Page 198 - Malay sketches

MALAY SKETCHES
continually led him into difficulty, and he smoked
opium to excess and to the neglect of all his duties
and his interests ; moreover, he lacked courage, and
sought counsel from men of no standing, whose only
thought was their own profit.
A Malay Raja has many wives. He begins
early and rings the changes often, until (especially
if he have pretensions to become ultimately the
ruler of his country, as was the case with Iskander)
his relatives decide that he should marry a lady
of his own rank. Then, if he is young, her
people usually insist that any wife he has must
be divorced, and, that done, the marriage takes
place.
At the time of which I write, Raja Iskander had
been married to Maimunah for about three years ;
she was the mother of two children, but her husband
thought he had good reason to doubt her fidelity,
and he was palpably neglecting her for a concubine.
That he should have other wives or concubines was
of course only what she had been educated to
expect, and, in acting on his right, Raja Iskander
was simply following the practice of his ancestors
and the custom of the country. The Muhammadan
law is nevertheless extremely strict in its injunctions
that all wives are to be treated with equal considera-
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