Study, trade, the skill of the artisan, 'and fruitful strifes and rivalries of peace,'
these are the things in which all the interests of the Trĕnggânu Malay are
centred. From his earliest infancy he grows up in an atmosphere of books, and
money and trade, and manufactures, and bargainings, and hagglings. He knows
how to praise the goods he is selling, and how to depreciate the wares he is
buying, almost as soon as he can speak; and the unblushing manner in which he
will hold forth concerning the antiquity of some article which he has made with
his own hands, and the entire absence of all mauvaise honte which he displays
when detected in the fraud, have earned for him the reputation he proverbially
bears of being the best liar in the Peninsula. The Pahang boy grows up amid talk
of war and rumours of war, which makes him long to be a man that he may use
his weapons, almost before he has learned to stand upon his feet. Not so the
young idea of Trĕnggânu. Men go about armed, of course, for such is the custom
in all Independent Malay States, but they have little skill with spear or knife,
and, since a proficiency as a scholar, an artisan, or as a shrewd man of business
wins more credit than does a reputation for valour, the people of Trĕnggânu
generally grow up cowards, and are not very much ashamed of standing so
confessed. In his own line, however, the Trĕnggânu Malay is far in advance of
any other natives on the East Coast, or indeed in the Peninsula. He has generally
read his Kurân through, from end to end, before he has reached his teens, and, as
the Malay character differs but slightly from the Arabic, he thereafter often
acquires a knowledge of how to read and write his own language.
But a study of the Muhammadan Scriptures is apt to breed religious animosity,
in the crude oriental mind, and the race of local saints, who have succeeded one
another at Pâloh for several generations, have been instrumental in fomenting
this feeling. Ungku Saiyid of Pâloh—the 'local holy man' for the time being—
like his prototype in the Naulahka, has done much to agitate the minds of the
people, and to create a 'commotion of popular bigotry.' He is a man of an
extraordinary personality. His features are those of the pure Arab caste, and they
show the ultra-refinement of one who is pinched with long fasts and other
ascetic practices. Moreover, he has the unbounded vanity and self-conceit which
is born of long years of adulation, and is infected by that touch of madness
which breeds 'Cranks' in modern Europe, and 'Saints' in modern Asia. He
preaches to crowded congregations thrice weekly, and the men of Trĕnggânu
flock from all parts of the country to sit at his feet. The Sultân, too, like his
father, and his great-uncle, Băginda Ümar, has been at some pains to ensure the
performance of religious rites by all his people, and, as far as outward
observances go, he appears to have been successful. Moreover, the natives of