The people of Pahang were ever lawless, warlike folk, and the Malacca Râjas,
who seem to have been a mild enough set of people while in their own country,
speedily caught the infection from their surroundings. Thus, from one generation
to another, various rival claimants to the throne strove for the mastery during
successive centuries. The land was always more or less on the rack of civil war,
and so to-day the largest State in the Peninsula carries a population of only some
four human beings to the square mile.
War was lulled, and peace fell upon Pahang when Bĕndahâra Äli, the father of
the present Sultân, came to the throne; but, when he died in his palace among the
cocoa-nut trees, across the river opposite to the Pĕkan of to-day, civil war broke
out once more with redoubled fury. During the years that he was a fugitive from
the land of his birth, Che’ Wan Âhmad, who now bears the high-sounding title
of Sultân Âhmad Maätham, Shah of Pahang, made numerous efforts to seize the
throne from his brother and nephew, but it was not until the fifth attempt that he
was finally successful.
During one of those pauses which occurred in the war game, when Âhmad had
once more been driven into exile, and his brother's son Bĕndăhâra Korish
reigned in Pahang, the ambitions of Wan Bong of Jĕlai brought him who had
cherished them to an untimely and ignoble death.
The Jĕlai valley has, from time immemorial, been ruled over by a race of Chiefs,
who, though they are regarded by the other natives of Pahang as ranking merely
as nobles, are treated by the people of their own district with semi-royal honours.
The Chief of the Clan, the Dâto’ Mahrâja Pĕrba Jĕlai, commonly known as To’
Râja, is addressed as Ungku, which means 'Your Highness,' by his own people.
Homage too is done to him by them, hands being 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. A wrongly given salute
may raise the ire of a Râja, which is no pleasant thing to encounter; or if it flatter
him by giving him more than his due, the fact may be whispered in the ears of
his superiors, who will not be slow to resent the usurpation and to punish the
delinquent.