Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/49

 DISTRIBUTION OF THE PEOrLE. SJ when the people were Hindus, no existence. The community is divided, in fact, into two great and distinct classes, and the influence of this division is discoverable in all their languages. In those of the Malays and Javanese, the dis- tinction is drawn in a most humiliating and mor- tifying manner. A great man, in both, means a person of rank ; and a little one is the usual ex- pression for a peasant. In the Javanese, the chiefs are designated the head, and the mob the Jeet. In the same language, the two classes are frequently designated from a comparison taken from the fami- liar appearance of the rice grain ; the lower orders being called by the same word which is applied to the motes and broken fragments of the grain, and the privileged order by that which expresses the perfect ones ; or, as the idiom of our language would make it, " the chaff and the corn." The Malay language, in one example, draws a still more degrading distinction for a rich man * and a man of rank, are one and the same thing, which, in such a state of society, implies pretty plainly that none but the great can be the possessors of wealth. Such a disregard to the rights of the people is what we must expect in such a state of so- ciety. Not trusting altogether to the evidence of 850 90
 * Orang-kaia.