #No class or rank of nobility is to be considered
exclusively civil or military, for, in such a state of
society, such an appropriation of employments has
no existence. When the Javanese would aim at the
organization of a regular military force, they transfer
to the military body the civil subdivision of
ranks, from the highest noble down to the humblest
officer of the village polity.
Under the Malay governments we have a nobility
of the very same description as under that of
the Javanese. The first class is there denominated
Mantri, and the second Hulubalang. The
first hold the principal offices of state, and the second
the subordinate ones.
The influence of Hindu manners, as stated in the
chapter on Government, appears to have had no
small share in the establishment of absolute power,
and its influence may be traced in the titles of nobility,
particularly in Java. The Hindu word Mantri,
meaning a viceroy, has, among the Javanese, been
strangely degraded, in modern times, to the lowest
class of nobility ; among the Malays it is more appropriately
applied. The probability is, that, with
the former, it was driven frcm its station, like many
other words of the same origin, by becoming too
familiar, and, consequently, vulgar. The words
adipati and nayolco are also Hindu words, not to
mention the titles of office, as several of the names
of the sovereign himself, as Raja, Narendra, and
JSfaradipa, with Senapati, commander of the army,
&c.
The third class, or priesthood, is next to be considered.
Religion, even the Hindu religion, seems
never to have established, among the Indian islanders,
that extraordinary influence upon the minds of
men which has accompanied it in some other countries,
and particularly in the country of the Hindus
themselves, whom we are most naturally led to compare
with the Indian islanders. The Hindu religion
does not appear* among the latter, to have been
artfully inteiwoven with the political institutions
of the country, nor to have mixed with all the
common offices and common business of life in the
wonderful manner it does in continental India.
The ministers of religion seem, therefore, never to
have acquired an undue and pernicious influence
in society, and the veneration for absolute power
seems, in all ages of the history of these countries,
to have superseded that for the priesthood. At
the period of the conversion of the Javanese, and
for some time afterwards, the priests exercised unusual
authority, and the government was a sort of
theocracy, but the civil authority soon regained
its natural ascendancy, and the powers of the
priesthood were absorbed into those of the sovereign,
who assumed and maintained the title