[The Malay Archipelago Volume I. (of II.) by Alfred Russell Wallace]@TWC D-Link bookThe Malay Archipelago Volume I. (of II.) CHAPTER XI 26/30
Among the ancients these would have been looked upon as heroes or demigods who sacrificed themselves for their country.
Here it is simply said--they made "amok." Macassar is the most celebrated place in the East for "running a muck." There are said to be one or two a month on the average, and five, ten, or twenty persons are sometimes killed or wounded at one of them.
It is the national, and therefore the honourable, mode of committing suicide among the natives of Celebes, and is the fashionable way of escaping from their difficulties.
A Roman fell upon his sword, a Japanese rips up his stomach, and an Englishman blows out his brains with a pistol. The Bugis mode has many advantages to one suicidically inclined.
A man thinks himself wronged by society--he is in debt and cannot pay--he is taken for a slave or has gambled away his wife or child into slavery--he sees no way of recovering what he has lost, and becomes desperate.
<<Back Index Next>> D-Link book Top TWC mobile books
|