THE ÂMOK OF DÂTO' KÂYA BIJI DĔRJA
THE average stay-at-home European knows little about the Malay and cares less. Any fragmentary ideas that he may have concerning him are obtained, for the most part, from light literature of the kind which caters for the latent barbarism of the young, with the amiable object of awakening in them a spirit of adventure which the circumstances of later life will render it impossible for the vast majority in any degree to satisfy. Books of this class, which are apt to be more sensational that accurate, ordinarily depict the Malay either as a peculiarly "treacherous" person, much as wild beasts that stand up for themselves are denounced as "vicious" by big game shooters; or else as a wild-eyed, long-haired, blood-smeared, howling, naked savage, armed with what Tennyson calls "the cursed Malayan crease," who spends all his spare time running "amuck."
As a matter of fact, âmok-running was not an event of very frequent occurrence, even in the lawless and unregenerate days of which I chiefly write; but mistaken notions concerning it, and more especially with regard to the reasons that impel Malays to indulge in it, are not confined to those Europeans who know nothing of the natives of the Peninsula.
