Professional Documents
Culture Documents
A N DAYA
A : 6K : H
of the SAME TREE
Trade and Ethnicity in the Straits of Melaka
Leaves of the Same Tree
Leaves of the Same Tree
Trade and Ethnicity in the Straits of Melaka
Leonard Y. Andaya
Introduction | 1
Chapter 1: Malayu Antecedents | 18
Chapter 2: Emergence of Malayu | 49
Chapter 3: Ethnicization of the Minangkabau | 82
Chapter 4: From Malayu to Aceh | 108
Chapter 5: The Batak Malayu | 146
Chapter 6: The Orang Laut and the Malayu | 173
Chapter 7: The Orang Asli/Suku Terasing and the Malayu | 202
Conclusion: Framing the Southeast Asian
Past in Ethnic Terms | 235
Notes | 241
Abbreviations | 285
Select Bibliography | 287
Index | 315
vii
Maps
Southeast Asia | 2
East-West Trade | 3
Sea of Malayu | 23
Minangkabau | 92
Northern Sumatra | 130
Batak | 171
Riau and Lingga Archipelagoes | 179
Malay Peninsula | 233
viii
Acknowledgments
ix
at the library of the Royal Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Stud-
ies (KITLV), especially Sirtjo Koolhof, for their help during my research in
their institutions. In Indonesia I benefited from the kindness of members of
LIPI (Indonesian Institute of Sciences), particularly my friend and colleague,
Dr. Taufik Abdullah. I also would like to thank the helpful staffs in Malaysia
of the Malaysian-American Commission on Educational Exchange (MACEE)
and the Asia-Europe Institute at the University of Malaya, and particularly
their generous and gracious executive directors, Dr. Don McCloud and
Dr. Shaharil Thalib. Back home at the University of Hawai‘i, I would like to
express my appreciation to Yati Paseng, our Southeast Asian bibliographer,
who continues to make a researcher’s life a pleasant one. To the staff of the
University of Hawai‘i Press, particularly Pam Kelley, my sincere thanks for
the very helpful suggestions in the preparation and the completion of the
manuscript. I am also grateful to Jane J. Eckelman, who so patiently drew and
redrew maps to my specifications, and to the University of Hawai‘i Research
Relations Fund for their financial assistance.
Once again, as in my previous works, I owe so very much to my wife
and colleague, Barbara Watson Andaya, who has been so patient and long-
suffering. Having married another Southeast Asian historian has had many
benefits, of which having a captive reader is one. Throughout this project she
has helped me to think through many difficult problems in conceptualization,
and in the final stages she has patiently (encouraged by promises of Starbuck’s
coffee) waded through the manuscript identifying inconsistencies, lapses in
analysis, etc. It makes me realize that O. W. Wolters perhaps was not being
sexist but merely pragmatic when he jokingly told his (male) students: “Marry
a typist.” I actually type better than Barbara, but she obviously has many more
redeeming qualities, and for that I am immensely grateful.
To all of you, my heartfelt thanks.
x Acknowledgments
Introduction
1
Banda Is.
mountain chains along the spines of Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula. It was
the “endpoint” of both the northeast monsoons that blew between January
and April and brought traders from the east, and the southwest monsoons of
July to November, which carried traders from the west. While traders awaited
favorable winds to return home, the communities located astride the straits
quickly seized the opportunities the situation provided. They established ports
for traders to repair their ships, replenish supplies, obtain local products, and
exchange goods with merchants from all parts of the world. Furthermore, the
interior of both landforms that bordered the straits produced valuable for-
est products, particularly camphor, benzoin, gaharuwood (eaglewood), and
dragon’s blood (a kind of kino)—all of which were highly prized in the inter-
national marketplace, particularly in China.
For more than two thousand years, this narrow waterway brought trad-
ers, religious scholars, diplomatic missions, and adventurers to the ports
bordering its shores. As a result of the economic opportunities provided by
the steady influx of people and goods, communities in the vicinity of this
waterway became increasingly involved in international trade. Much has been
written about the impact of international and domestic trade in the transfor-
mation of Southeast Asian societies, both materially and spiritually. In every
period it was trade that served as the stimulus for the movement of goods and
ideas across continents, and Southeast Asia’s ideal location midway between
2 Introduction
major civilizations provided its leaders with the luxury of surveying, experi-
menting, and selecting those elements that were most appropriate to advance
their societies. Little noticed by historians has been the role of trade in the
process of ethnic formation. The continuing presence of foreign merchants
and visitors contributed to an intense awareness of self among local individu-
als and groups. To maximize advantage, small socioeconomic units ethnically
identified by their location and involved in small-scale exchange gradually
began to join others of like mind to form numerically larger and more exten-
sive community networks.
The vicinity of the Straits of Melaka is an ideal site to investigate the
relationship between trade and ethnic formation, especially in precolonial
Southeast Asia. Before the middle of the first millennium of the Common
Era, the favored passage through Southeast Asia combined sea and land
routes across the Isthmus of Kra and the northern Malay Peninsula. While
these northern routes continued to be used in later centuries, they became
secondary to the preferred sea route through the straits. Communities bor-
dering or in close proximity to the Straits of Melaka were therefore blessed
with a continuing flow of seaborne commerce, bringing benefits to those
most effective in adjusting to the opportunities presented. In the process of
adapting to change, certain communities in the straits area saw the value of
detaching themselves from a larger ethnic identity to form smaller and more
Introduction 3
effective units, whereas others saw greater advantage in becoming affiliated
with a larger ethnic grouping.
Ethnic formation in the Straits of Melaka may have been stimulated fur-
ther by increasing contact with Europeans from the sixteenth century, the
century that has been called “a high point in the cycle of ethnic conscious-
ness” in Europe.2 With increased ethnic awareness, coupled with the desire to
classify and thus control, the Europeans assiduously listed local individuals
with whom they came into contact by their “ethnic group.” This was par-
ticularly evident in the ports, where European officials wished to control the
movement of certain rival or enemy groups. The results were predictable:
individuals tended to claim the most useful ethnic identity because there was
little to distinguish one group from another, and most could communicate
in Malayu, the trade lingua franca. When the Malayu3 kingdom of Johor was
given special privileges by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) for their
assistance in the seizure of Portuguese Melaka in 1641, there would have been
many who claimed to be Malayu from Johor. An opposite reaction occurred
when the Bugis of southwest Sulawesi were regarded as the enemies of the
VOC. They simply claimed to be Malayu, Javanese, or another more favored
ethnic community in order to be allowed to trade in Dutch ports and to travel
the seas free from VOC harassment.
Malayu ethnicity is an important theme in this study. In a situation of
increasing economic competition there was a politicization of ethnic identities,
or what Kahn has termed the “ethnicization” of groups.4 The emergence and
expansion of the Malayu resulting from a convergence of economic and politi-
cal interests encouraged at different times the formation of the Minangkabau,
the Acehnese, and to a certain extent the Batak ethnic identities. For such
groups, identifying cultural discontinuities within a common Malayu culture
was a necessary process in the erecting of ethnic boundaries.5 The Malayu
were also the stimulus for the formation of the new ethnic categories of Orang
Laut (Sea Peoples) and Orang Asli/Suku Terasing (Original Peoples/Isolated
Ethnic Groups, i.e., the forest and hill peoples). They performed valuable ser-
vices for the Malayu rulers as providers of ocean and jungle products and as
defenders of the routes through the various seas and forests. In return they
were richly rewarded economically and spiritually by the Malayu rulers, thus
encouraging the maintenance of this symbiotic exchange through the preser-
vation of separate lifestyles. Yet deliberate efforts by all groups in the straits to
erect ethnic boundaries to emphasize difference cannot disguise the fact that
they are “leaves of the same tree.”6
In this study I have attempted to capture the dynamism of the process of
ethnic formation with each individual group. Because of the unevenness in the
quality and quantity of materials available, it has not been possible to follow a
4 Introduction
single pattern of investigation nor to maintain a common time frame for all.
Instead, my primary concern has been to make the best use of the sources in
illuminating the process and thus demonstrating its vitality and significance in
the interpretation of Southeast Asian history. Too often the story of Southeast
Asia has been structured according to ethnic struggles, a presentist approach
that obscures the flexibility of ethnic identities in the past. I hope that this
work, focusing on trade and ethnic formation in a small area of Southeast Asia,
will encourage other historians to engage the issue of ethnicity to determine
the extent to which it informed the actions of Southeast Asians in the past.
Introduction 5
Although people, and hence documents, may not have used such terms as
“ethnicity” or “nationalism,” there is no reason to believe that such notions
of group identities were absent. The anthropologist Richard O’Connor was
among the first to suggest that ecological adaptation, language, and agricul-
tural techniques are significant shifts that can explain the so-called “decline”
and “emergence” of ethnic groups in Southeast Asia.12 There are encouraging
signs that historians of Southeast Asia are finally engaging the issue of eth-
nicity. In a recent article, David K. Wyatt cautions against reading modern
ethnic identities into Thailand’s past.13 A similar critical reading of ethnicity
is addressed in Victor Lieberman’s 2003 study of Southeast Asia between the
ninth and nineteenth centuries.14 The persistence of ethnic issues suggests that
ethnicity should not be regarded simply as a precursor to nationalism of the
modern nation-state, but as a concept that was relevant in the past and may
help to illuminate the particular ways that events unfolded in Southeast Asia.
Although the much-quoted phrases “invention of traditions” and “imagined
communities” begin with the premise that this process was associated with
the creating of modern ethnic or nation-state nationalisms, this process was
also a feature of communities in precolonial Southeast Asia.15
The complexity of the subject demands a clarification of certain key
terms. “Ethnicity” is used throughout this work to refer to a way of conceptu-
alizing the world and acting in it by privileging group identity and interests.
Religion, class, and gender are other ways in which the past could be struc-
tured, but they are subordinated to and form components of ethnic identity.
The second key term is “ethnic group or community.” The historian
Anthony Smith believes that the French word ethnie best captures and com-
bines the distinction found in Greek between genos, applied to kinship-based
groups, and ethnos, a broader term used for groups sharing a culture. He lists
as attributes of an ethnie a collective name, a common myth of descent, a
shared history, a distinctive shared culture, association with a specific terri-
tory, and a sense of solidarity transmitted by the upper strata to the rest of the
community. The last point is particularly important because in times of crisis
all class, factional, regional, and other identities are submerged by the strength
of the group’s sense of solidarity.16 Smith’s ethnie attributes are relevant in the
formation of ethnic groups in the vicinity of the Straits of Melaka. In defining
a group, greatest emphasis was on a strong social network established through
real and fictive kinship ties, reinforced by shared myths and symbols associ-
ated with and often created by their leaders.
“Ethnic category” forms the third key term in this study. This refers to
a loose and generalized collectivity to which groups attach themselves or are
assigned by outsiders because of certain shared characteristics. While the
members of an ethnic category acknowledge some common cultural relation-
6 Introduction
ship, their interpersonal and intergroup relationships are limited. In central
Borneo, for example, such ethnic categories as Kayan, Kenyah, Kelabit, Penan,
etc., do not form social units or a distinct social system and may not even
share the same language and culture.17 A similar observation may be made of
the Orang Laut and Orang Asli/Suku Terasing ethnic categories in the Straits
of Melaka. Ethnic categories and ethnic groups are fluid concepts and can be
re-formed to include or exclude others.
Basic to the notion of ethnicity is that a group’s ethnic consciousness
arises through contact with others who are perceived as different. As Thomas
Eriksen explains, “ethnicity is essentially an aspect of a relationship, not a
property of a group.”18 Once difference is acknowledged, it is necessary to
exploit this difference through the establishment of ethnic markers. Com-
monly cited as ethnic markers are cultural elements, such as dress, clothing,
food, language, or even religious belief, but different ethnic groups may also
share the same cultural elements. For this reason Frederik Barth argues that
rather than focusing on the “contents,” one should identify the “boundaries”
erected by the group to distinguish itself from its neighbors. In his study of
the Pathans of Afghanistan, for example, he lists hospitality, councils of equals,
and seclusion of women as elements that make up the Pathan “boundary.”19
In a close reading of Barth’s study, however, Marcus Banks found evi-
dence that Pathans will in fact grudgingly claim a common ethnic unity
based on cultural features, or what Barth calls the “contents” of an ethnicity.
Among the shared features named by the Pathans are patrilineal descent from
a common ancestor, Islam, and custom, including language, oral literature,
and certain masculine attributes. Banks argues that both the Pathan-centric
and the Barthian-centric conceptions are closer to Barth’s “contents” than his
“boundaries,” since many of these features are shared by neighboring eth-
nic communities. Banks then makes the important observation that the only
principle that distinguishes the Pathans is their putative descent from a com-
mon ancestor.20
In 1998, responding to criticisms of his pioneering 1969 work on ethnic
boundaries, Barth modified his arguments. He acknowledged that in indi-
vidual lives, culture often consists of the blending of difference and of adap-
tation, rather than the erection of boundaries. For this reason he suggested
focusing on the process whereby variation of culture is identified and made
salient to form a shared understanding of the “cultural discontinuity” that
then forms the crucial boundary of an ethnic group.21 Such boundaries may
separate an ethnic group from another, or ethnic groups within an ethnic
category. Each new boundary-making exercise is accompanied by the pro-
cess of reinterpreting tradition to establish legitimacy for and loyalty to the
“new” community. As this study shows, ethnicity can be invoked to serve as a
Introduction 7
stimulus and a justification for group action to maximize the group’s advan-
tage, as well as to counter a negative image or prevent absorption by a dominant
ethnic community. Membership in the group is determined by acknowledg-
ment of a shared field of interaction and communication. An ethnic group
can identify itself and be identified with an ethnic category, but most of its
interactions will be within an ethnic group or community.
A study of ethnicity usually begins with the old debate between the pri-
mordialists and those called situationalists, circumstantialists, instrumental-
ists, or constructivists. The former stance, often associated with Edward Shils
and Harold Isaacs,22 argues that individuals are born endowed with certain
fixed qualities that they share with a specific group of people. It is these “pri-
mordial” elements that serve to bond the members into an ethnic unity. The
situationalist position, which many social scientists adopt, criticizes the rigid-
ity implied in the primordialist argument and views ethnicity as a fluid con-
cept. It argues that the elements defining the group are constantly undergo-
ing change and rearrangement in response to shifting historical and cultural
circumstances.23
Most scholars writing on ethnicity today take a middle ground. They
agree that an ethnic group is fluid, is continually adjusting to shifting circum-
stances, and is multilayered, but they also recognize the significance of the
primordialist emphasis on some ineffable quality of group identity that defies
any situationalist explanation. It is this perceived “primordial” element that
has evoked such fervent, even fanatic response from individuals throughout
history. There is also a recognition of the agency of ethnic actors who are not
merely shaped by contexts, but who actively seek to construct their identity
from a host of variables. In the process of ethnic re-formation, the group
adjusts the “contents” and “boundary” to enable its members to be ideally
placed to benefit from new circumstances. The “middle” stance therefore
acknowledges the ongoing, active role of the group in redefining the cultural
elements constituting its identity, as well as the desire of a group to believe in
an essential core that distinguishes it from others.
The resulting “traditions” are not “invented” in the Hobsbawm sense
of being manufactured in order to “inculcate certain values and norms of
behaviour.”24 They are instead selected, reorganized, and reinterpreted from
a corpus of old and new symbols, myths, remembered events, etc., in light of
shifting circumstances. It is essential that members believe in an enduring core
that defines the group, despite the constantly shifting elements that make up
that “core.” Individuals seek commonalities that can be summoned to bind
them together as a group for maximum economic, social, or political advan-
tage. The enhancement of a group’s status and prestige in the eyes of others,
which Donald Horowitz describes as “group entitlement,” in turn serves to
8 Introduction
bolster the individual member’s own sense of pride and self-worth.25 The pro-
cess of ethnic formation enables the individual and the group to select from,
in Joanne Nagel’s memorable phrase, “a portfolio of ethnic identities.”26
The increasing globalization in all spheres of life and the resulting human
and capital mobility have all but transformed our traditional perceptions. The
porous borders, transnational activities of individuals, and the merging of
global economic forces have all produced a phenomenon Arjun Appadurai
has described as an “ethnoscape.” By this neologism, he means “the landscape
of persons who make up the shifting world in which we live: tourists, immi-
grants, refugees, exiles, guest-workers, and other moving groups and per-
sons.”27 Those inhabiting this ethnoscape interact with the more conventional
established networks of affiliations to create new possibilities of unities. The
cultural dynamics of deterritorialization thus enable individuals and groups
to imagine themselves from a wider set of possibilities than ever before.28 For
a historian working in the precolonial period in Southeast Asia, the situation
described by Appadurai is familiar. The Straits of Melaka served as a channel
of goods, ideas, and news from the outside world, thus igniting the imagina-
tions of individuals and groups living along its shores to new possibilities of
ethnic and other affiliations.
A common origin and a shared ancestor form meaningful ethnic markers
that legitimize the group and reaffirm its sacred links to the past. Acknowledg-
ing the spiritual potency of the idea of origins, John Armstrong and Anthony
Smith have both used the concept of a mythomoteur, defined as “the con-
stitutive myth of the ethnic polity,” which is based on the belief in a mythic
primordial past.29 Adherence to a mythomoteur, they argue, provides a power-
ful sense of a “common fate” among its members, thus defining them from
others.30 Although Smith distinguishes between a dynastic and a communal
mythomoteur, he nevertheless questions whether one should insist on such a
division. He asks, “Is it true that upper-class culture was generally of an utterly
different character from the many cultures of the peasantry, and that therefore
there could be no sense of shared identity between the classes in any area or
polity?”31 In the case of the Malayu in the precolonial period, sumptuary laws
may have been created to recognize difference but customary law and shared
cultural ideas clearly emphasized the communal purpose, thereby strengthen-
ing group unity. Precolonial Southeast Asian societies were characterized by
strong bonds between chiefs/rulers and their subjects, who were often kinfolk.
When a larger unity was required, the dynastic mythomoteur served to estab-
lish the social and political bonding for the newly extended boundaries of the
group.32
In the theories of ethnicity, the elite groups play a leading role in the
creation of a group’s cultural ideology. But the process is not all one-sided,
Introduction 9
and ordinary people are equally important in reinforcing these boundaries
by emphasizing differences, no matter how slight. How men and women wear
their hair or tie their sarongs, what types of food they eat, what language
they speak or even how they speak it, can all be important markers of ethnic
identity. For the common folk these are not “soft” boundaries33 but meaning-
ful ones that are reinforced through daily activities. By making these mun-
dane choices, people themselves strengthen the boundaries established on a
more reified level by their spiritual and temporal leaders. Tangible and easily
adopted, the boundaries erected by common people can be readily breached
to enable individuals and groups to strategically deploy one or more identities
in different circumstances to maximize advantage. The role of the elite and
the ordinary people in the process of ethnic formation thus allows for maxi-
mum flexibility in periods of rapid change. This is the situation that prevailed
among many of the communities living in the vicinity of the Straits of Melaka
in the precolonial period and explains the ease with which individuals and
groups moved from one ethnic community to another.
Language is one of the most cited elements in defining a group, and its
strength as a unifying force comes from its flexibility. This is clearly dem-
onstrated in an episode involving the main protagonist Hang Tuah and the
maidens from Indrapura in the popular Malayu tale the Hikayat Hang Tuah.34
When the maidens apologize that their use of the Malayu language lacks the
purity of that of the Melakans, Hang Tuah reassures them that the language of
Melaka itself is “mixed” (kacukan).35 During Aceh’s dominance as the center of
the Malay world in the seventeenth century, its form of the Malayu language
became the prestigious version even though it created difficulties in compre-
hension in parts of the wider Malayu-speaking world. A Muslim scholar from
Banjarmasin in the seventeenth century wrote a companion piece to a Malay
Islamic treatise from Aceh because he claimed that the latter contained too
many “Acehnisms.”36 These examples suggest that the Malayu language was
spoken in different ways in the seventeenth century. Even Melaka, regarded as
the center of Malayu culture in the fifteenth century, acknowledged the valid-
ity of the Malayu language spoken in Indrapura. Yet the dialectal differences
in no way diminished the importance of the Malayu language as an important
boundary marker in delineating a Malayu world that incorporated a diverse
population.
While the variation in the manner in which the Malayu language was
spoken and written was used to define specific ethnic communities, the
Malayu language was the boundary for the ethnic category. The variations of
the Malayu language suited the multiplicity of ethnic groups that used that
language as a basis of identity. The late nineteenth century, however, saw a
change in the attitude toward language use. In order to learn more about the
10 Introduction
area and to facilitate their control, European colonial powers commissioned
the recopying of local histories, law codes, belles lettres, and other cultural
works. The coincidence of a particular language that was used both for writ-
ten documents and for ordinary speech by the majority community often
became the colonial basis for ethnic identity. In time such ethnic boundar-
ies were self-fulfilling, with bilingual or even trilingual speakers claiming the
most advantageous language and ethnic group with which to be identified to
the colonial powers.
It may be scientifically indefensible to argue for distinctive ethnicities
because of the continuing intermingling and exchange of biological and cul-
tural elements among groups.37 Nevertheless, individuals and communities
have displayed a persistent desire to underscore difference and to define and
redefine themselves in order to promote their individual or group interests.
History is rife with examples of ethnonations and nation-states successfully
appealing to some sense of communal solidarity to defend a bounded entity.
There is a conviction that their “venerable traditions,” and hence their link
to the ancestral past, remain unchanged. Activity based on ethnic conscious-
ness, notwithstanding ethnicity’s variability and ongoing reinterpretations,
is an undeniable historical reality. The corpus of traditions allows variant
interpretations and a degree of ambiguity that facilitates the incorporation of
desired individuals or communities. Even the concept of hybridity, seemingly
counterintuitive to ideas of “origins,” can be harnessed to strengthen a group’s
identity. It is precisely this hybrid quality that enabled individuals to claim
Malayu ethnicity no matter how tenuous their claim to shared traditions.38
The ambiguity and multiple meanings that groups could extract from Malayu
origins and traditions made Malayu an extensive, expansive, and imperializ-
ing ethnicity.
There is a large menu of ethnic theories with a bewildering array of
approaches. Although some lament the lack of precision and consensus regard-
ing a definition of ethnicity, such “unsatisfactory” results are to be expected.
Human interactions are by nature unpredictable and dynamic, defying any
clear and definitive characterization. Yet it is possible to use ethnicity as an
important analytic tool to explain group relations in Southeast Asian history.
Introduction 11
or “people,” in contradistinction presumably to animals, ethereal beings,
the forests, and all others that inhabited their universe. To distinguish them-
selves from other human communities, a group often added another form of
identification based on location, such as “people of the upriver,” “people of
the hills,” “people of the swamplands,” etc. These were appropriate and ade-
quate markers of ethnicity among economically interdependent groups living
within a limited geographic space.
In time the group’s numbers generally increased, the search for addi-
tional resources became necessary, and contact with the outside world grew
more frequent. The impingement of groups became common, and the need
for some type of mutually agreeable economic and political arrangement
encouraged the formation of a more active and intrusive form of governance.
The process is captured in local traditions, where a pre-existing community
seeks an arbiter in its affairs whose judgment would be accepted by the people.
This condition is met in the dynastic myth (Smith’s dynastic “mythomoteur”),
which associates the progenitor of the royal family with supernatural origins.
Around this sacred figure the various kinship communities coalesce to form
a single political entity. With the proliferation and expansion of such polities,
the authority of these sacred figures/rulers overlapped at the frontiers. These
frontiers thus formed the dynamic region of political arrangements termed
“mandala polities” by Wolters and “galactic polities” by Tambiah.39
According to this roughly similar conception, the mandala/galactic pol-
ity is the center of its universe, with satellite communities located around
it. A graphic image of the exercise of power in such polities is that of an
upturned lamp, whose light is intense in the center but gradually fades away
at the edges.40 What the image conveys is a situation of constant realignment
of groups, in which the overlapping edges of authority become the site for
contestation. The periphery retains a position of strength because it is able to
shift allegiances or maintain multiple allegiances in promoting its best inter-
ests. At these dynamic edges individuals and groups are able to claim multiple
ethnic identities, or to move in and out of ethnicities as the circumstances
warrant. The periphery, then, determines whether the “exemplary center”
survives or is replaced by another. For this reason, the center takes great care
to maintain strong bonds with influential families or individuals in the cru-
cial borderlands.
The common practice of bilateral kinship, which traces lineage through
both males and females, facilitated alliances among families in Southeast Asia.
There was no particular advantage in having male children; female children
were as valuable because they, too, could be strategically married to advance
the family’s economic, social, and political fortunes. Through such marriages,
certain powerful families had networks extending to more than one polity,
12 Introduction
with some family members at the periphery claiming multiple allegiances.
Bilateral kinship inheritance patterns made it imperative for individuals to
retain rights both in their own families and in those of their in-laws. Some-
times this involved belonging to two separate ethnic groups, as in the case of
the Batak, because land ownership and the rituals associated with its transfer
could only be effected by ethnic Batak.41 In some cases, the Batak adopted an
additional Malayu ethnic identity because of the advantage of being interme-
diaries between the Malayu coast and the Batak highlands.42
In short, precolonial Southeast Asia was not subject to international con-
ventions confining individuals within a fixed space and imposing on them a
specific legal identity. Ethnic identity was a fluid concept, and the decision to
adopt one or more ethnicities was the privilege of the individual. The man-
dala/galactic polity encouraged rather than opposed such practices because
people were a source of wealth. The relative paucity of people in Southeast
Asia until the twentieth century made rulers particularly anxious to retain
their subjects and to attract others. Indigenous documents exhort rulers to
perform good deeds to attract followers and thereby bring prosperity to the
land. In this regard, Southeast Asian groups were more concerned with the
maintenance of the porosity rather than the impermeability of their ethnic
boundaries.
In this study I have been guided by Joel Kahn’s astute observation that
one should not focus on the “principles” that unite a culture, but on the social
process operating under specific historical circumstances that produced that
culture.43 Implied in this statement is the futility of depicting any ethnic iden-
tity as fixed since the construction of ethnicity is an ongoing sociohistorical
process. For this reason I have focused on the process of ethnic formation
to highlight the contingent nature of ethnic identity and the fluidity of its
manifestation.
Introduction 13
The Malayu were one of the earliest and most influential in the straits,
and their prominent role in international trade spurred the ethnicization of
other groups. As far as I can determine, as an ethnonym, “Malayu” referred
first to the communities living in southeast Sumatra and later came to include
those settled along both coasts and in the central and northern interior areas
of the island. From the fifteenth century the ethnonym was also applied to
those living on the Malay Peninsula who were descendants of Malayu immi-
grants from Sumatra. The name itself has been used at various times to refer
to a language, a culture, a regional group, a polity, and a local community. It
is not surprising, therefore, that it has spawned a wide variety of interpreta-
tions concerning its meaning and significance.44 Most of these discussions,
however, overlook an emerging culture in the northern portion of the Straits
of Melaka that formed the antecedents of Malayu culture. The settlements in
northern Sumatra and in the Isthmus of Kra and the Malay Peninsula were
part of an extensive network of communities, which I have termed the “Sea of
Malayu.” Chapter 1 explores this exchange network that extended from south-
ern India and Sri Lanka to northern Sumatra, the Isthmus of Kra, and the
northern Malay Peninsula, across to the Gulf of Siam and the Lower Mekong
of southern Cambodia, to the Cham areas of southern and central Vietnam.45
The long and profitable interaction within this common “sea” produced a
shared cultural idiom that helped shape Malayu identity.
Chapter 2 is a more specific examination of the Malayu culture that
developed in the early southeast Sumatran polities of Sriwijaya and Malayu
between the seventh and fourteenth centuries. While inscriptions and external
sources are limited, there is sufficient linguistic and archaeological evidence
to form the basis for a tentative reconstruction of the sociopolitical organiza-
tion and the nature of the economy of these polities, especially of Sriwijaya.
Certain features of the society can be detected, including the role of family in
government, a reliance on sea and forest peoples in assuring the collection of
products and protection of routes for international trade, the maritime and
riverine environment, the sacral quality of kingship, and the use of oaths as an
important political and economic tool. The term “Malayu” thus came to desig-
nate those communities that had incorporated many of the features identified
initially with Sriwijaya and its successor, the polity of Malayu. In Sumatra,
the expansion of the Malayu as an ethnic community and an economic force
served as a catalyst for the ethnicization of other groups.
The historical circumstances that gave rise to a separate Minangkabau
ethnic identity from the Malayu is the subject of chapter 3. In 1365 the Java-
nese court poem, the Desawarnana, included the Minangkabau highlands
and most of the areas on Sumatra as part of the bhumi Malayu, the “Malayu
world.” Inscriptions, artistic remains, and other archaeological finds indicate
14 Introduction
that there was a polity in the highlands whose royal settlement was called
Malayupura, “the Malayu City.” But sometime between the late fourteenth
and early sixteenth century, the local identity that had been subsumed by the
Malayu began to assert itself. Early sixteenth-century Portuguese documents
mention the Minangkabau by name and of their kings ruling in the highlands.
Only with the arrival of the VOC in the seventeenth century, however, are
there sufficient contemporary reports to trace the ethnicization process of the
Minangkabau. The economic opportunities provided by the removal of Aceh-
nese control and the increase in trade through the straits provided the impetus
for the formation of a separate Minangkabau ethnic identity. Through a con-
vergence of local beliefs in the supernatural powers of the Pagaruyung ruler
and the VOC decision to support his claims, a new Minangkabau ethnicity was
created that proved effective in rallying the people to act as one for economic
and political advantage.
The Malayu were associated with Sumatra until the rise of Melaka on
the Malay Peninsula in the fifteenth century. Melaka’s stunning success as an
international entrepot and center of Islamic scholarship raised the regional
status of the Malayu considerably. Melaka became synonymous with Malayu
and began to be regarded as the standard-bearer of Malayu culture. With the
capture of Melaka by the Portuguese in 1511, two competitors emerged to
claim the mantle of Melaka’s successor in the Malayu world: Johor and Aceh.
As shown in chapter 4, Aceh prevailed because of its strong economic and cul-
tural links to the great Muslim kingdoms in the Middle East and India. Dur-
ing the sixteenth and for much of the seventeenth century, Aceh established
new standards of Malayness based on Islam and on many court practices that
mirrored the foremost Muslim kingdoms at the time. As the leading Malayu
polity, Aceh’s new standards were applied along both Sumatran coasts, in the
west coast of the Malay Peninsula, and in Pahang on the east coast.
When Johor eventually emerged in the late seventeenth century to replace
Aceh as the center of the Malayu world, it adopted the stronger Islamic behavior
instituted by Aceh but reverted to the court customs of the Melaka period. By
the late eighteenth century, Aceh’s rejection as the major Malayu center forced
it to emphasize a new ethnic identity centered on the interior and agriculture,
rather than on the coast and international trade. Unlike the coastal regions
of Aceh, where the Malayu language was dominant, the interior areas were
principally Acehnese-speaking. The new Acehnese identity was reinforced by
literary works written not in the Malayu but the Acehnese language. The new
Acehnese identity proved so successful that by the nineteenth century few
remembered Aceh as once being the leading center of the Malayu world.
Chapter 5 narrates the story of the ethnicization of the Batak. As with
the Minangkabau and the Acehnese, the Batak were formerly a part of the
Introduction 15
fourteenth-century Javanese depiction of the bhumi Malayu. Contrary to
widely held opinion, the Batak were never isolated from the outside world
because they were the principal suppliers of camphor and benzoin. These two
resins grow abundantly in north Sumatra in the Batak country surround-
ing Lake Toba and were in great demand in the international marketplace.
To meet this demand, the interior Batak communities organized themselves
for the collecting and transporting of valuable resins to the Malayu entrepots
on both Sumatran coasts. Until the destruction of Sriwijaya by the Cholas
in 1025, these products were brought to this leading entrepot on the south-
eastern coast. Subsequently, the Batak brought the resins to Kota Cina and
other polities on the northeastern coast of Sumatra, as well as to Barus, an
ancient entrepot located on the northwest coast. As a result of this long trade
relationship, there was a flow of ideas between the Malayu and the Batak. This
is clearly evident in the monuments and statues found at the archaeologi-
cal site of Padang Lawas, at the frontier of the Batak and the Malayu (later
Minangkabau) lands.
Beginning in the fifteenth century, the introduction of pepper cultiva-
tion in Sumatra provided yet another opportunity for the Batak to become
involved in international trade. The intensive labor required for the cultiva-
tion of pepper left little time for rice cultivation, and so rice became a valued
commodity in the pepper-producing areas of Sumatra. Many of the Batak
were thus encouraged to move out of their home areas around Lake Toba
to seek lands for the planting of rice. The spread of the Batak into different
areas led to separate developments and modifications of Batak cultural ideas
and the formation of various Batak subethnic communities known today as
Karo, Simalungun, Pakpak-Dairi, Toba, Angkola, and Mandailing. But in ear-
lier times the term “Batak” would have been used as an ethnic identity for
those who traced their origins to the area of Lake Toba and adhered to the
indigenous religion. The ancient belief system provided the myths and sym-
bols that defined and strengthened ideas of Batakness. Its priests and religious
teachers with their extensive network of marketplaces, worship centers, and
students forged a common Batak identity that proved useful in the competi-
tive economic environment of the Straits of Melaka.
The final two chapters discuss two ethnic categories, marginalized today
but once invaluable to the Malayu groups both in Sumatra and the Malay
Peninsula. Chapter 6 discusses the communities that form the ethnic category
known by the exonym “Orang Laut” (though the government in Malaysia has
arbitrarily submerged this identity under that of “Orang Asli”), and chapter
7 focuses on the Orang Asli (known as “Suku Terasing” in Indonesia). Their
current emasculated political and economic position has colored interpreta-
tions of their important role in Malayu polities in the past as collectors of
16 Introduction
sea and forest products and as guardians of the sea and jungle routes. The
Orang Laut’s knowledge of the seas and their navigational skills made them
an indispensable part of the Malayu ruler’s naval forces. Malayu traditions
themselves acknowledge the debt owed to the Orang Asli and the Orang Laut,
and even highlight the significant marital arrangements contracted between
these two groups and the Malayu rulers to strengthen their mutually benefi-
cial relationship.
The distinct, complementary economic role of the Orang Laut and
the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing to that of the Malayu was a major reason for
a respected partnership in earlier times. Their ethnicization was therefore a
deliberate effort to preserve a way of life that guaranteed their advantage and
eventual survival from the intrusions of their numerically dominant Malayu
neighbors. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, with the shift in eco-
nomic wealth away from sea and forest products, the Orang Asli/Suku Teras-
ing and the Orang Laut lost their value to the Malayu. In a relatively short
space of time, an exonym once bestowed in respect and proudly ethnicized by
its members became a stigma. The result was a predictable rise of mutual sus-
picion and of violence committed mainly by the Malayu against the sea and
forest peoples. Through the revitalization and resymbolizing of the “Orang
Asli” name, the group has been able to promote its political interests in Malay-
sia and acquire greater recognition from the outside world. No such progress,
however, has been made in the position of the Suku Terasing in Sumatra.
Ethnic formation is an ongoing process, with trade being the principal
stimulus for change in Southeast Asia in earlier centuries. With this under-
standing of the nature of ethnicity and of the process of ethnic formation, it
is necessary to rethink views of “ethnic” politics in history. Ethnicity can be
a means of explaining difference, a basis for group action, and a mechanism
contributing to the successful functioning of the mandala/galactic polities in
precolonial Southeast Asia. Fortunes of groups change, and the stories of the
Orang Asli/Suku Terasing and the Orang Laut are useful reminders that some
groups exercise greater agency than others in the formulation of ethnic iden-
tities. By acknowledging both ethnicity’s explanatory value and its dynamic
characteristics, historians should be able to examine this concept with greater
precision and offer a more nuanced view of its role in Southeast Asian pasts.
Introduction 17
Chapter 1
Malayu Antecedents
18
of interaction that became the basis for a common identity. It is impossible
to know whether such an identity was actually formalized or even referred to
by name. Although early travelers and modern scholars have given specific
names to such complexes for convenience or heuristic purposes, one should
not assume that the participants of the complexes themselves perceived an
overarching identity. As discussed in the introduction, specific circumstances
would have determined choices of identity. My decision to refer to this voy-
aging corridor as the “Sea of Malayu” is based on the nature of the relation-
ships and the prominence played by groups who later became identified as
“Malayu.” Linked by sailing ships, a “sea” of communities came to be charac-
terized by the most dominant of the participants. In the first half of the first
millennium CE, communities in the Lower Mekong, which the Chinese called
“Funan,”4 were most likely the dominant partner. Funan’s language and cus-
toms may have then become the norm for the lesser partners in the common
sea. Other traders, like those now called “Arabs,” may have dealt with different
communities and hence called the network by the name of that group. In the
tenth century, for example, Arab geographers referred to the network (which
extended to east Africa) as the “Cham Sea.”5
The evidence points to the Malayu as the major group within this sea
extending from India to Vietnam and the most likely successor to Funan. By
the end of the seventh century, Sriwijaya had arisen in Palembang in south-
east Sumatra as a major polity. It was inhabited by people who wrote stone
inscriptions in the Malayu language but who are not mentioned specifically as
“Malayu” people. When Sriwijaya was succeeded by Malayu, a polity located
in present-day Jambi, it would therefore have been likely that local inhabit-
ants would have been called orang Malayu, or “people of Malayu.” The stone
inscriptions supply convincing evidence that Malayu was one of the major
languages of both Sriwijaya and Malayu. A way of life developed by the orang
Malayu would then have become the basis for the association of the group with
certain cultural features. It is important to reiterate, however, that the name
“Malayu” and what it meant in southeast Sumatra would have undergone
a number of permutations over the centuries.6 What the “ancestors” of the
Malayu may have called themselves is a mystery, and even the name “Malayu”
has never been convincingly explained. In other words, it is only possible here
to speak of the antecedents of those who later came to identify themselves as
“Malayu” in southeast Sumatra, without claiming a direct link between the two.
Malayu Antecedents 19
speakers in Taiwan between 4000 and 3000 BCE. Proto-Austronesian either
developed in Taiwan or in a subsequent move to the northern Philippines
c. 3000 BCE. With the dispersal of these peoples throughout the rest of the
Philippines, proto–Malayo-Polynesian emerged about 2500 BCE. By about
2000 BCE the proto–Malayo-Polynesian language began to break up as migra-
tion resumed to the southern Philippines, Sulawesi, Maluku, and Borneo, with
settlement in western Borneo dated between 1500 and 500 BCE.7
In the proto-Austronesian family tree reconstructed by linguists, a sub-
group called Malayo-Chamic forms part of the Western Malayo–Polynesian
languages. Working from this basis, Graham Thurgood lists two branches of
Malayo-Chamic: one is Malayic languages, from which derived proto-Malayu
and the various Malayu dialects, including Minangkabau; and the other is
proto-Chamic, which gave rise to coastal Cham and Acehnese.8 Linguists
believe that the homeland of Malayo-Chamic was in western Borneo and that
several hundred years BCE there was a move outward through the Tambelan
and Riau islands to the Malay Peninsula. From the Malay Peninsula, one group
crossed over to southeast Sumatra and became the ancestors of the Malayu
speakers, while another group proceeded to the coasts of Vietnam and became
the ancestors of the Cham language speakers.9 Sometime before 1000 CE
a northerly Cham group left central Vietnam and became the Acehnese speak-
ers of northern Sumatra.10 From very early on, therefore, the Acehnese in
northern Sumatra formed a different branch of the Malayo-Chamic subgroup
from the Malayic speakers in the southern part of Sumatra. Resulting from a
back-migration to Sumatra, the Acehnese language contains clear borrow-
ings from interaction with non-Austronesian speakers.11 Contact between the
Acehnese and the Chams may have been maintained through the centuries.12
Early Malayo-Polynesian communities developed in a subtropical coastal
and riverine environment where the economy was based on cereal, tubers,
and domesticated animals. In the process of adapting to specific ecological
niches, their descendants began to embrace differing lifestyles. Some foraged
the rain forests and the seas for products in great demand in the interna-
tional marketplace; others engaged in various forms of irrigated and rain-fed
cultivation of cereals, fruits, and tubers; while still others specialized in the
exploitation of the sago palm.13 Archaeological records for island Southeast
Asia indicate that during these migrations the best coastal sites were occupied
first. Only when or if there were no suitable coasts to settle did migrants move
into the interior. A feature Peter Bellwood terms “founder rank enhancement”
played an important part in this process. Because founders of new settlements
and their descendants were elevated to almost godlike status, there was strong
motivation for members of a junior branch to seek an empty area and estab-
lish a new senior line with priority over resources.14
20 Chapter 1
Less well known is a theory advanced by Wilhelm Solheim over a num-
ber of years. This ambitious conception incorporates the story of the Austro-
nesian speakers into a wider network of “Nusantao” communities. Instead
of positing a monodirectional Austronesian movement, Solheim proposes a
multidirectional flow from the different “lobes” that formed the Nusantao net-
work. He believes that the Nusantao “homeland” (calculated simply in terms
of the earliest dates known for the existence of a group) is in the Early Central
Lobe in eastern coastal Vietnam and dates it to c. 8000 BCE, much earlier than
Bellwood’s reconstruction for the ancestors of the Austronesian speakers. He
suggests that in c. 5000 BCE the people in the Late Central Lobe involved in
this network began moving by water and developed a trade communication
network. It was these maritime trading people who developed Austronesian
as a lingua franca from pre- and proto-Austronesian to facilitate communica-
tion among the communities forming this network. As the Nusantao network
expanded out of Taiwan, it was Malayo-Polynesian languages rather than
Austronesian that developed with it. Solheim emphasizes that the expansion
of Malayo-Polynesian was not the result of migrations but of the interaction
occurring within the network. He also emphasizes the important role of mar-
itime people in the dispersal of the Nusantao community.15
In discussing these two major theories regarding the antecedents of the
Malayu, it is important to stress that “Austronesian” and “Nusantao” are not
synonymous. The former is linguistic, the latter cultural, and neither refers to
a genetic group. Solheim, however, uses a gene marker identified among the
Southeast Asians but not found in China as an argument for rejecting the view
that the origin of the Austronesian speakers is in southern China. He believes
that ancestors of the Southeast Asians had been living in the region since 5500
BP, after the retreat of flood waters following the end of the Ice Age some eight
thousand years ago. Solheim also disagrees with linguists regarding the route
taken by the Austronesian speakers from southern China to Taiwan, the Phil-
ippines, and then down to Southeast Asia and out into the Pacific. Instead,
he suggests that a trade language in the form of Austronesian developed in
coastal south China, northern Vietnam, Taiwan, and northeast Luzon, and
evolved through ongoing contact among the Nusantao communities. The
notion of interacting communities moving in multiple directions allows for
local variations and adaptations to specific geographic conditions.16
Although Solheim’s dates are generally regarded as being too early, the
appeal of his model is the idea that the spread of a culture, including a lingua
franca, evolved as a by-product of the trade and communications network
of a large number of different communities in a widely dispersed area. In
the historical period the Malayu language and culture were developed and
sustained in very much the same fashion. Linguistic reconstruction of the
Malayu Antecedents 21
migration of the Austronesian speakers does not emphasize the trade aspect,
but for Solheim trade was the major feature and basis for the creation of this
“Nusantao maritime trading and communication network.” While Bellwood
explained the spread of the Austronesian migration by the phenomenon of
rank enhancement, Solheim points to the long-standing existence of many
maritime populations who became part of this extensive trade network.
Nusantao culture was not associated with a single ethnic group, but with a
style of life and a trade language comprehensible throughout an interactive
region. This particular aspect of Solheim’s model is helpful in understanding
the formation of an early network of communities I call the “Sea of Malayu.”
22 Chapter 1
at the “beginning” and “end” of the seasonal monsoon winds. Between Novem-
ber and February the northeast monsoon winds brought ships from East
Asia, and between June and August traders from India, the Middle East, and
Europe rode the southwest monsoon winds to the straits and to points further
east. In between these two dominant patterns, the winds moved in a clock-
wise direction, enabling traders from the various parts of Southeast Asia to
reach the major entrepots located in or near the Straits of Melaka. Because
the straits provided protection from the force of the monsoon winds, ports
on both shores of the straits have historically competed for the status as the
leading entrepot in the region.
Evidence for the vitality of these early exchanges is provided by recent
research on the Indo-Pacific bead trade, which has demonstrated that South-
east Asia and India were already important trade partners prior to the Com-
mon Era, often regarded as the beginning of Indianization in Southeast Asia.
High-quality Indian carnelian and agate beads dated to the last centuries BCE
have been found in central Thailand in sites such as Ban Don Tha Phet, in
peninsular Thailand at Khao Sam Kaeo, in coastal Vietnamese sites of the Sa
Huynh culture, and in the Tabon caves on Palawan in the Philippines. Bérénice
Bellina attributes beads of high quality workmanship and distinctive styles to
Indian artisans fulfilling orders from Southeast Asian elite. By contrast, beads
dating from the early centuries of the first millennium CE are of much lesser
quality and have been traced to Southeast Asian production centers. These
were probably intended for the lower levels of society or for trade with inte-
rior groups.20
The sophistication, wealth, and self-confidence that Southeast Asian elites
shared is apparent in discoveries of similar ornaments and prestige goods,
such as Dong Son drums, objects found at Sa Huynh, and bronze knobbed
ware.21 These findings suggest a depth of a common culture and a trade net-
work that persisted into the second millennium CE. Archaeologists date the
Ban Don Tha Phet site to the end of the third or the second century BCE. In
addition to beads, a significant find was bicephalous ear ornaments made of
nephrite (a variety of jade). Such jade ornaments are associated with the Sa
Huynh sites in central Vietnam, a cultural area where the Cham civilization
later emerged.22 It therefore appears likely that in the first millennium BCE
communities between central Vietnam and at the head of the Gulf of Siam
formed part of an exchange network extending from India to China through
the transpeninsular routes. At this site were found bronze ritual vessels and a
carved carnelian lion, both of which have symbolic functions in Indian Bud-
dhism, as well as glass beads and semiprecious stone beads. These finds indi-
cate that there was early Buddhist activity in Thailand and perhaps elsewhere
in Southeast Asia before the Common Era.23
24 Chapter 1
Kuala Selinsing in Perak in the northern Malay Peninsula was another
significant prehistoric site. It is thought to have been occupied from at least
the second century BCE or even earlier, but its contact with India may have
come later. Despite the long occupation of this site, Kuala Selinsing was not a
major port but, as Leong Sau Heng puts it, “a feeder point,” one of a number
of “small local supply centres serving the entrepots and important regional
collecting centres.” The recovery of glass and stone beads, some half-finished,
led Leong to conclude that there was a local bead-making industry, an observa-
tion substantiated by Peter Francis through glass analysis. Evidence of Indian
influence is limited to a small carnelian seal inscribed with a south Indian
script and a gold ring with an Indianized motif.24
Other early sites were incorporated into the international and regional
trade network of the Sea of Malayu, notably Khao Sam Keo (beginning of
the fourth century CE) and Khuan Luk Pat (“Hill of Beads,” c. third to sixth
century–seventh century CE), located in Khlong Thom in Krabi province, the
terminus of a transpeninsular route. The latter was replaced by Kuala Selinsing
as the main producer of beads perhaps from the sixth to the tenth centuries
CE.25 In a recent study, David Bulbeck has also emphasized the importance
of the Andaman Islands in the network of seafaring populations that helped
open the sea lanes for trade between India and Southeast Asia. He notes that
Andamese traditional decorations focus on “Sa Huynh Kalanay” geometric
decorations that show strong similarities with the pottery designs at Kuala
Selinsing.26
While Chinese sources describe Indianizing kingdoms in Southeast Asia
in the early centuries CE, archaeological studies have yet to yield evidence
for such settlements predating the fifth century. The absence of archaeologi-
cal records for pre–fifth-century settlements accords with Monica Smith’s
contention that substantive Indian contacts with Southeast Asia only date
from the rise of the Gupta dynasty in India in the fourth century CE.27 One
is therefore faced with a curious situation in which Chinese records describe
Indianizing settlements in the region, while Indian documents merely men-
tion names without any geographic or historical information. Furthermore,
archaeological evidence is limited to Chinese ceramics, which can only offer
limited insights into the local communities.
Early Indian works provide only a generalized reference to Southeast
Asia. In the Buddhist Jataka tales originating before the Common Era, the
term Suvannabhumi (“the Gold Country”) is an epithet for the lands east of
the Bay of Bengal, meaning Southeast Asia. The epic Ramayana, whose com-
position would have begun before the Common Era, mentions Suvarnadvipa
(“the Gold Islands”) to refer to Southeast Asia and later specifically to Suma-
tra. Of later provenance is the Tamil narrative poem Pattinapalai, composed
Malayu Antecedents 25
in the early centuries CE but not later than the beginning of the third century.
It describes the trade between southern India and Kalagam, usually identified
with Kedah. The Mahaniddesa, believed to contain information from the sec-
ond and third centuries, mentions Yavadipa, or the island of Java.28
At the beginning of the Common Era, southern India became a major
focus of Indian–Southeast Asian trade. Tamil culture was flourishing, Brah-
manic Hinduism was displacing Buddhism, new agricultural lands were
opened, and urban settlements were increasing. All of these developments
provided the basis for a lively and lucrative exchange with Southeast Asia in
the second and third centuries from the southern Indian ports of Arikamedu,
Kayal, and Kamara. Both Mantai in Sri Lanka and Arikamedu in southern
India were the most likely sources of Roman and Persian artifacts from the
subcontinent that moved across the Bay of Bengal, across the transisthmian/
transpeninsular route, to Oc Eo in the Lower Mekong.29
A Greek text titled The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea is a compilation of
knowledge available in the second half of the first century CE. It refers to ships
sailing from the southeast coast of India to “Chryse,” which is believed to be
Southeast Asia or perhaps even the Malay Peninsula.30 Also mentioned are
land routes of the silk trade, from which Wolters inferred that seaborne com-
merce between India and Southeast Asia at the time was very limited. Chinese
sources indicate that sometime between the third and fifth centuries CE the
sea route between India and China came to be used more frequently. In 413
the Chinese pilgrim Faxian returned all the way from Sri Lanka to China by
sea, and a few years later Gunavarman, a Kashmiri prince, went to China via
the same route. Under the Song dynasty in China (960–1279), Chinese over-
seas trading activity grew rapidly, particularly to Southeast Asia. The increas-
ing popularity of this all-sea route had important repercussions for some of
the early polities along the Straits of Melaka. Chinese sources mention the
existence of a western Indonesian polity called Ko-ying or Chia-ying in the
first half of the third century CE. Their source for this information came from
an area in the southern Mekong known to the Chinese as “Funan.”31
Funan, perhaps a Chinese rendering of the local term bnam/phnom
(mountain), consisted of a number of communities with a shared culture,
whose links to one another varied in nature and intensity at different times.32
An earlier suggestion that the inhabitants were Austronesian speakers was
apparently based on circumstantial evidence. It could be argued that the port
of Oc Eo, as an international port on a well-established international trade
route, would have been the temporary home of Austronesian speakers involved
in this trade. Chinese descriptions indicate that there was some Austronesian
presence in Funan and along the coast to the south,33 and an Austronesian
language (Malayu?) could have been a trade lingua franca. Based on recent
26 Chapter 1
archaeological evidence found at Angkor Borei, however, a far more likely
possibility is that most of the people were Mon-Khmer speakers. At its height,
Funan was said to have extended its influence to settlements on the Isthmus
of Kra and the Malay Peninsula.
As active participants in the Sea of Malayu, these areas would have been
part of a family of communities that exchanged goods and ideas and even
shared ambitions. It is no surprise that a powerful ruler of Funan extended his
political influence westward as far as the northern Malay Peninsula, or that an
ambitious Tambralinga ruler intervened in the politics of Angkor (see below).
These are only two striking examples recorded in history, but they would have
been commonplace and part of family politics in the Sea of Malayu. The well-
developed trade network contributed to an increasing sense of interlinked
political and cultural relationships among the communities. The art historian
Stanley O’Connor describes it as a feeling of a “neighborhood.” “How else
would one explain,” he asks, “the almost parallel development of the monu-
mental Visnu images wearing the long robe in three such widely separated
locations as Dong Si Mahapot, in Prachinburi, at the head of the gulf in east-
ern Thailand, the Mekong delta sites explored by Louis Malleret, and the pen-
insula?” O’Connor is convinced of a “family resemblance” in the architectural
styles and other features used in the service of Buddhism or Hinduism.34
These early sources thus suggest that there was increasing contact between
India, Southeast Asia, and China by the middle of the first millennium BCE.
The land route was favored until the third century CE, when more travelers
began using the sea route. In this early evidence, perhaps of greatest inter-
est to historians is the role of Buddhism in tracing the early trade contacts
between these three regions. The impact of Buddhism in long-distance mari-
time trade in the first millennium CE has long been intimated through stories
from the Mahavamsa and the Sasanavamsappadipika, describing Emperor
Asoka’s decision to send Buddhist missionaries to Suvannabhumi.35 Sona and
Uttara were two of the missionaries sent to Suvannabhumi soon after the
Third Buddhist Council in mid–third century BCE. Although there has been
a tendency to view the two as legendary figures, recent studies on the link
between Buddhism and international trade demonstrate that such a mission
may have indeed occurred.
In the early years of the Common Era, Buddhism shifted its focus from
being a pioneer in agricultural expansion to a promoter of commerce. Bud-
dhist emphasis on accumulation of wealth and its approval of interest earned
on investments made it a favored religion among traders. Links between
traders and Buddhist monasteries grew stronger, and Buddhist symbols
were widely used on pottery, terra-cotta seals, and a variety of other objects.
Monastic establishments in India became economic centers and promoted a
Malayu Antecedents 27
Buddhist trade diaspora that extended to Southeast Asia. Different forms of
Buddhism continued to play a significant role in structuring Southeast Asian
beliefs, statecraft, and trade networks well into the early modern period and
beyond. In the first millennium CE, Buddhism provided an alternative to the
Hindu/Brahmanic model and helped to reinforce trading networks in the
region.36 In a recent study, Tansen Sen documents the commercial role of Bud-
dhist monasteries in China as well as India in funding maritime mercantile
enterprises, including overseas trading ventures. Monks provided both physi-
cal and spiritual care for the merchants, in return for which the merchants
assisted monks in their travels, brought Buddhist items for their patrons, and
financially contributed to the maintenance of Buddhist institutions.37
The Lower Mekong sites provide further evidence of the link between
Buddhism and trade. Buddha images dating between the third and fifth cen-
turies CE were found in Funan and the Cham areas of southern Vietnam. In
Champa, particularly at Tra Kieu, a major Cham center in central Vietnam,
clay Buddhist votive tablets date from the seventh century. John Guy argues
that because Southeast Asian rulers regarded themselves as part of a religious
world that naturally extended to India, the trade in Buddha imagery would
have been as lively as that in spices, aromatic woods, and other desired prod-
ucts from Southeast Asia.38 In offering new religious ideas as well as artifacts,
Buddhism helped strengthen the common cultural bond among communi-
ties already linked by trade.
From the fifth century CE, a rival Vaisnavite trade network developed.
The popularity of both a devotional (bhakti) sect of Vaisnavism and Bud-
dhism would explain why inscriptions and statuary found in pre-Angkorian
sites, in Funan, the Malay Peninsula, and Sumatra are overwhelmingly Vais-
navite or Buddhist. Although Siva lingas are found at these Vaisnavite devo-
tional sites, Pierre-Yves Manguin believes that Siva was regarded as a lesser
divinity. Vaisnavite influence may have accompanied traders from Sogdania
and Bactria in central Asia who settled in Dunsun, somewhere on the Isthmus
of Kra, in the third century CE. Artistic styles and funerary practices dated to
the fifth and seventh centuries reflect the ongoing impact of the Iranian world
on the region.39
Although it is possible to demonstrate contact between India and South-
east Asia as early as the beginning of the first millennium BCE, Smith believes
this was sporadic and initiated by Southeast Asians themselves with their
superior sailing technology. The presence of iron, beads, and a black polish
ceramic known as Rouletted Ware has been cited by many scholars as evidence
of large-scale trade between India and Southeast Asia, but Smith is more cau-
tious. She cites the possibility of local manufacture of iron and beads, and
the possibility of Rouletted Ware being traded much later than the date of
28 Chapter 1
manufacture. There was no compelling reason, she argues, for sustained trad-
ing contact because there was little to be gained. Prior to the fourth century
CE, India had little to offer Southeast Asia economically or politically, and
Southeast Asia’s few requirements could be met in the region itself.
There was, however, a qualitative change in the relationship between the
two areas beginning in the fourth century CE, which is attributed to the rise
and the expansion of the Gupta dynasty in the central Gangetic valley. Dur-
ing the consolidation of power, the Guptas created a political structure and
administrative practices that became a model for other polities in the region.
Among Gupta practices was the use of copper plate to maintain land records
and temple donations, a shift from Buddhism to pre-Buddhist Vedic tradition,
and the revival of Sanskrit as the main language of inscriptions, land grants,
seals, and coins. It is about this time that one begins to find in Southeast
Asia evidence of borrowing of Gupta models in iconography, language, and
religion, which are grafted onto indigenous ideas. Only then, Smith suggests,
should one speak of “Indianization” to describe the relationship between
India and Southeast Asia.40
In assessing the evidence thus far presented, certain ideas have been
advanced. First of all, the prevailing Bellwood-Blust synthesis argues that
the general movement of Austronesian speakers, the ancestors of the Malayu
speakers, was southward from Taiwan through the Philippines, down the
Makassar Straits, then to the west as far as central Vietnam and to the east
through eastern Indonesia and out into the Pacific. Of those that went west-
ward from the Makassar Straits, one group settled in west Borneo and became
the ancestors of a subgroup of Malayo-Polynesian called by linguists Malayo-
Chamic. Sometime in the last few hundred years BCE or at the turn of the
Common Era, there was an emigration of Malayo-Chamic speakers out of
Borneo to the coastal areas of the Malay Peninsula. From here one group went
to east coast Sumatra and became the ancestors of the Malayu speakers, while
another sailed to coastal central Vietnam to form the Chamic speakers. Sol-
heim, on the other hand, attributes the existence of people speaking related
languages and sharing common cultures not to migration but to long social
and economic interaction within a network of trade-linked communities,
which he terms “Nusantao.”
A second important idea is that although the “Nusantao”/Malayo-Poly-
nesian speakers settled principally in insular Southeast Asia because of their
maritime orientation, early Indian trade contact with Southeast Asia appears
to have been stronger on the mainland. This suggests that the early Buddhist-
and Vaisnavite-inspired contact, which was later strengthened by the growing
Malayu Antecedents 29
trade relations with the increasingly powerful polities in the subcontinent
of India, probably used one of a number of transpeninsular/transisthmian
routes across mainland Southeast Asia.
30 Chapter 1
next. An early sea route went from the east coast of India along the shores
of the Bay of Bengal, down present-day peninsular Burma and Thailand, or
the isthmian region, and then southward to the northern part of the Malay
Peninsula. From the Kra Isthmian and northern Malay Peninsular ports, ships
could continue through the Straits of Melaka to the Gulf of Siam, or they
could unload their goods and have them transshipped via overland routes.
Wolters believes that the Straits of Melaka were not normally used by ships
coming from the west in the first and second centuries CE.42
Use of the transpeninsular routes increased in times of political turmoil
in the straits. The shortest was just sixty-five kilometers at the Isthmus of Kra,
but there were others between the Isthmus of Kra and Kedah that could be
crossed with little difficulty. One was from Kedah to Songkhla, and another
from Trang split into three different branches leading to Phattalung, Nakhon
Si Thammarat, and Bandon on the Gulf of Siam. The route from Takuapa on
the west coast led across the isthmus to Chaiya, but because of political cir-
cumstances this route may have been abandoned in the mid-eleventh century
for one further south in Kedah.43 At various times the competing powers in
the region used different routes across the Isthmus of Kra and the Malay Pen-
insula. Paul Wheatley has identified eleven routes stretching from the Isthmus
of Kra to the southern end of the Malay Peninsula.44
Some of the routes were more difficult than others and involved a vari-
ety of transport: boats, rafts, carts, pack elephants, horses, and bullocks.
Depending on the season and the route used, crossing the isthmus or the
peninsula could take anywhere from a week to about a month, though indi-
viduals without much baggage or cargo could make the journey even faster.
Goods shipped using the Martaban/Moulmein route went by Kokarit, then by
caravan to the Three Pagodas Pass and the Kwai River. The goods were then
reloaded onto boats or rafts, which carried them to ports on the Gulf of Siam.
The Tavoy route along the Kwai River to Kanchanaburi and on to Ayutthaya
was shorter but far more difficult. Because traders had to cross a series of
steep mountains and deep valleys before arriving at the Kwai River, goods
were transported by elephants or porters. Through the centuries, however,
the problems of transport through some formidable landscapes were gradu-
ally overcome. On these routes were found post guards, rest houses, and small
temples dedicated to deities. Every means of transport, from porters to pack
animals and bullock carts, could be rented, and foreign traders resident in the
terminal ports served as interpreters and provided information on business,
types of transport, the roads, lodging, and even alternative routes in times of
war.45 It would have been to the benefit of the local authorities on both ends
of the route to maintain the security of these passages to assure the flow of
trade goods to their lands. Evidence from the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Yijing
Malayu Antecedents 31
indicates that Sriwijaya may have become involved in the affairs of Kedah
toward the end of the seventh century, at the time of Sriwijayan expansion.
The eighth century Ligor inscription at Nakhon Si Thammarat confirms this
involvement.46 Both Kedah and Ligor were termini of transpeninsular routes
and were obviously still of sufficient importance to warrant the attention of
the rising Sriwijayan power.
The alternative to the land routes was the all-sea route, which in earlier
centuries also had its problems. Sailing the eight hundred kilometers through
the Straits of Melaka took about a month, and fickle wind conditions would
often cause delays. But the major deterrent to using this route was not so
much the length of the journey as the dangers to seaborne commerce. The
Orang Laut, or sea people, inhabiting the islands and coasts at the southern
entrance to the straits were notorious for preying on passing ships. Even if a
ship survived such attacks, it still had to navigate the treacherous shoals, sand-
banks, and submerged islands in the waters to the south of Singapore. For
safety and convenience, traders, diplomats, and other officials in earlier cen-
turies therefore preferred to use the land route. Even during the later period
when the all-sea route was generally favored, any political upheaval in the
Straits of Melaka with the resulting increase in piratical activities forced trad-
ers to use the transpeninsular routes.
In the first millennium CE the typical trader sailed between the Red Sea
and China in one long continuous voyage. From the turn of the millennium,
however, there was a change to less costly, shorter trips dividing the long tra-
jectory into segments. According to K. N. Chaudhuri, the first segment was
from the Red Sea and Persian Gulf to Gujarat and the Malabar coast, the sec-
ond was from the Indian coastal provinces to the Indonesian archipelago, and
the third from Southeast Asia to China. This segmentation was accompanied
by the rise of “great urban emporia” providing neutral ports that provided
merchants with all necessary facilities.47 Leong confirms that most of the
sites in the Malay Peninsula between 1000 BCE and 1000 CE were not major
emporia but small trading settlements serving as collecting centers for special
local products. Notable are the prehistoric sites on the Selangor coast and
in Terengganu located near areas rich in alluvial tin or gold, or along rivers
leading to such areas. In addition to providing local produce, these sites had
the added advantage of being in natural harbors with access to provisions for
revictualing trading ships. There were a few that operated as entrepots, but
most served as redistribution centers for regional trade in the Southeast Asian
area.48
Ships arriving on the Isthmus of Kra or the Malay Peninsula from the
west could unload their goods and reload a new cargo at the same dock, thus
making the entire journey across the Bay of Bengal and back in less than
32 Chapter 1
six months.49 It was in the period of the segmenting of the trade routes that
the eastern termini on the transpeninsular routes, particularly those on the
western shores of the Gulf of Siam, grew prosperous. They profited from
their ideal position as the midpoint of the segmented east-west trade, fac-
ing directly opposite the major entrepots in the Lower Mekong and in cen-
tral Vietnam. While the western termini of the transpeninsular routes may
not have developed into major entrepots, as Leong argues, they proved to be
ideal shelters from the heavy monsoon rains in the Bay of Bengal between
May and October. Ships could anchor in a series of good natural harbors
at Martaban, Ye, Tawai (Tavoy), Mergui/Tenasserim, Kraburi, and Phang
Nga/Phuket. These ports provided storage facilities and were well organized
for the unloading and loading of goods, while the surrounding countryside
offered wood, good drinking water, meat, fruit, and rice to provision the ships
for their onward journeys. Teak was also plentiful for ships in need of repair.
Another attraction was the tin, silver, lead, rubies, sapphires, benzoin, and lac
that were available in the Tenasserim–Isthmus of Kra area. The Takola and
Ligor inscriptions written in Tamil indicate that the Tamil commercial guilds
were certainly using this transpeninsular crossing regularly, perhaps as part of
the trade route to Oc Eo.50
Though the frequency and importance of the overland routes for inter-
national trade are in dispute, there is nevertheless a consensus that the routes
continued to be used. The advances in shipping technology would have most
definitely encouraged a greater use of the sea route, but others may have pre-
ferred to continue using the passage across land for other reasons. In addition
to those already advanced, another was to avoid the exactions of powerful
indigenous and foreign port polities on the shores of the straits. The trans-
peninsular routes would have also had their economic attractions. If Manguin
is correct in assuming that the transpeninsular route was used principally for
regional trade, then the east coast termini on the Gulf of Siam would have
played a role as redistributing centers to areas in mainland Southeast Asia.
A number of Southeast Asian communities came to participate in an eco-
nomic network extending from northern Sumatra, the Isthmus of Kra, and
the northern Malay Peninsula to the Gulf of Siam, the Lower Mekong, and
central Vietnam.
Malayu Antecedents 33
perhaps a Mon name, meaning “Five Cities,” which is described as a depen-
dent of Funan with some five hundred families from India. The settlement
had two fo-tu (interpreted as either “stupa” or “Buddhist”), and a thousand
Indian Brahmans, who spent their days studying the sacred canon and prac-
ticing piety. The people, so the texts report, offered their daughters to these
Brahmans, who therefore remained in the polity. The location of Dunsun is
disputed, but Wheatley is convinced that it was somewhere on the Gulf of
Siam and that it extended across the breadth of the isthmian tract. The evi-
dence he cites is a Chinese description of the polity being situated at an “ocean
stepping-stone,” where traders come from east and west. Wheatley interprets
the Chinese phrase as a reference to a place where one crosses from one sea to
another, an apt description of a transisthmian/transpeninsular route linking
the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea.51 Michel Jacq-Hergoualc’h believes
that Dunsun was a short-lived polity serving as a regional transit center for a
trading network between India and civilizations in Cambodia and Vietnam.52
The next important polity mentioned in Chinese sources is Panpan,
which existed at the end of the fourth century CE and sent an embassy to
China in the early fifth century. Various Chinese sources locate Panpan south-
west of Lin-yi (in central Vietnam) on a bay with “To-ho-lo” adjoining it
to the north and “Lang-ya-hsiu” to the south. To-ho-lo has been identified
as Dvaravati and Lang-ya-hsiu as Langkasuka, thus placing Panpan on the
Isthmus of Kra in the Bay of Bandon. According to the Tang dynastic history,
“the people all learn the brahmanical writings and greatly reverence the law
of the Buddha.” A later fuller account reflects the coexistence of these two
religions in Panpan, where Buddhist monks and nuns study the canon in ten
monasteries and many Brahmans with royal favor are “in search of wealth.”
The people live mostly by the water and within wooden palisades. Another
Chinese source mentions that a Brahman called Kaundinya settled in Panpan
(at the end of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century) before going
to Funan to become its ruler.53 Evidence thus points to the continuance of an
earlier link between the Lower Mekong delta area with the Isthmus of Kra and
the Malay Peninsula.
Panpan’s northern boundaries could have reached as far as Chumphon
on the Gulf of Siam, and its southern boundaries to perhaps the vicinity of
Songkhla, thus incorporating the region of Sathing Phra and Phatthalung.
But Panpan’s control was only on the east coast and did not extend to the west
coast of the Isthmus of Kra. Buddhist works linked to the art of Dvaravati
of the seventh and eighth centuries have been found along with a number
of Vaisnavite and Saivite remains from the fifth to the eighth centuries. This
supports Chinese accounts of the coexistence of Buddhism and Hinduism,
a common occurrence in Indianizing communities in Southeast Asia. The
34 Chapter 1
archaeological finds, according to Jacq-Hergoualc’h, are “an unquestionable
proof of the economic flowering of the region in this early period through
the medium of international trade,” though remains of a purely commercial
nature have not been found. All evidence points to Panpan as the dominant
polity in the isthmian region from the fifth to the eighth centuries CE and
perhaps even longer.54
To the south of Panpan was a polity termed Lang-ya-hsiu (Langyaxiu), a
name generally believed to be a Chinese rendering of the long-lived polity of
Langkasuka. It was founded in the early second century CE, and in the sixth
century it sent four embassies to China. It was closely linked first with Funan
and then with Sriwijaya and was targeted by the Cholas in their general raid
on Sriwijayan territories in 1024–5. From the seventh to the thirteenth cen-
tury, it was a port of call for Chinese Buddhist pilgrims on the maritime route
to India. Little is known of its subsequent history, and it is not mentioned by
the Portuguese in the sixteenth century. Despite this long history, however,
scholars have long debated its exact location. Chinese mariner charts and
Arab sailing directions place Langkasuka in the vicinity of Patani. Most now
agree with this location, with the center placed some fifteen kilometers to the
south at Yarang, where major archaeological remains have been found.
Langkasuka is described in Chinese sources as an Indianized polity with
a king, officials, royal bodyguards, a royal pavilion, and a main settlement
encircled by walls with double gates and towers. Whenever the king left his
residence, he traveled by elephant shaded by a white parasol and accompanied
by banners, fly whisks, flags, and drums. Its principal products were eagle-
wood (Aquilaria malaccensis), also known as gaharuwood or aloeswood, and
Barus camphor (Dryobalanops aromatica), found in the east but not the west
coast of the Malay Peninsula. It may have been Langkasuka’s ability to assure
the supply of these forest aromatics to the world market that guaranteed its
extraordinary staying power in the region.55
Langkasuka was the center of the production of votive clay tablets linked
to Mahayana Buddhist missionary activity perhaps at the beginning of the
sixth century. Only a few sculptures have been found, mainly of buddhas and
bodhisattvas, but two lingas and a Nandi associated with the Hindu god Siva
have been among the artifacts. As in many other sites in the Sea of Malayu,
Buddhism and Brahmanism/Hinduism coexisted. Archaeological and docu-
mentary evidence supports the view that Langkasuka was a prosperous polity
in the sixth century, though little is yet known of its later history.56
Chitu, mentioned for the first time during the Chinese Sui dynasty
(581–618 CE), is generally believed to have been located in upriver Kelan-
tan. As with Panpan and Langkasuka, Chitu was responsive to Funan and
practiced both Buddhism and Brahmanism. According to a Chinese report,
Malayu Antecedents 35
“it is the custom to worship the Buddha but greater respect is paid to the
Brahmans.” Chitu must have been sufficiently important to the Chinese to
warrant a visit in 607 by a special mission sent by the emperor to “open up
communications with distant lands.” When the mission arrived, presum-
ably at the mouth of the Kelantan River, the king of Chitu sent a Brahman at
the head of “thirty ocean-going junks” to greet the visitors. This reference to
seaworthy ships may indicate Chitu’s involvement in international maritime
trade and thus account for its reputation in the Chinese court. It offered gold
and Barus camphor as tribute to the Chinese emperor. As a site in upriver
Kelantan, Chitu would have had access to the gold-bearing areas in the inte-
rior of Pahang. It is nevertheless puzzling that no archaeological remains have
been found in the interior of the Kelantan River.57
Tambralinga, which extended from the bend of the Bay of Bandon south-
ward to Nakhon Si Thammarat, was another link in the Sea of Malayu. The
Ligor Inscription dated 775 CE is evidence of Sriwijayan influence in Tam-
bralinga, but Angkor later became a major force in the polity. In the beginning
of the eleventh century one of Tambralinga’s rulers came to the throne of
Angkor as Jayaviravarman (1002–6). Although Tambralinga’s direct involve-
ment in Angkorian politics was short-lived, it continued to retain strong lin-
guistic and cultural links with that kingdom. Tambralinga also maintained
ties with Sri Lanka throughout the thirteenth century.58
Sathing Phra, located on the east coast between Songkhla and Nakhon Si
Thammarat, was one of the oldest settlements in the Sea of Malayu. Archaeo-
logical evidence indicates that it had been involved in international trade since
the second century and had moats and long-distance canals like those associ-
ated with Angkor Borei and Oc Eo in the Lower Mekong. The completion of
two canals linking the east to the west coasts in the sixth century attracted
more international trade and thus the attention of competitors. Sometime
between the mid-ninth and the late thirteenth centuries, it came to acknowl-
edge “Indonesian” (presumably Sriwijayan) dominance.59 The wealth gener-
ated from external trade, and not rice surplus, was the engine for the growth
of Sathing Phra. Using a variety of measures, Jane Allen argues that no flood
plains for wet rice agriculture were possible around Sathing Phra until about
1250–1300 CE. Most or all of the sites before this time were located on beach
ridge sand, and the tanks found on the sites were not for agricultural use
but to supply the needs of the urban communities. The waterways, initially
believed to have been built as irrigation channels, are now thought to have
served principally as transshipment routes linking the forested interior and
the west coast with the major trade centers on the east coast. The dominance
of tradewares among the inventories of artifacts in Sathing Phra strengthens
the view of trade as being the key to the emergence and prosperity of that
36 Chapter 1
polity.60 Sathing Phra resembled a number of other settlements within the Sea
of Malayu and was very likely part of the extensive international trade system
linking it with Angkor Borei and Oc Eo.
On the west coast of the Isthmus of Kra and northern Malay Peninsula,
the most prominent site is in South Kedah, known to the Chinese in the sev-
enth and eighth centuries as “Jiecha.” It appears in Yijing’s account of the late
seventh century, where it is portrayed as a frequent stopover for ships coming
from Palembang to await the northeast monsoon to cross the Bay of Ben-
gal. Yet, like Langkasuka, Jiecha is not mentioned in the Tang official dynasty
records. This curious omission does not detract from the value of the site
as an ideal midway point for traders and pilgrims awaiting favorable mon-
soon winds to take them to their ultimate destinations in China or India and
beyond. Scholars believe that references in Tamil to Kadaram or Kidaram,
and in Sanskrit to Kataha, refer to South Kedah. Although some also suggest
that the “Kalah” of Arabic sources is Kedah, Wheatley rejects this and prefers
a site somewhere along the Tenasserim coast.61 In examining the various Arab
accounts of Kalah, Alastair Lamb identifies three common features. First of
all, it is located at a place where ships docked to await the shift of monsoon
winds between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. Second, it has
access to products of the Malay Peninsula, especially tin, as well as wares from
both east and west. Third, there is no agreement whether the name refers to
a town, an island, a kingdom, or a region. Since these features could apply
equally well to a number of other sites on the west coast, Lamb concludes that
Kalah did not refer to any specific settlement but to a number of settlements
at different times in the past that served the same function.62 Through an
examination of archaeological, literary, and historical sources, Jane Allen has
provided a useful summary of the various names used for the Kedah coast at
different periods: Chia-cha or Chieh-ch’a and Kolo in the seventh century;
Kataha between the eight and eleventh centuries; Kalah between the ninth
and fourteenth centuries, and Kadaram in the eleventh century.63
The area of South Kedah meets all the requirements listed by Lamb,
including a shifting center. According to Allen’s geomorphological evidence,
the coastal plain associated with the area only began to form from about
1200 CE. Of the eighty-seven early historical sites Allen listed in south cen-
tral Kedah in 1988, all were located beside rivers or near the coast and hence
ideally placed for trade. The centers at Kampung Sungai Mas and Pengkalan
Bujang both became landlocked early in their occupation and depended upon
river access to reach the coast. As in Sathing Phra, the dominance of trade-
wares found in the area of South Kedah suggests that commerce rather than
rice agriculture was the basis for the emergence of these centers. As in Sathing
Phra, it was the overly extensive cultivation of the hills for dry-land cereals
Malayu Antecedents 37
that later led to progradation and the formation of the coastal plains in South
Kedah. The shifting rivers and coastlines on both the east and west coasts of
the Isthmus of Kra and Malay Peninsula forced the major centers to relocate
at various times in their history. This would account for the various names
and locations of the center of a particular polity in different centuries.64
Swidden agriculture was the common form of cultivation in South
Kedah, as is shown by soil analysis that reveals high amounts of wood car-
bon from the burning of the land preceding swidden planting. The foothills
around Gunung (Mt.) Jerai spreading southward would have been the most
favorable areas for agriculture. Scholars have arrived at a population figure of
less than twenty thousand in South Kedah, based on the amount of land that
would have come under cultivation, the length of time fields are left fallow,
the yield per hectare, average rice consumption for an individual, and adjust-
ment to population density in non-sawah cultivation. The figure of twenty
thousand compares favorably with the famous settlement of Melaka, which
may have had a population of about twenty-five thousand in the fifteenth
century. Relatively low population density is one of the characteristics that
distinguish early Southeast Asian coastal exchange-based polities from inte-
rior agriculture-based ones.65
The South Kedah sites may have been settled as early as the fifth century
CE. The well-known inscription attributed to a sea captain named Buddha-
gupta from Raktamrttika (“Land of the Red Earth”),66 as well as the inscrip-
tions found at Kampung Sungai Mas, Bukit Meriam, and Cherok Tokun, all
date from the fifth century.67 Ports in South Kedah have produced large num-
bers of artifacts, suggesting that they would have been thriving ports. In the
sheltered Merbok estuary the port of Pengkalan Bujang contained more than
ten thousand potsherds of Chinese trade ceramics from the southern Song
and the Yuan periods. Also present was Middle Eastern glassware, including
hundreds of small bottles and large quantities of scrap glass. The scrap glass
was imported specifically for the local bead industry. This site, as well as others
in South Kedah, was a major redistribution center for Southeast Asian pot-
tery, beads, forest products, and minerals. The assembly points for such local
products were at the confluences of rivers and along the coast, oftentimes in
proximity to tin mines. Kuala Selinsing was one of the major collecting centers
for South Kedah.68 Both Sungai Mas and Pengkalan Bujang were located on
the coast until the eleventh century; thereafter they relied on rivers to reach
the sea. Geomorphological data suggest that dry-land farming increased con-
siderably at this time, most likely to meet the demands of a rapidly increasing
urban population engaged in international maritime trade.69
A study of the architecture, inscriptions, and statuary found in the vari-
ous sites in South Kedah has convinced Jacq-Hergoualc’h that between the
38 Chapter 1
fifth and eighth centuries Jiecha was not comparable to Panpan or Langka-
suka. The rough quality of the manufacture of the inscriptions and the fact
that the craftsmen had no knowledge of the language being reproduced argue
for a local production. Jiecha would have been no more than a chiefdom
that granted foreign merchants the right to erect temples and worship their
religious figures while in port. Archaeological remains indicate the presence
of Buddhist communities involved in international trade,70 which confirms
findings by Himanshu Ray and others.
While ports in South Kedah may not have been comparable to those on
the east coast, they nevertheless prospered as a result of international trade.
George Hourani argues that after the sack of Canton (Guangzhou) by Chi-
nese rebels in 878 CE, direct sailing between the Middle East and Canton
ceased, and Chinese and Arab traders met at Kalah to exchange goods. In the
ninth century, Arab trade in the Indian Ocean reached a peak and proved to
be a boon to the isthmian and peninsular ports. A large amount of Chinese
and Middle Eastern ceramic artifacts were found at the two termini of the
transpeninsular route—Ko Kho Khao in the west and Laem Pho in the east.71
The new Arab sailing patterns would have contributed to the rise of Kampung
Sungai Mas as a major ninth-century port in South Kedah. But with the grad-
ual silting of the Muda River, Kampung Sungai Mas was replaced by Kampung
Pengkalan Bujang as the favored site of traders. The latter port flourished
from approximately the end of the eleventh to the beginning of the fourteenth
century. From the fourteenth century, a new channel from the Muda River
flowed to the Straits of Melaka, enabling Kampung Sirih to become a thriving
port, but it too was soon overshadowed by other peninsular harbors.72
The continuity of ports in South Kedah reinforces the idea that this loca-
tion continued to be regarded as an important stopping-off point in the trade
trajectory from the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf to China. In time Southeast
Asian products were brought to these sites as part of the international exchange
that occurred while ships awaited the monsoon winds. Both the South Kedah
ports and Sriwijaya offered similar advantages to traders and other travelers,
with one at the northern and the other at the southern entrance to the Straits of
Melaka. South Kedah had a longer tradition and was far better known than the
newly emerging entrepot at Sriwijaya. The late seventh-century Malayu inscrip-
tions found in Sriwijaya’s territories reflect the political and economic uncer-
tainty of a new polity and the desire to retain the loyalty of its new subjects (see
chapter 2). The straits could support just one major entrepot, and by the end
of the seventh century Sriwijaya absorbed South Kedah. Yijing’s comments that
Kedah had now become part of Sriwijaya would not have meant the elimina-
tion of a rival but its absorption.73 It is likely that Kedah (Jiecha) continued to
operate as an independent port on the perimeter of the Sriwijayan polity.
Malayu Antecedents 39
In the first millennium CE the ports on the Sumatran coast of the Straits
of Melaka appear in Chinese but rarely in Indian documents. One explanation
may be that the southwest monsoon winds that brought traders and other
travelers from India and points west had a natural landfall on the Isthmus of
Kra and the Malay Peninsula. They would have then either chosen to make the
transpeninsular passage or sail directly through the straits with a single stop-
over at a port in “Kalah.” The Chinese, on the other hand, would have entered
the southern entrance of the straits and proceeded northward along the coast.
Their interest would have focused on the small ports that served as outlets for
aromatic woods, resins, gold, and tin from the interior of Sumatra. The two
most prominent toponyms appearing in Chinese sources by the middle of the
first millennium CE are Barus and Pulo or Bulo, both of which were located
in northern Sumatra.
Wolters believes that the sixth-century Chinese mention of Barus refers
to a port on east coast Sumatra somewhere between Aceh Head and Diamond
Point, and not to present-day Barus on the west coast.74 From the ninth cen-
tury onward the extreme north coast of Sumatra contained the chief harbors,
with a few also along the northeast coast.75 Proximity to the much-valued
forest products of camphor and benzoin from the Batak lands in the interior
of northern Sumatra may have been a consideration in the location of these
ports. Arab and Persian ships stopped regularly to obtain camphor at a port
called “Ramni,” which scholars identify with Lamuri in northern Sumatra.76
The camphor would have come from the interior, probably in the hinterland
of present-day Barus, hence the association of Barus with the east coast port.
Another well-known site was Pulo or Bulo, which is mentioned as a cannibal
area and a center for perfume.77
On both shores at the northern end of the Straits of Melaka and on the
coastline of the Bay of Bandon lived the core of communities of the Sea of
Malayu. This was the midway point of the trade route from India/the Middle
East to China and benefited fully from its location. In addition to serving as a
transit point, the Sea of Malayu provided Southeast Asian products that were
valued in both India/the Middle East and China. From the Isthmus of Kra and
Malay Peninsula, traders proceeded eastward to the Lower Mekong and cen-
tral Vietnam—the eastern edge of the Sea of Malayu—before finally entering
China.
40 Chapter 1
make landfall at the Isthmus of Kra or at Kedah.78 Goods were then trans-
ported via isthmian and peninsular waterways and land portage routes to the
Gulf of Siam, then on to the Lower Mekong, and finally to central Vietnam
before continuing on the final leg to China. At this eastern end of the Sea
of Malayu were settlements termed the “Oc Eo Culture” by the Vietnamese
archaeologists, as well as the various Cham unities in central Vietnam com-
prising river valleys and their corresponding upland areas.
In 1944, Louis Malleret provided the first comprehensive study of Oc
Eo.79 Artifacts found at the site have a distinctive style with strong similarities
to Dong Son and Sa Huynh cultures, which suggests an indigenous devel-
opment. Moreover, archaeologists interpret the common features of Oc Eo’s
assemblage with those found at sites on the Chao Phraya and Irrawaddy val-
leys as evidence of a new settlement pattern of urban centers arising in the
major river valleys in mainland Southeast Asia. Based on these archaeologi-
cal finds, Himanshu Ray believes there was a prior “local sailing network”
between the coast of Vietnam and the southern coast of Burma. This network
was then linked to two others, one extending to Orissa and Bengal, and the
other to the Tamil coast in India.80
Excavations at the Oc Eo–Ba Thê complex indicate that the earlier trade
site on low-lying ground in Oc Eo was abandoned between the late third and
fourth centuries. In the following two centuries there was renewed activity
in the Oc Eo cultural complex, marked by brick temples and burial sites on
the lower slopes of the Ba Thê mountain and on small mounds in the flood
plain of Oc Eo. Oc Eo was crossed by a grid of canals, with the longest extend-
ing in a northeast direction to Angkor Borei and southwest to the coast. The
well-known early finds of Roman coins and Indian artifacts in Oc Eo clearly
point to its entrepot role in maritime trade. An inscription dated either 639
or 644 CE describes a practice at a Brahmanical temple where donors were
presented with imported cloth.81 The cloth could very well have been trans-
ported from southern India to a port on peninsular Burma and Thailand or
the northern Malay Peninsula, then across the South China Sea to the Lower
Mekong. Other evidence of local manufacture of gold, tin, and bronze orna-
ments, beads, pottery, and other objects further suggests that Oc Eo may have
gradually developed into an “industrial” site for the production of goods for
export abroad and to the interior via the extensive canal system linking Oc Eo
to Angkor Borei and beyond.82
Stratigraphic excavation in Angkor Borei provides evidence of the site’s
occupation since the fourth century BCE but with intensive occupation
between c. 200 BCE and 200 CE. The city may have peaked in the sixth and
seventh centuries, and although the seat of power moved northward in the
latter century, the city continued to be occupied and only declined sometime
Malayu Antecedents 41
between the tenth and thirteenth centuries. Excavations and aerial photo-
graphs have indicated the presence of a network of canals linking Angkor
Borei not only with Oc Eo but also with other sites further north. It appears
likely that Angkor Borei was a central redistribution point of goods flowing to
and from the interior and the coast. One of the canals is believed to have been
used for local transport and communication, as well as to drain the fields.
In fact, the canal system was principally for these functions rather than for
irrigation, which was unnecessary in the well-watered lands of the delta. The
coincidence of dates, material culture, and canal linkages between Oc Eo and
Angkor Borei suggests that they formed part of a larger political and eco-
nomic system.83 Evidence points to the Lower Mekong as an ancient site of a
thriving culture at the eastern end of the Sea of Malayu.
In the mid-seventh century the Oc Eo site was inexplicably abandoned.
What may have hastened its demise was Chinese direct maritime trade to
Southeast Asia beginning in the fifth century. This led to the emergence of
coastal polities along the Straits of Melaka and greater trade traffic using one
of the Cham settlements in central Vietnam as the intermediary stop closest
to China. Increase in Chinese trade through the Straits of Melaka led to a cor-
responding decline in those using the transisthmian route, with equally ruin-
ous consequences for Oc Eo. The direct line from the isthmian and peninsular
ports on the western side of the Gulf of Siam to the Lower Mekong was no
longer as attractive as the all-sea route from the straits directly to central Viet-
nam and on to China. Oc Eo’s growing attention to manufacturing activity in
the fifth and sixth centuries may have been the result of its declining impor-
tance as an international entrepot. The inhabitants in the Lower Mekong were
thus forced to seek another outlet for the import of foreign items and export
of their own manufactured goods. The decision to seek an outlet on the Viet-
namese coast was not a novel idea. There is evidence that already in the first
millennium BCE the Lao Bao pass was used to link the Mekong valley to the
South China Sea. Another ancient route in use since Neolithic times was the
Mu Gia pass linking Nakhon Pathom with the northern coast of central Viet-
nam. It is no coincidence that some of the Cham polities in central Vietnam
emerged about this time, providing a much needed replacement for Oc Eo.84
The “family resemblance” noted by O’Connor contributed to the coop-
eration between the Lower Mekong and central Vietnam. Chinese envoys
to Funan in the third century CE observed that the Chams and the Funa-
nese cooperated in a raid against the Vietnamese in the Red River delta.85
The appearance in Chinese accounts of polities they called “Land Chenla”
and “Water Chenla” replacing Funan did not signal a major break between
one kingdom and another, as had earlier been thought. It reflects instead the
changing economic dynamics of the same communities that now sought to
42 Chapter 1
find other outlets for their goods in the settlements along the Gulf of Siam
and in the Cham lands.86
Linguistic evidence indicates that the Chamic speakers may have arrived
in Vietnam some two thousand years ago as part of the migration of Aus-
tronesian speakers from the islands.87 The roots of Cham civilization can be
traced back even earlier to the period of the Sa Huynh culture, which arose
in central Vietnam between the middle of the first millennium BCE and the
middle of the first millennium CE and overlapped with the Funan and Cham
civilizations. Vietnamese archaeologists claim there was a direct transition
from late Sa Huynh to an emerging Cham culture around the second century
CE,88 though one scholar advises caution because such a relationship remains
unclear.89 The known sites of the Sa Huynh culture stretch from Hue and
Danang in the north to Sa Huynh near the central Vietnam coastline and
then southward to the Mekong delta. The Sa Huynh burial jars and their asso-
ciated accessory vessels with specific decorations parallel closely the burial
assemblages found in the Philippines, northern Borneo, and the region of
the Sulawesi Sea.90 Based on the sites and the burial assemblages, the linguist
Graham Thurgood believes that a prior Austronesian-speaking group inhab-
ited this area around 600 BCE, or perhaps even earlier. Extended contact with
Mon-Khmer populations led to major borrowing from the Mon-Khmer lan-
guage, thus introducing certain linguistic changes to the Cham language.91
Cham village societies were incorporated into the Sea of Malayu network,
which provided the resources and the models for the evolution of Cham reli-
gious and political forms. Based on Chinese evidence, scholars have generally
accepted that the first Cham polity was Lin Yi, which was formed in the third
century CE after its successful rebellion against the Han Chinese Rinan com-
mandery. It consisted of a loose alliance of river-based chiefdoms in the five
districts in north central Vietnam that had earlier formed Rinan.92 Lin Yi (if
it indeed was Cham93) and later Cham polities were very much like those in
Funan. They shared a common culture and language, and they entered into
various forms of association with one another without forming a single united
Cham polity. The term nagara Cam (the Cham polity) was in fact applied to
any one of the different states that emerged on the central Vietnamese coast
at different centuries, such as Amaravati, Indrapura, Khautara, Panduranga,
and Vijaya.94 They were all located south of Hue in the three major centers of
Cham population: the Thu Bon valley associated with the well-known sites of
My Son, Tra Kieu, and Dong Duong; Nha Trang where the site of the temple
to the sacred earth goddess Po Nagar is located; and Phan Rang, the southern-
most concentration of Cham communities.95
The reason for the importance of the central Vietnamese coast was its
role as a major node in the India/Middle East–China trade through Southeast
Malayu Antecedents 43
Asia. The Thu Bon valley chiefdoms were the beneficiaries of the trade that
went from the central Vietnamese coast to Hainan and then on to Guanzhou
(Canton). But a further reason for its attraction was the availability in the
Truong Son mountains of gaharuwood, cinnamon, black pepper, and ebony,
goods which were much desired in China.96 But with the collapse of Tang
trade in the mid-eighth century, there was a shift in the location of the major
nodes. Guanzhou was replaced by a port in the Red River delta in northern
Vietnam, and the Thu Bon valley sites lost their advantage to ports further
south in Nha Trang and Phan Rang.97 Although different Cham settlements
arose as favored ports over the centuries, the Cham areas continued to be an
essential part of the east-west trade. In the early centuries before and after the
Common Era, the northern limits of the existing trade networks consisted of
the Sa Huynh culture sites, the riverine polities in the Han commandery in
northern Vietnam (which included Dong Son), and Lin Yi.98
As part of the larger Austronesian expansion, the Chams had far more in
common with the Malayu than with the Austroasiatic populations of main-
land Southeast Asia. Similarities are evident in the first known Cham inscrip-
tion dating from the mid-fourth century found at Tra Kieu in the Thu Bon
valley. The inscription is associated with a well and, as in the seventh-century
Old Malayu inscriptions in Sriwijaya, promises divine rewards for the loyal
and hellish punishment for the disloyal:
44 Chapter 1
uplanders in Champa is seen in their role as the guardians of the royal trea-
sures and in the inclusion of their major figures among the venerated Cham
ancestors.101
Because the relationships between the various river valley/upland Cham
polities varied according to circumstances, they were as likely to be rivals as
allies. There were some Cham groups that were forced to settle outside the
primary Cham centers. One group went south to the Vietnamese highlands
and became the Northern Roglai, while others took flight after Indrapura was
destroyed by the Vietnamese in 982 and went northward to Guangzhou and
Hainan to become the ancestors of the Tsai speakers of Hainan.102 The deci-
sion of one of the groups to go to Guangzhou was most likely influenced by
its familiarity with the Chams. The Cham lands formed the terminus closest
to China (with the exception of Vietnam, which was part of China until the
beginning of the tenth century CE), and therefore would have had far greater
contact with that land than with any group on the international east-west
trade network.
According to Ming dynastic records,103 the southern Cham polity of Vijaya
was invaded by the Vietnamese in February and March 1471, and its king
and many others were taken prisoner.104 The Sejarah Melayu records an inci-
dent that is quite probably a reference to Vijaya’s seizure by the Vietnamese.
A Cham polity referred to as “Yak” is invaded by “Kuchi,” a word C. C. Brown
claims is “always used on the East Coast of Malaya for Indo-China.”105 Through
a treasonous act, Yak is destroyed and the ruler killed. His two sons and their
ministers flee the land, one son going to Aceh and the other to Melaka.106 Per-
haps linked to these earlier events is a statement in the Ming chronicles under
the date 1487 that mentions a dynastic struggle between the son of the former
ruler of Vijaya and a son of a deceased chieftain who had earlier supported
the Vietnamese.107 After the seizure of Vijaya in 1471 there was a flight of
Chams to the highlands, Hainan, Guangzhou, Melaka, Aceh, Java, Thailand,
and Cambodia. The flight of Chams to Aceh in the fifteenth century would
have been the second such exodus, the first occurring after the destruction of
Indrapura in 982. The cultural affinity among the polities that formed the Sea
of Malayu would have facilitated movements of groups such as the Chams to
the Malayu areas.108
Their proximity to China made the Cham polities a particularly valuable
link in this common sea. Ming records indicate that in the first half of the fif-
teenth century Champa was still an important part of the international trade
route between India and China. Its links were particularly strong with Melaka
and Samudera/Pasai, two major ports in the Straits of Melaka where traders
from the Middle East and India stopped before proceeding on to China. In
1438 the Ming records speak of trade and diplomatic ties between Champa
Malayu Antecedents 45
and Samudera, and in 1481 the kingdom of Melaka sent a missive to the Chi-
nese court to report the capture of Champa by Annam (Vietnam) and the
fear that Melaka’s territories would be next to be invaded. The high regard
the Chinese had for the Chams is clearly shown by the fact that in 1370 the
Chams, the Cholas, Japan, and Java were among the first to be notified of the
accession of the new Ming dynasty.109
The eastern end of the Sea of Malayu was in no way a marginal area.
Funan, Angkor Borei, and the various Cham polities were sites of ancient civi-
lizations that emerged and flourished as a result of international trade. The
close interactions of this “eastern edge” with the other Sea of Malayu com-
munities enabled them to move seamlessly from one end of the sea to the
other. Cooke and Li have argued that in the late eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries the “Water Frontier” of ports and settlements stretching between
the Lower Mekong and the Gulf of Siam to the Malay Peninsula continued
to witness the frequent interchange of trade and ideas among many differ-
ent ethnic groups.110 They have clearly identified a vibrant unified economic
and cultural world that persisted in this area in later centuries. But, as I have
argued, this world existed far earlier and was even more extensive than they
believed. The common features that came to be identified with the participat-
ing communities in the Sea of Malayu formed an important antecedent for
the later construction of the bhumi Malayu or the “Malayu world.”
Conclusion
The story of the antecedents of the Malayu has two possible scenarios,
depending upon whether one accepts the Bellwood-Blust synthesis or the
theories advanced by Solheim. The synthesis has the Austronesian speakers in
Taiwan sometime between 4000 and 3000 BCE, from which place they emi-
grated southward through the Philippines, down the Makassar Straits, and
then westward as far as the coast of central Vietnam and eastward into the
Pacific between 2500 and 1500 CE. Malayo-Polynesian languages emerged
from Austronesian, and Malayo-Chamic from Malayo-Polynesian. More con-
troversial has been Solheim’s theory of an extended Nusantao network that
originated on the east coast of Vietnam as early as 8000 BCE. “Nusantao,”
according to Solheim, was not an ethnolinguistic group but a culture of all the
maritime communities participating in an extensive trade network. Through
interaction between the communities, a common trade language (which he
leaves unnamed) and culture evolved. Solheim’s division of the maritime
Asian and Pacific region into “lobes” and his dating may not gain general
approval, but there are aspects of the theory which are appealing. It accords
with the characteristics associated with “mandala polities” in Southeast Asia,
46 Chapter 1
and the process resembles the formation of Malayu civilization that evolved
in and around the Straits of Melaka beginning in the early centuries of the
Common Era.
The arrival in the Straits of Melaka of Malayic speakers (or, in Solheim’s
view, the participation of a straits community in the Nusantao network)
sometime between c. 500 and c. 100 BCE coincides with the earliest evidence
of Indian contact. Although Indianized polities did not emerge in Southeast
Asia until about the middle of the first millennium CE, the foundations were
laid earlier as a result of Buddhism and its patronage of commerce. The pref-
erence for the transpeninsular/transisthmian passages in the trade of India,
Southeast Asia, and China assured the success of ports serving as termini on
these routes. The trade lingua franca in the eastern edge of the northern Sea
of Malayu, and perhaps even in the isthmian area, may have been an Aus-
troasiatic language: Aslian among the Orang Asli along the transpeninsular/
transisthmian routes, and Mon-Khmer among the people in the port polities
on the Gulf of Siam and the South China Sea. A Malayo-Chamic language
from the Austronesian family may have been the dominant medium of com-
munication in the “Kalah” ports in the western isthmian and peninsular areas.
With the political and economic prominence of Sriwijaya from the seventh
to the eleventh centuries, the Malayu language would have then become the
major lingua franca in the Sea of Malayu.
Buddhism’s role in promoting commercial activity between India and
Southeast Asia is evident in the religious statuary, seals, and monuments found
in Southeast Asia. The presence of Indo-Pacific beads in the region is further
proof of ongoing links between these two regions. Although there was some
bead production within Southeast Asia itself, most of the beads recovered in
archaeological sites were manufactured in India. Being literally at the half-
way point in a long trade trajectory from India/the Middle East to China, the
Isthmus of Kra and the Malay Peninsula were ideally placed for international
trade. Ships coming from either direction found it necessary to stop in the
vicinity of the Straits of Melaka to await the southwest or northeast monsoon
winds to carry them to their ultimate destinations. In time traders from both
the east and the west restricted their activities to one segment of the route and
made the Straits of Melaka the main point of exchange. Products of Southeast
Asian forests and seas also became part of this trade, and the Malayu became
active suppliers, traders, and long-distance carriers of Southeast Asian goods.
The presence of large numbers of traders in the straits encouraged enterpris-
ing leaders to create conditions to facilitate trade between foreign merchants
from both east and west. Although initially there would have been competing
harbors, eventually one emerged as the dominant entrepot while the others
became feeder ports.
Malayu Antecedents 47
The network of communities that made up the Sea of Malayu developed
a common cultural idiom. It was visible in the buildings and artifacts they left
behind, as well as in the shared values that enabled any of their members to
move comfortably from one area in this unified world to another. As testa-
ment to the common cultural world of this sea, sources note the easy involve-
ment of the Malayu in Funan, the Angkorians in the Isthmus of Kra, and the
Chams in the Malayu world.111 The overarching unity of the Sea of Malayu
incorporated and transcended any localized identity and became the model
for the Malayu world. Economic interests were a paramount consideration
in this unity, and international trade was the glue that bound the widely dis-
persed communities together. Over time, continuing interactions forged cul-
tural commonalities that could be identified with the entire network. A lin-
gua franca developed that enriched the local languages, and ideas of religion
and statecraft were shared if not always adopted. What mattered most was
that those who participated in the common sea became regarded as family,
which carried connotations of respect, priority, and loyalty in every aspect of
their relationship. These were the antecedents of the Malayu world, in which
Malayu was not simply an ethnonym but an all-encompassing term to define
and affirm a family of communities.
48 Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Emergence of Malayu
49
With the conquest of Melaka by the Portuguese in 1511 and the establish-
ment of rival Malayu polities on both sides of the Straits of Melaka, the story
of Malayu once again returns for a brief interlude to Sumatra. For about 150
years thereafter, Aceh was the center of the Malayu world, until Johor in the
late seventeenth century succeeded in shifting the Malayu focus back to the
Malay Peninsula, where it has generally remained to the present time.
The aim of this chapter, then, is to follow the historical evolution of the
term “Malayu” and to provide a basis for understanding why the Malayu
became the impetus for the ethnicization of other groups in the Straits of
Melaka. Crucial to the story of this process is international trade, which con-
tinued to be a major stimulus for change in the region.
50 Chapter 2
Sometime between the fifth and the seventh century CE there was a shift
in the relative importance of the maritime trade networks. Up to the fifth
century China had received goods from the lands to the west, as well as exotic
products from Southeast Asia. They would have come via the Sea of Malayu
network, with its eastern termini at one of the Lower Mekong ports belong-
ing to the Oc Eo culture complex and at some dominant Cham port in cen-
tral Vietnam. Upheaval in northern China and the resulting shift in political
power to the south encouraged the development of China’s maritime trade.
In seeking a safer passage for goods that had previously come by land via
central Asia, the kingdoms in southern China began to use a maritime route
employing foreign oceangoing vessels. Although the Chinese had large boats,
they were mainly intended for riverine and lake transport. The principal
vessels carrying goods to and from China were termed by the Chinese kun-
lun bo or “kunlun ships.”3 Manguin has shown that some of the features of
the kunlun bo described in a Chinese account from the third century and
another from the eighth century are still maintained by shipbuilders in insu-
lar Southeast Asia. It is very likely, therefore, that the people along the Straits
of Melaka, including Sriwijaya and its predecessors, participated as carriers in
their kunlun bo.4
In the seventh century the so-called kunlun ships were coming annually
to Guanzhou and Tonking. The Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Yijing, who visited
Sriwijaya and Malayu in the late seventh century, made a distinction between
the kunlun, whom he described as dark and curly-headed, from the fairer
inhabitants of the other countries in Southeast Asia.5 This description appears
to refer to the inhabitants of the islands and more specifically to the Orang
Laut, or sea people. In fifteenth-century Chinese sources, kunlun were hired
to guide Chinese ships through the region and out into the Indian Ocean,
a practice also followed by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century.6 While
these tasks were usually performed by the Orang Laut populations, kunlun
was used more generally in the seventh century to refer to the people in the
islands and the inhabitants along the Straits of Melaka, with whom the Chi-
nese had most contact in this early period.
Increasing use of the all-sea route favored the southern ports in the straits
because the southern entrance was the “end point” of the northeast monsoon,
which provided a powerful tailwind for traders coming from China and else-
where in East Asia. The landfall somewhere in southeast Sumatra made it a
“favored coast” and encouraged the rise of settlements that aspired to entrepot
status.7 The early archaeological sites mentioned above are indications that
the inhabitants of this area in Sumatra were familiar with and receptive to the
economic opportunities offered by international commerce.
Emergence of Malayu 51
Trading ships coming from China using the northeast monsoon winds
were blown directly to the coast of southeast Sumatra. One of the earliest to
benefit from this development was the Sumatran port polity known in Chi-
nese sources as Gantoli (Kan t’o-li). The name appears for the first time in
a Chinese source dated 441 CE and may have encompassed both Palembang
and Jambi. According to Chinese accounts, the Gantoli ruler had a dream in
which he was told by a Buddhist monk: “If you send envoys [to China] with
tribute and pay your respectful duty, your land will become rich and happy
and merchants and travelers will multiply a hundredfold.”8 Gantoli thus
sent tribute missions and was rewarded with the much-prized patronage of
the Chinese emperor. As a result it became the favored port of ships coming
from China, and in turn attracted regional traders seeking Chinese goods.
It continued to prosper under this arrangement until at least the early sixth
century.9
One of the reasons for the success of Gantoli was its ability to profit from
China’s insatiable demand for Arabian frankincense and myrrh because of
their styptic and fumigatory qualities. In the fifth and sixth centuries, cam-
phor and benzoin, all grown extensively in the northern half of Sumatra, were
being substituted for and later preferred to the Arabian resins in southern
China.10 Camphor was a highly prized luxury item and so valued in China
that it was placed on a par with gold.11 In addition to their much-vaunted
ability to cure a host of illnesses and shortcomings, these Sumatran oleoresins
were also difficult to obtain, which further contributed to the high prices they
could command.12 Other desired products that attracted the Chinese were
gaharuwood, rattans, tortoiseshells, pearls, and edible seaweeds. Dynastic
weakness in China in the sixth century led to a drop in demand for imported
goods and may have contributed to the demise of Gantoli, which is last men-
tioned by the Chinese in 563.
In the early seventh century a new toponym, “Malayu,” appears in an
itinerary of a Chinese emissary sent sometime between 607 and 610 CE by
the Sui emperor to “open communications” with Southeast Asia. Then in 644
a placed called Malayu dispatched a mission to the Chinese court. Its emer-
gence on the southeast Sumatran coast is no surprise and would have built on
the experience of such predecessors as Gantoli.13 Wolters believes that in the
early seventh century Malayu was based in Jambi and may have controlled
the Palembang area. By the late seventh century, however, the situation was
reversed with Sriwijaya in Palembang now the dominant power. The most
important eyewitness account of the existence of Sriwijaya was Yijing, who
arrived in the city of Sriwijaya in 671 from China on a ship, presumably a
kunlun bo, owned by the ruler. He remained six months to study Sanskrit
grammar and was then sent by the ruler to Malayu, where he spent another
52 Chapter 2
go
u Archipelago
ela
hip
Arc
gga
Lin
Ria
two months. While in Palembang, he commented that “it [Malayu] is now
changed into Sribhoga [Sriwijaya] or Bhoga [Wijaya].”14
Like Gantoli before it, Sriwijaya became an entrepot dependent upon
the international trade flowing through the Straits of Melaka. Because of the
mangrove swamps on the coast, the center of Sriwijaya was located some dis-
tance inland on the Musi River in Palembang. Vital to its success as a polity
was its control over the upriver areas, which form one of the largest river
basins in the archipelago. It is this extensive network of communities linked
by the Musi and its many tributaries that led Wolters to characterize the pol-
ity as a “paddle culture.”15 Through exchange arrangements with the interior
Orang Asli and upriver groups, Sriwijaya was able to provide gold, rattans,
gaharuwood, and oleoresins that were in high demand in the international
marketplace.
Much more is known about Sriwijaya than any of its predecessors because
of the coincidence of Yiching’s visit and its association with a number of stone
inscriptions. The inscriptions were found at Kedukan Bukit (Palembang, 683
CE), Sabokingking (near Telaga Batu in Palembang, undated), Talang Tuwo
(Palembang, 684 CE), Karang Brahi (upper Batang Hari in Jambi, undated),
Kota Kapur (Bangka, 686 CE), Palas Pasemah (South Lampung, undated),
Karanganyar (Central Lampung, contemporaneous with Palas Pasemah), and
Boom Baru (Palembang, undated). Also found were a number of fragments,
plus numerous stones inscribed with the single word “sidda.” All these inscrip-
tions, plus another from Ligor written in Sanskrit in 775, use the Pallava script
in a style associated with south India and Sri Lanka in the same period. The
absence of any clear local differentiation in the Sumatran inscriptions may
indicate a recent borrowing,16 and could imply that a previous indigenous or
Indian script had been superseded or that Sriwijaya was in the early stages of
literacy.
The inscriptions fall into two general types: imprecations or oaths and
commemorations of royal gifts and victories. Inscriptions of the first type
containing similar imprecation formulae and almost identical texts were
found at Palas Pasemah, Karanganyar, Karang Brahi, Kota Kapur, and Boom
Baru. The Telaga Batu or Sabokingking inscription is longer and is directed
specifically to royal personages, officials, and various groups within the realm.
As in the first Cham inscription from the fourth century, its central feature
is the threat of supernatural punishment to those who fail to abide by their
oaths.17 Of the second type the oldest and most detailed is the Kedukan Bukit
inscription, which celebrated a victorious expedition that resulted in power
and wealth for Sriwijaya. Coedès believes that the inscription commemorates
the founding of a dynasty because in Indianized Southeast Asia the establish-
ment of a kingdom or a dynasty was often accompanied by magical prac-
54 Chapter 2
tices. The founder underwent a ceremony known as siddhiyatra, a voyage or
a pilgrimage from which one returns endowed with magical powers. Coedès
cites the following phrases from the Kedukan Bukit inscription as evidence
that a new dynasty was being founded: “His Majesty boarded a ship to go in
search of magic powers” and “Sriwijaya, endowed with magic powers.” The
discovery of the inscription at the foot of Bukit Siguntang, the sacred hill of
the Sriwijaya rulers, reinforces Coedès’ argument that the dynasty was follow-
ing the well-documented practice of “kings of the mountain” in Southeast
Asia.18 A new reading of the inscription in 1986 by Boechari suggests that an
army had left “Binanga,” conquered the enemy at the site where the inscrip-
tion was found, and there established a new center that became Sriwijaya.19
This interpretation has not found wide acceptance, but the Kedukan Bukit
inscription itself demonstrates that communities were competing with one
another in response to the new economic opportunities presented by direct
Chinese involvement in the maritime trade to Southeast Asia.
The Sabokingking (Telaga Batu) inscription, whose twenty-eight lines
makes it the longest of all the extant Sriwijayan inscriptions, begins with a
curse against a number of individuals, ranging from princes to shippers and
“washermen” of the ruler. The list is not comprehensive, and the occupa-
tions are those that could pose a danger to the ruler: princes who could lead
rebellions in the realm, shippers who could be subject to foreign influence,
or washermen who had access to the ruler’s person. In order to assure their
loyalty, the oath was administered in a ceremony involving the drinking of
the water that had been poured over the inscription containing the impreca-
tion. There is also a reference to the use of military force. Five inscribed stone
fragments dating from the late seventh and early eighth centuries recount
victories in battles and the shedding of much blood. Such force was necessary
against the elite groups who may have been less intimidated than the com-
moners by sacred oaths.20
The location of the inscriptions at Karang Brahi in the upper Batang
Hari, Kota Kapur in the southwest corner of Bangka, Palas Pasemah in south-
ern Lampung, and Ligor in the vicinity of Nakhon Sithammarat in southern
Thailand is important. It suggests that they were placed carefully at strate-
gic crossroads. The upper Batang Hari was one of the major interior trad-
ing centers, where goods from the Minangkabau highlands could be traded
for external goods going upriver. The headlands of the Musi, the major river
in Palembang, do not link up with the Minangkabau highlands, unlike the
upper Batang Hari River in Jambi. For this reason Karang Brahi may have
been essential for the protection of the land route between Palembang-
Jambi and the Minangkabau highlands. Kota Kapur was ideally placed on the
Bangka Straits where it could monitor ships moving between Palembang and
Emergence of Malayu 55
Jambi to the Lampungs and West Java.21 Palas Pasemah was a collecting and
redistribution center for products from both the Lampungs and West Java,
while Ligor, also known by the toponym Tambralinga, was for centuries an
important east coast terminus in the transisthmian trade route. Even with
the limited number of inscriptions emanating from Sriwijaya, the nature and
placement of these royal commands inscribed in stone demonstrate the pres-
ence of an ambitious polity in the late seventh century that sought to control
the important markets in the western archipelago.
Sriwijaya’s involvement beyond the Straits of Melaka can be inferred by
discovery of Old Malayu inscriptions in Java and the Philippines. The desire to
emulate Sriwijaya is evident in the manner in which ambitious rulers in Java
used Old Malayu to consolidate their positions. On the north coast of cen-
tral Java, the inscriptions invoke the gods of different regions, while another
found at Candi Sewu in the Kedu Plains to the south simply calls on the
spirit of Tandrum Luah, the protector spirit of Sriwijaya.22 A ninth-century
inscription in Sanskrit and Old Malayu from Sojomerto in central Java men-
tions a dapunta Selendra.23 “Dapunta” is the title used in the inscriptions for
Sriwijaya rulers, and the Old Malayu used in this particular text could pos-
sibly stem from the coastal Javanese version of the language.24 This suggests
that Sriwijaya’s influence had come via the northern Javanese ports and that
its prestige had encouraged other rulers to adopt the Sriwijayan titulature.
Another Old Malayu inscription written in Pallava script and dated 942 CE
was found near Bogor in west Java. Although it refers to the restoration of a
Sundanese ruler by the order of a Javanese lord, it is written in Old Malayu.25
From a close study of the language of these inscriptions, de Casparis is con-
vinced that “the use of Old Malay in Java reflects direct or indirect influence
from Sriwijaya.”26
The discovery of an Old Malayu inscription at Laguna in Bulakan prov-
ince in the northern Philippines makes it the most distant evidence of Sriwi-
jayan influence thus far found. It is a copperplate inscription dated 900 CE
using a mix of languages to record the clearing of an individual’s debt. The
main language is Old Malayu (though not identical to that found in Suma-
tra or Java), ceremonial forms of address are in Old Javanese, and technical
terms are in Sanskrit with simplified spelling and local affixes. The place
names in the inscription are all located on rivers and coasts with access to the
South China Sea and the outside world. The Laguna inscription is the first
indication that Old Malayu had developed a vocabulary to deal with matters
of debt and class distinction.27 The ability of the language to express such
concepts is unsurprising since it evolved in Sriwijaya, where a list of occupa-
tions recorded in the Sabokingking inscription suggests a well-differentiated
society.
56 Chapter 2
Arab and Persian sources reinforce epigraphic evidence indicating the
presence of an important polity somewhere in Sumatra or Java. About 916 CE
Abu Zayd compiled an account based on his own readings and on interviews
with people who had sailed to the east. He refers to the “Maharaja,” the king
of Zabag, whose possessions are principally at Sriwijaya.28 In a story repeated
in later Arabic sources, he describes a daily ritual in which the Maharaja has a
gold ingot thrown into a small lagoon adjoining the palace. Only at low tide
can one see the vast accumulation of gold in the pool. At the death of the
Maharaja, the gold is recovered, melted down, and distributed to the princes
and the royal family, among men, women and children equally, and to the
officers and eunuchs according to their rank and prerogatives of their offices.
What remains is then given to the poor and unfortunate.29
Masudi, an Arab writing in 943, repeats this story and adds that the
empire of the Maharaja comprises not only Sriwijaya but also Ramni and
Kalah. It is noteworthy that of all the areas responsive to Sriwijaya, Ramni,
and Kalah are the two places that merit special mention. “Kalah,” as noted
in the previous chapter, was one of the names used by traders coming from
the west to refer to any of a number of ports along the northwest isthmian
and peninsular coastline. It was an important landfall for traders who took
the transisthmian/transpeninsular route leading to ports on the Gulf of Siam.
The “Ramni” of Arabic accounts appears to be the Polu [P’o-lu] of Chinese
sources and refers to a large area stretching across northern Sumatra to Barus
on the west coast, with its principal port between Aceh Head and Diamond
Point. In the New History of the Tang (completed in 1034 but based on much
earlier materials), Sriwijaya is referred to as a “double kingdom” with one cen-
ter at Ramni in the north and another at Sriwijaya in the south.30
Masudi offers a formulaic description of Sriwijaya’s wealth and power by
reporting from “a reliable source” that when a cock in that country crows at
sunrise, others answer in a wave through contiguous villages extending out-
ward for more than six hundred kilometers.31 One major reason for Sriwijaya’s
prosperity, according to the Arab geographer Idrisi, writing in the mid-twelfth
century, is the benefits of trade. When both China and India are beset with
turmoil, he writes, “the inhabitants of China carried their trade to Zabaj and
to the islands which belonged to it; and entered into relations with the inhab-
itants because of their honesty, their extreme friendliness, their courtesy and
the flexibility of their commerce.” For these reasons, he continues, the island
of Zabag is highly populated and well frequented by foreigners.32 Considerable
quantities of ceramics found at ninth- and tenth-century sites at Palembang
and upriver in the Musi River basin are evidence of strong Chinese trade to
Sriwijaya, much of it spurred by the establishment of the Song dynasty in the
tenth century.33 In an attempt to become a maritime power, Song China had
Emergence of Malayu 57
begun to create a navy consisting of seaworthy “hybrid” vessels that combined
some of the elements of the kunlun bo and the Chinese river craft.34 Sriwijaya
was the principal beneficiary of this new maritime initiative, as comments by
Arab geographers on the wealth and power of its rulers readily attest.
In addition to Sriwijaya’s reputation as a successful entrepot, it was also
renowned as a center of Buddhist learning. There were more than a thousand
Buddhist monks studying there when Yijing arrived in Palembang in the sec-
ond half of the seventh century, and he noted that one could attend religious
lectures and read original Buddhist scriptures. For this reason he advised all
Chinese monks to spend a year or two studying in Sriwijaya before proceed-
ing to India.35 Although by the end of the seventh century Yijing affirmed the
dominance in Southeast Asia of one of the Hinayana sects, the Talang Tuwo
inscription dated 684 CE marked the introduction of Mahayana Buddhism
to Sriwijaya and is the oldest document in Southeast Asia that mentions or
infers the presence of Mahayana Buddhism. The inscription proclaims the
ruler’s bodhisattva status and his concern for the salvation of all beings. It
also emphasizes the importance of the ruler and his realm as the center of
a form of Tantric Mahayana Buddhism.36 The Sabokingking (Telaga Batu)
inscription, dated approximately the same time as the Kota Kapur inscription
(686 CE), mentions a Tantric rite, the tantramala, which is believed to be a
secret formula leading to “Final Liberation.”37 This Tantric form of Mahayana
Buddhism continued to be favored by the Malayu courts that moved to Jambi,
then to upriver Batang Hari, and finally into the Minangkabau highlands.
Excavations in Palembang have uncovered a large Buddha image and
many Buddhist artifacts, reinforcing Yijing’s depiction of Sriwijaya as an
important Buddhist center. The Sejarah Malayu’s account of the appearance
of the ancestors of the Malay rulers on Bukit (Mt.) Siguntang may contain
remnants of a Buddhist tale. In the story, three brothers descend from the
heavens onto Bukit Siguntang, whose summit is bathed in light from the
grains and stems of the rice stalks that had been transformed to gold and the
leaves to silver. Since bodhisattvas are frequently depicted in their refulgent
splendor, it has been suggested that the tale commemorates the bodhisattva
status of the rulers of Sriwijaya.38 This view is reasonable since the Talang
Tuwo inscription unequivocally refers to the Sriwijaya ruler as a bodhisattva
whose concern is the welfare of all beings.39
In the years 1024–5 the Cholas of southern India attacked and destroyed
Sriwijaya’s ports on both sides of the Straits of Melaka. Neither the reason for
the attack nor the timing of it can be determined by the sources, although
trade rivalry may have been one possible cause. The destruction of the Sriwi-
jaya center in Palembang led to the rise in the importance of Zhanbei (Chan-
pei, Jambi), which first appears in Chinese sources in 840.40 It sent tributary
58 Chapter 2
missions to Tang China in 853 and 871 and to Sung China in 1079 and 1088.41
Whether Jambi and Malayu were the same polity is unclear. The restoration of
the power of Jambi/Malayu would have continued the tradition of southeast-
ern Sumatran ports responding to shifts in international trade. Palembang
again became a trading port of note frequented by Chinese traders in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but both Zhou Zufei (1178) and Zhao Rugua
(1225) call the polity “Sanfoqi” instead of “Shihlifoshih,” the previous render-
ing of Sriwijaya.42
By the thirteenth century the Jambi-Palembang area was clearly subser-
vient to Java, and the “Pamalayu”43 expedition sent from east Java in 1275 is
evidence of the reversal of their long-standing relationship. Some believe that
the intent of the Pamalayu expedition was punitive, while others view it as an
act of an overlord seeking to protect a vassal state from threats of a Mongol
invasion.44 While the motivation for the launching of the Pamalayu expedi-
tion may never be known, subsequent events indicate that the ruler of Malayu
may have sought to escape further Javanese attacks by moving the royal resi-
dence, and hence the center of the polity, from the coast to the interior. But
the move did not prove a deterrent to the ambitious Javanese. In 1286 Kerta-
nagara, the Javanese ruler of Singasari, ordered the placing of religious statues
at Dharmasraya, Malayu’s capital in the vicinity of Padang Roco in the upper
reaches of the Batang Hari River.45 In addition to commemorating this royal
largesse, the inscription states that all the inhabitants of Malayu (referring to
the inhabitants of Dharmasraya)—brahmans, ksatriyas, vaisas, and sudras—
and especially the king, Srimat Tribhuwanaraja Mauliwarmadewa, rejoiced
at the presentation of the gifts. The placement of religious images at Dharma-
sraya continued an earlier Sriwijayan tradition of distributing sacred inscribed
documents on stone at crucial locations. Dharmasraya was in the transition
zone between the downriver center and a new interior one that was beginning
to develop in the highlands of Minangkabau.46 For nonliterate communities,
these religious statues and the royal inscription were visible signs of the power
of the ruler and his supernatural sanction.
The archaeological evidence supports the view that Malayu consisted of a
center on the coast and another in the interior. The main center of the king-
dom, defined by the presence of the ruler, moved upstream from Muara Jambi
to Dharmasraya sometime prior to 1286. It was followed by another move to
a place whose name ended with “–vita” or “–cita,” and finally to Suruaso in the
Minangkabau highlands. The second center was located somewhere downstream
and served as the entrepot for international trade. It is from this center that
two Muslim traders appeared in the Chinese court in 1281 as Malayu envoys.47
The ethnic identity of the inhabitants of Sriwijaya cannot be determined
with available sources. Only after the emergence of Malayu as Sriwijaya’s
Emergence of Malayu 59
successor can one suggest that the inhabitants may have adopted the pres-
tigious identity of their polity and hence were called orang Malayu, or “the
people of (the polity) Malayu.” Initially, therefore, Malayu identity was most
likely polity-based, and the characteristics of this identity were derived from
the nature of the polity itself. Increasingly, however, the term “Malayu” was
no longer used exclusively to identify subjects of a polity but to distinguish
specific cultural practices and the language associated with the populations of
the Musi and Batang Hari river basins. Nevertheless, the emergence in history
of a group that can be identified as “Malayu” should not be regarded as fixing
this ethnicity forever in time. The story of the Malayu is an ancient one, but it
is not a story of the “ancient Malayu.”
60 Chapter 2
The first major center of Sriwijaya was not on the coast, as one would
have expected of an entrepot, but some distance up the Musi River.52 The
reason is that the shores of east coast Sumatra are dominated by mangrove
swamps, which provide valuable resources for the Orang Laut populations
but are not suitable for residential communities. When the Malayic-speaking
immigrants from west Borneo arrived in southeast Sumatra, they settled along
the Musi and the Batang Hari rivers and their tributaries and even penetrated
into the highland interior.53 The location of the major settlements was at the
juncture of tributaries and land routes, with similar-structured smaller com-
munities providing the “feeder” points for the main port city.54 In this riverine
environment evolved the earliest version of the Malayu language and culture.
While most agree that Malayu culture (as differentiated from language)
developed in southeast Sumatra, the linguist Jim Collins has argued that west-
ern Borneo was not only the linguistic but the cultural origin of Malayu. He
bases his argument on archaeological finds of Indian carnelian beads and
Dong Son drums from the fourth century CE, and silver and gold Buddha
images in Sambas from the eighth (or, as Miksic suggests, perhaps ninth or
tenth) century.55 However, another linguist, Alexander Adelaar, contends that
coastal Borneo only received Malayu culture after its development in south-
east Sumatra.56 This latter view is strengthened by Blust’s recent linguistic
study, which demonstrates that the retention of ancient Malayu words in the
languages of southeast Borneo could only have been derived through trade
contact with the southeast Sumatran polity of Sriwijaya in the period between
670 and 800 CE.57 These dates coincide with the period of the polity’s expan-
sion as documented by the contents and strategic placements of Sriwijaya’s
limited but informative inscriptions. Recent archaeological investigations
undertaken in the Palembang area have also unearthed numerous sherds and
other artifacts that leave little doubt that Palembang was the site of Sriwijaya.58
In short, the evidence provided by most linguists and prehistorians supports
the view that the Malayu cultural homeland began in southeast Sumatra with
Sriwijaya as its principal center between the seventh and eleventh centuries.
Wolters provided one of the most innovative uses of the sources in tap-
ping Chinese materia medica to advance our understanding of the rise of
Sriwijaya and the development of features that came to be identified with
Malayu culture. From a study of Chinese pharmacopoeia, he identified rat-
tans, aromatic gaharuwood, pine resins, benzoin, and camphor as products
most likely obtained from Sumatra. How such products were brought to
market could only be convincingly explained by the involvement of hunting-
gathering communities in the interior using an intricate network of rivers,
tributaries, and linking land passages to bring the goods downstream to the
Emergence of Malayu 61
entrepot. Finally, it was the sea people’s intimate knowledge of the treacher-
ous waters at the southern entrance of the Straits of Melaka and their prowess
at sea that assured the safety of foreign ships trading at the entrepot.59 Earlier
studies depict Sriwijaya as an “empire” created and maintained by force. Such
a view is now generally rejected because the nature of the seascape and land-
scape would have limited the efficacy of any punitive expedition. The major
Sumatran rivers flow from the interior highlands to the east coast through
heavy forests. Along the banks of these rivers and their many tributaries lived
scattered communities, who used these waterways and the short land passages
connecting them as their principal access to the outside world. Until the recent
past, the Malayu lived by fishing, some farming, collecting of jungle products,
and trade. At or near the edges of the thick jungles were dispersed communi-
ties (officially termed Suku Terasing, “Isolated Ethnic Groups,” by the current
Indonesian government), who were collectors of forest products and were
the major suppliers of rattan, aromatic woods, and resins. The lower reaches
of the rivers, the coasts, and the many islands off southeast Sumatra formed
another part of the Sriwijayan landscape and were home to the Orang Laut
(sea people). They collected sea products for the China market and used their
navigational skills and familiarity with seas around the southern entrance of
the straits to bring passing traders to Sriwijaya and to harass those from rival
ports. The Orang Laut formed the bulk of the Sriwijayan fleet and provided
vital information on the movement of ships through the Straits of Melaka.
Faced with this type of natural and human environment in Sriwijaya, the
use of force would have been limited because recalcitrant subjects could sim-
ply disappear into the impenetrable forests or escape to the many islands off
the coast until the punitive expedition left. In such a polity, force would not
be a primary instrument in achieving a convergence of interests among the
constituent parts. Even though the inscriptions refer to military expeditions,
much bloodshed, and even an expedition of twenty thousand men, the threat
of the imprecation or water oath would probably have been equally if not
more effective in retaining the loyalty of the ordinary people.60 Collectively,
the inscriptions reveal the practice of Perfection Path Mahayana Buddhism,
which teaches that magical powers from mantras and yantras can be used to
defeat enemies and to reach Enlightenment.61
The royal word, “boosted by additional supernatural power,” was there-
fore an important feature of early polities.62 Through the judicious placement
of religious symbols and royal inscriptions containing fearsome oaths (“royal
words”), the threat of supernatural punishment of disloyal subjects was avail-
able as a last resort when gentle persuasion failed. The Karang Berahi and the
Kota Kapur inscriptions threaten the use of force to punish those disloyal,
along with their families and clans.63 Perhaps for this reason, the Kota Kapur
62 Chapter 2
inscription mentions inscribing the curse on stone at the time of a military
expedition against the land of Java (bhumi jawa).64 The sacred powers of the
ruler became associated with Sriwijaya and its successors and became regarded
as a feature of Malayu culture.
By rejecting the idea of a Sriwijaya “empire,” recent scholarship has
revealed a polity that was in effect a network of kin groups that functioned
like a family unit. In the Sabokingking (Telaga Batu) inscription is a long
list of functionaries and occupations: princes, landlords, army leaders, local
magnates, confidants, royal confidants, judges, surveyors of groups of work-
men, surveyors of low castes, cutlers, ministers of princely status, regular and
irregular troops, administrators, clerks, architects, naval captains, merchants,
royal washermen, and royal slaves. With a few exceptions the names in the
inscription are said to be “grandiose Sanskrit titles drawn from the admin-
istrative vocabulary of the imperial Guptas.”65 This view is consonant with
Smith’s contention that India had very little to offer Southeast Asia until the
rise of the Gupta dynasty in the beginning of the fourth century.66 Most titles
are mentioned only once, whereas the Malayu terms datu and huluntuhan
are repeated often. Datu is commonly used in all of the early inscriptions
of Sriwijaya, and huluntuhan is referred to seven times in the Sabokingking
inscription.67
The term “datu” stems from the proto–Malayo-Polynesian term refer-
ring to a lineage or clan official. From this original gloss, Malayo-Polynesian
languages have given the word other related meanings of chief, priest, noble,
and ancestor. The association of leaders with the ability to effect supernatural
sanction is a cultural feature that extends back into the Austronesian past.68
Among the Malayu on the Malay Peninsula the concept was retained in the
expression “timpa daulat,” or “struck by the forces of sovereignty,” with the
Arabic-derived “daulat” very likely replacing an indigenous term. In a famous
episode from the Hikayat Hang Tuah,69 a faithful retainer of the ruler of
Melaka commits treason (derhaka, a Sanskrit term) against the ruler and is
killed. So heinous is his crime that the spot where his dead body was hung
remained without a single blade of grass.70 Equally graphic is the story from
the Hikayat Siak where the nobleman commits regicide and in the process
is wounded on the foot by the ruler’s keris. Grass grows in the wound that
refuses to heal for four years, with the nobleman not being able to live or die
but continuing to suffer because of his treasonous act.71 While modern com-
mentators have regarded such tales as simply attempts by the ruling classes to
keep their subjects loyal, the belief in sacred punishment is part of an ancient
tradition that would have been understood even without such reminders.
The Sriwijayan datu and later Malayu rulers were believed to be imbued
with sacred powers, and any object, utterance, or representation of these
Emergence of Malayu 63
sacred beings became sacrosanct. The royal word contained in inscriptions
and letters was regarded as particularly potent. Through oath-giving cer-
emonies and the erecting of inscriptions that emphasized the supernatural
sanctions associated with the royal person, the sacred origins of the rulers
were reinforced. Not only the contents but also the medium that conveyed the
royal word became sacred by association. This is evident in the earliest extant
Malayu document dating to the second half of the fourteenth century, which
is a law code mainly consisting of fines. It was found in Kerinci, Sumatra,
and is written in a local Sumatran script.72 The survival of the manuscript is
explained by the fact that it was regarded as a sacred heirloom by the whole
group and was only brought out perhaps once or twice a generation.73 The
source of the law code, most probably from authorities linked to a Malayu
ruler, would have made it an object of reverence by the people. In a similar
vein, the Pasemah people in interior Sumatra in the early nineteenth cen-
tury were recorded to have consumed the seals of contracts made between
their leaders and Stamford Raffles. They believed that by ingesting these seals,
potent with sacred powers of the signatories, they were gaining a form of an
internal amulet.74
The association of the datu with fertility is also among his supernatu-
ral attributes. Many early Southeast Asian societies believed that there was a
direct correlation between the conduct of the chief/ruler and the fecundity
or barrenness of the land and the people. By citing crop failures or natural
disasters afflicting a society, a chronicler may not simply be reporting the state
of affairs but also leveling serious criticism against the ruler. A good monarch,
on the other hand, is praised through references to the fertility of the land, the
animals, and the people.75
In the Kota Kapur inscription, the word datu is used to mean the power
of majesty and those possessed of or invested with such power. The residence
of the Sriwijayan ruler is therefore known as kadatuan, a place containing
the datu in both its spiritual and corporeal manifestations. Those who are
installed by the ruler of Sriwijaya with “the power of datu” then become
datu. Their importance is evident in the Kota Kapur and the Sabokingking
inscriptions, where the families and clan of the datu share their fate in being
punished for disobedience or rewarded for loyalty.76 Sriwijaya was therefore
governed by a network of family members of the datu, from the ruler down to
those invested with the title. This idea is contained in the prominence of the
Malayu term huluntuhan, which means slaves or subjects (hulun) and lords
(tuhan).77 From its literal meaning as the lord’s subjects or slaves, huluntuhan
has been interpreted as “empire” (de Casparis), “ruler’s family or retainers”
(Kulke), and “a geographic entity or collectivity of people” (Christie).78
64 Chapter 2
In a study of all the extant inscriptions linked to Sriwijaya, Jan Chris-
tie identified about a dozen terms referring to the political arrangement of
the realm, six of which are Old Malayu words. These terms and glosses are
punta hiyang79 (a religious term used by the ruler), datu (chief of a group or
a smaller political entity subordinate to Sriwijaya), kadatuan (the ruler’s pal-
ace), parddatwan (group or place under the control of a datu), wanua (com-
munity, settled territory), and huluntuhan (lord’s slaves/subjects). The last
term appears most frequently and prominently in the inscriptions to refer to
Sriwijaya as an entity. Other terms borrowed from Sanskrit for the territorial
extent of the polity are bhumi (land, country) and mandala (literally “circle,”
but used to refer to a political unit ranging from “territory, province, country”
to “surrounding district” and “neighboring states.”)80
The titles and the administrative divisions suggest that the ruler relied on
his position as datu to employ his huluntuhan network to govern the polity.
This would account for the translation of huluntuhan as “empire”81 and for
its reference to both a geographic entity and a distinctive body of people. The
equating of huluntuhan with the whole of Sriwijaya in the Sabokingking (Te-
laga Batu) inscription suggests that the sum total of these networks, headed
by the ruler as religious and lineage head of the whole, was the essence of the
Malayu polity.82 This interpretation accords with Joyce White’s observation
that descriptions of political hierarchy in Southeast Asia do not conform to
the flexible social systems described by ethnographers, which are associated
with alliance-focused political entities.83 Hierarchy, as in the case of Sriwijaya,
tended to be more prescriptive than real, forcing scholars to examine more
critically the terms actually used to describe the system. While economic
self-interest may have been an important factor in establishing a relationship
among the various units in Sriwijaya, loyalty to the datu’s family proved an
effective means of maintaining these ties through the vicissitudes of the mar-
ketplace. Belonging to a relationship that was perceived as a kinship group
was desirable, not simply for material benefits but also for the protection it
provided.
Based on these terms and the list of occupations found in the Sabo-
kingking (Telaga Batu) inscription, Kulke has reconstructed what he believes
to have been the physical and social organization of Sriwijaya. The kedatuan
where the datu and his household resided formed the core or the center of
the polity. It contained the royal residence, the women’s quarters, the trea-
sury, and the sacred sanctuary for Sriwijaya’s tutelary deity. The kedatuan
was located within the vanua, or a semiurban area, which also incorporated
the residences of the various occupations mentioned in the inscription. Also
forming part of the vanua were the villages, the markets, and a Buddhist
Emergence of Malayu 65
monastery (vihara), which would have been the home of the thousand Bud-
dhist monks that Yijing noted in his visit to Sriwijaya in the late seventh cen-
tury. Kedatuan and vanua, the only Malayu terms found in the inscriptions
for a territorial space, together made up the city of Sriwijaya.
Linked to the vanua by special roads were the samaryyada, a Sanskrit
term referring to the neighborhood surrounding the city of Sriwijaya and
under the control of a Sriwijayan datu and his huluntuhan. Beyond the
samaryyada were lands conceptualized as concentric circles bearing the San-
skrit terms of mandala and bhumi. Mandala refers to the autonomous or
semiautonomous polities at the periphery governed by two different types of
datu. The more powerful and hence more independent of the mandala poli-
ties were led by datu who were “recognized” (sanyasa) by the ruler, indicating
that they retained their own people in positions of authority. These mandala
were replicas of the political/familial arrangement at the center. Less power-
ful mandala were governed by datu who had been “raised to” (samyarddhi)
that status by the ruler of Sriwijaya and thus become part of his huluntuhan.
Bhumi is glossed as “earth,” “soil,” “realm,” and “country,” and is mentioned
twice in one inscription in the phrase “people in the land (bhumi) under the
order/command of the kedatuan.” Bhumi Srivijaya was one way of referring
to the whole polity and was equivalent to bhumi Jawa and bhumi Mataram.84
In this analysis, Sriwijaya and other early polities in the archipelago
comprised a network of relationships with varying degrees of control exer-
cised from the center. Those mandala with greater independence and located
in the areas farthest from the center were therefore provided an option to
detach themselves from the core. Although there is insufficient information
to describe the functioning of the Sriwijaya mandala, some understanding
may be gained from a general discussion of the mandala concept as applied
to early Southeast Asian polities. In this concept, political control was exer-
cised through the occasional oath-giving ceremonies and the bestowing of
royal favors and blessings in exchange for tribute in the form of goods and
services. It was a system that relied on persuasion and acknowledgment of
mutual benefits rather than on force, though the threat of supernatural sanc-
tion was always a potential royal weapon. The relationship between the center
and the periphery is often explained through an analogy with the beam of
an upturned lamp. When cast on a flat surface, the beam is most intense at
the center and becomes progressively weaker toward the edges. In a similar
fashion, a mandala polity’s influence is strongest in the areas closest to the
center and weakest at the periphery. To carry the analogy a step further, if two
lamps are placed close to each other, their beams overlap at the edges, just as
the authority of two competing centers may overlap at their peripheries.85
These borderlands thus form dynamic areas where shifts in allegiances most
66 Chapter 2
frequently occur to challenge the established political arrangements. Based on
the reconstruction above of its geopolitical space, Sriwijaya probably operated
in accordance with the model of a Southeast Asian mandala polity.
Despite the appearance in the inscriptions of a highly structured political
system, Sriwijaya was likely governed in a much more decentralized fashion.
Officialdom was essentially a “patrimonial staff.”86 The presence of the tuhan
(lord and family head) in the kedatuan identified the spiritual center of the
realm, while physical proximity to the tuhan determined the status hierarchy
of his hulun (subjects or kinfolk). The phrase “people inside the land under
the order of the kedatuan (uran di dalanña bhumi ajñaña kadatuanku)”87
suggests that the bhumi itself only comes into existence when it has come
under the order of the ruler. The Sriwijayan datu was an essential ingredi-
ent in defining the polity, and it was the datu’s huluntuhan, or relatives and
retainers, who governed and linked the distant parts of the polity to the cen-
ter. For this reason the term huluntuhan has been glossed as “polity” and even
“empire,” making the ruler and his family a synecdoche of the polity.
In sum, the mandala political arrangement was admirably suited to the
dispersed and independent communities that made up Sriwijaya. Implicit is
the idea that governance would be by consensus since neither the ruler nor
the community would enter into a relationship unless it was one of mutual
benefit. Force was rarely contemplated, and when it was employed it usu-
ally proved ineffective against a highly mobile population operating in their
familiar habitats. The port polities acted as “gatekeepers” along the major
artery of a river basin, thus controlling the flow of goods. Moreover, in some
cases the downriver polities produced local goods, such as metal tools, salt
fish, woven cloth, and jewelry to entice the interior to trade their products
downstream.88 Strategic collecting posts at important crossroads of river and
land routes in the interior constituted vital nodes in Sriwijaya/Malayu’s dis-
tribution network. The realm did not consist of contiguous territories within
clearly demarcated boundaries, but of communities scattered in the rivers,
jungles, and seas—anywhere in the region that agreed to submit to the spiri-
tual powers of the ruler. It was people, not the lands or seas they inhabited,
that determined the extent of the realm. Even those who were not regarded
as subjects felt the impact of this prestigious kingdom. Local folklore in the
highlands of southern Sumatra preserve tales of charismatic leaders arriving
from the outside bringing a new cultural order to fill the vacuum left with the
demise of Sriwijaya.89
By the time of the decline of Sriwijaya/Malayu in the fourteenth century,
there were certain features which came to be associated with a “Malayu” pol-
ity: (1) an entrepot state involved in maritime international commerce; (2) a
ruler endowed with sacred attributes and powers; (3) governance based on
Emergence of Malayu 67
kinship ties; (4) a mixed population with specific and mutually advantageous
roles in the economy; and (5) a realm whose extent was determined not by
territory but by shifting locations of its subjects. This was a legacy bequeathed
by Sriwijaya/Malayu between the seventh and the fourteenth centuries. As
subsequent Malayu kingdoms continued to practice and refine the conven-
tions established by Sriwijaya/Malayu, these features as well as behavioral
patterns associated with these courts were increasingly identified as forming
Malayu culture.
68 Chapter 2
Interpreting this as a sign, he settles in Temasek and renames it Singapura,
or the “City of the Singa.” Sri Tri Buana remains in Singapore until his death
and is succeeded by his son. Singapura becomes a great city, attracting many
foreigners, but its fame is short-lived because it is attacked and destroyed by
Majapahit. The destruction of Singapore is implicitly attributed to injustices
committed by the ruler against his faithful subjects, thereby incurring the
punishment of the Almighty.96
In Tome Pires’ Suma Oriental, the reason for the abandonment of Sin-
gapore is an attack not by Majapahit but by the Siamese. The Sejarah Melayu
mentions that Melaka, but not Singapore, was attacked by the Siamese from
Sharu’n-nuwi (“New City”), which was the name the Persians gave the city
of Ayutthaya. Both Singapore and Melaka may have been attacked or at least
threatened by the Siamese. Founded in 1351, Ayutthaya had developed into
a major entrepot in the region. The rapid rise of any rival entrepot would
have been viewed as a threat to Ayutthaya’s own ambitions. According to the
episode in the Suma Oriental, the Permaisure (Sri Tri Buana) kills the Siamese
governor in Singapore and takes control of the city. This incurs the wrath of
the Siamese, who then send a large expedition and expel the Palembang peo-
ple from the island.97 The thriving northeastern Sumatran coastal polity of
Pasai may also have suffered an attack by the Siamese. In the Sejarah Melayu,
the ruler of Samudera/Pasai is seized by the ruler of Sharu’n-nuwi and forced
to tend the palace fowls.98 Evidence of Siamese incursions in the Malayu world
is corroborated in the Ming Shi-lu under the date 20 November 1407:
The kings of the two countries of Samudera and Melaka also sent people to
complain that Siam had been overbearing and that it had sent troops to take
away their seals and title patents which they had received from the Court.
They also noted that the people of their countries were scared and unable to
live in peace.99
In the Ming Shi-lu, Melaka is mentioned for the first time as a port that was
visited in 1403 by the eunuch Yin Qing at the orders of the Ming emperor.
China had never heard of Melaka until informed about its existence by some
Muslim traders from south India. These merchants were apparently eager to
see the development of an entrepot in the Straits of Melaka, which was much
more convenient than the port at Ayutthaya for traders coming from the
west. Convinced by these merchants that Melaka was a commercial success,
the Ming emperor dispatched a sizeable delegation to establish relations with
the new polity. On 11 November 1405, Melaka was granted an inscription
composed by the emperor himself to be placed on Melaka’s state mountain
(present-day Bukit Cina). Only three other nations were given such a signal
Emergence of Malayu 69
honor by the emperor: Japan in 1406, Brunei in 1408, and Cochin in 1416.
China’s desire to find a convenient trade center in the straits and a safe passage
to India coincided with Melaka’s own hopes of becoming a major entrepot.
This convergence of interests enabled Melaka to weather the initial serious
threats to its existence from Ayutthaya and Majapahit. By the time China
abandoned the policy of state trading in 1435, Melaka had already become
well-established as a major emporium in the region.100
Melaka became the entrepot of choice for traders from the east, par-
ticularly the Chinese. The Chinese emperors had given their special favor to
Melaka to encourage it to maintain peace in the straits and thereby assure
the safety of Chinese traders. It was for this very same reason that Sriwijaya/
Malayu had become a “favored coast” for the Chinese.101 Pasai, on the other
hand, appears to have been frequented mostly by Muslim traders from the
west. Were it not for the interest shown in Melaka by the Ming emperor of
China, there would have been little hope for its survival against attacks by
both Ayutthaya and Majapahit. Melaka grew prosperous and powerful, and
by the second half of the fifteenth century it had extended its influence over
much of the Malay Peninsula, the east coast of Sumatra, and the many adja-
cent islands that were home to the Orang Laut. Melaka’s economic success
could be measured by the fact that it had not one but four syahbandar, the
official appointed to handle all matters dealing with foreign commerce at the
port. One was assigned solely to the Gujarati since they regularly were the
most numerous merchants in the port; another to those from southern India
(benua Keling), Bengal, Pegu, and Pasai; a third to traders from Java, Maluku
(i.e., northern Maluku), Banda, Palembang, Tanjong Pura (Borneo), and the
people from Luzon (Luçoes); and finally a syahbandar to the Chinese (includ-
ing those from southern China), people from Ryukyu, and the Chams.102
One of the major reasons for Melaka’s success was the special allegiance
given to Melaka’s rulers by the Orang Laut (see chapter 6). There were many
Orang Laut groups who were regarded as Melaka’s subjects. On the east coast
of Sumatra from Arcat southward to Rokan, Rupat, and Bengkalis (Purim)
the Orang Laut populations served Melaka as rowers or fighting men. South
of Bengkalis were the larger polities of Siak, Kampar, and Indragiri, whose
rulers were related to the Melaka royal family and could therefore be relied
upon to contribute their boats and fighting men (many of whom would have
been Orang Laut) to Melaka’s fleets. But perhaps the source of the greatest
Orang Laut strength for Melaka came from the islands of Lingga, whose ruler,
according to Tomé Pires, was likened to a king of the Orang Laut with their
forty lanchars, or native boats, and four to five thousand men.103 Unmen-
tioned by Pires were the islands of Riau, which were as heavily populated with
Orang Laut as Lingga. The special relationship between the Malayu and the
70 Chapter 2
Orang Laut assured the success of the Malayu polities from the seventh to the
mid-eighteenth century.
Melaka’s rapid rise and stunning success made it an economic and cul-
tural model for other polities in maritime Southeast Asia. The styles and ideas
emanating from Melaka became de rigueur among the elite in courts as dis-
tant as Ternate, and the Malayu language emerged as a trade and diplomatic
lingua franca for the region. After Melaka’s rulers embraced Islam in the mid-
fifteenth century, the court sought to rival Pasai as a center of Islamic learn-
ing. It began to promote the religion through sponsorship of Islamic scholars
and translations of Islamic treatises into the Malayu language. In the rapidly
expanding Islamic world of Southeast Asia, Melaka became known as a patron
of Islam. Melakan court practice, behavior, dress, language, and religion were
emulated by other polities, thereby adding to the corpus of activities and arti-
facts that could be selected by certain populations at specific periods in his-
tory to become the basis of a Malayu identity.
There were two essential components that defined the Malayu polity in
Melaka and became the basis of the ethnicized Malayu from the fifteenth to
the late eighteenth century. The first was the ruler, who was attributed with
a superior descent (asal) through a genealogy that combined both a super-
natural origin and a fictive lineage extending back to the prophet Solomon
(Sulaiman). Such an illustrious descent was necessary to justify and legiti-
mize the ruler’s position as the mediator and primus inter pares of leaders
of kinship networks. The second vital component was the alliance of kin-
ship networks. Scholarship has tended to focus on the ruler as the linchpin of
Malayu society, with all meaning derived from association with the ruler. As
a result, little attention has been given to the clues available in Malay sources
that suggest that the alliance of kinship networks may initially have been the
more important of the two in determining the shape and viability of a Malayu
polity.
According to the Sejarah Melayu, the ancestor of the Malayu rulers
appears miraculously in Palembang on the summit of the sacred hill, Bukit
Siguntang, and is welcomed by the pre-existing community. A covenant of
mutual dependency and trust is then made between the ancestral head of
the community and the ancestor of the rulers, representing the ideal rela-
tionship for all times.104 For the Malayu on the Malay Peninsula, this is the
myth of the ethnic polity based on the supernatural descent of the ances-
tor of the Melaka royal house. One could argue that the “covenant” or social
contract described in the Sejarah Melayu simply reflects the attitude of the
ruling classes, but Malayu society places great emphasis on consensus. Even
in the Sejarah Melayu the nature of the relationship between the ruler and the
people is characterized by mutual respect and convergence of interests.
Emergence of Malayu 71
This depiction is not at variance with what is known from other histori-
cal evidence. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Dutch East India
Company (VOC) envoys to the Malayu courts remarked on the fact that the
official letters were read aloud in court and heard by an assembled crowd that
gathered to observe the entire proceedings. Tales composed or translated by
court poets and scribes were often recited for the pleasure not only of the
court but also of the ordinary people who gathered for the occasion. Neither
physical nor cultural barriers were erected to alienate the ruler from his sub-
jects, and even the production of literary works was often the result of mutual
borrowing between court and village. In daily life the distinction between the
ruler and subject was never marked. Western observers often commented that
except for size, there was little to distinguish the “palace” of a local Malayu
ruler from the dwelling of his subjects. Perhaps for this reason, status differ-
ences were affirmed through sumptuary laws.
While the external manifestations of kingship were evident to the people,
more important was the internalized belief in the superior descent of the rul-
ing family that established difference and accounted for the ruler’s daulat,
the supernatural forces that surrounded majesty. Nevertheless, there was a
mutual dependency that characterized the relationship between the ruler and
the Malayu people. Through good deeds performed for the ruler, the people
would not only acquire a good reputation (nama) but would also be rewarded
by the ruler with “robes of honor” and titles, both of which were imbued
with the spiritual potency of kingship.105 Royal letters were received with spe-
cial ceremony because they had come in contact with and thus contained the
supernatural powers associated with kingship. The Malayu were not coerced
to perform service to the ruler but did so willingly with the assurance that they
would be more than compensated by a good reputation and the reciprocal royal
gifts consisting of objects imbued with the protective powers of majesty.
Genealogy is particularly important in Malayo-Polynesian societies
because it is the primary determinant of royal succession and rank. The selec-
tion of marriage partners, however, can be based either on a principle of
descent or one of alliance.106 A close analysis of the early seventeenth-century
Raffles 18 and the late eighteenth-century Shellabear recensions of the
Sejarah Malayu reveals a shift in emphasis from alliance to descent,107 which
corresponds to the political changes in the Malayu world. Beginning in the
late eighteenth but culminating in the nineteenth century, colonial rule was
gradually imposed on the Malayu world by the Dutch and the English. Con-
flict between the two European powers was forestalled by the 1824 Anglo-
Dutch Treaty, which divided this world into an English and a Dutch sphere
of influence. Then began the process by which both colonial governments
sought to assure stability in their spheres by relying on those families with
72 Chapter 2
greatest “legitimate” right to govern. Legitimacy was determined by gene-
alogy, and therefore families were compelled to undertake the writing and
recopying108 of texts to advance their case with the Europeans.109 The Shel-
labear recension was written in the Bugis-Malayu court of Riau, as were two
of the major Malayu texts of the nineteenth century: the Salasilah Malayu dan
Bugis and the Tuhfat al-Nafis. At the same time the Minangkabau-Malayu of
Siak also entered the fray with their version of events that is known today as
the Hikayat Siak.110 Under these circumstances, the newly written or re-edited
Malayu “histories” stressed descent and illustrious origin (asal) in recounting
the genealogy of their royal patrons.
While the position of a ruler with superior descent was a necessary part
of the Malayu polity, of even greater importance was the alliance of kinship
networks which constituted the polity itself. Such networks were facilitated
by the practice of tracing a line through both the males and females, making
it almost inevitable that there would be an overlap of kin at the “edges.” As
in the mandala polity model, the “edges” are the site of contestation between
families. There is a Malay saying that captures both the sense of an expand-
ing kinship network as well as the potential for conflict at the margins: Bagai
kabung (nau) dalam belukar melepaskan pucuk masing-masing (Like sugar
palms in secondary forest, each putting out shoots), which naturally touch
each other and may set up friction.111 To minimize such conflicts, there may
be a tendency to “re-center” the peripheral members or third cousins by mar-
rying them. In a random search of “pupu” (grade, degree of relationship) in
some fifty-seven Malay texts compiled in the Australian National University’s
Malay Concordance Project, relationships are listed only as far as tiga pupu
(third cousins).112 Third cousins seems to be the most common limit of ego’s
immediate “family,” and therefore it becomes imperative to marry third cous-
ins to prevent their leaving the family and becoming outsiders. But each indi-
vidual within such core family units would have his or her own network of
kin, contributing to the proliferation of kinship networks.
The emphasis on the alliance principle in marriage among the Malayu
before the nineteenth century helped to extend the family. Because of the
importance of the family network, other means were employed besides mar-
riage to expand membership. One of the most common ways was through
fictive genealogy in order to insert a powerful historical figure as an ances-
tor. Such a fictive ancestor not only fulfilled the useful function as the bearer
of culture, but also enabled ambitious families to legitimize their claims to
a share of the political or economic resources controlled by that particular
ancestor’s direct kin group.113
Another means of expanding the kinship group was through lactation,
or “mother’s milk.” In the Raffles 18 Sejarah Melayu, a newborn child of the
Emergence of Malayu 73
ruler of Campa is nursed with the milk of the wives of his various subject raja
(“kings” or chiefs) and ministers.114 The practice of having a child nursed by a
lactating woman other than the birth mother appears to have been common
enough to have warranted a comment in the early seventeenth-century work
from Aceh, the Taj al-Salatin. Parents are told to be circumspect in selecting
a “milk mother” since the child would absorb her character.115 The belief in
the power of milk is also captured in the Salasilah Melayu dan Bugis, where
the milk of Engku Raja Fatimah is described as being so powerful that a child
nursed at her breast acquired special fortune (bertuah).116 The close bond of
the milk mother and the child is made evident in an episode in the Hikayat
Hang Tuah. When slander causes the ruler of Melaka to banish Hang Tuah, the
latter flees to Indrapura. To regain the favor of the ruler, Hang Tuah attempts
to convince Tun Teja, the daughter of the ruler of Indrapura, to become the
ruler of Melaka’s bride. He therefore succeeds in being adopted by Tun Teja’s
milk mother as the best means of gaining privileged access to the family.117
The strength of the relationship between the child and the milk mother moti-
vated a Jambi ruler to act instantly to assure the release of his children’s for-
mer wet nurses detained in Melaka.118
The significance of lactation relationships is clearly established in Islam.
Among the most popular of Islamic scholars among the Malays was the Sufi
philosopher al-Ghazzali (1058–1111). His Ihya’ Ulum al-Din would certainly
have been known in religious circles in the Malayu lands and the information
disseminated to the rest of the population. In the twelfth book of his work
Kitab Adab al-Nikah (Book on the Etiquette of Marriage), al-Ghazzali lists a
number of legal restrictions on prospective brides, one of which is a woman
who had been nursed by the same mother as the intended groom. The reason
is that in Islam the sharing of a mother’s milk is considered to have estab-
lished a sibling blood relationship.119 A pronouncement by such an eminent
and popular Islamic scholar in the Malayu world would have encouraged the
use of lactation as another strategic means of creating an extended kinship
network. Equally important would have been the examples from Mughal
India, a Muslim kingdom that was one of the most illustrious in the world in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Because the act of feeding the divine
royal child was of such great importance, milk mothers had to be “even-
tempered, spiritually-minded nurses.” Multiple milk mothers created close
links between the royal family and the noble families of the wet nurses.120
In the Malayu world, too, outsiders could be incorporated into the family
through lactation relationships.
Bonds created through mother’s milk greatly enhanced the opportunity
to create larger and more effective kinship units. A child provides the family
with an opportunity to advance its fortunes by eventually marrying him or
74 Chapter 2
her to another kin group. A milk relationship, on the other hand, can reach
out to an even larger group of families through the practice of “inviting” the
women of useful families to share in the nursing of the child. The practice
of bilateral kinship and Islam made every child highly treasured among the
Malayu. Through blood or milk relationships, both the male and female child
could provide two different sources of recruitment to the kinship group.
The sibling relationship created between those who had suckled at the same
breast was regarded to be as strong as those of blood siblings. In speaking
of his foster brother (i.e., “milk brother”) Aziz, the Mughal emperor Akbar
(1542–1605) is reputed to have said, “Between me and Aziz is a river of milk
that I cannot cross.”121 This practice contributed to the strengthening of kin-
ship groups and frequent overlapping of kin networks because of the relatively
limited population among the Malayu until late in the twentieth century.
The adoption (mengangkat) of children was yet another method employed
to incorporate outsiders into the family. In the Raffles 18 version of the Sejarah
Malayu, the queen of Bintan is brought news of the coming of “a Raja from
Bukit Siguntang, who is descended from Raja Iskandar Dzulkarnain.” At first
she contemplates marrying the wandering prince from Palembang, but when
she discovers how young he is, she decides instead to adopt him and make
him her successor.122 This episode demonstrates the fine distinction between
a relationship established by marriage and one by adoption. While a marriage
relationship is most desirable, a relationship through adoption can be almost
as useful. In this case the queen of Bintan is assured of a link to the superior
descent of the Palembang prince, while the latter gains the support of the
powerful Orang Laut fleets of Bintan.
Perhaps the most famous case of adoption involved Raja Kecil, who
claimed to be the posthumous son of the Johor ruler assassinated by his nobles
in 1699.123 According to the Malayu versions, Raja Kecil is brought as a young
man to the Pagaruyung court in Minangkabau, where he is adopted by the
Putri Jamilan, the mother of the Pagaruyung ruler. He is an outsider, assumed
scion of the Johor royal family, but through adoption he becomes a full-fledged
Minangkabau and even enjoys the privilege of undergoing the Minangkabau
royal installation. It is Raja Kecil’s absorption into the Minangkabau royal
family that provides the essential key to his ability to arouse support among
the Minangkabau in the eastern rantau (areas settled by Minangkabau out-
side their place of origin in the highlands of central Sumatra). Raja Kecil’s
special qualities are emphasized by the Putri Jamilan during the installation
ceremony, when she explains:
If you are of the descent (asal) of my brother in Johor, from the genealogy
of Sultan Iskandar Zulkarnain, ancestor and the seed of Nushirwan Adil, the
Emergence of Malayu 75
issue of Sulaiman, the Prophet of Allah, May Peace be upon Him, then noth-
ing more is required. The Minangkabau “heirloom” (pesaka) Si Bujang [i.e.,
Raja Kecil] himself will be more than adequate.124
The special qualities attributed to Raja Kecil are also emphasized in the con-
temporary VOC sources.125
Other well-known examples of adoption are found in the Hikayat Hang
Tuah. The Bendahara observes the skills of five young men of sakai (Orang
Laut) origins and brings them to Melaka, where they are adopted by the Ben-
dahara’s wife.126 When Hang Tuah is banished by the ruler of Melaka, he goes
to Indrapura, where he is adopted by the milk mother of the Indrapura prin-
cess.127 He is later restored to his former position, and his son is then adopted
by the ruler of Melaka.128 Another striking case comes from the Raffles 18
recension of the Sejarah Melayu. When the commander of the Portuguese
forces arrives in Melaka, he is adopted by the Bendahara and given robes of
honor.129 The practice of adoption was not uncommon and was an effective
method of neutralizing potential threats from outsiders and incorporating
them into the family. There are many examples in Jambi and Palembang in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries where the rulers of these kingdoms
adopted the Dutch head of the VOC trading post in order to assure his sup-
port as a member of the ruler’s family.130
The examples cited above highlight certain features in the practice of
adoption in the Malayu world. First of all, adoption occurs not at birth but
later in life when the individual’s character has already been determined. For
this reason there is a cautionary note in the Hikayat Bayan Budiman advis-
ing parents to adopt a child of good breeding whose deeds would stand close
scrutiny.131 Secondly, the adoptive parents belong to the elite of Malay society,
and thirdly, the individuals adopted are clearly outsiders whose incorpora-
tion would be beneficial to the group. Through adoption a group not only
increases its membership but also benefits from the infusion of fresh blood
and talent. Nevertheless, an ambivalence toward the practice is captured in
the Malayu saying quoted above about the sugar palm. Adoption raises both
the prospects of extending the limits of the group but also the specter of con-
flict resulting from the overlap of families at the edges.
Sibling relationships—whether established through blood, milk, or adop-
tion—form the core and the strongest bonds within a kinship group. The
depth of this relationship is captured in the Salasilah Melayu dan Bugis, which
speaks of the very close ties among the five Bugis brothers, who were primar-
ily responsible for establishing Bugis presence in the Malay world in the eigh-
teenth century. According to the Salasilah, written by the descendants of these
Bugis brothers, siblings are said to love one another from an early age, shar-
76 Chapter 2
ing sickness and happiness, helping one another in times of trouble without
hesitation.132 More distant relationships up to third cousins (tiga pupu) may
not enjoy the same depth of loyalty and devotion as siblings, but they never-
theless were respected as family members. When the ruler of Rokan in east
coast Sumatra visited Melaka, he was “treated with great distinction” because
his wife was a relative of the Melaka ruler. On another occasion the Sejarah
Melayu explains that the Sri Nara di Raja “constantly invited Raja Kasim to
his house and set food before him, for Raja Kasim was his cousin.”133 In trade
and business transactions, greater trust was placed in family members than in
outsiders, thus encouraging foreign traders to seek a local bride or common
law wife. Through such arrangements, the trader gained the trust of the com-
munity and a permanent agent to facilitate the exchange of goods.134 A further
advantage in becoming part of a family was the understanding that any debt
incurred could be shared and inherited by kinfolk.135
The varied ways in which the kinship group can be extended speaks vol-
umes about the importance of “family” in the organization and effective func-
tioning of society. In the Malayu world and elsewhere in precolonial Southeast
Asia, the kinship group formed the principal building block of a polity. It was
the shifting of alliances among kinship groups that accounted for the volatil-
ity and paradoxically the strength of polities. The strongest was the one that
was most successful in adjusting to change and rearranging kinship alliances.
In the Malayu world the arena of greatest flux was at the margins, where indi-
viduals were presented with a number of options due to the overlapping of
kin groups established through blood, milk, and adoption.
Melaka was similar to Sriwijaya in its reliance on family networks as the
foundation of the Malayu polity. Although Sriwijayan sources do not reveal
how such bonds were forged, Malayu documents from the Malay Peninsula
provide strong evidence of families extending and strengthening their power
through the manipulation of relationships of marriage, milk mothers, and
judicious adoption of individuals with special abilities. By the time of the
Portuguese conquest of Malayu Melaka in 1511, the political, economic, and
social features associated with the kingdom of Melaka became synonymous
with Malayu.
Emergence of Malayu 77
that suited the landscape. With an inhospitable swampy coastline, the people
preferred to live inland along the banks of the rivers. The thick jungles along
the rivers and the absence of sufficient cleared flatlands not subject to flood-
ing dictated the type of settlement and government the immigrants came to
develop. A concentration of population in large permanent structures such as
those found in wet-rice agricultural societies was impractical or impossible
in such a landscape. Instead, small communities of houseboats or houses on
stilts built over water and on land were established on the few flat, cleared
areas on a river or tributary. Communication between communities was by
boat using the numerous waterways and the short land passages linking them,
or by small trails left by elephants or cleared at regular intervals linking neigh-
boring hamlets. The characterization of Sriwijaya as a “paddle culture” cap-
tures the inhabitants’ reliance on the waterways for much of their activity.
The nature of such a polity can only be inferred by an analysis of the fol-
lowing administrative units mentioned in the inscriptions: kedatuan, vanua,
samaryyada, mandala, and bhumi. Despite its apparently well-defined struc-
ture, Sriwijaya was far less imperial and centrally organized than earlier thought.
A ruler’s perceived spiritual efficacy was a decisive factor in attracting follow-
ers. For this reason early rulers took pains to acquire and demonstrate great
spiritual prowess, even embracing Tantric forms of Buddhism. The dispatch
of religious statues to Malayu in 1286 by Kertanagara, the ruler of Singosari
in east Java, could be viewed as a sign of favor through the transferral of sakti
or sacred power.136 What is more likely, however, is that it represented a direct
challenge to the authority of the Malayu ruler because it offered an alternative
spiritual source of power and hence another lord to whom allegiance could
be given.
Princes with titles of datu occupied positions of authority in the keda-
tuan, vanua, and samaryyada. It may have been one of these royal scions,
serving as governor in Palembang in the late fourteenth century, who is men-
tioned in the Sejarah Melayu and the Suma Oriental leading his followers
in search of a new homeland. The reason for this decision may have simply
been the well-established Austronesian practice of enhancing one’s status by
being founder of a new settlement. The story of the peregrinations of this
group led by a prince from Palembang and its eventual founding of Melaka is
well known. Equally significant is that it was this immigrant community that
introduced the culture of Sriwijaya/Malayu to the Malay Peninsula. Although
there would have been some Malayic speakers who settled earlier along the
southern coasts of the peninsula, the Sriwijaya/Malayu civilization that was
brought to Melaka in the late fourteenth century evolved in southeast Suma-
tra. Prior to the founding of Melaka, most of the population on the peninsula
would have been speaking an Austroasiatic language and would have a cul-
78 Chapter 2
ture more akin to the mainland civilizations to the north. The arrival of the
immigrants from Palembang thus opened a new phase in the history of the
peninsula.
Having been founded by the Malayu from Palembang, Melaka embraced
all the features associated with its illustrious predecessor. From the mid-
fifteenth to the late eighteenth century, Southeast Asia saw an unprecedented
rise in the volume and intensity of foreign trade. Muslim traders from the
rich Islamic civilizations in central Asia and India were joined by a surge of
Chinese merchants freed from official constraints and, for a brief time in the
early decades of the seventeenth century, by state-sponsored Japanese traders.
In addition, Europeans appeared for the first time in the sixteenth century
and became a potent economic force in the region. The scale and intensity of
trade moving through Southeast Asia provided vast economic opportunities
for the local populations, particularly for the Malayu, who straddled both
shores of the Straits of Melaka. In searching for economic advantage in the
highly competitive market environment of the straits, the Malayu sought to
increase their effectiveness by expanding their family or kinfolk.
Various strategies were employed to incorporate outsiders into the fam-
ily. The most obvious was through marriage, which greatly extended the kin-
ship group because the Malayu followed bilateral kinship practices that trace
relationships through both the male and female line. Another effective strat-
egy was to establish relationships through milk mothers, in which all children
nursed by the same mother were considered to be siblings. In the sources it
appears that this was more a custom among the high-born, though there is no
reason why it could not have also been practiced among the common people.
Often the child of a ruler or an influential individual would be nursed by a
mother or mothers from an ambitious family seeking to promote its inter-
ests. In times of weakness rulers could also seek to strengthen their position
through milk relationships with powerful families. Because of this practice,
which established a sibling relationship among those sharing the same milk
mother, families had to search further afield for marriage partners. This cast
the kinship net onto an ever larger circle. The third significant strategy for
increasing the boundaries of the family was through adoption. A family could
preserve its precious supply of men and women for other relationships by
using adoption as a way to incorporate an outsider acknowledged to possess
special skills and spiritual prowess of great use to the family.
By means of these strategies, Malayu families or kinship groups were
extensive and reached beyond simply one settlement or even one kingdom.
Although Malayu polities are ideally depicted in texts as being ruler-centered,
the presence of effective strategies to extend family networks suggests that
some of these families must have exercised considerable authority in the
Emergence of Malayu 79
Malayu world. The families of the Bendahara and the Laksamana were two
prominent kinship groups that emerge clearly in Malayu texts and contem-
porary VOC archival documents in the seventeenth and eighteenth centu-
ries. The closest equivalent political structure was that in Sulu in the southern
Philippines, where the sultan was in every way the primus inter pares among
the chiefs or datu.137 What distinguished the Sulu sultan from the datu, both
of whom were in effect heads of kinship groups, was the array of legitimizing
ritual and religious ceremonials surrounding the ruler and made particularly
potent with the introduction of Islam.138
A similar arrangement prevailed in the Malayu areas, with a Malayu
kingdom consisting of a sultan with many of his kin residing close to the royal
residence, and other family networks headed by powerful officials or chiefs
with their constituencies scattered throughout the Malayu world. Because of
the relative equality in power of the sultan and his officials and chiefs, any
major decision was subject to the process of discussion (bicara) and consen-
sus (mufakat). Political leadership, as in Sulu, was not linked to territorial
units but to people belonging to an alliance of extended families.
The sultan’s mediating role was respected among the powerful families
because, according to the Sejarah Melayu, “it is the custom of Malay subjects
never to commit treason.”139 While most commentators have rightly inter-
preted this passage as emphasizing the elevated status of the ruler, the purpose
may have been to strengthen the ruler’s role as a mediating force among the
powerful families. The text itself is a narrative of the most prominent families
in the Melaka kingdom. In one episode the Bendahara and the Laksamana
refuse to allow the grandmother of the Melaka sultan to approach her ail-
ing grandson because they distrust her intentions. When she accuses them of
treason, they reply that for once they would be disloyal to protect the ruler.140
This tale has an ambivalent message: if heads of powerful families can protect
rulers, they can just as easily dethrone them. Evidence from indigenous texts
and contemporary VOC sources demonstrates the central place of family net-
works in the functioning of Malayu kingdoms.141 Each of these families had
its own network of alliances, and it was the ongoing desire to advance the
interests of the group that provided the dynamism and fluidity of Malayu
polities.
The boundaries of these Malayu polities were never stable because they
expanded or contracted in accordance with the movements of their sub-
jects. Pockets of settlements scattered through the landscape and seascape
constituted the polity, not any fixed contiguous territorial border. It is strik-
ing that in both the Sejarah Melayu and the Hikayat Hang Tuah the ethnic
term “Malayu” is only used when confronted by a distinct other, such as the
Javanese, Siamese, or the Portuguese. In all other cases where all Malayu are
80 Chapter 2
involved, individuals are associated with a place, such as “men of Melaka” or
“men of Johor.”142 There was a clear recognition of a unique Malayu culture,
though what is distinctive about the Malayu can only be found in remarks
about dress and conduct, which modern commentators on ethnicity would
have dismissed as “soft boundaries” or simply “contents” rather than real
boundaries of a group.143 In the Sejarah Melayu, differences with the Javanese
provide the opportunity to declare the attributes of the Malayu, such as the
game sapu-sapu ringan, a distinctive keris worn in the front, and sago and
kangkong as favorite foods.144
The idea of a sacred center was never a feature of Malayu polities, and both
Malayu and contemporary Dutch sources cite examples of kingdoms and set-
tlements utterly destroyed, only to be resurrected in a relatively short space of
time either on the same site or another. Yet what held the polity together and
enabled it to function effectively were the powerful families linked through
blood, milk, and adoption. Their desire to emphasize the sacred origins and
superior descent of the ruler was motivated by a practical consideration. Only
a ruler of such stature would be acceptable by the families as the mediator in
their affairs.
By the late eighteenth century the Shellabear recension of the Sejarah
Melayu already reflected the growing emphasis on the descent principle in the
selection of royal partners. It was a subtle reminder that the institution of the
ruler was beginning to displace powerful families as the focus of loyalty and as
a source of meaning in Malayu polities. Ideas of Malayuness were now being
formed in reference to kingship, a state of affairs which was maintained and
promoted by both the colonial and independent governments in Malay(si)a
until well into the twentieth century.
The dominance of Sriwijaya/Malayu in the Sea of Malayu between the
late seventh and early fourteenth centuries, and of Melaka in the fifteenth
and early sixteenth centuries, established a shared language, institutions, and
cultural norms among scattered communities in Sumatra, parts of Java, and
in such distant areas as southeastern Borneo and the northern Philippines.
The growing economic and political influence of the Malayu in turn led to
the ethnicization of other ethnic communities in the vicinity of the Straits of
Melaka seeking to emulate or rival the achievements of their Malayu neigh-
bor. One such community was the Minangkabau, who created a distinctive
identity to demonstrate their separation from a previously shared Malayu
ethnic identity.
Emergence of Malayu 81
Chapter 3
Ethnicization of
the Minangkabau
82
Contained in this description is a reference to the historical relationship
between Malayu and Minangkabau. When Adityawarman’s Malayu polity was
succeeded by one that emphasized its Minangkabau identity, observers such
as Marsden could be forgiven for believing that it was the Minangkabau, not
the Malayu, that had exercised sovereignty over the whole of Sumatra. Yet he
continued to be influenced by earlier traditions of a “bhumi Malayu” by call-
ing the inhabitants of the Minangkabau kingdom “people of Malayu (Orang
Malayo).”
Essential to this process of ethnic formation is the remembrance of some
meaningful event in the group’s history, which is harnessed for the needs of
the present community. As Kapferer has argued, “no tradition is constructed
or invented and discontinuous with history.”5 For the Minangkabau, history
was present in the monuments and natural objects that dotted the landscape
in southeast and central Sumatra, and in the oral and written traditions pre-
served in the courts and villages. The attribution of such monuments and
objects to magical beings was consonant with their belief in the extraordinary
feats of their ancestors as told in their kaba or stories.6 These relics of the
past formed the basis of a history identified with the Malayu. This chapter
seeks to explain how and why a separate Minangkabau ethnicity arose from
that of the Malayu, and how ethnic boundaries were erected to enforce this
difference. As with the other ethnic communities in the Straits of Melaka, it
was international trade that proved the decisive element in the formation of
Minangkabau ethnicity.
84 Chapter 3
with the bodhisattva’s powers and virtues. By equating Adityawarman with
Amoghapasa, the inscription proclaims the protective powers of the Tantric
bodhisattva over the newly located polity.15 For the same reason and in the
Sriwijaya tradition of apotropaic stones, a nearly fifteen-foot (4.41 meter)-
tall statue of the Tantric Buddhist Bhairawa was erected in Suruaso near the
village of Sungai Langsat. So sacred was the image that water collected in the
cavities of the statue was believed to have curative properties.16
This Buddhist Bhairawa was a spiritual boundary marker protecting the
frontiers of Adityawarman’s Malayu from the Javanese and all other dangerous
forces.17 Adityawarman’s decision to leave behind the base of the statue with
Kertanagara’s inscription was a symbolic severing of the spiritual dominance
of Java. Equally significant was the transporting of the Amoghapasa image to
Suruaso, thus legitimizing and protecting Adityawarman’s new center. While
a compelling reason for the move was to flee the political and spiritual threat
of the Javanese ruler, the site was ideally located to control the major gold,
camphor, and benzoin routes running through the highlands.18
There is an interesting statement toward the end of the inscription, which
focuses not on Adityawarman or Amoghapasa, but on a certain Dewa Tuhan
Parapatih. He is described as the governor (patih) “whose speech accords with
the truth; and whose fame is achieved through conquest of enemy lords, the
deflecting of the arrows of jealous gods, assuring the well-being of Malayu-
pura, being capable in all matters, and being radiant through a great many
virtues.”19 Krom speculates that he may have been a family relation, either the
father or the maternal uncle (mamak), of Adityawarman’s spouse.20 There is
a tradition among the Minangkabau that a marriage was contracted between
Adityawarman and the youngest sister of Parapatih nan Sabatang, one of the
two legendary lawgivers in Minangkabau folklore. The reason given is that
Adityawarman found a natural ally with the other lawgiver, Datuk Ketemang-
gungan, who advocated a more aristocratic form of government. To avoid
conflict in his new kingdom, Adityawarman sought reconciliation with
the Datuk Parapatih nan Sabatang, who supported the democratic ideal in
Minangkabau society.21
There is nothing in Adityawarman’s inscription that provides any clue
as to the identity of the Dewa Tuhan, but it would have been a politically
astute move by any ruler to gain the support among the local inhabitants in
the highlands by marrying into an influential family. In the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, when the records are more revealing, marriages between
people of high birth in Palembang and Jambi with members of interior com-
munities, including the Minangkabau, were common.22
Based on the location of the thirty known inscriptions issued by Adit-
yawarman dating from 1347 to 1375, the polity may have extended from the
86 Chapter 3
considerably. Archaeological and paleographic evidence from Lobo Tua in
Barus and Kota Cina in northeast Sumatra indicates the prominence of Tamil
merchants in the gold, camphor, and benzoin trade.30 With the South Indians
involved in the gold trade, there is a strong likelihood that they would have
established a settlement in Malayupura. Adityawarman’s lands were located
in the heart of the gold-producing area in the adjacent regions of the valley
and hills of the Selo River and the valley and hills of the Sinamar and Sumpur
Rivers. A community of South Indian traders is also thought to have resided
at Pariangan.31 Krom may very well have been right in assuming that Aditya-
warman’s inscription was intended for the south Indians living in his lands.
South Indian traders, as well as Indian ideas, could have also come to
Malayupura overland from the north via Padang Lawas. Padang Lawas was
a major ceremonial center of the Panai polity and was located at a strategic
position of converging trade routes. The conjunction of religious and com-
mercial centers is a common phenomenon in the ancient world, where the
deities are summoned to protect the enterprise of traders. South of Padang
Lawas is a string of temples between Tapanuli and Minangkabau, which
formed the first part of a well-traveled route. It led from the camphor and
benzoin forests in the region around Lake Toba in northern Sumatra, to Rao
in Minangkabau, then on to the upper reaches of the Jambi River, and finally
out to the Straits of Melaka through the entrepot in Jambi or Palembang.32 The
temples and statuary found in Padang Lawas reveal that they were occupied
by adherents of Vajrayana Tantric Buddhism, of Siva, and of a Siva-Buddhist
syncretism. At one of the temples is a torso of a queen believed to be conse-
crated as a Bhairawi. Among the other finds was a rare image of Heruka, a
seldom-depicted deity of Tantric Vajrayana Buddhism, wearing a necklace of
human skulls with flaming hair and a headdress containing the bodhisattva
Aksobhya. These finds are generally believed to date from the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, although some would prefer a longer range from the
eleventh to the fourteenth centuries.33
Evidence of the presence of Tantric Buddhism and the Bhairawa cult in
Padang Lawas demonstrates a strong cultural affinity with Adityawarman’s
Malayu. Such affinity would have also been strengthened through influences
arriving from the south. Scholars have shown that Javanese influence on the
art, language, and writing style of the southern part of Sumatra gradually
increased in the beginning of the tenth century and extended as far north as
Padang Lawas.34 Panai had been sufficiently important in the eleventh century
to have become one of the mandala polities of Sriwijaya attacked by the Cho-
las. By the fourteenth century, Panai would have developed into a powerful
independent entity, and perhaps even a rival to Adityawarman’s Malayu. For
this reason the archaeologist Satyawati Suleiman believes that the placement
Minangkabau Ethnicity
There is a major gap in the historical picture in the Minangkabau highlands
between the last date of Adityawarman’s inscription in 1375 and Tomé Pires’
Suma Oriental, written sometime between 1513 and 1515. By the latter date,
Minangkabau is the name given to the kings who rule in the highlands and to
the people who originally come from there. The creation of a separate identity
from the Malayu would have entailed emphasizing some important features
of the group that would serve as ethnic boundaries. Today the two features
that are usually associated with Minangkabau society are matrilineality and
the merantau. It is useful to begin here because these aspects were also impor-
tant in the past and can clarify the brief and scattered comments that are
made intelligible only by an understanding of these two features. Neverthe-
less, as I argue in the following section, the Pagaruyung court as kedatuan may
have been the most significant factor defining Minangkabau ethnicity from
the period after the death of Adityawarman. From available evidence, it was
certainly the major component of Minangkabau ethnic identity between the
sixteenth and the early nineteenth centuries.
88 Chapter 3
In describing the Minangkabau matrilineal system, commentators often
begin with the well-known though variant traditions concerning the two
Minangkabau “lawgivers,” Datuk Ketemanggungan and Datuk Parapatih nan
Sabatang. The former brought the Adat Ketemanggungan, customary laws
associated with patrilineality, the royal family, and a code demanding retali-
ation, whereas the latter lawgiver introduced the Adat Parapatih, customary
laws that emphasize matrilineality, the village community, and a code encour-
aging reparation. The distinction is represented by the phratries Koto-Piliang,
which follows the Adat Ketemanggungan, and Bodi-Caniago, which adheres to
the Adat Parapatih. It has been suggested that the lawgiver Datuk Ketemang-
gungan may be a reference retained in folk memory of Adityawarman when
he established his kedatuan in Pagaruyung. Those practicing Adat Parapatih
tend to explain that theirs was the indigenous conception onto which was
grafted the new ideas brought by the later institution of kingship represented
by the Adat Ketemanggungan.
But the explanation is not universally accepted, and there is evidence that
too much has been made of the distinction between these two forms of adat. As
shown above, Adityawarman’s succession was governed by matrilineal princi-
ples, a royal practice continued in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.37
Anthropologists have also increasingly come to acknowledge the prominent
role that patrilineality has always played in Minangkabau. In 1951 de Josselin
de Jong tentatively suggested that “many facts in Sumatran social structure
appear to point in one and the same direction, viz. that Minangkabau should not
be considered as a matrilineal island in the midst of surrounding patrilineally
organized societies, but the various Sumatran social systems may prove to be
based on a double-unilateral organization, which assumed a patrilineal stress
in the Aceh and Batak territories and a matrilineal stress in Minangkabau.”38
This observation is confirmed in Minangkabau tradition, where both
matrilineal and patrilineal tendencies are evident in the story of the two law-
givers and the division of the society into phratries. The greater emphasis on
matrilineality may have been a conscious decision by the Minangkabau some-
time between the late fourteenth and the early sixteenth century to under-
score their difference with their immediate neighbors, the Malayu and the
Batak, who lay greater stress on patrilineal principles. The growing presence
of Islam in Sumatra after the late thirteenth century may have also contrib-
uted to the increasing patrilineal tendency on the island. Islam, however, was a
relatively new phenomenon in the Minangkabau interior. The early sixteenth-
century Suma Oriental mentions that of three Minangkabau kings, only one
had become Muslim some fifteen years before.39
The merantau was another aspect selected by later Minangkabau society
to establish an ethnic boundary with the Malayu and reaffirm its distinctive
90 Chapter 3
frequent and meaningful at the lower levels of identity, where people identi-
fied with a local community.
Until perhaps the late fifteenth century, issues of identity arose principally
if not exclusively on a local level. But the situation changed dramatically when
the rantau inhabitants were confronted increasingly by self-confident and
aggressive Malayu groups along the coast. To safeguard their interests against
the coastal Malayu, the rantau communities created a larger and hence more
competitive identity of “Minangkabau.” The ethnicization of Minangkabau
was possible because of the great reverence paid to the Minangkabau rulers
of “Pagaruyung.” The first two Minangkabau kings appear to have had their
courts in Tanah Datar in the darek, and the third at an unspecified site but
with a possible jurisdiction over the coastal region.50 In the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, no matter where the particular court of a Minangkabau
ruler in the highlands, the missives were always from the “emperor” of the
Minangkabau at “Pagaruyung.”51 The existence of a court at Pagaruyung that
retained the aura of the spiritual powers associated with Adityawarman made
the new Minangkabau identity a credible and increasingly effective one. In the
middle of the seventeenth century the Pagaruyung court proved to be a major
source of inspiration and motivation for Minangkabau everywhere. By this
time the Minangkabau highlands were no longer regarded as Malayu, since
that identity had now been firmly appropriated by the coastal kingdoms.
Pires’ informative account of the Minangkabau in his Suma Oriental
can be compared to what is known of the past to see the changes that had
occurred. According to Pires, the Minangkabau lands in the early sixteenth
century included the interior highlands of central Sumatra where the kings
lived; the east coast areas from “Arcat” (between Aru and Rokan) to Jambi;
and the western coastal port cities of Panchur (Barus), Tiku, and Pariaman.
He then writes that the lands of Indragiri, Siak, and Arcat are all part of the
“land of the Minangkabau” but all the people are Malayu.52 Later he qualifies
that statement by stating that, though the area from Arcat to Jambi is called
Minangkabau, “it is more properly the interior.”53 In making this distinction,
Pires was repeating the Minangkabau formulation of the “land” (darek) and
the “sea/coast” (rantau). The coast was part of the Minangkabau rantau, but
the inhabitants were Malayu because of their earlier association with the poli-
ties called Malayu and the cultures they developed. At the time Pires made
these statements, however, there was no longer a Malayu political entity on
the east coast of Sumatra, and the former heartland of the Malayu in Palem-
bang and Jambi was now governed by patih appointed by a Javanese ruler.
“The people of the land of Jambi,” he observed, “are already more like the
Palembangs and Javanese than Malays.”54
94 Chapter 3
his Minangkabau subjects in recompense for the crimes committed against
Dutch subjects in Melaka by the Minangkabau from Naning and Rembau.64
Economic factors would have been the primary motivation in the meran-
tau to the Malay Peninsula. An Englishman who visited Johor with a Dutch
expedition in 1600–1 noted that the rulers relied on Minangkabau brought
from Sumatra to prospect for gold in their lands.65 Much of the gold in Sumatra
came from the Minangkabau highlands, so the Minangkabau were believed to
possess great skills in gold mining. This Englishman’s comment also implies
that there were close links between Minangkabau and Johor in the early seven-
teenth century. There appears to have been no difficulty in finding sufficient
workers because the empty lands of the Malay Peninsula were an attraction.
In 1613 Eredia observed that in the districts surrounding Melaka, “the greater
part of the country is uninhabited and deserted, except in the district of Nany
[Naning] which is occupied by Monancabos [Minangkabau].”66
In the late seventeenth century the appeal to the Minangkabau world
(alam67) to rally support in the rantau became more frequent. In the increas-
ingly competitive commercial world of the Straits of Melaka, any comparative
advantage would have been sought. By seeking a community of those who
were linked by their obeisance to their Pagaruyung lord, a potentially large
and powerful economic and political force could be assembled. The substan-
tial populations in the Minangkabau highland were noted in 1684 by the Por-
tuguese mestizo Tomas Dias, the first “European” to reach the Minangkabau
darek. Though his figures may be inflated, they suggest a substantial popula-
tion in the interior of central Sumatra. He reported that there were some 300
rajas or heads of settlements, and that Air Tiris had a population of 10,000,
of whom 500 were traders. At the court of the ruler of Pagaruyung lived some
8,000 people. A Dutch report in 1696 confirms the presence of large popula-
tions in the interior. Pagaruyung had 1,000 people; Suruaso 4,000; Padang
Ganting 10,000; and Sungai Tarab (or Padang Tarab) 1,000.68
When the Minangkabau began to merantau, they settled in many of the
sparsely populated coastal areas on both sides of the Straits of Melaka. This
spread had already been noted by Pires in the early sixteenth century, and
the process continued in subsequent centuries. While the Minangkabau did
merantau to different parts of the archipelago, the phenomenon was dif-
ferent in Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula because of (1) the proximity of
these two areas to the homeland of the Minangkabau and (2) their relatively
large migrant numbers compared to the host communities. The large con-
centrations of Minangkabau on lands bordering the Straits of Melaka made
them a potential source of either danger or opportunity for ambitious local
leaders.
96 Chapter 3
to preserve the allegiance of the coast was to make the ruler of Pagaruyung,
or the “Emperor of Minangkabau,” the sovereign lord over these communi-
ties, purely “for form’s sake (voor de leus).” As a result, the Pagaruyung ruler
also entered into treaties with these communities and formally appointed the
Dutch commander at Padang as his regent (stadthouder).71
Letters from the Minangkabau courts to the Dutch were always sent from
Pagaruyung by the maharajadiraja, or the “great king of kings,” an Indianized
title used by Adityawarman and his successors.72 In these letters the rulers
interchangeably styled themselves “Raja Pagaruyung” or “Keizer Minangka-
bau,” or both. Despite Minangkabau traditions associating the name Pagaru-
yung with early kingship,73 it is not mentioned in Adityawarman’s inscriptions.
After a thronal dispute in the 1680s, two separate courts were established,
one at Pagaruyung and the other at Suruaso. Nevertheless, rulers of both
courts, including the queen mothers known as Putri Jamilan, continued to
title themselves “Raja Pagaruyung” or “Keizer Minangkabau” in their letters
to the Dutch.74
The first mission sent by the VOC to the “Pagaruyung” court in 1668
clearly reveals the immediate impact of the bold Dutch initiative to manipu-
late the royal family in order to maintain control.75 Little did they realize that
their plan to acknowledge the Pagaruyung ruler as overlord over all the vari-
ous Minangkabau settlements on the west coast and central Sumatran high-
lands would have such immense consequences for the history of the area. The
mission brought a letter dated 9 October 1668 addressed to “Sultan Ahmad
Syah, Iskandar Zul-Karnain, Emperor of the renowned gold-rich Minangka-
bau” from Jacob Pits, “Chief Officer of the Company’s important trade along
this coast [west coast Sumatra] and regent for your Majesty over all his coastal
lands from Kotawan [?] to the south and Baros to the north of Padang.” Pits
even styled himself the bintara raja, or royal herald, of the Minangkabau ruler
and asked the latter’s mediation in bringing peace in the highlands so that
gold could once again flow to the coast.76
In amazed disbelief, the Pagaruyung ruler asked the envoys “whether it
was definitely so that the Lord Governor-General of Batavia with pure inten-
tions had conquered the coastal lands on my behalf and presented them to
me.” The envoys assured him that “these lands were reverting to him as part
of his ancient heritage, and that they would be governed and protected by
the Honorable Company in his name and with his authority.”77 The Dutch
were obviously aware of the awe with which the coastal Minangkabau viewed
the distant, rarely visited, and hence mysterious court. They saw this as an
excellent opportunity to use this reputation to facilitate Pagaruyung’s con-
trol not only over the gold trade, but over the whole west coast of Sumatra.
Camphor, benzoin, pepper, and gold were the valuable products that came
98 Chapter 3
According to Jane Drakard, these letters were formulaic with a precise
structure. The first part began with an account of the divine origins of the
Pagaruyung rulers at the time of Creation; the second described the geo-
graphic reach, the quality, and the manner of the transmission of the royal
message; the third provided the signs of the God-given powers of the rulers;
and the final section contained the threat of supernatural sanction against
those who failed to heed the royal commands. In an analysis of the letters,
Drakard explains the significance of the language of space. In one surat cap
(seal-bearing letters), the large royal seal of Pagaruyung is surrounded by the
nine smaller seals of Aceh, Pariaman, Indrapura, Sungai Paguh, Palembang,
Jambi, Siak, Rokan, and Banten, entities (except for Sungai Paguh) on both
the east and west coasts of Sumatra. The conception, then, is of a core repre-
sented by Pagaruyung, encircled by nine kingdoms serving as gateways (bab)
leading into the Minangkabau alam.83 The depiction is precisely that which
characterized the political layout of the Sriwijaya/Malayu polity.
Acknowledging Pagaruyung’s surat cap was an important demonstration
of identification with Minangkabau. In every letter sent from the Pagaruyung
rulers, the language of greatness of the surat cap is centered on the description
of regalia. Drakard argues that the efficacy of such description lay in a general
familiarity with oral traditions that associated each item of the regalia with
supernatural powers.84 In the ceremonial apology that precedes the famous
Minangkabau Kaba Cindua Mato, the reciter asks forgiveness of the two
semidivine protagonists of the tale and disclaims responsibility for repeating
“other people’s stories.”85 Implicit in this practice is the belief in the power
of the word, particularly when associated with spiritually potent individu-
als. Through these extraordinary powers claimed by the Pagaruyung rulers,
peace would be restored, justice re-established, and protection provided for
all their subjects. The justice promised would emanate from God through his
disciples represented on earth by the descendants of Iskandar Zul-Karnain,
which included the Pagaruyung rulers.86 At a time when there was great dis-
ruption and movements of people in the region because of new economic and
political pressures, Pagaruyung’s message had tremendous appeal.
But the themes and motifs do not simply reflect Pagaruyung’s sacred pow-
ers; they also reassert a claim to traditions of sacred descent from Bukit Sigun-
tang.87 In the 1612 version of the Sejarah Melayu favored by Melaka, Johor,
and other Malay courts on the Malay Peninsula, the eldest of the princes from
Bukit Siguntang is taken by the Minangkabau of Andalas (an ancient name for
Sumatra) and given the title Sang Sapurba. The second prince becomes ruler
of Tanjung Pura, and the youngest is made king of Palembang with the title of
Sri Tri Buana. The youngest travels to the islands and eventually settles on the
Malay Peninsula to become the founder of the Melaka dynasty. The story then
100 Chapter 3
the Minangkabau court. He claimed many of the attributes of the Pagaruyung
ruler and used his special role as a messenger to assemble the Minangkabau
in the rantau to evict the Dutch from Melaka. His efforts to form a Minang-
kabau alliance with the ruler of Kuantan, a Minangkabau polity in upriver
Indragiri, proved unsuccessful. He therefore turned to Islam as a rallying force
to gain support from the Bugis and Makassar settlers living in Kelang. But the
threat ended abruptly with his assassination by a Bugis in 1678.94 Although
the threat from Raja Ibrahim was short-lived, it was an important precursor
of future developments. It demonstrated that a Minangkabau ethnicity was
not sufficiently strong in the late seventeenth century to provide the basis for
a common cause, but it was being considered by Minangkabau leaders.
The Minangkabau on the Malay Peninsula continued to reaffirm their
Minangkabau ethnic identity in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centu-
ries by acknowledging the rulers of Pagaruyung as their overlord. When in
1758 the Sultan Johor decided to transfer to the Dutch his sovereign author-
ity over the Minangkabau settlements of Rembau, Sungai Ujong, Johol, and
Naning, the leaders of these four communities requested that the sultan seek
a lord from Pagaruyung to be their principal head. The communities there-
fore received a royal representative from Pagaruyung, who assumed the title
of Yang Dipertuan Besar. Since Dutch approval was required, it was agreed
that the Yang Dipertuan Besar would produce his teromba (a “song of ori-
gin” or genealogy) for the Dutch authorities at Melaka. The teromba was to
present in “a correct and unimpeachable manner the genealogical tree of the
house of Minangkabau, and his [the Yang Dipertuan Besar’s] own connection
therewith.”95
In later years disputes over the succession to this newly created office
proved so disruptive to the tin trade that the Dutch governor in Melaka con-
sidered seeking yet another Minangkabau prince from Pagaruyung to become
the next ruler. Whether such a request was ever made is not known, but a
paramount lord over these four areas, known collectively as Rembau, was
appointed in 1785. According to local oral tradition, a certain prince known
as Raja Melewar was actually brought from Pagaruyung to become ruler in
the late eighteenth century.96 In 1828 a Raja Labu was sent from Pagaruyung
to govern in Rembau, and the links between Pagaruyung and the Minang-
kabau settlements on the Malay Peninsula only ended with the demise of the
monarchy around 1833.97
One of the most spectacular examples of these royal messengers was
Raja Kecil. The historical and legendary accounts of his life provide a glimpse
into the role of Pagaruyung in the ethnicization of the Minangkabau. On
4 December 1717, Raja Kecil first appears in the VOC letters as a messenger of
the ruler of Pagaruyung sent to avenge the assassination in 1699 of the Johor
102 Chapter 3
his claim and establish a new kingdom called Siak on the Sumatran side of the
Straits of Melaka.103
While the contemporary documentary evidence from the VOC archives
provides a detailed picture of Raja Kecil’s activities as an adult, the story of
his conception, birth, childhood, and early adulthood is from the Hikayat
Siak, an indigenous court chronicle containing many local oral traditions. An
important process appears to be unfolding in the story: the division of the
Minangkabau-Malayu identity to form two separate ethnic groups reinforced
by specific ethnic markers. For many in the Malayu world, the reputation of the
Pagaruyung court as the guardian of the community and dispenser of justice
was widely known. That the son of an assassinated ruler was secretly brought
to the safe haven in Pagaruyung would have been understood and considered
appropriate. In Pagaruyung, Raja Kecil exhibits special supernatural qualities
because he is of royal Johor blood. But the tale makes it abundantly clear that
despite his origins, Raja Kecil had been adopted as an “anak Minangkabau”
(i.e., a Minangkabau child/subject). He is depicted as “a fatherless child” who is
raised by the queen mother, Putri Jamilan, as her own.104 By becoming mother
to the fatherless child, the Putri Jamilan provides Raja Kecil with the matrilin-
eal link that establishes his position in Minangkabau society.
As a young man, Raja Kecil asks permission to go abroad to “seek knowl-
edge” (mencari ilmu), a clear reference to the merantau. When he returns, both
the Raja Pagaruyung and the Putri Jamilan ask why he had spent such a long
time “at sea,” but later he is advised to return to the “sea” to Siak and Johor.105
The word “sea” was used to refer to the rantau. In a letter from Pagaruyung
written in the Malayu language and included in an eighteenth-century Johor
text, the Minangkabau in the rantau are referred to as “Minangkabau who are
at sea (Minangkabau yang dilaut).”106 The final act in the transformation of
Raja Kecil to a Minangkabau occurs when he is installed with the Pagaruyung
regalia.
According to early eighteenth-century Dutch reports, thousands of
Minangkabau complied with the letter brought by Raja Kecil from Paga-
ruyung seeking their assistance. Among Johor’s subjects, only the Orang Laut
appeared to have believed Raja Kecil’s claim to be the son of the murdered
Johor ruler. There was confusion among the Johor Malayu because some
were convinced that he was a Minangkabau. He had gained the support of
the Minangkabau settlers in Siak, and his possession of a letter from the Paga-
ruyung ruler clearly identified him with the alam Minangkabau.107 This reac-
tion among the Johor Malayu clearly demonstrates that by the second decade
of the eighteenth century, there were clear ethnic markers distinguishing the
Malayu from the Minangkabau. The fount of this distinctive Minangkabau
ethnic identity was Pagaruyung.
104 Chapter 3
Assurance of effective mediation and protection by Pagaruyung in any dis-
turbance in the alam, as well as access to the Minangkabau-dominated gold
and pepper trade, made the choice of Minangkabau ethnicity an increasingly
appealing proposition.
Conclusion
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Minangkabau were noted in
the VOC reports as being responsible for a number of disturbances in Suma-
tra and the Malay Peninsula. The Dutch attributed many of these outbreaks
to Minangkabau “adventurers” who claimed to be emissaries of Pagaruyung.
The fact that the Minangkabau communities outside Pagaruyung readily
accepted these claims reveals the great credence given to the reputed sacred
powers of the Minangkabau court. A body of oral traditions helped to rein-
force this belief, which was undoubtedly stimulated by the presence in the
central Sumatran highlands of ancient inscriptions and statues associated
with Adityawarman. The list of sacred objects associated with the Pagaruyung
ruler and included in every preamble of their letters grew from as few as three
or four in some seventeenth-century letters to as many as thirty-seven by the
nineteenth century.110 The idea of sacred kingship was retained, but the man-
ner in which it was conveyed was greatly elaborated.
In the second half of the seventeenth century, the VOC decided to use
Pagaruyung to assure the smooth functioning of the gold and pepper trade.
Any treaty it signed with a Minangkabau coastal settlement had to be “legiti-
mized” by the Pagaruyung ruler. Such an arrangement was typical of the
VOC, which found it easier and more convenient to deal with one overlord
rather than a host of smaller lords. The ruler of Pagaruyung was thus sup-
ported in his pretension as the “great king of kings,” but with a difference. He
was the “great king of kings” not over all other kings of Sumatra and beyond
as was the claim made by Malayu rulers, but only over the Minangkabau.
The Dutch addressed him as the “Emperor of Minangkabau,” and any who
acknowledged his authority by submitting to his letters and obeying his royal
messengers became by the very act of submission a Minangkabau. Therefore,
all areas where Minangkabau resided in the darek and the rantau constituted
the alam Minangkabau,111 thus challenging and displacing areas once listed as
part of bhumi Malayu.
The Pagaruyung rulers began exercising their newly found power begin-
ning in 1668. To their great satisfaction, their letters and emissaries were greeted
with reverence and submission among those who had begun to emigrate
from the heartland toward both coasts. The changing political and economic
context in the Straits of Melaka explains the readiness of the Minangkabau to
106 Chapter 3
In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Pagaruyung court was no
longer relevant in establishing the boundaries of Minangkabau ethnic iden-
tity. The changing political and economic contexts had now given this role to
matrilineality and the merantau.
Though the Minangkabau had been part of the Malayu polity in the
fourteenth century and therefore within bhumi Malayu, their identification
with the latter had lessened in subsequent centuries. The Minangkabau came
to erect ethnic boundaries to distinguish themselves from the Malayu. In the
early sixteenth century, Tomé Pires clearly wrote about the Minangkabau and
the Malayu as two separate groups. This distinction was given even greater
credence in the region in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries because of
the prominent role played by Pagaruyung in the ethnicization of the Minang-
kabau. Although certain external observers continued to see the Minangkabau
as Malayu, the people in the darek and the rantau increasingly saw themselves
as part of the alam Minangkabau defined by Pagaruyung and its rulers. The
economic and political situation along the Straits of Melaka that had resulted
in the ethnicization of the Minangkabau had an equally significant impact on
ethnic identity in Aceh.
108
and the Hikayat Aceh. The Taj al-Salatin, a “Mirror of Kings,” was written in
1603 by Bukhari al-Jauhari and relies heavily on Persian sources. Instead of
engaging in philosophical discussions or definitions of concepts, the text offers
explanations through stories based on the tales of the prophets and on Islamic
myths and histories. This narrative technique, popular and widely used in
the archipelago, was effective in providing models of good Muslim behavior
for rulers, ministers, and ordinary people. The Taj enabled Aceh to create a
model of Muslim Malayu kingship in the seventeenth century, which reached
its pinnacle under Sultan Iskandar Muda (1607–36). The ruler’s daulat or sov-
ereignty plays a major role in this text. While a just (adil) society is the ideal,
it is never promoted at the expense of the ruler’s daulat. Order represented by
the ruler, no matter how evil, is preferable to rulerless chaos. It was also the
message contained in the Sejarah Melayu, the Malayu text that emerged from
the fifteenth-century Melaka court. The pragmatic view of kingship in the Taj
reflected the situation at the time of writing in Aceh, which had witnessed the
assassinations of five rulers and the deposing of another.4 The attitude of the
Taj was appropriate for the type of Malayu kingship that began to emerge in
Aceh in the early seventeenth century.
The second text, possibly by Syams al-Din, is the Hikayat Aceh, written in
the Aceh court sometime after 1612.5 It is a paean of praise to Sultan Iskandar
Muda, and draws upon Malayu, Mughal, and Persian traditions to describe
his supernatural origins and his direct descent from the legendary Islamic
hero Iskandar Zulkarnain.6 The crowning touch was the depiction of Iskan-
dar Muda as a Sufi ruler “in-dwelt by God.”7 In both the Hikayat Aceh and the
Taj al-Salatin, Islam has a major presence. The customs, the activities of the
court, the officialdom, and the ceremonies of the kingdom reflect the strong
influence of the Islamic kingdoms of central Asia and India. As leader of alam
Malayu, Aceh promoted and strengthened Islam in the society and thus made
it a crucial component of Malayu ethnic identity.
When Johor displaced Aceh as the leader of alam Malayu in the late sev-
enteenth century, Aceh began to promote its own distinctive identity based
on texts written in the Acehnese language. The interior, agriculture, the local
leaders (uleebalang), local religious officials, and the Acehnese language of
the interior were all privileged. They were clearly meaningful boundaries that
separated the new Acehnese identity from the former Malayu one based on
the coasts, international trade, the powerful Sufi religious teachers at court,
and the Malayu language of Pasai and the coastal polities. These new emphases
underscored Aceh’s rejection of the Malayu label and its proclamation of a new
identity and status in the archipelago. Aceh’s subsequent history of resistance
to the Dutch and the overwhelming influence of Snouck Hurgronje’s study
of the Acehnese in the late nineteenth century have obscured Aceh’s earlier
110 Chapter 4
areas in Asia and the Middle East with which the Portuguese had contact.
Pires lists the various ports in the northeast coast of Sumatra from the north
to the south, with useful economic and some political information about each
of them. In more recent times the Portuguese historian Alves has combed
the Portuguese archives and reconstructed the history of Pasai.10 In an earlier
study he describes the struggle for power in the Pasai court between the fac-
tions representing the agricultural interior and the coastal trading ports.11 An
equally noteworthy aspect in the history of the northeast coastal areas is the
close familial relationship among the elite. This would explain the not uncom-
mon occurrence of rulers of Pasai being chosen from neighboring polities. In
the history of the northeast coast, therefore, two significant themes can be
identified: the rivalry between the coast and interior, and the close relation-
ship of the elite families in the northeastern coastal polities. These themes
continue in Aceh, which absorbed Pasai in the early sixteenth century.
To speak of a “rivalry” between the coasts and the interior is only mean-
ingful in terms of which of the two would be regarded as the primary focus of
the kingdom. In practical terms there was close cooperation between the col-
lectors and producers in the interior and the middlemen and merchants on
the coast. In earlier centuries the coast was privileged because of the growth of
international trade beginning in the early centuries of the Common Era. It is
believed that Sriwijaya’s success in substituting Southeast Asian aromatics for
the frankincense and myrrh from the Hadramaut in the China trade sparked
a major economic boom.12 Acquiring forest products required binding rela-
tionships between the interior collectors and the coastal traders. Ideas of royal
power may have been elaborated and new oaths of allegiance developed in
order to provide economic arrangements with legitimation and spiritual
sanction. The relationship continued when demand for forest products began
to decline and was replaced in the fifteenth century by the new cash crop,
pepper. Labor for the clearing of land and for the planting and rearing of this
labor-intensive crop would have been obtained through similar arrangements
with the pepper-producing interior communities.
Unlike the relatively small hunting-gathering communities in the imme-
diate hinterland of southeast Sumatra who lived mainly in or near the rain
forests, the interior Batak populations of northern Sumatra were relatively
large in relation to the coastal communities. The strength of the interior was
always a major factor in northeastern Sumatran court politics, as is evident in
Alves’ account of the history of Pasai. When pepper replaced forest products
as the major export commodity, the interior became of even greater impor-
tance to the coast. Pires noted that the Pasai ruler had to handle affairs with
the interior with some delicacy to assure a steady supply of pepper.13 But it
was not until the late eighteenth century that the agricultural interior became
112 Chapter 4
In addition to the export products that were readily available on the
northeast coast through the port of Pasai, Islam appears to have been an
important factor in Pasai’s rise to prominence. In 1292 Marco Polo observed
that Perlak, in the northeast coast of Sumatra, had a well-established Muslim
community.18 Although Muslim graves had been found throughout the archi-
pelago, they were isolated individuals rather than whole communities. What
Marco Polo had stumbled upon was the first major local Muslim community
and, many scholars believe, the beginning of Islamization in the archipelago.
Malay sources, however, claim that the first place to have embraced Islam
was Samudera, which later became incorporated into Pasai to the immediate
south of Perlak.
The Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai (The Story of the Kings of Pasai), a text
said to have been written in stages beginning sometime between 1383 and
1390,19 attributes the Islamization to the sharif of Mecca. He dispatched a
ship carrying royal regalia for Samudera and religious scholars to convert the
ruler to Islam. In this episode the author of the hikayat implies not only that
Samudera was known in the Holy Land, but that it was deserving of the atten-
tion of the sharif of Mecca. Equally important is the mention of the arrival
of traders from benua Keling, or land of the Keling.20 The Keling were Tamil
Muslim traders from southern India who were a major economic force in
Southeast Asian trade. It is perhaps this Muslim connection from India that
enabled Samudera to become a leading Malayu center in the fourteenth and
early fifteenth centuries. Unlike previous centers, Samudera/Pasai was a Mus-
lim polity and owed its rise to the Muslim kingdoms both in the Middle East
and in India.
Pasai’s rise in the middle to late fourteenth century occurred at the time
Adityawarman was governing his Malayu kingdom in the Suruaso area of
Minangkabau. Traders accustomed to dealing with a major Malayu entrepot
in the Straits of Melaka sought similar arrangements with Pasai. Pasai met
these needs, but unlike Sriwijaya and Malayu, its principal patrons were
not Chinese but Muslim traders from the Middle East and India. Its com-
mercial success would not have gone unnoticed, and the hikayat describes
attacks by the Javanese kingdom of Majapahit. According to the story in the
hikayat, the first attack was launched to avenge a Majapahit princess whose
intended betrothed, a royal prince from Pasai, had been killed by his father.
In this just campaign the Pasai forces are defeated. The second attack occurs
because of the desire of Majapahit to bring more lands under its control.
In this invasion motivated by self-aggrandizement, Majapahit is defeated
by Pasai in a duel between water buffaloes.21 In keeping with traditional
Malayu court values, the Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai was primarily interested
in conveying ideas of proper behavior between rulers and subjects, as well
114 Chapter 4
Although Pires calls the ruler of Aru “the greatest king in all Sumatra,” he
does not describe anything of note except Aru’s powerful fleets and its raiding
activities. The reason is that the core of the polity was located in the interior.
One of Aru’s major allies and a source of warboats was Raja Tamiang (Raja
Tomjam), ruler of a polity that Pires describes as “Bata[k].” At the time the
Raja Tamiang was a son-in-law of the ruler of Aru and had a fleet of some
thirty to forty well-equipped lanca (a seagoing, three-masted trading ship)
that could be sent downriver to the straits when needed. Immediately to the
south of Aru was a vassal polity that Pires calls “Arcat,” whose ruler was related
to the king of Aru. Arcat was a major center of the Orang Laut and a principal
supplier of Aru’s fleets, which perhaps explains the strong rivalry between
Aru and the kingdom of Melaka. The main Orang Laut support for the king
of Melaka came from the Orang Laut groups south of Arcat and in the islands
of the Riau-Lingga archipelagoes.28
It has been argued that Aru and the later Deli were located on the same
site, and that on this particular stretch of coast Panai flourished between the
tenth and fourteenth centuries, Aru from the late thirteenth to the early sev-
enteenth century, and Asahan from the seventeenth to the nineteenth cen-
turies.29 What all of these polities had in common was access to the interior
products and the manpower resources of the Batak. In addition to benzoin,
camphor, rattan, and eaglewood, the Batak later added pepper and rice as
their major exports. There was an upsurge in Chinese demand for pepper in
the fifteenth century, which led to large areas of the Sumatran interior being
converted to pepper gardens. The time-consuming labor involved in cultivat-
ing pepper resulted in a shortage of rice, thus encouraging the Batak in the
interior of Aru/Deli to expand rice production.30
The history of the northeast Sumatran coast helps explain why Aru
became such an important polity between the late thirteenth and the early
seventeenth centuries. It had an extensive hinterland with a major Batak
population, whose agricultural and collecting activities complemented Aru’s
orientation toward the sea. With access to highly desired products for the
international market and with strong fleets to safeguard its trade routes and
discourage the rise of competitors, Aru became a worthy rival of both Pasai
and Melaka as the center of alam Malayu.
Aru and Tamiang are interesting cases of the interplay of ethnicities in the
sixteenth century. Both had been included as part of Desawarnana’s “bhumi
Malayu,” and in the early sixteenth century they both pursued a way of life
clearly identifiable as Malayu. Yet both rulers had a Batak connection, with the
Raja Tamiang ruling over what Pires calls “the kingdom of Batak.” Although
Pires supplies no information on the origins of the ruler of Aru, the Sejarah
Emergence of Aceh
Only in the early sixteenth century is there a mention of a place called Aceh
with a “population of fishermen.”34 Its earlier existence may have gone unno-
ticed because the settlement was located a mile inland from the bay on the
Aceh River. Lying on the bay itself was Lamuri, which was better known
because of its ideal location on the trade route between India and China. For
some reason, possibly the shift in the course of the river or threats from Pidië,
the royal family of Lamuri moved its court to Makota Alam on the Aceh River.
It lay directly opposite the settlement of Dar al-Kamal, the epithet by which
Aceh was known at the time. In a war between the two settlements sometime
in the late fifteenth century, Makota Alam emerged victorious and Munaw-
war Syah became the ruler of the united realm.35 Aceh is unmentioned by the
Frenchman who went to Tiku to purchase pepper at this time, which may
indicate that Aceh was not yet a port worthy of note.36 Foreign merchants
appear to have preferred to trade at the coastal settlement of Lamuri.
At the time of these reports, Aceh was beginning to expand under Sul-
tan Ali Mughayat Syah (1515–30), incorporating all the port polities along
116 Chapter 4
the coast: Daya in 1520, Pidië in 1521, and Samudera/Pasai in 1524. Only
Aru and the interior Batak settlements succeeded in resisting Aceh, but under
Sultan Alauddin Riayat Syah al-Kahar (1539–71), Aru too was conquered in
1564.37 So extensive were his conquests on Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula
that he is said to have referred to himself in a letter as “King of Aceh, Barus,
Pidië, Pasai, and the vassal states of Daya and Batak, prince of all the land
bounded by the ocean and the inland sea, the mines of Minangkabau, and the
kingdom of Aru, recently conquered with just cause.”38 Extravagant claims
by rulers were not uncommon, as is particularly evident in letters sent by the
Pagaruyung courts.39 The Portuguese obviously regarded Sultan Alauddin as
the most powerful ruler in Sumatra, with the Portuguese chronicler Diogo do
Couto further dubbing him “Emperor of all the Malayu,”40 a reference redo-
lent of the past glories of Sriwijaya Malayu. Sultan Alauddin was also attrib-
uted with the establishment of the administration of the kingdom. He sent
envoys to Sultan Sulayman the Magnificent (1520–66), the reigning sultan of
Turkey (the famous Sultan “Rum” of Malay traditions), to obtain teachers to
strengthen Islam in his realm and military aid to fight the infidel Portuguese.
Aceh’s ability to besiege the Portuguese in Melaka and to obtain assistance
from the legendary Rum raised its prestige in the region and particularly in
the Malayu lands on both sides of the straits.41
One of the most detailed descriptions of early Aceh is found in a Portu-
guese account, Roteiro das cousas do Achem, based on reports by the Portuguese
Diogo Gil, who was a prisoner of the Acehnese for several years in the six-
teenth century.42 Gil noted that one had to sail some three leagues (c. eighteen
miles) up the Aceh River before encountering forests, fallow land, and some
rice fields. On the right were a few villages of fisherfolk who, he remarked,
were “well-regarded in the society.” Though there were rice fields and gardens,
Aceh was not self-sufficient and had to import food for the city. Pasai, Pidië,
and Aru were major suppliers of food for Aceh, with additional rice, wine,
and butter from Pegu and rice, sugar, and conserves from Bengal. Merchants
from the city went to trade on Pulau Wai, a small island off the Acehnese
coast, because it was the principal market for food in Aceh. Acehnese exports
were camphor and benzoin from Barus, and pepper and gold from Pariaman,
Tiku, and Indrapura. Pepper also came from Pidië and Aru, as well as from
the Malay Peninsula and Java.
As with many contemporary observers, Gil’s population figures appear
inflated though they are useful in providing relative comparisons. He believed
that the city itself contained some 70,000 inhabitants, of whom 7,500 were
foreigners. The latter were housed in various quarters in the city: one for the
3,500 Pasai merchants; a trading village containing 3,000 foreign merchants
(origins left unmentioned) in houses with warehouses (gudang) below; and
118 Chapter 4
madhhab [sect, school], and a lover of jurists, who come to his audiences for
the recitation of the Qur’an and for discussions. . . . The people of his country
are Shafi’is who are eager to fight infidels and readily go on campaign with
him.”46 The Suma Oriental mentions that Pasai had become Muslim some
seventy years before, hence c. 1450, through the “cunning of the merchant
Moors.”47 Given the frequent interaction among the polities along the north-
eastern coast, it is far more probable that they would have embraced Islam
about the same time as Perlak in the late thirteenth century. By the early six-
teenth century, Aceh was expanding under Sultan Ali Mughayat Syah, who
continued the practice among rulers in north and northeast Sumatra in being
strong patrons of Islam. In 1575 an Aceh ruler required his officials to don
Arab dress, while Sultan Alauddin Riayat Syah al-Mukammil (1589–1604)
encouraged Islamic teachers from the Holy Land to preach in his kingdom.48
Aceh’s decision to promote Islam was due to its long and profitable rela-
tionship with the wider Islamic world. In the sixteenth and much of the sev-
enteenth centuries, Islamic powers were pre-eminent in the Mediterranean,
the Black Sea, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean, various seas in
the Indo-Malaysian archipelago, and parts of the South China Sea. The Otto-
man, the Safavid, and the Mughal-Timurid Empires49 controlled the greater
part of the known world, with only Ming China their equal in power and
prestige. Persian, the language of literature and culture in the Islamic courts,
was the true international language of diplomacy.50 The splendor, the wealth,
and the learning of these Islamic empires and the incomparable strength of
their armies were legend. Many lesser kingdoms around the world, most par-
ticularly Muslim ones, sought to model themselves after such greatness. Aceh
was one such kingdom in the periphery of the Muslim world, and its ideal
location between the Islamic heartland and the Indo-Malaysian archipelago
enabled it to become the primary center for the study and transmission of
Islamic knowledge in the region.
Although Aceh’s strongest links to the Islamic world were through the
Indian Muslim kingdoms, particularly the Mughal dynasty, it was also exposed
to developments in the other two major Islamic empires: the Ottoman and
the Safavid. In 1516–17 the Ottoman Empire gained control of Egypt, Syria,
and the Hejaz, and between 1534–38 added Iraq and the Persian Gulf. The
Ottomans fought Spain and the other Christian powers in Asian waters to
preserve the Muslim spice routes. As part of this campaign, Sultan Sulayman
(1520–66) dispatched a contingent of artillerymen to accompany some large
Turkish cannon to Aceh in 1568 and perhaps even in 1564.51 Muslim trad-
ers and teachers from “Rum,” the Malay designation for the fabled land of
the caliph of Turkey, were found throughout the archipelago and as far as
the spice islands in eastern Indonesia.52 A Frenchman visiting Aceh in the
120 Chapter 4
In the streets are a large number of shops belonging to merchants dressed in
the Turkish style who come from the great lands of Negapatnam, Gujarat,
Cape Comorin, Calicut, the island of Ceylon, Siam, Bengal, and various other
places. They live in this place for some six months in order to sell their mer-
chandise that consists of very fine cotton cloth from Gujarat, sturdy silk bolts
and other textiles of cotton thread, various types of porcelain, a large number
of drugs, spices, and precious stones.59
122 Chapter 4
and Hindu traders from India. So highly desired was Indian cloth that many
groups, including the interior Sumatrans who were the major suppliers of
pepper and gold, refused to accept anything else in exchange. Even when the
Dutch brought their formidable technological and capital resources to bear
on Aceh, they were unable to stem the flow of Indian ships to Aceh’s road-
stead. In one typical year Aceh received six Muslim ships from Bengal, another
six from Gujarat, one from Pegu, five Hindu-owned ships from south India,
plus numerous smaller boats manned by Malayu, Javanese, Chinese, etc. The
Indian traders brought so much cloth to Aceh that the whole region became
saturated, which pleased local populations but dismayed the monopoly-
minded Dutch.68 Initially, the VOC employed a naval blockade and other
restrictive measures to discourage Indian traders from going to Aceh. When
this policy failed because of Mughal threats of retaliation noted above, the
Dutch sought to deprive the Indian traders of tin and pepper by cutting off
Aceh’s access to these products. These measures were more effective, but suf-
ficient supplies were available to satisfy the continuing flow of Indian traders
to Aceh.
Aceh competed with Johor for the control of tin on the Malay Peninsula
by conquering Perak and Kedah in 1620 and assuring supplies from Ujung
Salang, Banggarai, and Tenasserim. To gain a monopoly over the pepper
trade, Sultan Iskandar Muda extended Aceh’s control over the northeast coast
of Sumatra and the pepper-producing Minangkabau lands on the west coast.
This policy was maintained by his successors until the Minangkabau settle-
ments succeeded in rejecting Aceh’s control with the help of the VOC in the
1660s.69 Elephants were in plentiful supply in both Sumatra and the peninsula
and satisfied the demand from Indian courts. Contributing to the attraction
of Aceh as an entrepot was its ability to supply rice and other consumables
from Java, as well as gold from the Minangkabau interior, which reached Aceh
via Bengkalis and Indragiri.70
While the trade of Sriwijaya and to a lesser extent Melaka had depended
heavily on the Chinese, Aceh’s success was based on the flow of traders from
Islamic lands. Muslim rulers favored Aceh with special trading privileges and
high-ranking envoys, an honor that would not have gone unnoticed in the
region. With its growing success, Aceh became a major contender for leader-
ship in alam Malayu. In the Hikayat Aceh, Sultan Iskandar Muda is said to be
of the line (nasab) and race (bangsa) of Iskandar Zulkarnain, the legendary
“Islamic” hero based on the Alexander Romance or legend of Alexander the
Great of Macedonia. The hikayat’s statement clearly presents Aceh as part of
the Malayu world, for the Raffles 18 version of the Sejarah Melayu written
in 1612 implicitly depicts Iskandar Zulkarnain as the ancestor of the Malayu
rulers.71 Another significant claim made in this statement is Aceh’s position
124 Chapter 4
powerful Muslim empires at the time.77 Aceh was the undisputed successor
to Melaka as the most prosperous and prestigious center of the Malayu world
and came to offer new standards of Malayuness based on Islamic models in
literature, in court administration, and in behavior.
126 Chapter 4
again attacked Johor, and Tun Sri Lanang fled after completing thirty-four
episodes.89 The second Acehnese attack may have been motivated once more
by the challenge that the resumption of the writing of the Sulalat al-Salatin
posed.
Such an interpretation appears reasonable in light of an earlier episode
involving Aceh and Perak. According to the Silsilah Raja-Raja Perak (The
Genealogy of the Perak Kings), sometime in the mid-sixteenth century the
widow and children of the second Perak ruler were taken by the conquering
Acehnese armies back to Aceh, where they were treated as honored guests
rather than as prisoners of war. The eldest son was taken as husband by the
sultanah of Aceh, and four years later in 1579 succeeded as ruler with the title
Sultan Alauddin. He then sent his younger brother back to Perak to rule.90 The
favorable treatment accorded the royal captives from Perak, and the subse-
quent marriage of a member of the Perak royal family to the Acehnese sulta-
nah, are consistent with seventeenth-century events involving Sultan Iskandar
Muda. In both cases the Aceh rulers were sensitive to the importance of the
Melaka royal line in providing legitimacy to their attempts to be acknowl-
edged as leaders of the Malay world.
Iskandar Muda’s commissioning of the Hikayat Aceh, apparently some-
time either after the first attack on Johor in 1613 or after the second in
1615, was a significant affirmation of the new identity evolving in Aceh. The
removal of the rival claim from Johor prepared the way for Aceh’s assertion of
leadership in alam Malayu through the legitimizing document of the Hikayat
Aceh. While Sriwijaya used strategically placed stone inscriptions invoking
sacred sanctions to maintain loyalty among its subjects, its successors sought
the same results employing a new medium, the written text.91 The change in
medium would have combined an older significance of sacred objects with a
new understanding of sacred contents to create an even more powerful object
of sanction and legitimacy for the ruling class.92
While scholars have argued over which model informed the writing of the
Hikayat Aceh,93 the more important issue is its intended functions. The most
obvious, of course, was to praise the great Iskandar Muda. After his death, it
appears that this hikayat continued to be recited at special occasions to com-
memorate a ruler “whose life,” according to a Dutch East India Company
envoy in the seventeenth century, “was cruel but whose good name would
never die among the Acehnese.” He describes how the Dutch were accorded a
singular honor by the sultanah of Aceh by being invited to a performance by
the musicians and singers of her late father, Sultan Iskandar Muda. The per-
formers offered a “praise song in which the sultanah’s late father’s deeds were
extensively celebrated, so affecting the nobles and other Acehnese listening to
it that they burst into tears.”94 This could have been segments of the Hikayat
128 Chapter 4
in Islamic circles as al-Maqassari, Aceh became noted as the leading center of
Islamic learning in the region.99
A fifth important scholar who contributed to the impressive output of
Malayu-Islamic literature from Aceh was Abd al-Rauf al-Singkili (1615?–93).
He was born in Singkel in west coast Sumatra, left Aceh in 1642 to study in
Arabia, and spent some nineteen years abroad studying with various religious
teachers. Sultanah Taj al-Alam Safiyat al-Din appointed him to the office of
Qadi Malik al-Adil or mufti in charge of religious affairs. Until his death he
continued to serve the subsequent sultanahs who ruled Aceh for the remain-
der of the seventeenth century. During this time he is reputed to have writ-
ten some thirty books on mysticism, jurisprudence, the unity of god, and the
traditions. At the request of Sultanah Safiyat al-Din he wrote the Mir’at at-
Tullab in 1663, a substantial work covering various aspects of the religious life
of Muslims. It was written apparently to assist him in the performance of his
duties as mufti. The sources used in compiling this work are evidence of his
extensive intellectual connections with the Islamic world. He was also the first
to write a Malayu exegesis (tafsir) of the entire Qur’an, which circulated and
stimulated further study throughout the archipelago.100
What distinguished Aceh’s Malayu literary production from that of other
Malayu courts at the time was not only its greater volume, but also its stronger
emphasis on Muslim themes and literary models from the great Islamic courts
in India and the Middle East. Even works written in praise of Aceh’s rulers or
in support of Aceh’s political goals exhibited influences from Persian and Ara-
bic Islamic literature in both the original and in Malayu translations, as is evi-
dent in the titles of such well-known texts as Bukhari’s Taj al-Salatin (1603)
and al-Raniri’s Bustan al-Salatin (1638).101 By producing and maintaining
a high standard of Malayu-Islamic literature, Aceh strengthened the idea of
Islam as a crucial component of Malayu identity. This association of Islam
and Malayu was further enhanced by Aceh’s selective adoption of court and
administrative practices from the most prestigious of the Islamic empires.
132 Chapter 4
sal areas by the ruler’s officials and demanded immediate obedience.117 The
young men of the court (bujang) were often sent to various areas carrying
the ruler’s éseuteumi.118 When a foreign vessel arrived in Aceh’s roadstead, it
was not allowed to land men or goods or sell anything until the royal seal was
delivered. The seal was placed at the base of the hilt of a royal keris, which one
Englishman in the seventeenth century described as “like to a Mace which
openeth on the top where the signet is Enclosed.”119 On one occasion in the
early seventeenth century, a VOC merchant went ashore before being pre-
sented with a royal seal. For his effrontery he was thrown before an elephant
and had his legs broken.120
Perhaps the strongest evidence of Islamic borrowing in Aceh was the
prominent role of the harem and eunuchs in the court.121 When Augustin de
Beaulieu visited Aceh in the reign of Sultan Iskandar Muda, he noted that the
palace was guarded by three thousand women:
These women come seldom out of the Castle. They have a marketplace
of their own, and traffick with one another in such manufactures as they
make. . . . None are allowed to enter into their apartments but the king’s
eunuchs [capados], who are said to be in number about five hundred. Besides
these the king has a great many wives and concubines; and of these his wives,
twenty are the lawful daughters of the kings whom he has pillaged.122
Thomas Bowrey visited Aceh in the latter half of the seventeenth century
and reported that the attendants to the sultanah “are Said to be 100 eunuchs
and 1000 of the comliest women the Countrey or Citty affordeth.”123 The
women in the harem did not actually provide sexual services to the ruler but
were personal retainers for the ruler’s mother, his consorts, and his children,
with the largest number being house servants.124 More importantly, however,
was the role of the palace women in linking the court to powerful families. The
numbers of women in the harem remained high despite the reign of sultanahs
in Aceh, which reinforces the view that the primary importance of their pres-
ence in the court was for purposes of alliance rather than sex. Women for the
harem came chiefly from uleebalang and panglima families, as well as from
the royal households of other kingdoms. Their presence was a visible sign of
the mutual trust and alliance established between the sultan and his lords, and
between the ruling house and other royal families.
The extensive role of eunuchs in Aceh is another borrowing from the
powerful contemporary Islamic empires. In classical Malayu literature there
is a term sida-sida, which has been translated as “eunuchs,”125 but a reference
in the Sejarah Melayu to a certain court official Tun Indera Segara, who is said
to be a descendant of a sida-sida (“Adapun akan Tun Indera Segara itulah asal
134 Chapter 4
which they brought to incoming ships so merchants could present their obei-
sance to the royal proxy before being allowed to land.136 During the reigns of
Aceh’s sultanahs in the seventeenth century, the capados acted as intermediar-
ies between the throne and the guests and officials at court. Muslim propri-
ety demanded that the sultanah, as a woman, be sequestered. She therefore
conducted affairs of state somewhere behind the throne, out of view of the
audience, and communicated through her capados.137 Because of their trusted
positions in court, some of the capados came to occupy positions of great
importance in the kingdom. In the mid-seventeenth century the capado Raja
Adona Lela was considered to be the equal of the four ministers of state,
while the commander of all the capados was given the title of maharaja setia.
Another capado was the bookkeeper to the sultanah. These capado heads
became close advisors to the ruler and exercised considerable power in the
kingdom because of their role in determining who could gain access to the
throne.138
The inspiration for the use of capados in Aceh did not come from Melaka.
While there were sida-sida in Malayu Melaka, they were not eunuchs but most
probably effeminate men who once belonged to a pre-Islamic priestly class
associated with royalty.139 In Aceh, however, the capados may indeed have
been eunuchs. In 1616, the English captain William Keeling was in Aceh,
where he described two noblemen who were condemned to have their tes-
ticles removed because they had not carried out the ruler’s orders.140 If castra-
tion as a punishment was practiced, the idea of court eunuchs may not have
been considered unusual. The inspiration for eunuchs in Aceh came from the
great Muslim empires. In Mughal India, castrated young boys from the slave
markets of Bengal were purchased to become slave-eunuchs. They became
trusted confidants and advisors to their high-born masters and mistresses,
and they came to fill a variety of functions. Some were servants and guards,
while the most capable were entrusted with the business dealings of noble-
women in the harem.141 In Bengal and areas further west in India, as well as
in the Islamic court of Arakan in Southeast Asia, eunuchs were employed in
positions of authority.142 But it was in the Ottoman Empire that the institu-
tion of the eunuch was most elaborated. Most were involved in court duties
and as guards of the harem, though a few reached high military or admin-
istrative positions or became scribes.143 Not only would the Acehnese have
heard of the eunuchs in the Muslim lands, but many would have dealt with
eunuchs arriving on Muslim ships to trade on behalf of their masters.144
Aceh’s admiration for the Ottoman Empire is evident in the Adat Aceh.
It describes Sultan Iskandar Muda reposing under his royal umbrellas and
banners and likens him to the Ottoman sultan Sulayman the Magnificent. In
a procession, some of the Acehnese soldiers bear swords, spears, and muskets
King of the whole world . . . who has a white elephant, the eyes of which shine
like the morning star, also elephants with four tusks, purple and spotted
elephants . . . for which God has given me so many gold cloths of different
sorts, enameled and encrusted with various precious stones, to dress these
elephants, as well as so many hundred elephants to use in war . . . also so many
hundred horses.148
All those who sought favor at court participated in the elephant hunt,
and even the sultanah engaged in this activity.149 So enamored was she of her
elephants that in a letter to the sultan of Perak she styled herself “the lord of
all manner of elephants, among which was one with white eyes as clear as the
morning star.” The last phrase recalls the description of the elephants men-
tioned in Sultan Iskandar Thani’s letter to the Dutch in 1640. The sultanah
was equally proud of her collection of horses, and she boasted to the Perak
ruler that she was also “through God’s Grace lord over all manner of horses
from Arabia, Turkey, Rum, Tartary, Cathay, Lahore and Tanging.”150 Pride in
the origins of the horses is also evident in the Hikayat Aceh, which describes
a special ceremony at court in which horses of Arab, Iraqi, and Turkish stock
bedecked with jewels play a prominent part.151
All evidence points to the fact that Acehnese court administration and
practices were patterned after those of the prestigious Islamic kingdoms in
the Middle East and India. The process of centralization in the kingdom led
by Sultan Iskandar Muda coincided with the codification of state ceremonies
with a heavy Islamic content described in the Adat Aceh. The detailed descrip-
136 Chapter 4
tions of the involvement of the ruler in important Islamic events, such as the
Friday prayer (Jum’ah), the fasting month (Ramadan), the breaking of the
fast (‘Id al-Fitr), and the festival of the sacrifice (‘Id al-Adha), became the
standard for all subsequent Aceh rulers.152 As long as Aceh was the leading
entrepot and military power in alam Malayu, it became the model for other
Malayu courts. Kedah on the Malay Peninsula and a number of kingdoms on
the northeast and northwest coasts of Sumatra had already adopted Acehnese
practices and titles by the seventeenth century. Had Johor not regained its
prominence in the Straits of Melaka toward the end of the seventeenth cen-
tury and restored the Malayu model based on Melaka, the Malayu world as
we know it today would have mirrored Aceh during its period of glory in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Marketing does not yield much profit, even if you grow pepper, my friends.
If there is no rice in the country, nothing else will be of use. . . . The entire
population will emigrate: the only ones left will be the king and his consort.
But if there is no one left in the country, what shall we reign over? You may
accept it from me that agriculture is the best of trades.158
138 Chapter 4
The gradual shift from the coast to the interior, from trade to agriculture, and
from the Malayu to the Acehnese language reflected the transformation of
Aceh from a Malayu to an Acehnese polity.
The formation of an Acehnese ethnic identity was strengthened by a
reputed letter from the grand mufti in Mecca to the effect that female-led
governments were contrary to Islamic practice. This supposedly led to the
deposing of the last sultanah of Aceh in 1699 and the installation in 1703 of
a short-lived Arab dynasty. A failed attempt by the sultan to subdue one of
the mukim led eventually to the removal of the Arab royal family by the ulee-
balang and the beginning of a Bugis dynasty in 1727.159 After the late seven-
teenth century, roaming groups of refugee “Bugis” were a source of instability
in the area because of their willingness to be hired as mercenaries in return for
promises of land to settle to begin new lives.160 The coincidence of the rise of
a Bugis dynasty in Aceh in 1727 and the establishment of Bugis power in the
kingdom of Johor by 1728 may have contributed indirectly to the promotion
of Acehnese ethnic identity.
In the Malayu texts written by descendants of the Bugis Raja Muda fam-
ily of Johor based in Riau, there is no evidence of an attempt to establish
relations with the Bugis dynasty in Aceh. The Bugis in Johor-Riau took pains
to demonstrate their support of Malayu traditional institutions, and so they
requested and were given the Malayu position of Raja Muda. In practice, how-
ever, they transformed the position from one that indicated the designated
heir apparent to one of chief advisor to the ruler, a function reserved for a
similar office in the Bugis homeland. Subsequent events demonstrate that the
assurance of a fixed domicile in Riau, an office reserved for the Bugis, and
intermarriage with Malayu royalty and nobility enabled the Bugis to identify
with and become increasingly Malayu.161 There would have been an incentive
for the Bugis dynasty in Aceh to emphasize its difference with the Malayu
identity being forged by their compatriots in Johor-Riau. Moreover, any deci-
sion to cultivate an Acehnese identity would have been regarded with favor by
the uleebalang in the mukim, whose language and cultural differences with the
coastal elite were becoming increasingly emphasized.
Although the Acehnese language was pre-eminent in the countryside, it
was always present in the city and even in the courts where the Malayu lan-
guage was supreme. In 1644 a Dutch envoy in Aceh apologized to his hosts
because, though he could speak Malayu, he was not conversant in the Aceh-
nese language and customs.162 In addition to Aceh’s thriving written literary
court culture in the Malayu language, it had an equally vital oral (and later
written) noncourt tradition in Acehnese. The Malayu language spoken in the
kingdom derived from Pasai with a strong infusion of Acehnese words and
140 Chapter 4
contest between the religious scholars from Pasai and Melaka as recounted
in the Sejarah Melayu. To counter Melaka/Johor’s claims of pre-eminence in
matters dealing with Islam, the Hikayat Malem Dagang describes the king of
Johor as refusing to embrace Islam, thus forcing his brother to come to Aceh
to be converted.170 The text thus portrays Aceh as a beacon of Islam guiding
others to its shore to convert and learn more about the religion. Islamic recti-
tude is no longer the preserve of the sultan, and the ulama or religious teach-
ers are portrayed as the measure of piety and as a source of nonroyal spiritual
and hence temporal power. In one telling episode the people call upon their
ulama to intervene on their behalf to assuage the sultan’s anger. When the
sultan refuses to be mollified, the ulama instructs his followers to throw away
their gifts intended for the ruler. He explains that “[s]omeone who does not
open his mouth does not deserve my obeisance. It is better that I return to my
own land, Medina, because here we are treated unjustly.”171
The Hikayat Malem Dagang also describes an impending war between
“Melaka” (i.e., Johor172) and Aceh. During the preparations for war, a keel
measuring some forty fathoms long intended for one of Johor’s war boats
drifts away to Aceh. The people are afraid to gaze upon it because they realize
it is inhabited by a powerful spirit. The sultan in Aceh is told of this strange
event and goes down to the shore to investigate. Approaching the keel, he asks
it to explain its origins. The keel replies:
My Lord, I come from the land of Johor Lama [Old Johor, the capital of
the Johor kingdom]. When Si Ujut felled me, he intended to war with your
country. Had he succeeded in completing me, then you would certainly have
lost the war. But I am an Islamic spirit [jin] and not your Majesty’s enemy,
and therefore I have come here. If you so wish, use me to make a ship because
then Melaka [Johor] would be sure to lose the war.
And so the sultan uses the keel to build a ship, but at the launch it refuses to
budge until an ulama offers a prayer.173 In the expedition to Johor, the Aceh
fleet stops at various lands to gather ships and men. The spiritual leader of
the expedition is the great ulama Ja Pakeh. It is he who makes Malem Dagang
the commander of the fleets and requires him to cleanse himself ritually
and to recite passages from the Qur’an prior to battle. When Malem Dagang
approaches the Aceh ruler, the Mahkota Alam [Sultan Iskandar Muda], to
receive the orders to begin the battle, the ruler says to him: “Why ask me? It
is Ja Pakeh, the ulama, who has better knowledge of it than I. If he says to go
ahead, then you should.”174
The message of the Hikayat Malem Dagang is clear: Islam is the primary
source of power in the land, and the ulama’s authority takes precedence over
142 Chapter 4
“[t]he most famous man in Aceh is Panglima Po Lém, who is in a position
to enthrone and dethrone our lord the Sultan. / He is always busy conferring
with others, and constantly resides in the XX Mukim.”182 Unlike the power-
ful seventeenth-century rulers of Aceh, the leaders described in this mid-
eighteenth-century hikayat are in a situation in which regional leaders are
equal in authority and influence to the sultan. Power is acquired and sustained
through judicious marriages that help to build a strong family network. When
Pocut Muhamat goes to the interior to recruit men for an expedition, many
of his relatives through marriage arrive with their men.183 The point of having
family to provide a secure power base is made even stronger when the leader
of Pidië challenges Pocut Muhamat, saying:
Maybe in Aceh Muhamat is quite a man, but here in Pidië we take him for
a greenhorn. / Maybe in Aceh he has quite a reputation, but when he comes
here, we ignore him. / For outside his own village and region, no one counts
for anything with us. / Leave your own village and withdraw from your rela-
tions, and we tear you to pieces without any respect. / Everyone (belongs)
on his own rubbish heap, in his own region, with his own relations. / Not a
word is known about a man whose grave is far away from (the residence of)
his family.184
Conclusion
The destruction of Melaka by the Portuguese in 1511 enabled the leader-
ship of the Malayu world to shift back from the Malay Peninsula to Sumatra.
Although one of the princes of the Melaka royal family eventually settled in
the southernmost part of the peninsula on the Johor River, the new Johor
kingdom was subject to continual harassment, first by the Portuguese and
later by the new power in the Straits of Melaka, the kingdom of Aceh. Pasai, a
long-time rival of Melaka, was the logical choice as successor to the glories of
Melaka, but it eventually succumbed to the emergence of its northerly neigh-
bor Aceh.
With a coastal culture based on international trade, Aceh was very much
part of the Malayu world. It benefited from the refugee scholars and mer-
chants fleeing Melaka, and it became the settlement of choice among traders
144 Chapter 4
Malayuness in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Aceh by the begin-
ning of the nineteenth century had developed a distinctive Acehnese ethnic
identity. It was based on its interior agricultural lifestyle and local uleebalang,
the Acehnese language and literature, and the prominent role played by Islam
and the ulama.
The process of ethnic formation among the Acehnese and the Minang-
kabau had strong similarities. Both emerged from a general cultural phenom-
enon that was associated first with “bhumi Malayu” and after Islam with “alam
Malayu,” both initially attempted to claim leadership in the Malayu world,
and both eventually abandoned the effort and sought instead to distinguish
themselves as a separate ethnicity by emphasizing non-Malayu characteris-
tics. Their northerly neighbors, the Batak, had also experienced ethnicization
in response to shifts in international trade in the Straits of Melaka, but the
process had begun much earlier.
146
cannibals. Early visitors to Southeast Asia were fascinated by rumors of a can-
nibal tribe called the Batak in the interior of Sumatra. At the end of the thir-
teenth century, Marco Polo reported that the Sumatran people (presumably
the Batak) consumed the sickly.7 A variation of this tale was repeated by a
Dutchman in the mid-seventeenth century, who claimed that when people
became old in Batak society they were killed and eaten by their descendants.8
European understanding of the little-known Sumatran interior was influ-
enced by stories commonly told in east coast Sumatra by “downstream” (hilir)
people that “upstream” (hulu), that is, in the interior, the people were hostile
and grotesque. A Portuguese chronicler even repeated downriver stories of an
inland group possessing tails “like unto sheep.”9
Stories of cannibalism among an interior group persisted, and when the
Englishman John Anderson was traveling along the Sumatran coast and inte-
rior in the early nineteenth century, he was regaled by a Batak who boasted
of having eaten human flesh seven times, even mentioning his preference for
particular parts of the body. Two other Batak confirmed participating in this
practice and “expressed their anxiety to enjoy a similar feast upon some of
the enemy, pointing to the other side of the river. This they said was their
principal inducement for engaging in the service of the sultan.”10 Lurid details
of cannibalistic practices may have been provided by the Batak themselves in
an effort to prevent outsiders from penetrating into their lands. From early
times, therefore, cannibalism became associated with Batak identity and had
the desired effect of limiting the intrusion of Europeans until the nineteenth
century. It appears that many of the comments made on Batak cannibalism
were hearsay, and there is no evidence of any commentator having witnessed
its occurrence.11 While ritual cannibalism may have been practiced as a form
of punishment, to dwell on cannibal tales simply reinforces long-held mis-
leading stereotypes about the Batak.
Another common misconception is that the Batak communities were iso-
lated from events occurring on the coasts. Although most of the Batak lived in
the interior of northern Sumatra, they were very much part of the economic
and cultural developments occurring around the Straits of Melaka. The Batak
were sufficiently integrated into international trade to warrant a mention
by China’s inspector of foreign trade in the thirteenth century and by Tomé
Pires in his Suma Oriental in the sixteenth. A study of the Batak data reveals
a greater commonality with their neighbors and interaction with the outside
world than is generally recognized. In the first millennium CE, the Batak were
subject to similar Indian influences as the Malayu, the Minangkabau, and the
Acehnese, and the exchange of ideas helped to create a common Sumatran
culture. The Old Malayu language inscription found at temple II at Joreng,
Tapanuli, and the bilingual inscription in Old Malayu–Javanese and Tamil from
148 Chapter 5
On the basis of later evidence we can probably assume that camphor was
traditionally collected by Batak men under a special leader (in subsequent
centuries called pawang), whose spiritual prowess was employed in locating
the elusive commodity. Nevertheless, even with the aid of religious practition-
ers and adherence to strict taboos, including the use of a special camphor
language, expeditions were not always successful. Writing in the late eigh-
teenth century, William Marsden claimed that not even 10 percent of the trees
cut down yielded any crystallized resin or camphor oil. Benzoin trees were
tapped for their resin after seven years but stopped producing after about
ten to twelve years. The finest was obtained in the first three years of tapping.
After that the quality deteriorated and had a lower market value.16
Only small quantities of camphor and benzoin were brought to China,
India, and the Middle East in the early sixth century, which kept their value
high. In the eighth century, camphor was being included as tribute to the
Chinese emperor from non-Indonesian rulers, indicating that camphor was
growing in popularity in other areas.17 Export of benzoin to China may have
begun as early as the fifth century, though some believe that it began as late
as the eighth or even the ninth century.18 This increased demand for camphor
and benzoin was met by Sriwijaya, which was the dominant entrepot in the
Straits of Melaka between the seventh and eleventh centuries.
The Ligor inscription dated 775 CE indicates an expansion of Sriwijayan
power across the straits. A consequence of, and perhaps even an important
motivation for, this expansion would have been the control of camphor sup-
plies from the Isthmus of Kra and the Malay Peninsula. The annals of the
Liang dynasty, which ruled China from 502 to 556 CE, mention that camphor
came from both Funan and Langkasuka. Funan must have imported and
redistributed the camphor since it did not produce the Dryobalanops aromat-
ica variety brought into China.19 Sriwijaya’s incursion on the peninsula would
have prevented further export of camphor to ports on the Mekong delta. By
the latter part of the eighth century, therefore, Sriwijaya may have succeeded
in monopolizing the sale of camphor and benzoin in the region.
A major source of Sriwijayan camphor and benzoin was the forests in
northwest Sumatra. The supply route from these forests to Sriwijaya went
to Padang Lawas via Sipirok and the valley of the Batang Toru. There is lit-
tle evidence that Padang Lawas was ever a large settlement, but it may have
been a trade center linking the northwestern areas of production to east coast
Sumatra.20 From here there was a route leading directly to Barus, as well as
two alternate routes southward. One of the southern routes went via Padang
Sidempuan to the valley of the Batang Angkola, while the other passed near
Sibuhuan in the Padang Lawas across the mountains into the Angkola valley
near Si Abu. From the Angkola valley the route continued southward through
150 Chapter 5
enth century by an entity known as “Malayu.” Following the Chola invasion,
the temporary weakness of Sriwijaya and its Jambi successor, Malayu, as well
as the increasing volume of Indian Ocean trade, enabled several polities to
emerge as suppliers of camphor and benzoin. This development was tolerated
as long as the vassal areas did not challenge Sriwijaya’s and Malayu’s direct
export trade in Indian Ocean commodities.28 Although its secondary centers
and feeder ports had always had some direct trading with foreign merchants,
from the late eleventh century this became the dominant pattern. Two of the
most important of these alternative ports were Barus and Kota Cina.
152 Chapter 5
transcription or translation has been made nor any archaeological context
provided, the inscription may be linked to the Minangkabau trade in cam-
phor and gold.43 The second inscription is from the back of a Ganesa statue
found at Porlak Dolok near Paringginan in the Padang Lawas area and dates
from either 1258 or 1265. From what can be inferred from a very damaged
text, the inscription commemorates an offering made by the ruler as a meri-
torious act.44
Although the inscription at Porlak Dolok is in the Tamil script, de Cas-
paris notes that beside it to its right is another in the same Sanskrit script
used in Adityawarman’s fourteenth-century inscriptions.45 Using these two
different scripts for apparently the same message suggests that there were suf-
ficiently large number of Tamil speakers in the community to warrant the use
of a Tamil script. The discovery of Tamil inscriptions at Porlak Dolok and
at Batu (or Bandar) Bapahat implies a strong Tamil presence in these two
areas. It is highly probable, therefore, that the Tamil population was a major
intermediary in the movement of ideas and even images between the Padang
Lawas center and the court of Adityawarman at Malayupura.
The Padang Lawas complex was located at the confluence of three rivers
and was a flourishing Buddhist community. It had twenty-six temples and
stupas strewn around a 1,500-kilometer (930-mile) area, with the remainder
situated close to the banks of the rivers. The presence of Tantric Buddhist stat-
uary in both Padang Lawas and Malayupura strengthens the view advanced
in the previous chapter that they formed part of a single “bhumi Malayu.”
The sustained Tamil economic activity in north and west Sumatra from the
eleventh to the fourteenth centuries provided the economic stimulus for the
increasing Batak participation in the trade of camphor and benzoin. These
products continued to be transported southward to the entrepots in Malayu,
but by the late eleventh century most of the supplies were going to Barus and
Kota Cina.
The founding of Kota Cina was not an isolated event but part of the his-
torical oscillation in the Straits of Melaka between a single dominant entrepot
and a number of smaller dispersed ports exporting the products of their
immediate interior. Based on recent archaeological explorations in Singapore,
Miksic believes that Kota Cina may have been simply one of many similar
settlements along the straits, which came to include Singapore (c. 1300) and
Melaka (beginning of the fifteenth century).46 Contemporary with Kota Cina
was a similar port at Pengkalan Bujang across the straits in Kedah to the north
of the Merbok River.47 It is apparent that Kota Cina served principally as a
depot for supplying fresh water and Sumatran forest products. Though there
were other possible outlets for Batak goods in this period, Kota Cina may have
been the dominant port in the northeast coast.48
154 Chapter 5
ries, Batak groups moved from the Lake Toba and Pakpak regions eastward
using a number of routes. Perret shows the spread of various Karo marga from
their homeland in the current Pakpak districts, located close to the camphor
and benzoin forests, to the present-day Karo region.54 The thriving trade in
forest products encouraged the establishment of settlements along the major
routes, which led from the camphor and benzoin forests through passes in the
Bukit Barisan mountains and finally down the rivers to Kota Cina. The short-
est route from the Karo highlands to Kota Cina was via the Cingkem pass and
then either down the Serdang River (known in Karo as Lau Tawang) or the
Deli River (in Karo, Lau Petani) to the coast. But the easiest route from the
highlands was via the Buaya pass, which followed the upper course of the Ular
River (in Karo, Lau Buaya) to the area of Seribudolok on the border of the
present-day division of the Karo and the Simalungun lands. In the nineteenth
century the most important market for the Karo and Simalungun continued
to be situated on this well-frequented trade route.55 The village of Seberaya
was the strategic convergence point of the routes from the camphor- and
benzoin-producing forests, across the Karo plateau, down to Kota Cina and
the east coast.56
South of Lake Toba, one of the earliest transinsular routes went from
Sibolga on the west coast, through a low pass in the mountains, and then
to Gunung Tua and Portibi in the Padang Lawas region. Many places dated
between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries are found inland with their
main functions being trade with the highland groups.57 Miksic points out
that ceremonial sites, such as those at Padang Lawas and at Muara Takus (on
the upper Kampar River), were often located near the border between the
highlands and the coastal plains and “may reflect some function in regulating
intercourse between highland and lowland groups.”58 From Padang Lawas the
major route southward went through a number of valleys and towns to Rao.
From Rao it was possible to go directly to Muara Takus via a tributary of the
Kampar River, but the more common route seems to have been to Buo and
then out to the Batang Hari River. These routes encouraged the movement of
peoples from the area of Lake Toba southward into the region that later came
to be associated with the Angkola-Mandailing groups.59
Migration out of the Toba highlands to areas south of Lake Toba may
have begun sometime in the eighth century when Sriwijaya became involved
in the camphor and benzoin trade. Scattered evidence suggests that the Batak
had earlier spread into lands now occupied by the Malayu or Minangkabau.
According to some Malayu traditions from Kampar, the area of Rao was once
Batak but was later seized by certain Minangkabau chieftains, while lands
directly east of Rao were regarded as Batak. There is also a story of an attack in
the past on Muara Takus by Batak based in Kuamang, which today is occupied
156 Chapter 5
mass market in China in the preparation and preservation of food, and by the
seventeenth century China may have been importing between ten and twelve
thousand piculs (picul = 60.5 kg or 123 lbs.) annually. Europe also became a
major market for pepper and by 1500 was importing about twelve hundred
metric tons yearly. To meet this burgeoning demand, the Sumatran kingdoms
of Aceh, Palembang, and Jambi increased their production of pepper.66
As the Malayu kingdoms in northern Sumatra responded to the new
demand for pepper, they relied on the more populous Batak communities in
the interior to provide the labor. A Malayu document describes how the Batak
were enticed to descend from the highlands to plant pepper in the Malayu
lands of Serdang.67 Batak migrants willing to plant pepper would have been
welcomed in these Sumatran kingdoms. Even in the early nineteenth century
when the peak of the pepper trade had already passed, Anderson noted large
numbers of Batak engaged in pepper production in the interior of Deli. In the
pepper season, he wrote, the river at the ford in Sunggal “is almost impass-
able for the multitudes of people who flock there with produce.”68 Aceh, at
the northern tip of the island, also began to transform some of its interior
areas into pepper lands, and Sultan Iskandar Muda (1607–36) expanded pep-
per cultivation down both coasts. Across the Straits of Melaka he conquered
other pepper-producing areas in Kedah and Perak to monopolize their
production.69
The cultivation of pepper was labor-intensive and required almost con-
tinuous attention. Once the men had cleared the forests and planted the pep-
per, the women and children were responsible for putting in support plants,
training the pepper vines around them, and weeding the root areas of the
pepper vine. The first pepper harvest came after the fourth year, with a large
and a minor harvest annually thereafter. The pepper growers were therefore
kept busy picking, cleaning, drying, and bagging the fruit for much of the year.
It was estimated that it took a woman an entire day to sift a picul of pepper
berries. Because of the labor involved in growing pepper, most families could
not plant rice at the same time.70 As the powerful rulers of Aceh, Palembang,
and Jambi required more and more of their subjects to plant pepper, rice pro-
duction in these areas declined. Rice had to be imported to feed the families
now engaged full time in the pepper fields. The surplus rice from the extensive
wet rice (sawah) fields of the Minangkabau and the Batak in the interior of
central and north Sumatra became the favored sources of supply. Rice, which
was ordinarily scarce in Aceh, was found in abundance under Sultan Iskandar
Muda as a result of shipments from the Batak interior.71
In response to demand for rice from the pepper-producing kingdoms,
the Batak greatly expanded rice production by more extensive use of their
lands. When these proved insufficient, many emigrated in search of cultivable
158 Chapter 5
came to form a main marga, which were the oldest, middle, and the young-
est, and how the marga came to create even larger marga culminating in the
moieties of the Lontung and the Sumba.81 The tendency for other Batak gene-
alogies to downplay ancestral depth may reflect the relative newness of their
marga and therefore the need to emphasize other more useful linkages than
that of an ancient lineage.
The Karo today identify themselves as belonging to the Merga 82 Silima,
or the “Five Marga”: Karo-Karo, Peranginangin, Ginting, Tarigan, and Sem-
biring, all claiming an origin from lands to the west. Neumann suggests that
the “original” inhabitants were the Karo Sekali based on their name, which he
translated as “genuine or true Karo” (echte Karo), but that idea has been chal-
lenged.83 Unlike the Toba, with their extended patrilineally based genealogies
going back to a common mythical ancestor, the Karo emphasize instead the
marital bonds among the five major clans and the alliances created in the
formation of new marga under a local mother marga.84 Equally striking is
Singarimbun’s claim that the “Karo do not possess any myth of the origin
of their own society” nor a “ritual center.” The Karo clans, he argues, are not
descent groups, “have no history of common origin,” and “do not regard
themselves as agnatically related to one another.”85
Simalungun society is very much like that of the Karo in stressing the
equality of the four basic marga of the Saragih, Purba, Damanik, and Sinaga,
while eschewing the importance of long genealogical links to the founder of
the marga. The marga do not play such an important role in Simalungun, and
there is an absence of any tradition of common marga territory, property, or
ceremonies.86 These features of Karo and Simalungun society appear to be
much more in keeping with rapidly evolving frontier societies where long-
standing traditions have less relevance than those of the more recent past.
With less venerable traditions to consider, such societies were more likely to
experiment and adopt new forms and ideas. A continuing important source
for such innovations among the Batak, particularly in the newly settled com-
munities, was the Indian subcontinent.
160 Chapter 5
There is also support for the argument that Indian influence may have
reached Padang Lawas from the north. Harry Parkin, for example, argues that
many Saivite ideas were brought by Indians themselves through communities
such as those found in Lobu Tua and Kota Cina.96 A team of archaeologists
visiting the site in 1973 also concluded that it had no clear relationship with
Java.97 Their preliminary findings suggest that the Padang Lawas complex
was more a result of Indian influence coming from the port cities in north-
ern Sumatra rather than from Java and southern Sumatra. It is likely, how-
ever, that Padang Lawas received Indianized ideas from both directions and
formed a cultural frontier between the Minangkabau and the Batak. The idea
of a “frontier” between these two cultural groups was first advanced by the
archaeologist Satyawati Suleiman in an attempt to explain the presence of an
inscription associated with Adityawarman found at Lubuk Layang in the Pasa-
man district. The inscription was near the border of south Tapanuli, where
the Padang Lawas complex—located at the confluence of the Sirumambe, the
Barumun, and the Panai Rivers—formed the center of the ancient kingdom
of Panai. For this reason, Satyawati believes that the inscription was issued
by a local prince under Adityawarman whose task was to guard the frontier
against possible invasion from Panai.98
The close link between Sriwijaya, Malayu, and Panai is evident in the
presence of Tantric Buddhist ideas. De Casparis argues that in the Saboking-
king (Telaga Batu) inscription, many of the punishments and the rewards
for those drinking the sacred oath of loyalty to the Sriwijaya ruler are Tantric
references.99 Based on a study of the artistic images found in east Java and
Sumatra where Tantric influences are evident, Reichle concludes that Suma-
tra is characterized by Buddhist Tantrism. In Padang Lawas, for example, the
images are almost universally Buddhist with a striking exception of a Ganesa
figure atop a pillar. An inscription accompanying the image mentions the
name of an official, which appears to have been the same one associated with
the inscription on the Amoghapasa statue associated with Adityawarman.100
162 Chapter 5
tombs of the Sibayak (lords) of Kabanjahe and Barusjahe. On the outward
journey betel was presented, but on the homebound journey after the com-
pletion of a successful transaction, a goat or white chicken was sacrificed.109
These ancestral tombs proved popular as sites of spiritual power.
The religious institution with the greatest economic impact on the Batak
was the high priest.110 Though the phenomenon arose in the Toba lands, it
spread quickly to the new areas where the Toba migrants had settled. Situmo-
rang suggests that the Toba Batak believed in a sahala-harajaon, “the spiritual
power of governing,” which derives from the gods and is transmitted patri-
lineally through the original founders of the three major Toba marga—the
Borbor, the Lontung, and the Sumba.111 It was this sahala-harajaon that legit-
imized the rule of high priests with the title of Jonggi Manaor among the
Borbor, the Ompu Palti Raja among the Lontung, and the Sisingamangaraja
(preceded by the Sorimangaraja) among the Sumba.112 Although they were
equal in stature within their own marga, the Sisingamangaraja was the best
known to Europeans. Unlike the Sisingamangaraja, the Ompu Palti Raja did
not claim a divine origin, nor authority beyond their own jurisdictions among
the Lontung. The pretensions of the Jonggi Manaor were also far more mod-
est than those of the Sisingamangaraja and claimed to have their own specific
areas of influence.113 The success of the high priests in promoting trade and
agriculture was an important measure of their sahala.
A fair amount of literature exists on the Sisingamangaraja, but little on
the Jonggi Manaor or the Ompu Palti Raja. One can assume, however, that
many of the distinctive features attributed to the Sisingamangaraja would
have been applicable to the other two high priest groups. One of the most
extensive accounts of the Sisingamangaraja is from a Batak manuscript col-
lected by C. M. Pleyte. In this legend the deity Batara Guru causes a jambu
fruit to fall to the ground. It is found and eaten by the wife of the chief of the
village of Bakkara, and she becomes pregnant. After three years pass with the
baby still unborn, a spirit informs the mother that another four years will
elapse before the birth can occur. She will know when it is time because there
will be earthquakes, lightning, and a heavy rainstorm, spirits will fill the village
square, and tigers and panthers will tear at one another. These things occur,
and the Sisingamangaraja is born with a black, hairy tongue. The afterbirth
is buried under the house, but lightning strikes at that very spot and trans-
ports the afterbirth into heaven.114 Batara Guru’s messenger then brings to
the child manuscripts with the astrological charts for augury purposes, mat-
ters concerning planting and weaving, the calendar, the laws, and a handbook
of spells. The Sisingamangaraja confirms his supernatural origins by openly
declaring, “I am a descendant of the gods.”115 Other legends were later added
to reaffirm the Sisingamangaraja’s supernatural attributes. In 1870, de Haan
164 Chapter 5
The Sisingamangaraja was revered for his powers in assuring the mate-
rial welfare of the people through the promotion of agriculture, creating har-
mony among the Batak groups through mediation, and the maintenance of
the marketplace. In agriculture he was attributed with the ability to bring the
rains, locate wells, maintain the irrigation system, enforce the acceptance of
his allocation of the rice lands, and assure efficacious agricultural rituals.125
The Sisingamangaraja was said to have been capable of causing rice plants
to grow with their stalks in the ground and their roots in the air. His control
over the growth of rice and various types of ubi or root crops, and his abil-
ity to cause rainfall and to locate well water, were attributes expected of one
with direct links to the agricultural deities. Before the rice-planting season
began, the Sisingamangaraja conducted rituals invoking the ancestral spirits
to assure a good harvest and prosperity for their descendants. In Toba proper,
his appointed officials, the parbaringin, presided over the sacrifices in the
important agricultural rites. Although there is very little about the other two
high priests, the Ompu Palti Raja and the Jonggi Manaor, nineteenth- and
twentieth-century sources mention that they continued to be highly revered
for their ability to summon rain and control rice growth.126
Conducting the agricultural ritual was considered an essential task of the
parbaringin to assure the ongoing prosperity of the inhabitants, the animals,
and the crops. As late as 1938 the Dutch received delegations of parbaringin
who sought to revoke a colonial measure introduced earlier in the century that
forbade the continuation of this ritual. It was this prohibition, they asserted,
which had resulted in problems in their community.127
The esteem and respect of the high priests among the Batak may have
risen even further when rice became an important Batak export commodity.
The growth of the pepper trade in the fifteenth century led to an increasing
demand for rice from communities engaged in pepper production in Suma-
tra and the Malay Peninsula. It may have been around this time that the Batak
intensified rice planting in existing fields to meet this need. Rice is a fragile
plant requiring great preparation and care. Moreover, during its growth it
is vulnerable to unexpected weather changes, diseases, and pests, which can
destroy the entire crop. In such circumstances traditional rice-growing soci-
eties everywhere have resorted to appeals to supernatural forces to prevent
the loss of a crop and to assure a bountiful harvest. The Batak were no differ-
ent, and Raffles commented on their belief that the Sisingamangaraja could
“blight the paddy, or restore the luxuriance of a faded crop.”128
A second important function of the Sisingamangaraja was to assure har-
mony among the Batak groups through his mediation. In this role he was able
to gain widespread agreement on standard rice measures and scales, and the
assurance that the sanctity of the marketplace would be observed. Burton and
166 Chapter 5
something like an ecclesiastical Emperor or Chief, who is universally acknowl-
edged, and referred to in all case of public calamity, etc. His title is Si Singah
Maha Rajah, and he resides at Bakara in the Toba district. He is descended
from the Menangkabau race, and is of an antiquity which none disputes. My
informants say certainly above thirty descents, or 900 years. He does not live
in any very great state, but is particular in his observances; he neither eats hog
nor drinks tuah [palm-wine]. They believe him possessed of supernatural
powers.131
In this letter Raffles claims that the Sisingamangaraja was “universally” acknowl-
edged. Although it is more likely that he had direct influence only over the
Sumba group of marga among the Toba Batak, stories of his superior powers
would have been sufficient to convince many other Batak to heed his words or
the words of those who represented him. In this way the Batak in the south-
ern Lake Toba region, who were the Sisingamangaraja’s principal adherents,
would have been joined by Batak elsewhere in forming a group responsive
to his wishes. While he did not possess any means for physical coercion, his
acknowledged supernatural powers were far more intimidating. Instead of
a political structure with the accoutrements of state authority, the Sisinga-
mangaraja and the other high priests created an ethnic unity among many
Batak groups based on their sacred reputation, system of marketplaces, and a
coterie of magico-religious officials who operated in a borderless world.
Batak ethnic consciousness was further reinforced by the creation of
pustaha or bark books. Written in a language and a script unlike anything
possessed by their neighbors, the pustaha was regarded as distinctly “Batak.”
Although the Batak language employs an old Indian Pallava-derived script,
there is no record when pustaha were first written. Nevertheless, Uli Kozok
argues that the Batak script continues to have an affinity with the Pallava and
Old Javanese (Kawi) scripts, whereas modern Javanese has diverged signifi-
cantly from the original Pallava.132 The antiquity of the Batak script is further
attested by the fact that the first Batak bark books acquired by the British
Museum in 1764 already demonstrated marked regional variations.133 This
suggests that Batak writing may have begun early in the creation of the pustaha
but remained relatively unchanged over the centuries, perhaps because of the
pustaha’s sacred contents. The pustaha were intended for magico-religious
purposes and contained astrological tables and magic formulae.134
The retention of a Batak language using a modified Pallava script to trans-
mit sacred and other tribal knowledge is noteworthy. From the seventh until
at least the fourteenth century, the dominant intellectual and political lan-
guages in Sumatra were Sanskrit and Malayu. Their influence was particularly
strong, and evidence of their presence has been noted in the discussion of the
168 Chapter 5
and directives of the high priest. His wandering lifestyle and the practice of
accepting pupils from all Batak lands contributed to a network that tran-
scended territorial and marga divisions. Also strengthening the sense of a uni-
fied Batak world were the pustaha traditions. In his intensive study of pustaha,
Voorhoeve concludes that the sacred language of the texts is from a sub-Toba
dialect spread by the wandering datu, who were immune to inter-marga and
intervillage warfares in precolonial times.143 The spread of the pustaha tradition
helped create a shared sacred language and a common store of magico-religious
lore. Prior to the twentieth century, Perbegu/Pemena, or the old religion of the
Batak, was a central element in Batak identity. But the keys to the ethniciza-
tion of the Batak were the components of Perbegu/Pemena: the high priests,
the datu, and the pustaha.
Conclusion
The people who are collectively known today as Batak were historically never
isolated from the developments occurring in the region. Based on origin tales
and linguistic evidence, I have assumed that the ancestors of the Batak occu-
pied the area around Lake Toba in the interior of northern Sumatra since
perhaps 4500 BCE and at least by the first millennium CE.144 International
trade was a major catalyst in the movement of Batak from the Toba highlands
toward both coasts, though personal and environmental reasons also contrib-
uted to the out-migration. The interior redistribution centers and the inter-
national marketplaces on the coasts exposed the Batak to new peoples, new
ideas, and new products. In searching for economic advantage in the highly
competitive market environment, the Batak sought support among their kin-
folk, both real and fictive. One of the means employed to extend the kinship
network as widely as possible was to seek commonality by determining the
cultural discontinuities that distinguished them from their neighbors. This
was found in the institution of the high priests and the role of the wandering
datu/guru.
The Batak were incorporated early into regional trade networks because
they were major suppliers of camphor and benzoin. For this reason the Batak
lands were regarded as crucial to the prosperity of Sriwijaya and therefore
an essential part of the polity. When Sriwijaya was attacked by the Cholas in
1024–5, the polity of Panai located among the Batak was also destroyed. In
the late thirteenth century, when the eastern Javanese kingdom of Singosari
began to extend its influence to Sumatra, it sent sacred images to at least two
important centers of Malayu: Dharmasraya in the upper Batang Hari River
and Padang Lawas (Panai) in the Batak area. Panai was one of the areas listed
as part of bhumi Malayu in the Desawarnana, which suggests that at least
170 Chapter 5
of being “Batak” became both a political and economic decision resulting in
the removal of huta and marga barriers in the formation of a Batak ethnic
identity.
Despite the increasing ethnicization of groups in Sumatra by the early
modern period, their shared Malayu cultural heritage and the absence of any
rigid ethnic and political boundaries facilitated movements of groups in and
out of ethnicities. The Batak who were involved in trade in the Malayu areas of
the east coast found it advantageous at times to become Malayu by embracing
Islam and using the Malayu language. Yet they knew their marga, and when
they returned to the interior they reaffirmed their links to the ancestral lands
through specific Batak rituals associated with the indigenous religion. For
these Batak, there was little to lose and much to gain through the maintenance
of complementary ethnicities. The presence of many of these “Malayu Batak”
on the coasts helped to forge strong links between the Malayu kingdoms and
the interior Batak communities, which in time led also to the acceptance of
Batak Sibayak as the royal family of some east coast “Malayu” states.145
For the Batak, the flexibility to move between a Malayu and a Batak eth-
nic identity was useful economically and ritually. A common cultural base, the
absence of insurmountable ethnic and political boundaries, and a continuing
desire by rulers for new subjects enabled neighboring communities such as
the Malayu, the Minangkabau, the Acehnese, and the Batak to move easily in
and out of ethnic identities and to participate in activities that defined one or
another group. The ordinary people, perhaps more than the elite, would have
made this move between ethnic worlds to seek greater economic advantage.
Although this option was also open to the sea people (Orang Laut) and the
forest and hill peoples (Orang Asli/Suku Terasing), they rarely took it because
their value rested on their complementary lifestyle and hence their separate
identity from the more dominant ethnicities. The story of their ethnicization,
therefore, follows a different trajectory from the Malayu, the Minangkabau,
the Acehnese, or the Batak. But, as with these other ethnic communities, it rests
fundamentally on calculations of optimal economic advantage to be gained
from the rich international trade flowing through the Straits of Melaka.
172 Chapter 5
Chapter 6
173
given to the numerous sea and strand communities that inhabit the northern
and southern entrances to the Straits of Melaka, the lower reaches and the
estuaries of the major rivers in Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, the Riau-
Lingga archipelagoes, and the various island groups in the South China Sea.
The Moken and the Moklen are closely related and live along the strands and
islands off the western coast of peninsular Burma and Thailand.
Unlike most of the Orang Laut, the Urak Lawoik (a dialectal form of
the term “Orang Laut”) are located at the northern entrance of the straits in
islands and coasts bordering Malaysia, Thailand, and Burma. For this rea-
son they are often discussed as one with the Moken and Moklen. One Urak
Lawoik tradition traces their homeland to Langkawi, while another claims
origins in the vicinity of Gunung (Mt.) Jerai or Kedah Peak. Their dispersal
is explained simply by the statement that “they are a frightened people.” A
story of the origins of the group told by one of the elders involves a disciple
of God who is shipwrecked and found after seven years and seven days. He is
brought to a temple by the Thais, who try to teach him Buddhism and how
to become a rice farmer, but he is unable to learn. The Malayu then take him
and try to teach him their language and Islam, but again without success. He
thus goes to the seashore and becomes the progenitor of the Urak Lawoik. It
is said that they later “drifted/floated apart (berpecah hanyoi)”2 to form the
Baw Jet Luuk in Satul province, the Kok Lanta, and those who settled in the
forests of Kedah. In this latter tradition the Urak Lawoik and some of Kedah’s
forest people, including the Semang group called the Kintaq Bong, trace their
origins to Gunung Jerai.3
Gunung Jerai is famous because it was a recognizable landmark for early
shippers making landfall on the west coast of the Isthmus of Kra or the north-
ern Malay Peninsula. Early sources refer to this coast as Kalah (Arabic)/Kataha
(Sanskrit)/Kadaram (Tamil), where at different times in the past various ports,
including those in south Kedah, would have been visited by traders coming
from the west. They came either to exchange their goods before returning
home or to obtain provisions for their onward journey. In the early centuries
CE the favored route from the west coast went overland to the Gulf of Siam,
and then on to the Lower Mekong, central Vietnam, and from there to China
(chapter 1). The existence of an oral tradition linking the Urak Lawoik and
Kedah may be based on this early trade relationship between the sea people
and Kedah inhabitants. The areas at the lower reaches of the river—the strand,
mangroves, and the many smaller creeks that are found on both sides of the
northern Straits of Melaka—were known to both Orang Laut and Orang Asli
groups and thus provided many convenient meeting points. Because of their
complementary lifestyles, they formed ideal partners in the gathering of local
products for international trade.
174 Chapter 6
Some Urak Lawoik believe that Lanta Island was their immediate place
of origin (via Gunung Jerai), and they are indeed called “Orang Lonta” by the
Moken. From Lanta the Urak Lawoik spread outward to other areas.4 Their
close linguistic and historical links with the Malayu may indicate a strong
relationship with South Kedah polities, with Moken operating farther north
in the Isthmus of Kra. Nevertheless, there would have been contact between
both groups since the medium of communication was a form of the Malayu
language, as is the case today.5
In the same area as the Urak Lawoik live the Moken, whose lifestyle is sim-
ilar to the Orang Laut, and the Moklen, who have completely abandoned life
on the sea and have settled permanently on land. The Moklen live in coastal
villages and refer to themselves in Thai as Chaaw Bok (Coastal People) and
to the Moken as Chaaw Kok (Island People). The Moklen language spoken in
Phangnga province and at the northern end of Phuket island is considered a
dialect of Moken.6 There is little known about the Moklen, but it is believed
that they once led a lifestyle similar to the Moken before becoming land dwell-
ers. This type of change can occur very quickly. In the early twentieth century
an Englishman tried to entice the Moken to settle ashore by offering to erect
substantial houses for them and by assuring them of regular employment.7
The very few who did so had made the crucial decision to exchange a Moken
way of life and ethnicity for that of the Moklen, thus providing an example of
how lifestyle may determine identity.
During the strong winds and heavy swells associated with the southwest
monsoon, the Moken seek shelter on the leeward side of islands or on coasts
protected from the winds by islands lying just offshore. In this period they
establish their homes on land and forage the strand and the forests for food.
They then return to their boats and their nomadic sea existence once the
monsoon winds change. Even when the Moken are at sea, they put to shore
occasionally so that at low tide the women and children can gather crabs, oys-
ters, snails, mussels, watermoths [watermotten], and shrimp. When the tide
is high, the women go by boat to the islands to gather berries, wild fruit, and
roots while the men seek honey in the forests.8 While it is likely that the Urak
Lawoik followed a similar lifestyle as the Moken in the past, today they are
regarded more as strand dwellers who go to sea to obtain sea products, but
then return to live on land.9
Moken tales provide a variety of reasons for the group’s lifestyle based on
the sea. According to a tale told to an Englishman c. 1930, the ancestors of the
Moken lived on the mainland of Burma and the northern shores of the Malay
Peninsula. Fierce Burmese hill tribes from the north and Malayu pirates from
the south raided the Moken and forced them to seek safety in the islands. But
the Malayu continued to harass them and so they finally took to living on
176 Chapter 6
Lifestyle formed the major ethnic boundary between the Malayu and the
Orang Laut. Until late in the nineteenth century, the Orang Laut were valued
for their prowess at sea and their role as guardians of the ruler’s maritime trade
lanes. There was little reason to abandon this favored ethnicity, and far greater
incentive to retain and strengthen it to preserve this economically and socially
rewarding relationship with the Malayu. The distinction between the two eth-
nic communities was very clear to the Dutchman Ch. van Angelbeek, who vis-
ited Riau in 1825 in his official capacity as Malay translator. He wrote:
The Orang Laut do not appear to belong to the Malayu people, and at present
there is a great difference between a Malayu and an Orang Laut. While the
language is with a few exceptions the same, one finds great differences in the
character of both people.14
Despite the close relationship between the Orang Laut and the Malayu,
outside observers never saw these groups as anything but separate. Mainte-
nance of this boundary was the result of the recognition of their complemen-
tary and mutually beneficial economic roles and lifestyles.
These islands are separated by numerous Straits. Only a few of these Straits,
however, are navigable by ships; the rest are so narrow and crooked, that it is
even unadvisable for small vessels of light draught to venture through them.
All have reefs of more or less consequence, part of which are connected with
the islands and part are detached. From this circumstance these islands were
formerly much frequented by pirates, who had inaccessible hiding places all
over them, in which they were perfectly secure against an attack by boats,
owing to the multitude of outlets and salt water creeks.15
The many hidden shoals and reefs that dot these archipelagoes were a constant
danger to ships. Knowledge of the currents, winds, islands, and the locations
of shoals and reefs in their home waters gave the Orang Laut an advantage
over far superior forces. The strong current from the South China Sea flowing
to the northeast of Batam Island split into two, moving in a westerly direction
178 Chapter 6
Such a perception ignores the specific lifestyle of the sea people who con-
ceptualize space differently from those based on land. The presence of Orang
Laut groups scattered throughout the Malay-Indonesian archipelago fostered
the misconception that they recognized no fixed boundaries. In fact, their life-
style was characterized by systematic sojourns within a fairly well-determined
area of exploitation in search of moving prey, such as the sea turtle, and of
edible seaweed, tripang (sea cucumber), and pearl oyster beds. In pursuit of
such economic activities, an island, even a tiny rocky outcrop, could be an
important seamark. Although highly mobile, the Orang Laut did not venture
beyond the islands and surrounding seas they regarded as their areas of exploi-
tation, whether for purposes of burial, transmission of knowledge, gathering
of sea products, or for specific activities on behalf of a Malayu lord. Knowing
the boundaries of such areas was essential to prevent the overexploitation of
resources and to avoid destructive rivalries with other Orang Laut groups.22
These demarcations meant each Orang Laut group had an intimate knowl-
edge of its own specific area of operation. The Malayu rulers who sought
to maintain advantage over competitors were therefore dependent upon the
different Orang Laut groups to supply sea products and to guard the sea lanes
within their respective maritime territory (“maritory”).
The precise divisions of areas of exploitation between groups contributed
to a common understanding of the land and sea components of a group’s
maritory, with a center under an acknowledged head.23 Islands with hills or
some high point were favored not only because high places were often revered
as the domicile of powerful spirits, but also because they served as visible land-
marks for their ships at sea. Mountains were sacred to the Orang Laut, and
islands with high peaks were frequently selected as burial sites. Such islands
could be recognized by the numerous white flags planted around the burial
area and by the remnants of food offerings left for the dead. Although the
Orang Laut spent much of their time on water, they did not bury their dead
at sea because they believed that the deceased can do harm to the community
if they are not buried on land and maintained with special ceremony.24
Islands were not only associated with the ancestors, but were sites of com-
munal knowledge conveyed through stories linked to the natural vegetation,
rocks, and other physical features. Orang Laut groups were often identified by
reference to specific islands regarded as spiritually potent and essential for the
preservation of the group’s traditions and identity. The Moken, Moklen, and
the Urak Lawoik acknowledge the customary rights of specific groups over
islands. In the Mergui archipelago, the Moken are divided into five groups,
with each taking the name of the island where they shelter during the rainy
season. These five “mother” islands are characterized by the presence of a
major mountain, the abode of the sacred ancestors who are propitiated in
180 Chapter 6
special ceremonies. In addition, the Moken frequent some fifteen “satellite”
islands and reach the farthest extent of their area of exploitation at Kok Surin,
a small coral island on the Thai-Burma border. The island is regarded as the
home of the “monkey king,” where each beach, each rock, and each mountain
possesses a history and an ancestor.25
Cynthia Chou’s recent study of the Orang Laut populations in the Riau
archipelago provides some insight into how the Orang Laut groups in the past
may have determined their maritoriality. The seascape is divided according
to the usufruct of the seas and the bordering coastal fringes, as well as by the
legitimizing tales of prior clearance and settlement of an area. The group’s
maritory extends to include that of its kin, creating a fluid situation in which
groups appear to outsiders to be wandering freely among the seas and islands.
Such apparently random movements are actually based on what Chou calls
“a network of territorial ownership through kinship.” For example, one group
can move to the island of another to harvest tripang, and when it is the cuttle-
fish season the favor is returned. The practice of operating in another’s area
of usufruct is considered to be “borrowing,” with the only obligation being
prestations to the spirits of the area being visited.26
Historical evidence indicates that Orang Laut groups varied in size, eco-
nomic importance, and social organization. The larger and better-organized
in sociopolitical terms were under leaders with indigenous or Malayu titles
presented by a land-based ruler. Most of the information about the Orang
Laut prior to the nineteenth century relate to their role as the ruler’s navy,
guarding the sea lanes or participating in raids against passing ships and
coastal settlements. But they also performed varied economic functions that
provide an informal guide to their social status. They planted sago, pepper,
gambir, and coconut trees; collected ebony, eaglewood (gaharuwood, aloes-
wood), lakawood, rattan, gold, tin (smelted), tripang, and agar-agar; felled
trees for timber; prepared betelnut, gathered and wove kajang or palm-leaf
mats for sails and roofing (a mainly female activity); manufactured coconut
oil; fished; and raided.27
According to an 1827 Dutch official report by von Ranzow, the most com-
monly used title for the heads of Orang Laut islands was the indigenous term
batin. The Malayu title orang kaya was also frequently used, together with
datu, panglima, and penghulu. Only one head had the mixed Malayu-Bugis
title of datu sullewatang. The largest and most important of the islands were
placed directly under a Malayu or Bugis lord: Lingga under the sultan, Singa-
pore under the Temenggong of Johor, Pahang under the Bendahara of Johor,
and both Penyengat and Bintan under the Bugis Raja Muda.28 Begbie’s 1834
account adds nothing new to von Ranzow’s list of titles,29 and neither men-
tions the Raja Negara, which in 1718 was the title of the head of the Orang
182 Chapter 6
Mantang were not simply providers of kajang but had the more honorable
occupation of ironsmiths and weapon makers to the ruler. Another notable
change was the downgrading of the importance of the suku Tambus, who
were now simply listed as the keepers of the ruler’s hunting dogs. The com-
ment that they were not allowed to serve as rowers in a boat carrying the ruler
also implies a decline in status. The suku Mapar are not mentioned by von
Ranzow, but Schot claims that in the past they were entrusted with conveying
the ruler’s envoys and royal letters to foreign lands.37
According to local traditions, the most prestigious Orang Laut in nine-
teenth century Riau-Lingga comprised two groups known collectively as
Orang Dalam (People of the Royal Court), who had moved from the Malay
Peninsula to the islands with the Malayu ruler. One, the suku Bintan, were said
to have moved from Java to the islands during the period of Majapahit’s dom-
inance over the area. The second group of Orang Dalam was the suku Mapar,
who had originally lived in Terengganu on the peninsula until the ruler of
Pahang killed their leader, Tun Telanai. Three grandsons of the murdered
leader then went with their followers to complain to the ruler of Melaka, who
entrusted them with the task of governing and maintaining order among
the wandering tribes in Lingga and the surrounding islands.38 The stories of
Wan Sri Benian and Tun Telanai are also well-known episodes in the Sejarah
Melayu, which demonstrates the ease with which popular tales circulated and
were localized by each community.
The special relationship of the Orang Dalam with the ruler elevated them
above the other Orang Laut, with the bride price for a suku Mapar women
reaching 350 reals and a woman from suku Bintan as much as 400 reals.
Among the other Orang Laut groups, serving in the ruler’s fleets appears to
have been the most highly respected of the duties rendered to the Malayu
ruler and was reflected in the bride price. The most prestigious was the
Galang, whose women commanded a top bride price of forty-four reals, but
far below that of the Orang Dalam. Sharing this status were the suku Sekana
and Gelam, part of the ruler’s fighting force, whose women also required a
bride price of forty-four reals. Women from the suku Selat, Trong, Sugi, and
Tambus, as well as from the suku Enam on the Sumatran coast, could demand
a bride price of thirty reals. If a woman married a second time, her bride price
was reduced by half, with the sole exception being the Galang women, whose
price remained constant. This exception clearly underscores the importance
of the Galang, who were regarded as the fiercest of the ruler’s subjects. They
were unchallenged over a wide area of the archipelago, which included both
Galangs, Karas, Rempang, Stoko, Temojong, the islands in the Bolang Straits,
and the Gelam and the Rokan group of islands. The high status of an Orang
Laut group attracted smaller, less prestigious suku because size obviously
Forging Links between the Orang Laut and the Malayu Lords
To maintain the loyalty of the Orang Laut, the Malayu ruler presented their
leaders with various emblems of office and some with Malayu titles.44 When
the Malayu rulers in the Riau-Lingga archipelagoes were replaced by the
Dutch colonial state as overlords, the batins requested and received Dutch
flags so they could raise them whenever colonial officials paid a visit or when
184 Chapter 6
the batin dispatched a formal delegation to the Dutch.45 The emblems of
authority were important to the batin not simply for legitimizing their activi-
ties on behalf of the overlord, but also because they were regarded as imbued
with that overlord’s sacred power.
While the enticement of material and spiritual benefits through asso-
ciation with a Malayu ruler was almost irresistible, one of the most effective
ways the Orang Laut leaders became linked to the Malayu lords was through
the forging of kinship ties. The earliest detailed information on the relation-
ship between the Orang Laut and a Malayu ruler comes from Pires’ sixteenth-
century account, the Suma Oriental. According to Pires, the refugee prince
from Palembang, the Permaisura, in addition to making both the Orang Laut
men and women hereditary nobles, marries the Malayu princes to the daugh-
ters of the Orang Laut leaders. Thus, he explains, “the kings [of Melaka] are
descended [from the Orang Laut] through the female side.”46
Seventeenth-century Dutch sources mention that Orang Laut lead-
ers were placed as captains of royal trading ships and were related through
marriage with prominent families. The services of one particularly powerful
Orang Laut chief, Long Pasir, were so valued that the ruler of Jambi presented
him with one of his nonroyal wives (gundik). A nineteenth-century Jambi tale
recalling events two hundred years earlier offers another example of the desire
to retain Orang Laut loyalty through kinship ties, this time through adoption.
A great Jambi hero, Orang Kaya Hitam, adopts the Orang Laut leader as his
brother and provides him with a state keris and the right to raid along the
Jambi-Palembang coast.47 By making the Orang Laut their kinfolk, Malayu
rulers were able to rely on the sense of family to strengthen their bonds.
Malayu rulers did not govern the Orang Laut directly but appointed offi-
cials who were either from that community or had some blood ties with some
of its members. They received their “commissions” and titles from a Malayu
lord, and the most favored were entrusted with lucrative raiding expeditions.
An example was the colorful nineteenth-century figure from Lingga, Panglima
Raman, who was the offspring of a Bugis trader and a daughter of an Orang
Laut leader. Because of his talents and general demeanor, he was given an
official position in the Riau-Lingga kingdom and made head of several Orang
Laut groups. His activities took him from the Palembang River to the Java
coast, but he later abandoned this way of life after being dislodged from his
base in Bangka by the head of the Palembang Orang Laut.48
In the nineteenth century, when control of piracy became a major cam-
paign of the British and the Dutch, the leaders of the populous Orang Laut
communities in the Lingga area became especially important. During his offi-
cial visit to Riau in 1825, the Dutchman van Angelbeek noted that the two
most important heads of the “pirates” in the kingdom were “the Penghulu
Where they [the Orang Laut] had behaved, they were administered fairly and
their services acknowledged; where things had been unsatisfactory, the law
for miscreants was applied and people were arrested and taken to Riau. All
their resources which had been used for their illegal activities, their heavy
artillery and large perahu [native boats] were confiscated. Some of the chiefs
were dismissed because their crimes were so blatant. They were replaced by
those whose goodness was obvious and who commanded the loyalty of their
followers. The conferences and consultations continued like this until Lingga
was reached.
Despite such missions, the British complained that in one such visitation,
piracy was “suspended” during the time of the tour but quickly resumed once
their Malayu lord had left.50
The Laksamana of Melaka and Johor had especially strong ties with the
Orang Laut in his role as commander of the ruler’s fleets. But the relation-
ship may have been a far more intimate one if Pires is correct in claiming in
the Suma Oriental that the position of Laksamana had been held by Orang
Laut since the establishment of the Melaka kingdom.51 Support for this claim
comes from the great Malayu epic the Hikayat Hang Tuah, where the hero
is depicted as a famous Laksamana born into a sakai or Orang Laut family.
Because of his extraordinary skills, he is adopted and brought to court, where
he demonstrates an exemplary loyalty to the ruler.52 Although many have seen
186 Chapter 6
Hang Tuah as a model of Malayu behavior, he may have been regarded as illus-
trating the ideal relationship between the sakai and their Malayu lord. When
the Temenggong family was given Johor as an appanage by Sultan Mahmud
(r. 1767–1812), the Temenggong replaced the Laksamana as the main link
between the Malayu ruler and the Orang Laut. The important area of the
appanage was not the sparsely populated mainland but the islands inhabited
by the many Orang Laut groups.53 The Bugis Raja Muda also exercised this
intermediary role between the Orang Laut and the Malayu ruler from the
early eighteenth century until the abolishing of the Raja Muda post in 1899.
In addition to kinship links through marriage and adoption, mutual eco-
nomic interests contributed to the close bonds between the Orang Laut and
the Malayu. From the earliest Chinese accounts, the Orang Laut have been
regarded as among the most fearsome pirates, quite unlike twentieth-century
ethnographies, which depict them as shy and elusive. While some condemned
the Orang Laut as major perpetrators of piracy, there was also a recognition
that such activities often occurred during certain monsoon periods when
food became scarce because of the difficulty in “seeking a livelihood from the
sea (mencari isi laut).”54 Many of the piratical activities would have been tasks
assigned by the Malayu ruler. The Orang Laut were essential for the success of
any entrepot because of their naval skills and intimate knowledge of the sea-
scape in the Straits of Melaka. They patrolled the seas to warn of impending
danger, to bring traders to port, and to harass and destroy competitors. While
competitors viewed such activities as “piracy,” the Malayu patrons regarded
them as acts of loyalty.
The Orang Laut were effective fishers of the sea, but their catch was not
limited to delicacies for the China market or pearls and turtle shells. One of
their major “harvests” was people stranded in shipwrecks or on ships foun-
dering in shallow waters, who became fair game as part of the flotsam and
jetsam from the sea. These chance finds were augmented by actual raids on
passing ships and on coastal settlements to seize people to be sold as slaves.
The growing demand for slave labor was one of the major causes for the
increase in piracy from the late seventeenth century. Because of the difficulty
in employing local workers, the Dutch East India Company turned to slave
labor to build and service its cities and major posts.55 The slave trade was fur-
ther encouraged because status in many urban centers was measured by the
number of domestic slaves one possessed. When kingdoms such as Palembang
and Jambi began to increase pepper gardens to satisfy increasing demand,
slaves were used for the clearing and the maintenance of the labor-intensive
crop. The Orang Laut were thus sent by their Malayu lords to scour the seas
and the coasts for slaves, and both Palembang and Jambi became noted slave
markets.56
188 Chapter 6
lier centuries when the transpeninsular routes were heavily used by traders.
A 1644 Dutch reference mentions the seizure of Johor subjects on the Perak
River by Orang Laut.59 The latter were obviously not under the ruler of Johor
but may have been serving Perak or another of the northern kingdoms. These
may have been Urak Lawoik, but there is no way of knowing. Both the Urak
Lawoik and the Moken would have seen the value of strengthening their
mutually beneficial exchange arrangement with the local rulers. One way that
this was done was through marriage. Ivanoff makes an intriguing comment
that among the Moken such a practice was an attempt to “imprison their
overlords in kinship relations.”60 Whether the wording was intentional or not,
it suggests that the initiative came from the Moken. More specific informa-
tion, however, is simply unavailable in the sources, unlike the situation of the
Orang Laut in the southern half of the straits.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there are numerous refer-
ences to raids and counter raids by Orang Laut serving the rulers of Jambi,
Palembang, or Johor. The Orang Laut serving Jambi were prominent in the
destruction of the Johor capital in 1673, while Johor’s Orang Laut played an
equally important part in the subsequent retaliation against Jambi.61 The first
few decades of the eighteenth century were particularly tumultuous because
of the upheaval in Johor after 1699. Soon after the regicide, many of the
Orang Laut abandoned the new Bendahara ruler of Johor to serve Raja Kecil,
who claimed to be the son of the murdered ruler. According to the Tuhfat
al-Nafis, Raja Kecil later sought to make peace with the new Johor dynasty
by offering “to return Johor’s Sea People and those from Johor’s outlying ter-
ritories (memulangkan rakyat Johor dan teluk rantau Johor).”62 In 1717 ten
boatloads of Orang Laut left Lingga to seek service in Jambi.63 But not all the
Orang Laut had abandoned Johor, for there were groups who assisted Raja
Sulaiman in 1723 in the attempt to rescue his family from Raja Kecil.64 Shift-
ing allegiances among the Orang Laut continued into the nineteenth century.
When the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 created a British and Dutch sphere of
influence, some 270 boatloads of the suku Galang moved to Singapore from
the Dutch sphere so they could continue to offer allegiance to their lord, the
Temenggong of Johor.65
The ability of the Orang Laut to transfer their loyalties because of per-
ceived mistreatment by their Malayu lord or because their best interests were
served by such moves made it imperative that the Malayu lord continue to
offer rewards and recognition to the Orang Laut. How such a relationship
was formed is described in early nineteenth-century Lingga. The head of an
Orang Laut group would approach an individual of means, such as an orang
kaya, and offer his services. If the orang kaya accepted the offer, he would then
fund the expedition and be promised two-thirds of the booty. The sultan was
190 Chapter 6
association with the Malayu and instead undertake activities on their own
account. European contemporary accounts suggest that there was a direct
correlation between upheaval in Malayu kingdoms and an increase in Orang
Laut “piracy,” or activities occurring outside the purview of a Malay patron.72
After the Johor regicide in 1699, the Dutch noted a great increase in piratical
activities in Johor waters.73
The great extent of piracy, whether under the auspices of a Malayu lord
or an Orang Laut batin, led to the decision by the British and the Dutch after
1824 to cooperate in stamping out this practice. Toward this end a number
of treaties and subsequent notes of modifications of provisions were made
between the Dutch government and the sultan of Riau-Lingga. The Dutch
told the sultan in the mid-nineteenth century that for eradication of piracy to
occur he had to increase the amount of money given to the sea people.74 Of
particular interest to the Europeans was the question of jurisdiction over the
numerous islands that dotted the area. In addition to the desire to fix perma-
nent international boundaries, they hoped to be able to hold specific Orang
Laut groups responsible for piratical activities committed in their traditional
areas of exploitation. The Malayu rulers had never before known nor needed
to know the islands that were under their control because they left such affairs
in the hands of the Orang Laut chieftains. In the Malayu versions of the trea-
ties, a few main islands are mentioned by name and the remainder simply
referred to as “negeri-negeri takluknya,” or the “subject areas.”75 Even after the
British and the Dutch formally split the kingdom of Johor in 1824, the ruler
now based in the islands and known as the Sultan Riau-Lingga continued to
exercise great influence “in the detached part of his kingdom, such as Johor,
Pahang and other places on the Malay Peninsula.”76 It mattered not that the
Europeans had created two separate divisions; the Orang Laut continued to
see the sultan of Riau-Lingga as their true lord. This was an ancient relation-
ship that persisted despite the political vicissitudes of the Malayu kingdoms
in the Straits of Melaka.
192 Chapter 6
work must have existed to account for the islands’ access to imported goods
and their ability to exchange their own bead production for food from the
mainland. The presence of canoe burials for both men and women further
suggests the existence of a “maritime ideology.” The islanders were possibly
the forerunners of the sea people who still survive in the northern end of
the Straits of Melaka, and the Kuala Selinsing community would have helped
open the maritime trade in the Indian Ocean as part of a seafaring population
with links to the Nicobar and Andaman Islands.79
If Bulbeck is correct in assuming a Nicobar and Andaman connection
with the ancestors of the Urak Lawoik and Moken, then it is possible that ships
coming from the west would have first encountered the sea people on these
islands before making landfall on the Isthmus of Kra or the northern Malay
Peninsula. As with their southern counterparts, these ancestors of the Urak
Lawoik/Moken would have helped patrol and guide ships into the dominant
port at the time, which in the north was anywhere along the “Kalah” coast,
including the well-known sites in southern Kedah. Based on archaeological
evidence, other beneficiaries of this trade were the civilizations in peninsular
Burma and Thailand. The Urak Lawoik/Moken would have also been valuable
as trade intermediaries between the Orang Asli and the lowland communities
and as gatherers of sea products. Pearls are found in the waters of the Mergui
archipelago, and the skill of the Moken as pearl divers was still recognized in
the early 1920s.80
In the Hikayat Hang Tuah, the role of the Orang Laut in the success of
the Malayu venture on the Malay Peninsula is freely acknowledged. There
is frequent mention of the sakai, which is used in this text to refer to the
Orang Laut inhabitants in the islands lying south of the Malay Peninsula.
The Hikayat describes the sakai performing a number of tasks in the king-
dom, such as building the ruler’s palace, repairing the city’s canals, protecting
Melaka’s traders from enemies, patrolling the seas, transporting the ruler and
the nobility of Melaka to the islands for pleasure trips, forming the fight-
ing fleets for Melaka, and defending the city.81 They undertake these tasks
together with the people of Melaka (i.e., the Malayu), and there is no hint of
antagonism or subservience of one group to another. Among those that are
mentioned as offering their support to the first Malayu ruler of Melaka are the
batin (Orang Asli or Orang Laut heads), who with their followers control the
tributaries, and the penghulu (a Malay title used for those with some author-
ity over the Orang Asli communities) and their sakai.82 The Sya’ir Perang
Johor, too, explicitly mentions the role of the sakai in the defense of the king-
dom of Johor against its enemies.83 The nineteenth-century Tuhfat al-Nafis
repeats a story in the earlier Sejarah Melayu of the legendary strongman
named Badang. While in the latter text Badang is simply called a “Sayung
194 Chapter 6
The same tale of the flight of the prince and his followers is rendered
in a much more poetic fashion in the Sejarah Melayu, captured nicely in
C. C. Brown’s English translation:
So vast was the fleet that there seemed to be no counting it; the masts of the
ships were like a forest of trees, their pennons and streamers were like driving
clouds and the state umbrellas of the Rajas like cirrus. So many were the craft
that accompanied Sri Tri Buana [the Permaisura in the Suma Oriental] that
the sea seemed to be nothing but ships.92
The ships carrying the Palembang prince are met by a fleet of four hundred
sails sent by Wan Sri Benian, the great queen of Bintan, one of the largest
islands in the Riau archipelago and a major center of the Orang Laut popula-
tions. The queen’s intention is to marry the prince, but when she learns how
young he is, she instead adopts him as a son. She later installs him as her
successor “with the drums of sovereignty.” When he decides to leave Bintan,
he asks her ministers to convey the following message to the queen: “If she
wishes to show her affection for us, she will furnish us with men, elephants
and horses, as we propose to establish a city here at Temasek [Singapore].”
The queen agrees to his request by explaining that “we will never oppose any
wish of our son.”93
The move to Singapore may not have been as peaceful as depicted in the
sources. Singapore was under a sangaji, as was Palembang, and thus would
have been part of Majapahit’s mandala. After only eight days in Singapore,
according to Pires, the Permaisura has the sangaji killed. He then remains in
Singapore for five years and then flees to escape a powerful Siamese expedi-
tion sent from Patani under the command of the father-in-law of the mur-
dered sangaji. The Permaisura and his followers go to Muar, where they clear
the jungle for their gardens and orchards, fish, and plunder boats from Java
and China that come to the Muar River to obtain drinking water.94
The Muar River is linked to the Pahang River via the Penarikan passage.
Gold from upriver Pahang and forest products brought by Orang Asli com-
munities were transported by water to the Muar River and sold to foreign
traders. Muar, like Singapore and later Melaka, was ideally suited for interna-
tional trade, which had been the lifeblood of the Malayu rulers since the days
of Sriwijaya. The Orang Laut, therefore, were crucial to the success of any
prospective entrepot. This is confirmed by Pires’ account of the final stages of
the peregrination. A group of eighteen Orang Laut informs the Permaisura
of a site up the Bertam River suitable for agriculture and animal husbandry
sufficient to support a sizable population. They say to the Permaisura: “We
too belong to thy ancient lordship of Palembang; we have always gone with
196 Chapter 6
river to the coast, and finally by sea to Bintan.99 Except for the flight to Pahang,
it was a retracing in the opposite direction of the very route taken by the Sri
Tri Buana/Permaisura in the founding of Melaka. The route was deliberately
chosen because it offered protection by the Orang Laut, who demonstrated
a fierce loyalty to their Malayu lord. But even in the stronghold of the Orang
Laut the fugitive ruler had to flee into the jungle to escape capture by the
Portuguese. In the Sejarah Melayu version of these events, one of the sultan’s
officials summons his son and tells him: “Go and collect all the people liv-
ing on the coast, and we will then go and fetch the Ruler,” and so he calls
“the coast tribesmen who thereupon assembled.” These “coast tribesmen,” or
Orang Laut, then bring Sultan Mahmud to Kampar.100
According to the Sejarah Melayu, Sultan Mahmud dies in Kampar and
is succeeded by his son, who takes the title Sultan Alauddin Syah. He moves
from Kampar to Pahang, where he stays for a while, and then makes his per-
manent residence at Pekan Tua in Johor. The Portuguese pursue the new ruler
at his new capital, where he is fiercely defended by the Orang Laut but is
forced to flee further upriver to Sayong.101 For the remainder of the sixteenth
century the new kingdom of Johor ruled by the Melaka royal line maintains a
precarious existence as a result of periodic attacks by the Portuguese and the
Acehnese, the new power in the Straits of Melaka.
The decision of Sultan Alauddin and many of his successors to establish
their capital somewhere up the Johor River was a sensible one. The Orang
Laut patrolling the mouth of the river could give adequate warning of any
approaching enemy fleet, as well as assemble Orang Laut in the neighboring
islands to help defend the ruler. Equally important was that the river empties
into one of the busiest waterways in the region. Between the Hook of Barbukit
on the Johor mainland and the island of Pedra Branca (Pulau Batu Putih)
were three channels through which ships could sail between the South China
Sea and the southern entrance of the Straits of Melaka. This was a particularly
dangerous stretch that claimed many ships even in the nineteenth century.102
The task of the Orang Laut was to guide traders through these treacherous
straits and up the Johor River to the capital, and to attack those considered
Johor’s competitors or enemies.103
The most crucial task of the Orang Laut remained the safety of the per-
son of the ruler. Both the Suma Oriental and the Sejarah Melayu describe
the Orang Laut in the role of transporting the ruler to safety or defending
the ruler against enemy attack. But there were also enemies within from
whom the ruler needed protection, and in times of serious internal disorder
the Orang Laut could prove decisive. In the seventeenth century there was a
serious rivalry between the Laksamana and the Bendahara families of Johor.
The office of Bendahara was traditionally the most important in the kingdom
198 Chapter 6
the Suma Oriental, the distinction is implied in the Permaisura’s search for a
secure and favorable place to settle. When the Permaisura flees Palembang, he
is accompanied by a thousand Malayu and thirty Orang Laut. Their economic
activities are clearly distinguished in the search for a permanent settlement. In
Singapore “his people planted rice and fished and plundered their enemies,”
and at Muar the Permaisura, “with a thousand men,” cleared the jungle to
plant rice and orchards. But at Muar they also fished “and sometimes robbed
and plundered the sampans that came to the Muar River.” It was the Orang
Laut who recommend Bertam to Permaisura because “they saw how well this
place was adapted for a large town, and that they [the Malayu] could sow large
fields of rice there, plant gardens, pasture herd.” Upon considering a move to
Bertam, the Permaisura explains that he plans to “leave the fourth part of my
people in Muar to profit from the land where we have devoted so much work
to reclaiming.”106
Although Pires does not explicitly identify farming with the Malayu and
fishing/raiding/trading with the Orang Laut, the pattern of settlement in Ber-
tam and Melaka imply this division. While the Permaisura settles with his
subjects in Bertam because it is ideal for agricultural pursuits, his son and suc-
cessor Iskandar Syah decides to move his residence downstream. He “ordered
the people of Bretam [Bertam] to come, and only left people like farmers
there, and he sent all the Celate [Orang Laut] mandarins [nobles] to live on
the slopes of the Malacca hill to act as his guards.” Among these are his father-
in-law, an important Orang Laut leader who had been made the “chief man-
darin” in the Permaisura’s government, and three hundred of his Orang Laut.
In keeping with an old relationship dating back to the days of Sriwijaya, the
Orang Laut flock to the new settlement to forge links with a Malayu lord who
promises to create a new entrepot and restore trade stability in the area after
years of turmoil. According to Pires, “people began to come from the Aru side
and from other places, men such as Celates robbers and also fishermen, in
such numbers that three years after his coming Malacca was a place with two
thousand inhabitants.”107
The obvious economic and political benefits accruing to the Orang Laut
community in a Malayu entrepot in the past would have encouraged the pres-
ervation and even accentuation of their distinctive lifeways and identity. In
more recent times, however, the Orang Laut would have less reason to main-
tain difference because of the change in circumstances. Some may neverthe-
less adopt the strategy of the Urak Lawoik and the Moken, who may not see
any political or economic advantage in their way of life yet strongly hold to
practices that define them in opposition to the landed communities. The
main reason for enforcing difference is to retain a way of life that promises
far greater freedom and independence than any other. Therefore, they make a
200 Chapter 6
a subtle form of erecting ethnic boundaries to distinguish themselves from
those on land and even to forestall hostile action from them. The Orang Laut
and the Moken may have lost their economic and strategic importance to
the dominant ethnic land communities and their rulers, but they continue to
reinforce difference as a strategy for survival of their chosen way of life. Their
situation bears a strong resemblance to that of a closely related group, the
interior forest dwellers known collectively as Orang Asli/Suku Terasing.
202
Orang Asli on the Malay Peninsula and the Suku Terasing
in Sumatra
The Orang Asli are generally divided into three broad divisions: the Semang
or Negrito, the Senoi, and the Orang Asli Malayu (Aboriginal Malayu).2 Today
the Semang rarely occupy lands above one thousand meters (3,280 feet) in
elevation and live in the coastal foothills and inland river valleys of Perak,
interior Pahang, Ulu Kelantan, and across into southern Thailand in Ulu
Patani and Phattalung/Trang.3 Most are found on the fringes of the forest and
maintain links with Malayu farmers and Chinese shopkeepers. In the past they
appear to have also frequented the coasts. Excavations in the early part of the
twentieth century of a settlement site on the Perak coast believed to be dated
to “Hindu times” (most likely sometime in the early first millennium CE)
revealed the presence of skeletons “showing distinct Negro affinities.”4 The
Semang appear to have had a long association with farmers and merchants
and were favorably placed to exploit the resources of both the forest and the
lowlands.5 In addition to being collectors of forest products for international
trade, they also sought wage labor with the lowland communities.6
Unlike their Malayu and Senoi neighbors, who focus primarily on farm-
ing with a little hunting and fishing, the Semang adapt themselves to what-
ever ecological “space” is left by surrounding communities. This fact was
also noted early in the twentieth century by Schebesta, who commented
that “it is a condition of Negrito [Semang] life that they should be able to
attach themselves at will to their technologically more dominant neighbours
whenever there is some bounty to be gained.”7 Among the Senoi, the Temiar
occupy the upper reaches of the rivers in the remote interior mountains of
the Main Range and have limited contact with the lowlands, while the Semai
live mainly in the plains and the foothills of Perak. The Orang Malayu Asli are
found from Selangor southward. Through long association with their more
numerous Malayu neighbors, they have increasingly become acculturated to
Malayu ways.
Geoffrey Benjamin suggests that the conventionalized three-category divi-
sion of the Orang Asli be regarded as part of “institutionalised societal pat-
terns,” which he calls Semang, Senoi, and “Malayic,” with the last incorporating
a spectrum from the Orang Asli Malayu to the Malayu themselves. The
Semang are mainly involved in foraging activities, the Senoi practice swid-
den agriculture and a more sedentary lifestyle while engaging in some trade
and trapping, and the Malayic combine a basic farming or fishing subsistence
with the more important collection and trade of forest and marine products.8
The three major Orang Asli categories arose, Benjamin argues, from a con-
scious decision by certain individuals or groups to avoid becoming part of
204 Chapter 7
kabau came to settle. Within the forests in the peneplain zone, where the lands
between the rivers were particularly large, lived the Petalangan (between the
Siak, Kampar, and Indragiri Rivers), the Talang Mamak (along the Indragiri
River in Bukit 30 National Park), and the Orang Batin and Orang Rimba
(between the Batang Hari and the Musi). As collectors of forest products for
former Malayu kingdoms, they filled a complementary economic niche that
helped them to maintain a distinctive lifestyle and ethnic identity.20
Among the most well-known of the Suku Terasing is a group referred to
in ethnographic literature and in public discourse as “Kubu,” an exonym that
members of the group themselves reject. One suggestion is that it is a Malayu
term used for the forest people who had contact with the Malayu polities in
southeastern Sumatra over the centuries. The term itself, so the Sumatran
Malayu claim, is the same word as “fortification” because of the resistance
of the “Kubu” to becoming Malayu (masuk Malayu). Early last century van
Dongen collected tales of the origins of the Kubu and claimed that the word
derived from “ngubu,” meaning “forest.”21 Whatever the derivation of the
word, “Kubu” is often associated in many people’s minds with “primitive,”
“dirty,” “stupid,” etc., and is therefore rejected by the group.22 Instead, the term
Orang Batin, “people of the batin” [title of Suku Terasing leaders], is used by
the former “tame Kubu,” and Orang Rimba, or “people of the forest,” for those
formerly known in the literature as “wild Kubu.”
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, a distinction was made
between the Kubu based on differing subsistence patterns, language, beliefs,
and boundary mechanisms to distinguish the group from the Malayu.23 Early
characterizations used the measure of the Malayu to distinguish between the
“tame” and the “wild” Kubu. Such characterizations were based on a belief in
a linear progression from the “primitive” nomadic forest hunting-gathering
lifestyle to the more “civilized” sedentary agricultural existence. In reality,
however, only the “tame Kubu,” enjoyed both worlds because of their abil-
ity to move easily between these two different ways of life. They interacted
frequently with the Malayu and could move into the Malayu world with little
difficulty by acquiring the outward signs of ethnicity defined by language,
dress, and diet. Those who intended to stay longer among the Malayu could
also quietly absorb and apply Malayu customary laws and practices (adat).
Upon returning to the forest, they could then revert to their own ways.24
Early studies have tended to focus on the tame Kubu, who are regarded as
the oldest communities in Jambi. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
the Batin Duabelas (the Twelve Batin), the most accessible groups along the
Batang Hari, were subject to corvée labor. Their varied tasks included preparing
for a royal wedding, outfitting a ship to carry envoys to the Dutch in Batavia,
providing timber and rattan to build defenses, and serving when summoned
206 Chapter 7
to the disappearance of the elephant, rhinoceros, and the orangutan in their
lands. They were said to have abandoned their nomadic ways, settled down,
and adopted Malayu customs and clothing.31 The distinction between “wild”
and “tame” Kubu may not have been as sharp in earlier centuries, for Dutch
sources in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries refer to all the forest peo-
ple in southeast Sumatra as Kubu (Koeboe). The distinction between those
more or less acculturated to Malayu culture also appears among the Sakai in
Siak, who distinguish between the Sakai dalam (inner Sakai) and the Sakai
luar (outer Sakai).32 Such distinctions among the Kubu and the Sakai would
have been accentuated in later centuries when there was a greater tendency to
adopt the ways of the dominant lowland cultures.
In earlier centuries international trade encouraged a greater disposition
to preserve a lifestyle that strengthened certain skills and knowledge of the
forests as well as an ability to operate in the Malayu world. There were always
leaders, some offspring of Malayu–Orang Asli unions, who acquired the nec-
essary knowledge of downstream communities in order to facilitate their
tasks. When forest products became less desirable to the outside world, there
were interior communities such as the Orang Rimba in southeast Sumatra
who actively rejected any infusion of outside influences as a defensive mecha-
nism to preserve their way of life. Others, subject to increasing pressures of
development, maneuvered between two cultural worlds. Despite the tendency
at different periods for the Malayu to make Islam the defining feature of their
ethnicity, there were groups that followed the path of some of the Batak,
whose adoption of Islam did not mean the rejection of their own way of life.
As the Dutch discovered in the late nineteenth century, male members of
Kubu families were already moving comfortably as “Malayu” while in Malayu
communities and then reverted to being a Kubu back in their home villages.
It was at the edges of these two worlds that the dynamism of ethnic iden-
tity was clearly evident. The fluidity of ideas and porosity of ethnic identities
at the periphery paradoxically accentuated ethnic difference. The reason is
that the economic complementarity of the groups made the ethnic boundar-
ies clear, while the porosity of these boundaries provided individuals with
unimpeded access to well-defined options. As a case in point, as long as the
“tame” and the “wild” Kubu fulfilled the important function of collecting valu-
able forest products for the Malayu, their way of life was respected and even
encouraged. Economic interdependency in earlier centuries had fostered a
respect between the two communities. With the shift in international demand
away from forest products, beginning with the introduction of pepper as a
major cash crop in the seventeenth century, the interior collectors of forest
products became increasingly irrelevant to the Malayu.33 They became the
target of derision and contempt because they were everything that the Malayu
208 Chapter 7
The Malayu kingdom of Jambi in the late seventeenth century was made
very much aware of the consequences of abusing the trust of the interior
groups. When three of the Orang Batin Sembilan children presented to the
Jambi ruler were later sold to a third party, the group viewed this as a grave
affront. They took up arms against the Jambi ruler and were joined by Orang
Batin Sembilan groups from the Lalang and Komering Rivers in Palembang.
They blocked the land route that passed through their land to the Jambi capi-
tal, forcing the Jambi court to seek a resolution of the conflict.40 A combined
Orang Batin force operating within their own areas of exploitation in the for-
est made them a formidable enemy. Also weighing on the mind of the ruler
was the real possibility that the Orang Batin would divert their forest products
to another river basin, thus favoring a rival Malayu lord. Since the major riv-
ers were linked by their numerous tributaries and short land passages, mov-
ing one’s products down another river basin would not have been difficult.41
What is also evident in this incident was the balanced relationship based on
economic self-interest between the downstream kingdom and the upstream
Orang Batin. Before the nineteenth century, there was little real attraction for
the Orang Batin to seek a lifestyle associated with the Malayu because it was
their specialized skill in the rain forest that assured their value to and respect
from the Malayu.
Another major group of forest people in Sumatra is the Petalangan,
whose traditional areas of exploitation are in the lowland tropical rain for-
est between the Siak, Kampar, and Indragiri Rivers. The Petalangan are said
to consist of twenty-nine Pebatinan (Pebatinan kuang oso tigo pulou, thirty
“Batinates” minus one), each headed by a batin. They were important forest
collectors and also engaged in dry rice agriculture (ladang) and horticulture.
In exchange for tribute of honey and wax to the Siak ruler, they obtained
iron, salt, and cloth, items of great value to the interior populations.42 The
Petalangan were typical of the forest peoples both on the Malay Peninsula and
in Sumatra who from early times established lucrative exchange agreements
with the Malayu.
The Petalangan are associated with two early kingdoms, about which very
little is known. The first was the kingdom of Gassip, which was established on
the Siak River and named after one of the interior groups that constituted the
realm. Each of the groups was headed by a leader who was given a title by the
ruler, such as batin, pembilang, jokerah, patih, anten-anten, panghulu, or tua-
tua. The Petalangan were the most important of the ruler’s subjects because
it is said that they and the progenitors of the royal family originated from
the Minangkabau highlands. There is, however, little evidence to support this
view, which may only have arisen because the Minangkabau and the Petalan-
gan share similar matrilineal practices (adat kamanakan).43 Contact between
210 Chapter 7
terombo (genealogical histories), and it was these oral recollections that were
the basis for the ruler’s decisions regarding ownership, use, and preservation
of tribal lands. In the Petalangan’s nyanyian panjang (long songs), the aim is
not simply to entertain through the adventures of the main protagonists, but
also to instruct. Interspersed through the songs are customary prescriptions,
the wisdom of the elders, and the story of the ancestors who opened the lands
and built the village, the gardens, and the fields that form the heritage of the
group.51 In addition to the purely economic arrangements, the Petalangan
demonstrated their readiness to serve the ruler with fighting men because
they believed that the ruler could protect them from any outside threat.52
A recent ethnographic study of the Sakai in Siak underscores the com-
plexity of Suku Terasing identity.53 Through intermarriage, there emerged an
intermediate ethnic identity, which the Sakai themselves term “Sakai Malayu”
or “Sakai Cino” to distinguish it from the “Sakai Asli,” or the “Original Sakai.”
Yet one professed Sakai Malayu was indistinguishable from the Sakai Asli, even
to the point of possessing similar shamanic practices. The Sakai Asli will admit
only of some minor differences in their language and the earlier adoption of
Islam as forming the “boundaries” between the two groups. The Sakai Malayu
regard both as Orang Riau (people of Riau), while some claim that they are all
Malayu or even Minangkabau.54 For the Sakai and many other groups in the
vicinity of the Straits of Melaka, ethnic affiliation is not a single fixed iden-
tity but a spectrum of identities. Nathan Porath explains this phenomenon
in terms of “affiliation through association,” in which there is a gradation of
affinal links that extend outward into other areas to incorporate a number
of different outsiders.55 It is therefore possible for one group to declare itself
Minangkabau or Malayu under one set of circumstances, as Orang Riau in
another, and Sakai Malayu or Sakai Asli in yet another. This fluid concept
of ethnicities is an important economic and political mechanism that can
be employed to advance the interests of individuals or the whole group. The
ethnic choice made at any one time along a spectrum could determine the
success or failure of an economic venture or a political relationship.
Among the Malayu in Sumatra, the Sakai in Siak are noted as possessing
the powers of “black magic,” which the Sakai call olemu tangan ki’i (left-hand
knowledge). The explanation given is that the Sakai and the Riau Suku Tera-
sing are regarded as the magical left hand of the sultan. The Sakai believe
that only the sultan as an exemplary Muslim could use this “left-hand knowl-
edge” or mystical power (sakti) derived from the land.56 This expression of the
special relationship between the Sakai and the Malayu ruler recalls an earlier
episode recorded in the Sejarah Melayu, where Demang Lebar Daun, believed
to be the leader of the indigenous community, enters into a “social compact”
with the Malayu ruler Sri Tri Buana.57
212 Chapter 7
nomadic interior groups.61 Increased sunlight in the cleared Malayu land
enabled a variety of undergrowth to appear, attracting wild animals that
became another source of food for the forest and hill peoples. In hunting
these animals, they performed a service for the Malayu by controlling damage
to the crops. The Malayu also provided the interior groups with opportunities
to gain additional income by helping to clear the land, harvest the crops, and,
in the twentieth century, to tap the rubber trees.62 But the complementarity
of the economic roles of the interior forest and hill peoples and the Malayu
was far more important than simply for subsistence reasons. Until the late
nineteenth century, the interior forest and hill peoples were essential to the
economic success of the Malayu polities because of their ability to extract for-
est products that were in great demand in the international marketplace. This
was an ancient relationship that extended back to the prehistoric period.63
214 Chapter 7
between the skulls of the “Mongoloid,” the African, and the Negrito (Andaman
Islander) groups, Bulbeck argues, “refute any notion of a pristine ‘Negrito’
occupation of Malaya.”71 He sees the transition to the Neolithic occurring
not through migration down into the peninsula from present-day Thailand,
but through the establishment of regularized trade relationships between the
interior and the coast. It was the surplus created by this international trade
in forest products, rather than craft or farming specialization, which would
account for the presence of prestige goods at the funerary site of Gua Cha and
in the slab graves in southern Perak dated to the first half of the first millen-
nium CE. At the Changkat Menteri site, for example, were found carnelian
beads, glass fragments, a stone bark cloth beater, and a high-tin bronze bowl.
Such prestige items in the southern Perak slab graves would have been made
possible by the wealth generated by the trade in gold, alluvial tin, and high-
quality iron ores from the Bernam and adjacent valleys in Selangor. Bulbeck,
following Benjamin, concludes that there may have been a small elite Aus-
tronesian element, perhaps even early Malayu speakers from Sumatra, who
supervised the labor of the dominant Aslian commoner population.72
By a comparative analysis of Aslian languages, Benjamin suggests that a
common ancestry of Aslian speakers split into the northern Aslian-speaking
Semang and the central Aslian-speaking Senoi some five thousand years ago.73
Bellwood dates this division about a thousand years later, in 2000 BCE, with
the migration of a Neolithic agricultural community of Austroasiatic speakers
from central Thailand to the Malay Peninsula as far south as Selangor. Having
moved into areas where the incidence of malaria was far lower than in their
original homelands, the Austroasiatic-speaking population increased sub-
stantially and spread both to the coasts and the interior. Bellwood acknowl-
edges, however, the possibility that both processes—migration and internal
peninsular developments—accounted for the differences of the Orang Asli
populations on the peninsula.74
The hope that historical genetics would help determine the early history
of those groups who are today referred to as the “Orang Asli” has largely been
dampened by Alan Fix’s warning that “the history of genetic loci is not equiv-
alent to the history of populations and may tell us nothing useful about recent
human history.” The findings regarding possible links of “Orang Asli” popula-
tions with other groups extend as far back as sixty million years ago and to
the more “recent” 58,000 years ago, far too early for any real use for the recon-
struction of the early prehistory of any of the groups.75 A. Baer, nevertheless,
argues on the basis of genetic findings that “Malayan prehistory cannot be
encapsulated in terms of separate waves of migrating peoples,”76 supporting
Benjamin’s contention that the differentiation of Orang Asli groups occurred
within the Malay Peninsula itself.
216 Chapter 7
Once the colonial extractive and plantation industries were introduced
in the nineteenth century, forest products became only a minor part of the
total economy. As the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing became less important to the
Malayu, the former fruitful and respectful relationship disappeared. Orang
Asli reluctance to embrace Islam and to abandon their foraging and shifting
agricultural lifestyle confirmed the Malayu view that they lacked “civiliza-
tion.” This is the dominant perception in Malayu and foreign accounts from
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Malayu then began to marginal-
ize the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing, both as economic partners and as human
beings. The shift in attitude was reflected in the growing scorn and contempt
with which the Malayu began to treat the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing. Their way
of life, dress, and even their physical bodies became objects of ridicule. Con-
tributing further to the weakening position of the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing
was the influx in the late nineteenth century of Chinese and European capital
for the development of the tin, rubber, palm oil, and timber industries. Orang
Asli/Suku Terasing lands were viewed as uninhabited and undeveloped and
were seized to accommodate the new industries. The transformation of the
forest landscape seriously threatened the lifestyle of many Orang Asli/Suku
Terasing groups. A simple but tragic tale told by a Kintak records a “history of
cycles of withdrawal and return into an everchanging space” in the effort to
maintain the lifeways that defined the group.80
The ultimate humiliation occurred when the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing
became commodities, slaves to be sold for domestic work or to labor in the
transformed colonial economy. Increasingly from the eighteenth century until
the abolition of slavery in the 1880s, the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing became
prey to Malayu slavers. Kirk Endicott argues that such raids forced the Orang
Asli to adopt silent trade practices81 and either follow a greater nomadic life-
style in isolation from their neighbors or resort to communal longhouses for
protection. It also created a division between the lowland Semai, who became
more acculturated to the Malayu lifestyle, and the upland Semai, who fled
to the safety of the mountains. Later immigrants from Indonesia were even
responsible for killing some of the Orang Asli Malayu to seize their lands.82
The tales collected by Wazir Jahan Karim from an Orang Asli Malayu group
in Selangor, the Ma’ Betise’, reflect the violent encounter with outsiders and a
pessimistic view of the future.83
The Semang, who tended to operate in areas with easy access to the non–
Orang Asli communities for trade purposes, were probably most affected. The
Temiar, on the other hand, may have escaped much of the slave raiding for a
number of reasons. Unlike the Semang, almost all the Temiar occupy lands in
the difficult mountainous terrain in the headwaters of the rivers. Another rea-
son may have been the institution of the mikong, or Malayu chiefs who acted
218 Chapter 7
These interior towns would have served as secondary centers feeding the
ports on the coast. Once the gold, tin, and aromatic woods and resins were
gathered from the peninsula and the isthmus, they were transported to the
coasts by a complex series of rivers and streams joined by short land routes
serving as portage areas. Wheatley has identified six such highways: the Kedah
River or the Perak River via the Perak valley into Patani; the Bernam valley
into the Pahang Basin; the Muar River across the Panarikan land portage to
Pahang; the Batu Pahat valley to the Endau; and the ancient route along the
Kelantan and Galas Rivers toward upper Pahang, which offered different river
routes to the west coast. In addition to these six peninsular routes, he has
listed another five through the isthmian region: the Three Pagoda and Three
Cedis; the Tenasserim River; the Isthmus of Kra; the Takuapa River; and the
Trang River. In the isthmian region, the historic routes went from the west
along rivers via low watersheds to the South China Sea.87
In describing the Orang Asli trade in a specific type of bamboo highly
prized for making blowguns, R. O. D. Noone mentions that the major routes
across the Malay Peninsula followed the tributaries which run east to west off
the major rivers flowing in a north-south direction. The main mountain range
posed no obstacle because the mountains could be crossed at various points
without difficulty.88 For the Semang Batek, for example, the tributary systems
are the “true waterways” and principal focus of their foraging activities.89 Fol-
lowing these tributaries as a major part of the transpeninsular routes would
therefore have been a natural decision by the Orang Asli in the delivery of for-
est products to the coasts or in the transshipment of goods between the coasts.
The choice of routes would also have been determined by the Orang Asli’s
intimate knowledge of the lay of the land and the location of resins, aromatic
woods, and rattans. In this role as collectors of primary forest produce and
as laborers and guides in the transshipment of goods across their lands, the
Orang Asli became indispensable to the Malayu coastal trading kingdoms.
There is very little documentation of the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing before
the nineteenth century. VOC records provide only scattered information on
the Orang Asli communities. In 1642 the Dutch governor of Malacca wrote:
This information was based on a report by the Syahbandar Jan Menie, who
visited the Benuas and filed a report on 21 September 1642. He describes
meeting the Orang Asli, who carried spears or blowpipes with a quiver of
darts. Their leaders sat on a covered platform (balai), which was built by
the Malayu to conduct trade with the Orang Asli. They were naked except
for a cloth wound around their middle and between their legs. Some only
had bark cloth, which was also worn by the children, who were tied tightly
with cloth to their fathers or mothers, leaving their hands free to hold onto
their parents as they walked. At the balai were three heads, all of whom could
speak Malayu, but the person with greatest authority remained with the rest
of the group at the Kassang River. They hunted buffaloes, pigs, and elephants
and gave a detailed account of the elephant hunt. During the encounter, the
Orang Asli roasted some monkeys, which they ate with wild tubers. Although
there were some three thousand men, women, and children in total, they were
divided into groups. Those that Menie met had about forty in the band, with
some three hundred of the group scattered in various gardens. They could all
assemble within two days if summoned. He was told there were many others
scattered from Pahang to Patani.
Because of fear of foul play, they required each visitor to swear an oath
by taking two sips of salted water into which a keris had been placed. Anyone
breaking the oath was threatened with punishment by the sacred power of the
weapon.91 Menie wanted one of them to accompany him to Melaka, offering
to leave one of his Malayu companions as hostage, but they refused because of
an earlier disastrous encounter with the Minangkabau.92 The latter had come
with beguiling words and then had seized the women, children, and posses-
sions, and so they no longer trusted outsiders. The women came with their
children and were dressed in the same way as the men. For the adults Menie
distributed cloth, salt, rice, a keris, six spears, a blowgun, and for the children
some Dutch coins, which they hung around their necks. It was Menie’s belief
that the Orang Asli could be encouraged to collect sufficient quantities of
bezoar stone, eaglewood, and kelembak to trade with the Dutch.93
The few and sporadic early accounts confirm the important Orang Asli
role in international trade in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Miss-
ing, however, is any description of the exchange and of the relationships
established. Maeda’s study of four Jakun or Orang Hulu (formerly known
as Benua) hamlets along the Endau River in Johor in the 1960s is therefore
instructive. The hamlets were permanent residences where the inhabitants
220 Chapter 7
were swidden farmers and forest collectors. Their headman, a batin, medi-
ated between his people and outsiders and was an arbiter in the affairs of the
hamlet. While his most important task was officiating at disputes, his author-
ity was circumscribed by the freedom exercised by the Jakun in interpersonal
and intercommunity relations.94 Economic exchange between the Jakun and
outsiders was based on the time in took for the process of payment (bayar). A
more important form of exchange was “repaying” or “reciprocating” (balas)
desired goods in order to establish and maintain a long-term relationship.
When Maeda tried to pay money to the Jakun headman for the cost of the
gasoline, the headman refused. A more appropriate gesture, he discovered,
was the purchase of the gasoline itself to “repay” the headman and thus main-
tain the relationship.95 This may also have been the practice in the barter trade
between the Orang Asli and the Malayu in earlier centuries.
These special relationships were necessary to assure the steady flow of
forest products downriver to the Malayu ports. Besides the much-desired
camphor and benzoin, the forest also yielded dammar and gaharuwood.
Dammar was produced in diseased dipterocarps, while gaharuwood formed a
diseased core of the Aquilaria malaccensis. Detecting these resins was a highly
skilled endeavor. The most effective collectors were the forest peoples because
of their intimate understanding of their area of exploitation and their tradi-
tion of transmitting knowledge about their surroundings to their offspring.
Other valuable forest products were a red resin known as “dragon’s blood”
and various types of rattans. Some of the rattans were also believed to be anti-
dotes to poison, while dragon’s blood was highly prized as a dye.96 Less exotic
but equally profitable were the various types of rattan or climbing palms, as
well as wax and honey from beehives established on tall trees not of any spe-
cific species but known collectively as sialang.97
In addition to valuable aromatic woods and rattans, the exotic bezoar
stone, known as guliga in Malayu, was a particularly valued forest product.
One European observer in the early eighteenth century claimed that such a
stone, a concretion in the stomach of certain animals such as porcupines, pigs,
snakes, and even elephants, was worth ten times its weight in gold.98 Slivers
would be shaved off, immersed in liquid and consumed. Europeans believed
that the concoction would stimulate the appetite and cleanse the stomach and
blood. For Southeast Asians, the bezoar stone had a number of uses depend-
ing upon the animal from which it originated, with those from snakes and
porcupines considered to be potent antidotes to poison. But it was the belief
in its spiritual properties that made the bezoar stone so valuable among the
local populations. Many used it as a talisman, and some stones came to form
part of the ruler’s regalia. Realizing their value to local rulers, the VOC fre-
quently sent bezoar stones as gifts.99
Your Highness, the descendants of your humble servant shall be the subjects
of your Majesty’s throne, but they must be well treated by your descendants.
If they offend, they shall not, however grave be their offense, be disgraced or
reviled with evil words: if their offence is grave, let them be put to death.
Sri Tri Buana agrees only if Demang Lebar Daun’s descendants “shall never
for the rest of time be disloyal to my descendants, even if my descendants
oppress them and behave evilly.” Demang Lebar Daun then abdicates his posi-
tion to Sri Tri Buana and becomes his chief minister.102
This is the first indication of the special relationship established between
Malayu rulers (represented by Sri Tri Buana) and the people (represented by
222 Chapter 7
Demang Lebar Daun). “Demang” is a common title presented by a Malayu
lord to a Suku Terasing leader, and so the “people” in this document may
refer to the forest people (most likely the Orang Batin). The presentation of
Malayu titles to heads of interior groups was one important way the Malayu
lord would have maintained good relations and thus assured the uninter-
rupted delivery of forest products. In addition to “demang,” these leaders were
given such titles as dipati, jenang, batin, etc., and became the intermediaries
between their people and the Malayu. Because of their role in international
trade, these heads of the forest communities were honored with titles and
gifts from the Malayu court. Such formal arrangements were instrumental in
encouraging the distinction in lifestyle and hence economic function between
the Malayu and the forest peoples. According to the Suma Oriental, the Orang
Asli were among those who offered assistance to the Palembang prince and
his followers in the founding of Melaka.103
In the earliest extant recension of the Sejarah Malayu, dated 1612, the
term “Sakai” can be interpreted as synonymous with Orang Asli generally or
as subjects of one of the principal officials in Melaka.104 The ambiguity sur-
rounding the term is removed in the Undang-Undang Melaka (Melaka Legal
Digest), which may have been compiled during the height of Melaka’s power
in the fifteenth century. In these legal prescriptions the Orang Asli are listed
among Melaka’s subjects and fighting force (Sakai bala tentara).105 The tenth
paragraph (fasal) refers to a law pertinent to the “biduanda orang,” “muda-
muda orang,” “hamba orang,” “Sakai orang,” and the “hamba raja.” Liauw
explains that they refer to the various types of servants or slaves mentioned
in the digest.106 It is difficult to know what distinguished the various cate-
gories in the Melaka period. Early last century, Skeat and Blagden believed
that “Sakai” derived from the Sanskrit sakhi, meaning “friend,” which often
appears with seva or siva (propitious, friendly, dear) in Vedic hymns. Based on
this etymology, Couillard suggests that “Sakai” may have been used by Indian
traders for the Orang Asli who were their “partners in a trading alliance.”107
The ultimate derivation of the term is still undetermined and continues to
invite speculation.
Wilkinson believes that the distinction between the various types of
Malayu subjects was based on the extent of assimilation to Malayu culture.
He therefore proposes a hierarchy with the lowest being the sakai, who were
aborigines who did not speak Malayu; then the rakyat, who were aborigines
who did speak Malayu; and finally the biduanda, who were aborigines who
spoke Malayu, accepted Malayu culture, and had been received as equals into
the Malayu community.108 Despite the neatness of Wilkinson’s conception,
there is evidence that such categories and even meanings were never static. In
the Hikayat Hang Tuah, the references to “biduanda” suggest that they were
224 Chapter 7
There is a striking similarity in the story of the foundation of Kedah as
told in the Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa and that of Melaka in the Sejarah
Malayu. In both cases a stranger prince arrives seeking to become king over a
land without a ruler. The people of the land are the Orang Asli, whose coop-
eration enables the prince to establish his new settlement. It is the Orang Asli
who are also responsible for the economic well-being and protection of the
kingdom. This model of Orang Asli–Malayu cooperation may have been a
generally accepted phenomenon among the Malayu. It is also the theme in
the penglipur lara (soother of care)115 tale known as the Hikayat Awang Sulong
Merah Muda. Although the penglipur lara characterizes the “sakai” as those
who live upriver and eat monkeys, he acknowledges the role played by the
batin in assisting the Malayu ruler to establish a new kingdom, a common
theme in Malayu–Orang Asli relations.116
A crucial distinction is made in the tales regarding the roles played by the
indigenous populations in Kedah and Melaka. In Kedah it is the Orang Asli
populations of Semang and Senoi who assure the success of the royal venture;
whereas in Melaka the important indigenous populations are the Orang Laut,
with implied support from the Orang Asli. The greater contribution of the
Orang Laut in Melaka reflects their crucial function in helping create and
preserve Melaka’s position as a leading trade entrepot in the region. In these
texts, the Orang Asli are never denigrated but openly acknowledged for their
sacrifices on behalf of the Malayu rulers.
For the Malayu kingdoms of Sumatra, the importance of the forest groups
was always recognized because of their role in supplying forest products to the
downstream kingdoms. The relationship was more formalized than on the
Malay Peninsula, with the issuing of copper plate inscriptions and letters to the
interior groups of Suku Terasing to assure the flow of goods. Stories of mar-
riages between a Suku Terasing princess and a downstream Malayu prince were
not uncommon, but a more telling measure of the close relationship between
the two communities is the intertwining of their cultural heroes. Barbara
Andaya describes a thought world in which spiritually powerful figures move
easily in and out of the different communities, providing points of intersection
which help bind the groups together. Heroic figures in Malayu folklore, such as
Iskandar Zulkarnain (Alexander of the Two Horns, i.e., Alexander the Great)
and Arya Damar, have also become incorporated into the tales of the interior
groups. The cross-fertilization of cultural heroes occurs not only between the
Malayu and the Suku Terasing, but also among the different groups of Suku Tera-
sing. It is common to have well-known poyang, or ancestors of a clan or a tribal
group, be equally important in the legends and traditions of other groups.117
One striking example of the sharing of culture heroes is that of Si Pahit
Lidah (He of the Bitter Tongue). There are various version of this tale of a
226 Chapter 7
kah (Mecca), “the land created by God.” The Orang Asli are the first to leave
Mengkah to go to Sumatra and then eventually to the Malay Peninsula, while
the Malayu follow a similar trajectory but centuries later.120 In a Semelai origin
tale, the Orang Asli and the Malayu arrive on the peninsula from Pagaruyung
in Sumatra as one people, but become separate because of an incident. Dur-
ing a feast, the Malayu, who are sitting outside (hence the “outside people”)
on the verandah (balai), ask the Semelai seated inside the house (hence the
“inside people”) for more of the dishes. The Semelai refuse, and so the Malayu
become angry and vow never again to eat Semelai food. After leaving the feast,
the Semelai begin to cross over a large river on a fallen tree trunk led by their
batin, who is carrying on his head a scroll with the people’s genealogies. He
lifts his head upon hearing a cock crow, causing the scroll to fall into the water.
For this reason the only memory of the genealogies is retained by the batin.
The family relationship and the split are also explained by the Semelai in
a tale of the origins of the positions of sultan, penghulu, and batin. As three
of Adam’s boys are descending from heaven on a rope, a strong gust of wind
causes the rope to twist until it finally breaks, sending them tumbling to the
ground. The youngest lands on his feet and comes to be called raja (i.e., the
sultan), the middle brother falls on his knees and becomes the penghulu,
and the eldest drops to a sitting position and becomes the batin. During the
descent, the tale also informs the listeners that the youngest has on a yellow
sarong (color of Malayu royalty), and both he and the middle brother wear
songkok (a fez-like cap worn by Muslim men).121 The Semelai thus see their
earlier familial ties with the Malayu being broken and replaced by distinctive
ethnic boundaries based on food preferences, literacy, and religion.
A similar tale of a former unity that dissolves into two separate and irrec-
oncilable groups can be found among the Orang Rimba in Jambi. Their sto-
ries, called “dongen,” relate the origins of the group and the activities of the
ancestors. One such tale tells of a time before the introduction of Islam when
their people and the Malayu were one. The Prophet Adam and the Prophet
Muhammad snare a wild pig and share the meat, as is customary among the
Orang Rimba, When Muhammad returns to ask for more, Adam replies that
there is none left. But Muhammad later discovers that Adam is hoarding the
remainder of the meat. As a result of this unpardonable act in the eyes of the
Orang Rimba, Muhammad declares that he and Adam will have to go their
separate ways. He explains: “I will leave the forest to form a village, where it will
be forbidden (haram) to eat pork.” On his departure he extends the food ban
to all forest animals. For this reason the forest people, descendants of Adam,
also institute a food ban on domesticated animals. The angels then give Adam
and Muhammad different customary laws (adat), with Muhammad introduc-
ing Islam and the Orang Rimba retaining their adat as an equal to Islam.122
228 Chapter 7
the son of the powerful Bugis Raja Muda of Johor, was installed by the Perak
ruler as the first sultan of Selangor.128 Perak’s close relations with the Bugis
dynasty in Selangor may have added a Bugis interpretation to the significance
of white blood.
The close relationship between the Orang Asli and the Malayu depicted
in the tales may account for the sharing of legendary heroes. Writing in the
early twentieth century, Skeat and Blagden describe an Orang Asli tale from
the Malay Peninsula of a batin called Chief Iron Claws (Batin Berchanggei
Besi). After his death, his position is taken by Hang Tuah, the batin of Peng-
kalan Tampoi in Kelang. He and his sons, Hang Jebat and Hang Ketuwi (Kas-
turi in Malayu), and their descendants become the founding batin in Sungai
Ujong, Kelang, Johor, and Melaka.129 In the Semai chermor, among the retain-
ers of the Malayu ruler of Melaka are the Orang Asli brothers, Hang Tuah
and Hang Jebat. Later there is a quarrel between the brothers, which results
in the death of Hang Jebat. Hang Tuah, accompanied by his wife’s family and
those of Hang Jebat, as well as the Orang Asli from Gunung Ledang, moves
northward and settles in the area. Part of the group remains in central Perak
and comes to be known as mai bareh (i.e., the lowland Semai), while Hang
Tuah proceeds farther northward and becomes the leader of the Orang Asli
in upper Perak. The last group eventually settles in an area now called Lam-
bor.130 In these Orang Asli stories, Hang Tuah, Hang Jebat, and Hang Kasturi
are important early leaders of the Orang Asli community. They are also well
known in Malayu folklore and in two of the most popular works of Malayu
literature, the Sejarah Malayu and the Hikayat Hang Tuah. In the former they
are archetypal Malayu heroes, while in the latter they are associated with the
islands and implied to be of sakai or Orang Laut origins.
Another notable feature in Orang Asli tales is the role of Sumatra, partic-
ularly Minangkabau and the legendary royal center of Pagaruyung. According
to the tale collected by Skeat and Blagden, Chief Iron Claws leaves Minang-
kabau with his followers and goes first to Java, where some of his people remain
behind, and then to Melaka, which was then uninhabited. One of his descen-
dants in Kelang gives his daughter in marriage to a downriver Minangkabau
chief.131 A Biduanda creation myth collected by Hood Salleh also has a Suma-
tran connection. According to this tale, the origin of the group is attributed
to Batin Sri Alam who seized a “walking tree trunk” and kept it in captivity.
The trunk then produced forty-four eggs, which the batin then buried until
they hatched into forty-four children. When they grew up he supplied them
with bark cloth for clothes. Half of these children he sent to Sumatra, where
they colonized the coast “as far as the borders of the Batak country” (i.e., in
the interior of Sumatra), while the other half remained on the peninsula and
became the Biduanda.132
230 Chapter 7
people in the region (see chapter 3). Stories of the sacred powers of these rul-
ers would have arrived in the Malay Peninsula during the Malayu immigra-
tion of the late fourteenth century or even earlier as a result of the free flow of
goods and information across the Straits of Melaka. The Orang Asli may have
absorbed the traditions from the Minangkabau settlers, but it is more likely
that the reputation of the Minangkabau sacred center preceded the immi-
grants. This reputation facilitated marriage between the Minangkabau and
the Orang Asli, particularly in Negeri Sembilan, which has often been seen as
a way in which the early Minangkabau settlers obtained access to the land.141
Yet for the Orang Asli communities there was much to gain spiritually from
such unions. Their tales of the spiritual potency of Pagaruyung, reinforced
by the reputation of its rulers’ sacred “words,”142 would have made the idea of
marriage with the Minangkabau attractive indeed.
Perhaps the most poignant theme in these Orang Asli/Suku Terasing tales
is the nostalgia for the time when their relationship with the Malayu was good.
In the Semai chermor, the marriage of the prince from Sumatra and the Orang
Asli princess living on Gunung Ledang results in the assistance of the Orang
Asli communities in the establishment of Melaka. The Orang Asli then become
the prince’s palace workers, guards, and army, tasks they continue to perform
for the descendants of this first Melakan ruler.143 A similar development is
described in the Semai chermor. After the foundation of the Perak kingdom
following the marriage of the Johor prince Tok Betangkuk to an Orang Asli
woman of white blood, the Orang Asli come to perform such tasks as palace
workers, guards, and hunting partners of the ruler. In this and other Semai
tales, the Malayu ruler dreams of the supernatural partner among the Orang
Asli and goes in search of her. Before the marriage is contracted, the Orang Asli
always ask and obtain a commitment from the Malayu prince to assure that he
will treat them well and accept them as subjects.144 The past is thus depicted as
a time when the Orang Asli and the Malayu were related by blood or by agree-
ments of mutual assistance. In many Orang Asli tales involving the Malayu,
the latter is useful as a counterpoint to a group’s creation of ethnic boundaries
while still retaining what Rosemary Gianno calls a “sense of relatedness.”145
The reality of more recent times is baldly described in the tales of the Ma’
Betise’. According to their trimbow, or origin tales, the Ma’ Betise’ are pushed
out of Merekah (Mecca) and go to Mahdinah (Medina), where they are again
deprived of their land by the Malayu. From here they go to Batak country in
Sumatra where they are well treated, but the harshness of Batak law, particu-
larly regarding adultery, convince them to leave. They move to “peninsular
country” at Batu Pahat, where the group divides to become the Semai, the
Temiar, and the Ma’ Betise’. The Ma’ Betise’ remain on the coast, with one
group later splitting off to form the Blanda, today known as the Temuan.146
Conclusion
The nature of oral tales enables the reciter to adjust the message to current
concerns. This is obvious among the animal tales collected from the various
Orang Asli communities in Perak, Pahang, Kelantan, Negeri Sembilan, and
Johor. Despite slight variations, a common factor is the problems the Orang
Asli face in a Malayu-dominated world. In tales involving the bamboo rat
(dekan) and the porcupine (landak raya), for instance, the message is that
all can live peaceably together despite their differing needs. A well-known
story of the elephant and the mouse emphasizes that despite the latter’s small
size, he is so clever that he can force the more powerful animal to behave
properly. In another tale with an obvious modern twist, animals seek to pre-
vent the destruction of their world by explaining that they pose no danger
to humans.149 These tales reflect the weak and desperate position of Orang
Asli (and the Suku Terasing in Sumatra) who see their lifeways rapidly being
destroyed by a modernizing Malayu society. The respect that characterized
earlier narratives is clearly missing in modern retellings. Increasingly, these
tales stress the importance of maintaining the adat or customary laws and
the ethnic boundaries that protect the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing way of life.
Through the ongoing process of ethnic formation, the weaker ethnic units are
able to regroup in a variety of ways to assure their survival against the incur-
sions of larger and more dominant ethnicities.
The tales and other traditions of both the Malayu and the Orang Asli/
Suku Terasing trace the evolution of their relationship from one of affinity
232 Chapter 7
and equality in earlier centuries to one of distrust in the present. The decline
in the economic and social position of the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing is clearly
a major factor in this shift in attitude. The Malayu now regard the Orang
Asli lifestyle as an impediment to the country’s economic and social devel-
opment. The earlier more amenable relations between the two groups have
been conveniently forgotten in the drive toward modernity. The Orang Asli/
Suku Terasing, therefore, have responded with a reaffirmation of their way of
life and have resorted to both politics and the dissemination of their tradi-
tional lore to remind the dominant Malayu of their once useful and beneficial
relationship.
A diachronic framework best reveals the shifting ethnic relationship
between the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing and the Malayu. From such an exami-
nation it is possible to see how closely related ethnicities and reinforcing life-
styles and traditions were forced by new economic circumstances to move
from complementarity to opposition. In the process, new ethnic boundaries
were erected to reflect the change in relationship and the readjustment of
what it meant to be a Malayu or an Orang Asli/Suku Terasing. Their tales,
particularly those of the latter group, bear the imprint of these changes from
a nostalgic past to the harsh realities of more recent times.
234 Chapter 7
Conclusion
235
Vietnamese and the Tai, the Javanese and the Acehnese against the Malayu,
etc. This interpretation of the past is very much influenced by present-day
realities of legal boundaries, ethnicities determined by censuses and rein-
forced by societal values of the dominant group, and conflicts characterized
as “ethnic.”1
In these pages I have examined the process of ethnic formation by focus-
ing on the changing perceptions of Malayu ethnicity in the precolonial period
and the role of the Malayu in instigating the ethnicization of other communi-
ties. Underlying much of the discussion is the idea of “ethnicization,” which is
a conscious political decision by the group to adopt a particular ethnic iden-
tity for some perceived advantage. Group consciousness beyond the imme-
diate kinship community, village, and village clusters is often the result of
a common perception of greater advantage to be gained by forming larger
unities. The most important motivating factor for this decision, I argue, is the
economic opportunities that arose from international trade flowing through
the Straits of Melaka for more than two thousand years. Ports on both shores
of the straits, particularly on the Sumatran side, prospered from this trade,
and ripples of this new economic development extended throughout the
region.
The most important regional network that emerged in the first millen-
nium and a half of the Common Era was what I have called the “Sea of Malayu.”
This network consisted of a swath of lands and waterways from southern
India and Sri Lanka to northern Sumatra, across the Straits of Melaka to the
Isthmus of Kra and the northern Malay Peninsula, then through the South
China Sea to the settlements along the Gulf of Siam, the Lower Mekong, and
central Vietnam. There emerged a commonality of outlook based on the flow
of goods and ideas along this trajectory, enabling leaders and ordinary indi-
viduals to move easily within a single world. The use of the term “Malayu”
for this extensive regional trade and cultural network is arbitrary; indeed, the
surrounding waters could as easily have been called the “Sea of Cham” or the
“Sea of Funan.” My decision to use “Malayu” is based on the prominent role
played by Malayu (or Malayic) language shippers and traders in their exten-
sive network stretching from China to the east coast of Africa.
But as is the nature of ethnic identity, “Malayu” was continually being rein-
terpreted. From at least the second half of the seventh century CE, it referred
to the subjects of polities such as Sriwijaya and Malayu, where Malayu was
the language of government and of the marketplace. But in later centuries the
term also incorporated those groups that used Malayu as a language of choice
or as a trade language, and adopted the customs and dress of those identified
as Malayu. By the early nineteenth century, T. Stamford Raffles recognized a
Malayu identity among communities scattered throughout the region under
236 Conclusion
different political leaders but all sharing a single language, customs, and even
“character.”2 European observers at the time commented on dress, manners,
lifestyle, oral and written traditions, and even literary style that they believed
to be distinctive to the Malayu.3
Unlike the period since the late nineteenth century, however, the deci-
sion to be Malayu was not irrevocable. The ease of movement in and out
of Malayu ethnicity can be attributed to the “soft” boundaries listed above,
many of which were shared by neighboring communities. It was a common
practice for an individual to remain Malayu or Batak or Minangkabau when
it was most advantageous to do so, but to adopt another ethnic identity when
operating in a different environment. In the area of the Straits of Melaka,
making such choices was primarily a decision faced by interior groups seeking
to maximize profits in the trading environment of the coast and the islands,
the acknowledged world of the Malayu.
The Straits of Melaka provided an ideal laboratory for the study of the
process of ethnic formation. All maritime routes linking the major civiliza-
tions to the east and west of Southeast Asia led through the Straits of Melaka.
The straits also served as a safe haven throughout the year because the parallel
mountain ranges in the center of Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula acted as
protective barriers against the strong monsoon winds. International traders
moving between the east and west found ideal conditions in the entrepots
established by communities along the straits. One of the earliest known and
most prominent of the groups identified in the straits was the Malayu. The
emergence and eventual dominance of the Malayu paradoxically encouraged
specific communities to break away to form the new ethnicities of the Aceh-
nese, the Batak, and the Minangkabau. But many individuals who decided
to identify with these new ethnic communities never totally abandoned the
Malayu but moved between them when such movements promised greater
advantage under specific circumstances.
In the case of the Orang Laut and Orang Asli/Suku Terasing, economic
considerations actually promoted the maintenance of their ethnic identities.
Their lifestyle based on the sea and in the forests equipped them to be the
primary collectors of products from their environment, which were highly
prized by international traders. In addition, both groups had an intimate
knowledge of their surroundings and were thus invaluable as guardians of the
sea lanes and the forest routes. The Malayu valued the special skills of these
groups and were willing to offer titles, legitimation, and exotic and practical
goods to maintain this relationship. The sea and forest peoples themselves
saw little reason to abandon their way of life, and in fact were encouraged to
reinforce their unique identity to gain the greatest advantage in their relations
with the Malayu.
238 Conclusion
be tempted to reorganize and perhaps form new ethnic identities. Historians,
therefore, should be alerted to the fact that the “rise” or “decline” of an ethnic
group may be the consequence of significant shifts in economic or political
opportunities encouraging the re-formation of old or formation of new eth-
nic identities.
Being aware of the dynamics of ethnic formation may help historians
avoid the temptation to view aspects of the past in terms of “ethnic struggles”
and instead to seek other more tangible reasons for difference. Problematizing
ethnicity would enable the historian to offer a nuanced view of ethnic rela-
tions in a region that boasts one of the greatest diversities of languages and
cultures in the world.
Introduction
1. Comaroff and Comaroff, Ethnography, 49–67.
2. Armstrong, Nations before Nationalism, 232.
3. Throughout this study I have decided to retain the Malay word and spell-
ing “Malayu” to refer to the Malays, in preference to the current usage of “Melayu.”
The former was the way the name was more commonly transcribed in inscriptions
and early historical documents. Adopting this spelling also avoids the association of
the term with the dominant ethnic group in Malaysia today. By using “Malayu” I am
including not only those in Malaysia but also those living in various parts of Indone-
sia, particularly on the east coast of Sumatra and the offshore islands to the south of
the Malay Peninsula. I have, however, retained the English usage of “Malay Peninsula”
because of its familiarity to English speakers.
4. Kahn, Constituting Minangkabau.
5. Barth, “Enduring and Emerging Issues,” 16.
6. Logan, “Orang Benua,” 247.
7. Lieberman demonstrates the ethnic complexity of mainland Southeast Asia
in the fifteenth century before the standardization imposed by the dominant eth-
nic groups in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Lieberman, Strange Parallels,
37–9.
8. Leach, Political Systems.
9. Nagel, “Constructing Ethnicity,” 158–60.
10. Keyes, “Presidential Address,” 1171.
11. See, for example, Espiritu, Asian American Panethnicity, and Calderon, “‘His-
panic’ and ‘Latino.’”
12. O’Connor, “Agricultural Change,” 987.
13. Wyatt, “Relics, Oaths.”
14. Lieberman, Strange Parallels.
15. The term “invention of traditions” comes from Hobsbawm and Ranger’s
241
edited volume The Invention of Tradition. Equally well known is Anderson’s term
“imagined communities” from his book of the same name. These scholars focused on
the manner in which new nations, or even those not particularly new, invented tradi-
tions or found commonalities in order to emphasize their shared identity and hence
unity.
16. Smith, Ethnic Origins of Nations, 21–30.
17. Rousseau, Central Borneo, 3.
18. Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism, 11–2.
19. Barth, “Introduction,” 11; Barth, “Pathan Identity,” 119–23.
20. Banks, Ethnicity, 14.
21. Barth, “Enduring and Emerging Issues,” 15.
22. Shils, “Primordial, Personal”; Isaacs, Idols of the Tribe.
23. See for example Okamura, “Situational Ethnicity.” The classic and influen-
tial examples of this approach are associated with the Manchester School, such as
J. C. Mitchell’s The Kalela Dance and A. L. Epstein’s Politics in an Urban African Com-
munity. Most recent studies of ethnicity tend to borrow aspects from both the primor-
dialist and the situationalist approach.
24. Hobsbawm and Rogers, Invention of Tradition, 1.
25. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups, 185, 226–7.
26. Nagel, “Constructing Ethnicity,” 154.
27. Appadurai, “Global Ethnoscapes,” 192.
28. Appadurai, “Global Ethnoscapes,” 196–7.
29. In many societies Creation is a time of great spiritual potency. For this rea-
son, shamanic healing practices rely on trances or dreams to journey back to the time
of Creation to restore wholeness and purity to an individual or to the whole society.
E. Florescano, Memory, Myth,and Time in Mexico, 25–7; Hamonic, Le Langage, 35–6.
30. Armstrong, Nations before Nationalism, xxii, 8–9; Smith, Ethnic Origins, 15.
31. Smith, Ethnic Origins, 57–70.
32. Barth describes a similar situation among a Persian nomadic group, the Bas-
seri. The creation of larger units among the Basseri is accomplished through submis-
sion to the same chief, thus “bonding to his imperium of authority and protection.”
Barth, “Boundaries and Connections,” 23–4.
33. By “soft” boundaries, Duara means such cultural practices as rituals, lan-
guage, dialect, music, kinship rules, or culinary habits that may identify a group but
not prevent it from sharing or adopting cultural practices of another group. Duara,
Rescuing History, 65.
34. The Hikayat Hang Tuah may have begun as an oral tradition in fifteenth-
century Melaka but was recorded in its present form sometime in the late eighteenth
century. The Malayu text has not been translated into English. In citing sections from
the Hikayat, I have used Kassim Ahmad’s transliteration.
35. Kassim Ahmad, Hikayat Hang Tuah, 175. See also Maier’s discussion on
kacukan and the “real Malayu” (Malayu sungguh) in Maier, “We Are Playing Relatives,”
673–5.
36. Liaw, Sejarah Kesusasteraan, vol. 2, 50.
Conclusion
1. Such characterizations in the past must be viewed with care since often they
originate from external observers, rather than from those being observed. Indigenous
perspectives often highlight different reasons for such conflicts, reasons that to an out-
sider may at times seem trivial and unacceptable but are meaningful to the group.
2. Raffles, “On the Melayu Nation,” 103.
3. Milner, Kerajaan, 1–9.
285
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Aceh: Bugis dynasty, 139; earliest Angkor Borei, 27, 36–37, 41–42, 46
accounts, 116, 117–118; elephants Arab: sources on Sumatra and Java, 22,
and horses, 123, 136, 138; eunuchs, 57–58; trade, 19, 30–31, 40
133–135, 138; harems, 133–134, Aru, 114–115, 116, 117, 199, 267n34
263n121; identity, 109, 124–125, Austronesian language, 19–20, 26,
129, 138–139, 145; Islamic treatises 60; distinct from Nusantao, 21;
written in, 10, 125–126, 128–129, languages derived from, 20, 44
137; links to wider Islamic world, Ayutthaya, 69–70, 137, 140
117, 119–122, 124–125, 129–131,
132–133, 135–137; as Malayu Ban Don Tha Phet, 24
kingdom, 108–109, 117, 124, bangsa, 224, 282n113
143–144; Malayu texts written in, Banjarmasin, 10
108–109, 129, 261n78; as patron Barus, 16, 40, 116, 151, 154, 160, 170
of Islam, 109, 117, 119, 123–124, Batak, 115; as bhumi Malayu, 169;
136–137; royal command letters, and “cannibalism,” 146–147,
98–99, 132–133; Syaikh al-Islam, 266n11; collectors of camphor
125–126, 128–131, 142; territorial and benzoin, 115, 149; cultural
expansion, 116–117, 123; trade and features, 89, 146, 207; definition,
trade routes, 118, 119–123 266n4; early references, 146–147;
Adityawarman, 88–89, 96, 104, 113, as ethnic group, 16, 156, 273n144;
114, 268n43; inscriptions issued ethnicization of, 148, 166–167,
by, 85–86, 88, 153, 160–161; links 169, 170–172; horses in, 150; and
to east Java, 84; and Pagaruyung, Malayu, 115–116, 162, 170–172;
91; relationship with legendary marga and subgroups, 16, 146,
Minangkabau lawgivers, 85, 89; 154–155, 156–157, 158–159, 160,
ruler of Malayu, 83, 84; as Tantric 168, 172, 265nn1, 2, 269nn65, 82,
bodhisattva, 84–85, 86, 160, 83, 270n84, 271n111; migration
279n56; titles of, 84–85, 86 (marserak), 154, 155–159, 170,
Alauddin Riayat Syah al-Kahar of Aceh 268nn50, 54; and Minangkabau
(1539–1571), 117 links, 90; pepper and rice
Angkor, 27, 28, 36, 48 producers, 115, 156–158, 170;
315
pustaha and datu/guru, 167–169, Chola: notified of Ming accession, 46;
170, 272n140; religion (Perbegu, raids, 35, 58, 86, 159–160, 169,
Pemena), 161–163, 170–172, 267n27. See also Tamil
270nn96, 101, 103; routes, 155, “cultural discontinuity,” 7, 169, 170
169–170; Sisingamangaraja customary law, 9
and high priests, 163–167, 170,
271nn110, 112, 114, 120, 272n123; Desawarnana (also known as
as Sriwijaya lands, 169–170 Nagarakrtagama), 14, 49, 83, 110,
beads, 28, 47, 50, 61; Indian, 24–25; 115, 116, 169–170
Indo-Pacific, 24, 30, 47; Malay Dharmasraya, 59, 83–84, 93
Peninsula, 25, 38, 192, 215 Dong Son, 24, 44, 50
Bellwood-Blust synthesis, 19–20, 29, 46 Dunsun, 28, 33–34
benzoin. See camphor and benzoin Dutch East India Company (VOC), 4,
bezoar stones (guliga), 221, 281n99 15; blockade of Aceh, 123; supports
bhumi Malayu, 14, 16, 46, 49, 82–83, 105, Johor recovery, 144
107, 110, 115, 116, 169, 258n2 Dvaravati, 34
Brahman: in Dunsun, 33–34; in Panpan,
34
ethnicity, 235; as defined by author,
Buddhism, 29, 35–36, 47, 174; building
6; elite and commoner ideals,
cultural bonds, 28; co-existence
9–10; ethnie, 6; ethnoscape, 9; key
with Hinduism, 35; communities,
terms, 6–7; mythomoteur, 9, 12,
39; as economic centers, 27–28;
238; reformulations, 11, 236–237;
images, 61; in Langkasuka, 35;
“soft” boundaries, 10, 237, 242n33;
Mahayana missionary activity, 35;
stances, 8–9; uses, 17
in Panpan, 34; in Sriwijaya, 58, 62;
ethnicization, 49–50, 81, 145, 170–172;
Tantric, 84–85, 86, 87, 88, 153,
Aceh, 144–145; Batak, 148,
160–161, 279n56; trade, 27–28, 30
166–167, 169, 170–172; concept
Bugis, 4, 13, 139, 181, 182, 185, 187,
of, 4, 236; Malayu, 77, 81, 236;
228–229
Minangkabau, 90–91, 105–107
Bukit Siguntang, 58, 68, 71; and
“exemplary center,” 12
Pagaruyung, 99
camphor and benzoin, 61, 221; family networks, 12, 14, 71, 85, 232; in
collection, 149, 247n11, 277n16; Hikayat Pocut Muhamat, 143; in
description, 148, 266n13; location, Melaka, 73–74, 75–76, 77; methods
16, 35–36, 40, 110, 148, 149, 155; in creating, 73–77, 79, 274n60,
routes, 85, 149–150, 151, 155, 276n112; in northeast coast
156, 170; trade, 2, 36, 87, 97–98, Sumatra, 111; in Sriwijaya, 64–67.
115–116, 117, 124, 146, 148, 149, See also kinship
151–154, 155, 158, 169–170; “founder-rank enhancement,” 20, 78
transport of, 150; uses, 52, 247n12 Funan, 19, 26–27, 28, 34, 42, 46, 48
Cham, 51; civilization, 24, 42–45;
inscription, 54; links to Malayu gaharuwood (eaglewood, aloeswood),
world, 45; and related upland 2, 35, 44, 52, 54, 61, 115, 216, 221,
groups, 44–45; “Sea of,” 19; 280n77
settlements, 43–44, 45–46; speakers galactic polities, 12, 13. See also mandala
of, 43 polities
Champa, 28, 30, 42, 43–46 Gantoli, 52
Chitu, 35–36 Gupta, 25; bringing of Indianization, 29
316 Index
Hang Tuah: Hikayat Hang Tuah, 10; kinship: by adoption, 75–76, 238;
Malayu hero, 10 bilateral, 12, 73; as bond between
Hikayat Malem Dagang, 140–142, 144 ruler and subject, 9; communities
Hikayat Pocut Muhamat, 140, 142–143, based on, 11–12; by lactation,
144 73–75, 238; as link between
Hinduism, 35; co-existence with center and periphery, 12; by
Buddhism, 35; Saivite, 34, 161; marriage, 73, 85, 200, 206, 225,
temple, 41; Vaisnavite, 28, 29, 34. 228, 231, 238; networks in Melaka,
See also Brahman 71; networks in Sriwijaya, 64–67;
Orang Laut, 181, 200. See also
Indrapura, 10 family networks
Iskandar Muda of Aceh (1607–1636), Kota Cina, 16, 116, 154–155, 156, 162,
109, 126, 127; in Aceh texts, 109; 170, 268n48; founding of, 152,
and pepper monopoly, 123 153, 267nn32, 33; influence
Islam: Aceh’s patronage of, 109, 117, 119, of Tamil and Chinese in, 152,
144; civilizations, 79; conversion 159–160, 161
in Melaka, 71; features shared Kra Isthmus, 3, 14, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33,
by Pathans, 7; first Sumatran 34, 37, 38, 40–41, 47–48, 149, 174,
evidence, 113, 118–119; in 175, 216
Hikayat Malem Dagang, 140–141; Kuala Selinsing, 25, 38, 192, 193, 280n66
lactation and kinship, 71, 74–75; kunlun, 51, 247n3
as Malayu identity, 124; Melaka
and Pasai as centers, 15, 71, 141; Laguna inscription, 56
in Minangkabau, 89; networks, Lake Toba, 16
128; political legitimacy based Lamuri, 40, 116, 268n48
on, 79–80; Sufism, 125–126, 142, Langkasuka, 34, 35, 39
258n7; treatises from Aceh, 10 language: hybridity in, 11; as identity
marker, 10–11; as kacukan, 10; use
Jambi: adoption strategy in kinship, under colonialism, 11
75–76; early Malayu polity in, “leaves of the same tree,” 4, 204, 232
19, 52; as Gantoli, 52; heir to Ligor, 32; inscription, 32, 33, 36, 55, 149
Sriwijaya, 58, 84; intermarriages Lin-yi, 34, 43–44
with Minangkabau nobility, 85; as Lobu Tua, 267n32; definition of, 267n29;
Javanizing polity, 91–93; subject to inscription, 151, 159–160
Java, 59
Jerai (Gunung, Mt.) or Kedah Peak, 38, Majapahit, 49, 70, 183, 195; attack on
174–175, 224 Singapore, 69, 194; invasion of
Jiecha. See Kalah Pasai, 113–114, 258n22
Johor (-Riau), 108, 137, 139, 141, 143–144 Malayic languages, 60, 77
Malayo-Polynesian, 20–21, 29
Kalah (also known as Kadaram/Kidaram, Malayu, 14, 113; Acehnese form of
Kataha, Jiecha, Kolo), 30, 37, 39, 40, language, 10; ancestral “origins,”
47, 57, 174, 193 19–20; as Batak, 115–116, 162,
Kampung Sungai Mas, 37, 38, 39 170–172; culture of, 14, 61; distinct
Kedah, 32, 37, 38, 40, 137, 174 from Minangkabau, 82–83, 88, 91,
Kedah Peak. See Jerai 100; ethnonym, 14; as expansive
Keling, 70, 113, 114 ethnicity, 11, 88; features of
Kertanagara, 84 polity, 67–68; identity, 13, 59–60,
Khao Sam Kaeo, 24 207, 236–237; interaction with
Index 317
Orang Asli/Suku Terasing, 4, 94, Nagarakrtagama. See Desawarnana
205–209, 212, 216–218, 222, 224, Nusantao: communities, 29; as distinct
225, 226–232, 234, 238; language, from Austronesian, 21; network,
4, 10–11, 19, 60, 139–140; 21–22
meaning of, 208, 243n1; Melaka’s
contribution to identity, 70–71; Oc Eo, 26, 36, 37, 42, 51; culture, 41;
Moken tales about, 175–176; manufacturing activity, 42
relationship between ruler and Orang Asli, 17, 279n64, 281n92;
subject, 71, 113, 211, 222–223; ancestors, 213–215, 280n67;
spelling of, 241n3; as Sumatran collectors of forest products, 62,
polity, 51–52, 59, 60, 67, 84, 88; 210, 221, 225; divisions and
tales of relations with Orang Asli, groups, 203–204, 224, 277nn2,
225, 226–232; as toponym, 52 8, 279n49, 281n107, 283n146;
mandala polities, 12, 13, 46, 66–67, 238 enslavement of, 217–218; exonym,
Melaka, 15, 32, 49; as center of Islam, 16, 276n1; interaction with Malayu,
71, 114; contribution to Malayu 4, 94, 207–208, 212–213, 216–218,
identity, 70–71; emulation of, 222–223, 224, 225–227, 228–232,
71; family networks in, 74, 234, 282nn120, 124; land as source
75–76, 77; as favored entrepot, of material and spiritual benefits,
70; founding, 68; Ming ties, 69, 216, 280n78; lifestyle, 202–204,
70; Orang Laut role in, 70–71, 212, 216, 219–220, 279nn59, 61;
114–115; population, 38; rivalry location, 203, 277n3; maintaining
with Pasai, 114 ethnic boundaries, 17, 202,
merantau. See Minangkabau: rantau 206, 223, 226, 232, 237–238; as
Minangkabau: distinct from Malayu, “opportunistic foragers,” 212; other
82–83, 88, 91, 100, 107; ethnicization terms for, 223–224; relations with
of, 90–91, 105–107; European Malayu ruler, 17, 207–208, 210,
perceptions of, 94; first mentioned, 216, 223, 225, 282n125; relation to
83; Islam in, 89; “law-givers,” State, 203–204; role in founding
89; links to Batak, 90; links to of Melaka, 223; routes used by,
Petalangan, 209–210; matrilineality, 218–219; tales of relations with
82, 88–89, 90, 107; patrilineality, 89; Malayu, 225, 226–227, 228–232,
rantau, 82, 88, 89–91, 93–95, 106, 282nn120, 124; titles of leaders,
107, 144; settlements, 91, 93, 94. See 223; trade, 195, 218–219, 220–221,
also Pagaruyung 222, 280n81. See also Suku Terasing
Moken, Moklen: collectors of sea Orang Laut, 4, 17; collectors of sea
products, 193; customary rights products, 62, 173; different groups,
in seascape, 180; establishing 181–184, 275n85; as exonym, 16,
marriage relationships, 274n60, 275n84; as kunlun, 51; lifestyle,
276n112; lifestyle, 175–176; 180–182; maintaining ethnic
links to Andaman and Nicobar, boundaries, 17, 176–177, 198–200,
193; location, 174; maintaining 201, 237–238; maritoriality,
ethnic boundaries, 199–200, 201; 180–181, 273n22, 274n32;
relationship to ruler, 200; role piracy, 32, 173, 175, 177–178,
in Malayu trade, 192; source of 182, 185–187, 189, 190–192, 194,
knowledge, 200; tales, 175–176. See 276n103; role in founding of
also Orang Laut Melaka, 194–197, 200; seascape, 62,
monsoon winds, 1–2, 24, 30, 33, 52 174, 177–178, 181, 200; service to
318 Index
Malayu ruler, 17, 62, 173, 178–184, Pengkalan Bujang, 37, 38, 39
188–191, 192, 193–194, 196–198, pepper, 110, 120, 144; Batak
199, 200, 225; source of knowledge, participation in trade, 16,
200; titles of heads, 181, 193, 157; grown in Pasai, 111–112;
273n22. See also Moken international demand, 112, 115,
121, 156–157; introduced to
Padang Lawas, 16, 156, 168, 169–170, Sumatra, 16, 112, 118; Iskandar
269n58; as ceremonial and trade Muda’s monopoly of, 123; from
site, 87, 149, 155, 162; inscriptions, the Malay Peninsula, 117, 118,
148, 152–153; Tantric influences, 131; plant requirements, 112,
160–161 157; replaces forest products, 111;
Pagaruyung, 15, 75, 88; and Bukit from west coast Sumatra, 117, 123,
Siguntang, 99; as “core” of alam 132
Minangkabau, 96; emissaries, Persian: sources on Sumatra and Java,
100–104; “emperors” of, 91, 100, 57; trade, 30, 40
104, 105; end of royal family, Polu. See Ramni
106–107; influence in rantau, Pulau Tioman. See Tioman
94, 101; letters from “emperors,”
97–99, 105; links to Orang Asli/ Raja Kecil: as adopted son of
Suku Terasing, 230–231; role in Pagaruyung, 75–76; as emissary
Minangkabau ethnicity, 82, 91, from Pagaruyung, 101–103; links to
96–100, 104. See also Minangkabau Petalangan, 210
Palembang, 37, 138; adoption strategy in Ramni (Ar.), Polu (Chi): as double
kinship, 75–76; as center of Malayu kingdom to Sriwijaya, 57; identified
polity, 84; Chinese trade to, 58–59; with Lamuri, 110
as Gantoli, 52; intermarriages with routes: Batak trans-Sumatran, 154–155,
Minangkabau, 85; as Javanizing 169; camphor and benzoin, 85,
polity, 91–93; peregrinations of 87, 155; India to China sea, 26,
prince to Melaka, 68, 75, 78–79; as 31–32; Mekong to Vietnam, 42;
site of Sriwijaya, 19, 61; subject to northern Malay Peninsula, 3;
Java, 59; supernatural ruler from, Palembang-Jambi to Minangkabau,
68, 71 55–56; religious temples and
Pamalayu expedition, 59, 84 trade, 87; segmenting of sea, 32;
Panai, 87, 161, 267n34; as Batak polity, transpeninsular/transisthmian, 26,
88, 115, 156; as bhumi Malayu, 116; 30–32, 33, 39, 40, 42, 47, 56, 110,
destroyed by Cholas, 169; religion 216, 218–219
and trade, 162
Panpan, 34–35, 39 Sa Huynh: culture of, 24, 41, 43, 44; and
Pasai, 45, 117; absorbed by Aceh, 117; Kalanay, 25, 43
contributions to Aceh, 118; favored Samudera, 113, 116, 137. See also Pasai
by Muslim traders, 70, 113; history Sathing Phra, 34, 36–37
of, 111, 112–113; Majapahit “Sea of Malayu,” 27, 45–46; definition,
campaigns against, 113–114; 14, 22, 236; earliest references, 22;
pepper in, 111–112; rival of Melaka, participants in, 27, 33, 40–41, 51,
114; Siamese attacks on, 69, 114; 236; shared cultural idiom, 14, 19,
struggles between interior and 42, 45–46, 48, 236
coast, 111; themes in history of, Selinsing. See Kuala Selinsing
111. See also Samudera sida-sida, 118, 133–134
Index 319
Sriwijaya, 14, 36, 52–54, 83, 84–85; Suruaso, 59, 85, 86, 113; inscription, 86
absorbs Kedah, 40; as birthplace Suvannabhumi, 25, 27
of Malayu culture, 49; and
camphor-benzoin trade and routes, Taj al-Alam Safiyat al-Din, Sultanah of
149–151; center of Buddhist Aceh (1641–1675), 128, 129, 131,
learning, 58; Chinese trade to, 137, 142, 144
57–58, 70, 113; Chola raids on, 16, Tambralinga, 27, 36
58; datu in, 63–64; features of, Tamiang, 115–116, 259n30; as bhumi
67–68; inscriptions, 54–56, 60, 62, Malayu, 116
63–64, 281n91; links to Langkasuka, Tamil: cultural impact on Batak, 160,
35; as network of mandalas, 66; as 162; inscriptions written in, 33, 151,
“paddle culture,” 54, 78; political 152–153; merchant guilds, 33, 86,
and administrative terms, 63–68; 151, 159, 267n27; settlements in
and spice substitution, 111; trading Sumatra, 152, 153, 160, 162; texts,
wealth, 57 25–26; trade and traders, 87, 113,
Suku Terasing, 17, 277n19, 279n64; 159. See also Chola; Keling
collectors of forest products, 62, Tenasserim, 33, 37
205, 212, 230; exonym, 16, 204–205; Tioman, 30
groups, 204–205, 212; interaction
with Malayu, 94, 205–207, 208–209, Urak Lawoik: collectors of sea products,
212–213, 216–218, 225–226, 193; customary rights in seascape,
227–228, 230–234; “Kubu” (Orang 180; links to Andaman and
Batin, Orang Rimba), 205–209, 212, Nicobar, 193; maintaining
227–228, 278nn26, 30, 31, 36, ethnic boundaries, 199–200;
283n138; land as source of material origins, 174, 175, 176; relations
and spiritual benefits, 210–211, 216; with Malayu, 192, 200; source of
lifestyle, 205–208, 209, 212, 216; knowledge, 200. See also Moken;
location, 204–205; maintaining Orang Laut
ethnic boundaries, 17, 202,
206–207, 208, 209, 226, 232, 237; “voyaging corridor,” 18
as “opportunistic foragers,” 212;
Petalangan, 209–211, 212, 279n47; women, 12, 190; in establishing kinship
relations with Malayu ruler, 17, relations, 79; as ethnic markers, 10;
205–206, 210, 211, 216–217, 225; as guards, 133; harem, 133–134,
relations with Sriwijaya, 54; relation 135, 263n121; as milk-mothers,
to State, 204; Sakai, 207, 211, 230, 73–75, 79; among Orang Laut,
280n77; tales of relations with 175, 181, 182, 183, 185, 193; and
Malayu, 225, 227–228, 230–232; pepper planting, 157; in rantau, 90;
titles of heads, 209. See also Orang sequestered, 7, 134
Asli
sumptuary laws, 9 Yijing, 31, 37, 40, 51, 52–54, 58
320 Index
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