Equals in rank when saluting one another touch^49 (though they do not shake)
each other’s hands, but a person of humble birth must not touch hands in
saluting a great chief. “A man, named Imam Bakar, was once slain at Pasir
Tambang, at the mouth of the Tĕmbĕling river. He incautiously touched hands in
greeting with a Chief called To’ Gajah, and the latter, seizing him in an iron grip,
held him fast, while he was stabbed to death with spears.”^50
In saluting a great Chief, like the Dato’ Maharaja Pĕrba Jĕlai, the hands are
“lifted up in salutation with the palms pressed together, as in the attitude of
Christian prayer, but the tips of the thumbs are not suffered to ascend beyond the
base of the chin. In saluting a real Râja, the hands are carried higher and higher,
according to the prince’s rank, until, for the Sultân, the tips of the thumbs are on
a level with the forehead. Little details such as these are of immense importance
in the eyes of the Malays, and not without reason, seeing that in an Independent
Native State many a man has come by his death for carelessness in their
observance.”^51
In the king’s audience hall the formal salutations are performed in a sitting
posture, and in this case, too, the greatest attention is paid to the height to which
the hands are raised. The chief twice makes salutation in a sitting posture as he
advances, and at the third advance bends over the Sultan’s hands, two more
salutations being made on his way back to his place.
A flagrant infringement of any of the prerogatives of the Sultan, such as those I
have described, is certain, it is thought, to prove fatal, more or less immediately.
Thus the death of Pĕnghulu Mohit, a well-known Malay headman of the Klang
district, in Selangor, which took place while I was in charge of that district, was
at the time very generally attributed by the local Malays to his usurpation of
certain royal privileges or prerogatives on the occasion of his daughter’s
wedding. One of these was his acceptance of gift-buffaloes, decorated after the
royal fashion, which were presented to him as wedding gifts in his daughter’s
honour. These buffaloes had a covering of cloth put over them, their horns
covered, and a crescent-shaped breast-ornament (dokoh) hung about their necks.
Thus dressed they were taken to Mohit’s house in solemn procession.^52 It was,
at the time, considered significant that the very first of these gift-buffaloes,
which had been brought overland from Jugra, where the Sultan lived, had died