Sejarah Melayu

L E O NA R D Y. A N DAYA

of the SAME TREETrade and Ethnicity in the Straits of Melaka

Leaves of the Same Tree

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Leaves of the Same TreeTrade and Ethnicity in the Straits of Melaka

Leonard Y. Andaya

University of Hawai‘i Press

Honolulu

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© 2008 University of Hawai‘i Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

13 12 11 10 09 08 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Andaya, Leonard Y.

Leaves of the same tree : trade and ethnicity in the Straits of Melaka / Leonard Y.

Andaya.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8248-3189-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)

1. Ethnicity—Asia, Southeastern. 2. Ethnology—Asia, Southeastern. 3. Asia,

Southeastern—Commerce—History. 4. Malacca, Strait of—Commerce—History.

I. Title.

DS523.3.A5 2008

305.8009595’1—dc22

2007044638

University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free

paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability

of the Council on Library Resources.

Designed by Paul Herr

Printed by The Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group

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To BarbaraIt’s been a truly wonderful journey

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ix

Acknowledgments

Having reached the “twilight” of my academic career, I have a greater appreciation of any of my projects that reach fruition. This particular book has been long in the mak-

ing, not only because of the demands of teaching but also because of having ventured into academic disciplines and cultural areas that were less familiar to me. In the process I have benefited immensely from the generosity of many individuals who were willing to guide me through difficult material. It makes one aware that in any academic enterprise, collegial cooperation is essential. To the following colleagues, many of whom read sections of the manuscript, I would like to express my sincere gratitude for their help: Taufik Abdullah, Sander Adelaar, Jane Allen, Geoffrey Benjamin, Leonard Blussé, Robert Blust, David Bulbeck, Cynthia Chou, Robert Dentan, Juli Edo, Kirk Endicott, Jeff Hadler, Tsuyoshi Kato, Uli Kozok, Michael Laffan, Adri Lapian, Henk Maier, John Miksic, Henk Niemeijer, Colin Nicholas, Wannasarn Noonsuk, Jon Oka-mura, Nathan Porath, Jim Scott, Miriam Stark, and Wazir Johan Karim. Any omission of a name is not deliberate, but simply a sign of failing memory. The major part of the research was undertaken in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Netherlands in 1999–2000 through the Fulbright-Hays Program, and I would like to acknowledge the generous funding that made all of this possible. In the Netherlands in 2000 I was fortunate to have been a Fellow-in-Residence at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study. I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere appreciation to the staff for the opportunity to meet such intellectually stimulating colleagues from all parts of the world and for all the wonderful support facilities in conducting research in that country. The Netherlands has some of the best libraries and archives in the world for the study of Indonesia, and I would like to express my thanks to the staff at the National Archives of the Netherlands in The Hague and

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x Acknowledgments

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.

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1

Introduction

Of some six thousand ethnolinguistic groups in the world, about a thousand are found in Southeast Asia. This immense ethnic diversity has piqued the curiosity of lin-

guists, anthropologists, and sociologists, but oddly, not that of historians until recently. In general the latter have tended to apply ethnic names loosely, giv-ing insufficient attention to the nature of ethnic identity and the constant redefinition of groups, particularly in the precolonial period (i.e., before the late nineteenth century). Historians can therefore profit from social science insights regarding the shifting components that constitute an ethnic group and the complexity of ethnicity as a concept. One such insight, from the anthropologists Jean and John Comaroff, recognizes the ambiguous nature of ethnicity. “Is [ethnicity] an object of analysis, something to be explained?” they ask. “Or is it an explanatory device capable of illuminating significant aspects of human existence?” They then proceed to demonstrate the mutual and dialectic influences between ethnicity as an analytic framework and eth-nicity as a conceptual subject.1 The Comaroffs are just two of many social scientists who have sought to explicate some aspect of this slippery concept. From this vast array of theoretical ideas, I have selected those that I feel have direct relevance to historians who wish to use ethnicity as a way of under-standing Southeast Asian history. The value of problematizing ethnicity becomes apparent in the context of trade, long the lifeblood of Southeast Asians and one of the dominant themes in the region’s history. Southeast Asia sprawls across the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and until perhaps the sixteenth century the only known sea passage through the region was the Straits of Melaka. Located midway between the major civilizations to the east and the west, the straits proved an ideal haven for ships because it was protected from the strong monsoon winds by parallel

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2 Introduction

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

Banda Is.


Introduction 3

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 continu ing 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


4 Introduction

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


Introduction 5

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.

Ethnicity as an Explanatory Device

The plethora of writings on ethnicity in the social sciences has led to a bewil-dering variety of interpretations, raising some doubts regarding its useful-ness as a concept. Yet scholars persist in attempting to understand ethnic-ity because of the intensity of emotion that ethnic issues continue to evoke among ordinary people. While some have argued that ethnicity is a modern phenomenon, there is every reason to believe that group identity based on shared beliefs, practices, and real and fictive ancestors would have been as significant in the past.7 This is the proper task of the historian, who can bring a different perspective to the studies of ethnicity long dominated by social scientists. At the very least such an endeavor should encourage other histori-ans to become aware of the problem of an unreflective acceptance of ethnic communities as somehow fixed forever in time. Anthropologists have demonstrated the fluidity and complexity of ethnic identities, particularly in Southeast Asia. Edmund Leach’s classic 1954 study of highland Burma reveals the ease with which a Kachin could become Shan and a Shan a Kachin by means of a preference of one form of social sys-tem over another. In viewing the Kachin as a complex product of its politi-cal relations with neighboring distinctive communities, Leach encouraged a new direction in the study of ethnicity.8 Since Leach’s work, social scientists have examined the socially constructed and political nature of ethnicity, and it has become clear that the colonial state and the modern nation-state have been instrumental in the creation of ethnic categories and groups.9 Charles Keyes has even argued that ethnicity has flourished as a result of national-ist discourses.10 In the United States, the increasing politicization of ethnic minorities has spawned an entire new field of ethnic studies and created new identities based on geography (pan-Asian), as well as on culture and language (Latino).11 Yet the interest in difference is a human quality, and there is every rea-son to believe that ethnic ideas were also prominent in Southeast Asia’s past.


6 Introduction

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-


Introduction 7

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


8 Introduction

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


Introduction 9

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,


10 Introduction

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


Introduction 11

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.

Ethnic Communities as Objects of Analysis

According to many oral traditions, the early communities in Southeast Asia began as small, kin-based societies with clan elders as their natural leaders. Such groups were generally known by a name they called themselves (end-onym) and one or more names given to them by outsiders (exonym). The most common form of self-identification was the local word for “human being”


12 Introduction

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,


Introduction 13

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.

Process of Ethnic Formation in the Straits of Melaka

Each chapter relies on a historical narrative based on trade that helps explain why, when, and where various ethnic groups and categories were formed or re-formed in the distant and more recent past. The groups that have been chosen as the basis of this study are those that are regarded as the “ancient” inhabitants of the lands and seas bordering the Straits of Melaka. Although Indians, Chinese, and the Bugis have played important roles in the history of the straits, they are relatively recent settlers and are associated with home areas outside the straits. Inclusion of these groups would also have required attention to another major issue, that of diaspora, and thus complicate an already complex subject.


14 Introduction

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


Introduction 15

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


16 Introduction

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


Introduction 17

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.


18

Chapter 1

Malayu Antecedents

In many history books the story of the Malayu1 begins with the fifteenth-century kingdom of Melaka and occasionally with the seventh- to eleventh-century kingdom of Sriwi-

jaya. The first can be justified in terms of the history of the Malayu on the Malay Peninsula, while the second is based on growing evidence of the early development of Malayu culture in southeast Sumatra. But the story can be pushed back even further as a result of the latest linguistic and archaeological research. In reaching back into the past, the outlines of ethnic groups as we know them today become blurred and indistinct. For this reason it would be presumptuous to assume that there was a clear Malayu ethnicity in prehistoric times that has continued basically unchanged into the present.2 It is not my intention here to “establish” the antiquity of the Malayu people, but simply to try to understand how such a group could have emerged from an ancient past where ethnicity was an indeterminate and perhaps even irrelevant category. In the seventh century CE there was a group of people speaking the same language living in a place known as Malayu, who could have called themselves at appropriate times “people of the land Malayu.” Through comparative lin-guistics it is even possible to trace the Malayu language to a proto-language that developed in west Borneo. But the ability of the linguist, the archaeolo-gist, and the historian to see connections between groups of people in no way implies that such links were perceptible to the people themselves. A more reasonable assumption is that long social and economic intercourse among communities helped create a form of identity—not necessarily expressed in ethnic terms—based on a common language of communication and of shared experiences. In this chapter I argue that the ancient ongoing inter-course among particular communities straddling the Indian subcontinent, the Southeast Asian isthmus and the northern Malay Peninsula, and the shores of the South China Sea created a “voyaging corridor”3 and a pattern


Malayu Antecedents 19

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.

Austronesian Speakers and the Nusantao Communities

The most widely accepted reconstruction of ancestral Malayu origins is the Bellwood-Blust synthesis. It dates the initial settlement of proto-Austronesian


20 Chapter 1

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



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 Nu santao 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


22 Chapter 1

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. Nu santao 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.”

The Sea of Malayu

The first reference to a “Sea of Malayu” is from an Arabic document dated c. 1000, which noted that travelers “reaching the Sea of Malayu, were approach ing the area of China.”17 Eredia, writing in 1613 from Melaka, also uses the phrase “Sea of Malayu,” but he identifies it with that “land-enclosed sea between the mainland of Ujontana [Malay Peninsula] and the Golden Chersonese [Suma-tra].”18 By privileging land over water, Eredia believed that the “Sea of Malayu” referred simply to the Straits of Melaka. For the Malayu, who were shaped by their orientation to the sea and the riverine environment in which they lived, stretches of land were viewed as barriers that fortunately could be breached through short land passages.19 The people were named after a particular river or stretch of river, stream, or coast. In this maritime world, rivers and seas formed unities, while land formed the link between bodies of water. Based on this particular way of viewing waterways and identifying people, the Malayu would have conceived of their sea as a far larger unity than that proposed by Eredia. Although the Arabic document is not specific, the general reference to a Sea of Malayu approaching the area of China is an accurate description of the extensive network viewed as one sea stretching from India to Vietnam. The sea itself I have called “Malayu” after the people most prominently associated with this particular body of water. But the “Sea of Malayu” that I am proposing in this study is a community of settlements conjoined through extensive and intensive economic and cultural interactions. From the late seventh century the people of Malayu would have played a role, even a lead-ing role, in such a network. The evidence suggests that there existed a single continuous “sea” linking southern India and Sri Lanka to the Bay of Bengal, Sumatra, the Straits of Melaka, the Malay Peninsula, the Gulf of Siam, the South China Sea, the Lower Mekong, and central Vietnam. The pivotal point in the network of Sea of Malayu communities was the Straits of Melaka. In the days of sailing ships, the straits were conveniently located for traders


24 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



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


26 Chapter 1

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



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


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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



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


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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.

The Transpeninsular/Transisthmian Routes

The early Buddhist and Indo-Pacific bead trade from India and Sri Lanka between the last half of the first millennium BCE and the first half CE appar-ently used the transpeninsular route located in the Isthmus of Kra and the northern portions of the Malay Peninsula. The route continued to be used, though less frequently in later centuries. From the late seventh century, Arab and Persian ships trading to Southeast Asia and China departed from differ-ent ports on the Persian Gulf with cargoes of cloth, metal work, carpets, iron ore, and bullion. They could follow two possible routes: The first began in the ports on the coast of Oman, then went directly across the Indian Ocean to Quilon in southern Malabar; the other went along the coast from Hormuz to northern India, and then to southern Malabar. From southern Malabar, ships could continue coastal sailing around the Bay of Bengal to the eastern shores, or they could go south to Sri Lanka, known as Sarandib to the Arabs, and then directly to the Andaman and Nicobar islands before reaching “Kalah,” believed by some to be a generalized name for any port on the west coast of the Isthmus of Kra or the Malay Peninsula. From “Kalah” there were two pos-sible alternatives: the transpeninsular route to the Gulf of Siam, then to the Lower Mekong, central Vietnam, and finally China; and the sea route which went south through the Straits of Melaka to Sumatra, Java, and China. Those using the all-sea route proceeded southward through the straits, stopped to replenish their water supplies at Pulau Tioman, an island off Pa-hang on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula, and then crossed the South China Sea to ports in Champa in central Vietnam. From the Cham areas the ships sailed northward to Canton in southern China, either through Hanoi or via the dangerous Paracel reefs. It has been estimated that in the mid-tenth century the total sailing time between Muscat and Canton, excluding stops, was 120 days. In China the sale of the cargo and loading of the new shipment of goods could be completed in time to catch the northeast monsoon winds, which blow more strongly and with a more consistent tailwind from China to the Straits of Melaka. By relying on these winds, Arab and Persian traders could make the round trip once every year.41 Until the technology for open-sea sailing became widely employed in the first century CE, ships tended to sail within sight of the coastline. But even when mariners mastered open-sea sailing, ships continued to hug the coast because of the profits to be made by buying and selling from one port to the



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


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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



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.

Southeast Asian Components of the Sea of Malayu

Through archaeological and early historical evidence it is possible to describe the process by which trade fostered a communal identity linked to a region that I have called the “Sea of Malayu.” In the Southeast Asian part of this sea, the earliest polities are described in Chinese sources. The first is Dunsun,


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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



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,


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“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



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


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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



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.


40 Chapter 1

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.

The Eastern Edge of the Sea of Malayu

In the days when longitude was not yet known and navigators relied almost entirely on latitudinal readings, ships coming from the west would sail in a straight line from southern India or Sri Lanka across the Bay of Bengal and



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


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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



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


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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:

Fortune! This is the divine serpent of the king.

Whoever respects him, for him jewels fall from heaven.

Whoever insults him, he will remain for a thousand years in hell,

With seven generations of his family.99

Another common feature was the physical arrangement of the polities. As in Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, the Cham settlements were located along major river valleys, with the principal site inland from the river mouth. The valley and the associated upland areas formed a natural unity, and a mutu-ally advantageous relationship was developed between the lowland Chams and their upland relatives—later known as the Roglai, the Jarai, the Rhade, the Curu—who also spoke Austronesian languages. The Cham scholar Po Dharma has even argued that nagara Campa (the Champa polity) included both Chams and uplanders, a contention supported by Li Tana, who found that in epigraphic and other historical documents the term urang Champa (people of nagara Champa) was used to refer to both the lowland Chams and to the upland groups.100 In return for the delivery of valued forest products from the interior, the upland groups gained access to such necessities as cloth, salt, and iron, as well as to foreign prestige items. The special place of the



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


46 Chapter 1

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,



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.


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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.


49

Chapter 2

Emergence of Malayu

In this chapter I rely on linguistic and archaeological evi-dence to begin the story of Malayu. Identifying how the term was used is essential to understanding the shifting

and multiple meanings it has acquired over the centuries. It also enables one to see how various layers of meaning were imposed and others removed under differing historical circumstances, most often instigated by changes in economic opportunities in the Straits of Melaka. After a brief overview of the early arguments regarding the origins of the Malayu language and culture, I offer a synthesis of research on Sriwijaya, now widely if not universally regarded as the birthplace of Malayu culture. From Sriwijaya and its successor polity, Malayu, evolved the characteristics that have been identified with Malayu culture. It is little known, however, that the Malayu polity also encompassed the highlands of Minangkabau, provid-ing the basis for what later emerged as a separate Minangkabau identity. The Majapahit court epic poem the Desawarnana (also referred to as the Nagara-krtagama), written in 1365, is an important document because it is the first known source that shows an actual conceptualization of Malayu as a world in itself. In this work bhumi Jawa, or the “world of Java or the Javanese,” is contrasted with bhumi Malayu, the “world of Malayu or the Malayu” associ-ated with Sumatra. This confirms the existence of communities throughout Sumatra that shared cultural characteristics sufficiently distinct from those in Java to warrant a separate identity. Only after the demise of the centers of Malayu culture in southeast Sumatra does the story then shift to the Malay Peninsula. The emergence of Melaka as the dominant Malayu polity in the fifteenth century added a new layer to Malayu ethnic identity and relegated the Sumatran layer to obscurity.


50 Chapter 2

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.

Identifying the Malayu

For more than two thousand years the Straits of Melaka was the principal route through Southeast Asia, and communities located along its shores were the major beneficiaries of the steady flow of commercial traffic. On the pen-insular side, mound and boat burials in the Kelang and Langat River basins in Selangor dating from the last centuries BCE have revealed assemblages of local and imported artifacts. They include indigenous iron and bronze sock-eted tools, beads and pottery from India, and cast bronze bells and kettle-drums from Dong Son in northern Vietnam. Inhabitants of these settlements probably offered tin from nearby alluvial tin deposits and accessible interior gold in exchange for foreign goods, thus helping to explain the presence of artifacts that demonstrate their ranked societies. Similar finds are recorded in two other major sites in the Kinta region of the Perak-Bernam River valleys and the Upper Pahang-Tembeling River valley.1

The Sumatran side of the straits has three sites dating to the first five centuries CE and possibly as early as the first century BCE, with artifacts of both local and foreign manufacture: Air Sugihan, Karang Agung, and a third upriver from Karang Agung. Their location close to the Musi River would have placed them strategically on the international trade routes moving through the Melaka and Bangka Straits on to western Java, Bali, and the spice islands. Foreign goods penetrated far into the interior of Sumatra, as attested by the presence of Indian beads, Dong Son artifacts, and tall-necked kendi (spouted vessels) in the megalithic sites in Pasemah. As in the peninsular sites, such goods would have been exchanged for forest products and gold. Though little is yet known about these archaeological complexes in southeast Sumatra, they supply clear evidence of an area well accustomed to responding quickly to the new trade opportunities flowing through the Straits of Melaka.2


Emergence of Malayu 51

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.


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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


R i a u A r c h i p e l a g o

Lin

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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-



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


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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.



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


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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



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


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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.”

Development of Malayu Culture in Southeast Sumatra

Only limited numbers of inscriptions, scattered references in Chinese dynas-tic records, a few travelers’ accounts from the Middle East, India, and China, some archaeological finds, and a few linguistic studies are available to recon-struct aspects of the Malayu culture that evolved in southeast Sumatra in the first 1500 years CE. From such divergent approaches but complementary evi-dence emerges a clearer picture of the society. Studying stone inscriptions reveals attitudes toward governance and the political and social organization of the polity, Chinese and Arabic documents contain material on interna-tional exchange of goods and ideas, archaeology provides information on the material and religious culture, and linguistics demonstrates how the Malayu language evolved to become the medium of communication and a basis for group identity. Linguists believe that the Malayic languages arose in western Borneo, based on their geographic spread in the interior, their variations that are not due to contact-induced change, and their sometimes conservative character.48 According to Robert Blust, the Malayu language was emerging by the begin-ning of the first century CE.49 It was sufficiently developed by the late sev-enth century to be used as the language of the Sriwijayan inscriptions. While Malayu may have been an official language, there is an intriguing theory that the undeciphered opening sentences in the Kota Kapur and Karang Berahi inscriptions belong to another local language related to Malayu.50 Blust and Benjamin share the view that in the Malay Peninsula too there is evidence of a pre-Malayic Austronesian language beneath a Malayic continuum.51 What this suggests is that there were other languages spoken by communities that formed part of the Sriwijaya polity, and that Malayu may have been the lingua franca, or at least the language of government.



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


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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



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


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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



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


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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



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


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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.

The Malayu on the Malay Peninsula

According to a Malayu tradition found in the Sejarah Melayu, a prince and his followers migrated from Palembang (the site of Sriwijaya) to the Malay Penin-sula sometime toward the end of the fourteenth century.90 Most of the stories in this text are about individuals and events from the semilegendary Melaka kingdom (c. 1400–1511) and may have originated in this period. When the Portuguese conquered Melaka in 1511, the Portuguese apothecary Tomé Pires collected many of the traditions of Melaka in order to reconstruct something of its past. Local documents were studied for an understanding of the Malayu foe and for an assessment of the trade possibilities for the Portuguese in the region. The outcome was the Suma Oriental, written in Melaka between 1512 and 1515, which describes some of the same episodes as those in the Sejarah Melayu but often in greater detail.91 Unlike these two documents, the Ming dynastic history, the Ming Shi-lu, is noted for the brevity of its comments dealing with Melaka. It is nevertheless an invaluable contemporary record of the early years of the Melaka kingdom.92 These three documents provide a far more detailed (though still limited) account of a Malayu polity than is avail-able for Sriwijaya/Malayu. The supernatural ruler who descended on Bukit Siguntang in Palembang is called Sri Tri Buana in the Sejarah Melayu and Permaisura in the Suma Ori-ental. It is the latter name that is mentioned in an entry dated 3 October 1405 in the Ming Shi-lu, where a “Bai-li-mi-su-la” is said to be “the native ruler of the country of Melaka.”93 Both names for the founder of Melaka underscore the non-Muslim origin of the Palembang prince.94 Though the outlines of the story of the Palembang prince’s peregrinations are structurally similar in the Suma Oriental and the Sejarah Melayu, the latter text has obviously been written for the pleasure and edification of the Melaka court. While the Suma Oriental describes the movement as a flight to escape Majapahit’s wrath,95 the Sejarah Melayu explains it as a planned visit. In the Sejarah Melayu Sri Tri Buana encounters a singa, a strange type of lion associated with ancient times, while on a visit to the island of Temasek.



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


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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



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.


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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



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


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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



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


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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-



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.

Conclusion: Ethnicization of the Malayu

The Malayic speakers from west Borneo who settled in southeast Sumatra sometime in the first century CE entered into a familiar environment. As in their homeland, there were substantial rivers flowing from the highlands through jungle interiors out to sea. The Borneo immigrants settled along the banks of these rivers and their tributaries and created a form of government


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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-



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


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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



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.


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Chapter 3

Ethnicization of the Minangkabau

The Majapahit Javanese in the fourteenth century referred collectively to areas in Sumatra as “bhumi Malayu,” in contrast to “bhumi Jawa.” In time, however, some areas

decided to emphasize a separate ethnic identity from the Malayu in order to maximize economic and political advantage.1 Among these new ethnic affili-ations bound by a perceived common culture were the Minangkabau. The Minangkabau have been a popular source of study because of their matrilineal social organization and practice of merantau, where young Minang kabau men leave the homeland to seek knowledge and fortune abroad.2 While matrilin-eality and the merantau are regarded by many today as the primary elements constituting the “boundaries” of Minangkabau ethnicity, in earlier centuries the most effective and recognizable marker was the ruler of Pagaruyung.3

Minangkabau ethnicity itself is relatively recent. It arose out of a Malayu ethnic identity based on the Malayu polity that underwent adaptation in the highlands of central Sumatra in the fourteenth century. Even by the late eigh-teenth century, the distinction between Malayu and Minangkabau was not apparent. In his History of Sumatra (1783), Marsden writes:

Menangkabau being the principal sovereignty of the island, which formerly

comprehended the whole, and still receives a shadow of homage from the

most powerful of the other kingdoms, which have sprung up from its ruins,

would seem to claim a right to precedence in description. . . . They [the

Minangkabau] are distinguished from the other inhabitants of this island

by the appellation of Orang Malayo, or Malays, which, however, they have

in common with those of the coast of the Peninsula, and of many other

islands.4


Ethnicization of the Minangkabau 83

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.

Documenting the Minangkabau Past

The first mention of the name Minangkabau is in the 1365 Majapahit court poem, the Desawarnana (or Nagarakrtagama) composed by Mpu Prapanca.7 By determining the location of a sequence of names in Sumatra mentioned by Prapanca, Westenenk believes that “Manankabwa” refers to an area in the Padang highlands along the banks of the Selo and Sinamar Rivers, which today forms the heartland of the Minangkabau.8 In the late fourteenth cen-tury, however, the Javanese saw it as part of bhumi Malayu, which referred to lands settled by inhabitants that had once acknowledged or continued to acknowledge the datu and kedatuan of Sriwijaya and Malayu. The account of Sriwijaya/Malayu’s shifting centers has been treated in the previous chapter, but it is necessary to reiterate certain aspects of the story that are essential in explaining the creation of a separate Minangkabau ethnic identity. In the late thirteenth century, the center of the Malayu polity moved inland to Dharmasraya in the upper reaches of the Batang Hari River in Jambi. Dharmasraya was located in a gold-exporting region and at a vital transition


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zone where traders from the highlands and lowlands met. In 1275 the “Pama-layu” expedition embarked from Tuban in east Java to Sumatra for reasons that are still in dispute among scholars. But the true purpose of the expedition was probably to extend Java’s dominance over the Sumatran polity. This was clearly the intention of Kertanagara, ruler of Singosari in east Java, when he sent a group of images with an inscription dated 1286 to Dharmasraya. While the ostensible purpose of the inscription was to commemorate the arrival and establishment of statues of the Tantric bodhisattva Amoghapasa with his thir-teen followers,9 the accompanying religious figures would have represented Kertanagara’s spiritual pretensions over Malayu. It was a message that would not have been lost among the local inhabitants accustomed to such perma-nent reminders of the ruler’s sacred powers in the form of inscriptions and statuary scattered through the landscape. Sometime in the 1340s Adityawarman, raised in Majapahit in east Java of mixed Javanese and Sumatran parentage, was sent to govern Dharma-sraya, presumably because of his links to Malayu and because of the economic importance of this gold-bearing region.10 Wolters suggests that Adityawarman was the same person as the Malayu ruler of Jambi known as Maharaja Prabhu, and he reaffirms an earlier view that there were two parts of Malayu. He believes that Maharaja Prabhu moved inland to become the ruler of Malayu in the Minangkabau highlands, while coastal Malayu came to be associated with Palembang.11 When the Amoghapasa statue was sent by Kertanagara, the reigning monarch in Malayu was Tribhuwanaraja Mauliwarmadewa. He was succeeded by Akarendrawarman, who was ruling in 1316, and then by Adityawarman in 1346 or 1347. Adityawarman also held the title of Mauli-maniwarmadewa, which indicates close links to Tribhuwanaraja. De Casparis makes an interesting observation that the Kubur (or Kubu) Raja inscription lists Adityawarman as the son of Adwayawarmadewa, but the succession was not from father to son. In keeping with Minangkabau matrilineal laws of succession, Adityawarman’s predecessor may have been his mamak, or his mother’s brother.12 Majapahit held Adityawarman in great regard, confirming him on his throne and bestowing upon him a title reserved only for the most esteemed rulers.13

The first evidence of a new Malayu center in the Minangkabau highlands is an inscription dated 1347 placed on the back of the Amoghapasa statue, originally sent by Kertanagara to Dharmasraya in 1286.14 The image was taken to Malayupura by Adityawarman, who bore a title that Krom believes is an attempt at a synthesis of the royal titles traditionally employed in Sri-wijaya Malayu. The inscription referred to Adityawarman as maharajadiraja, “the great king of kings,” an epithet not of a vassal but of an independent lord. It further describes him as a reincarnation of Amoghapasa, endowed



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


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banks of the Sinamar River, where Buo is located, to the Selo River, the site of Pagaruyung and Suruaso.23 If one accepts de Casparis’ view that Indonesian languages do not usually distinguish between the name of the kingdom, its capital, and its royal residence,24 then the name of the polity becomes clear. Adityawarman’s first inscription in 1347 refers to the settlement as Malayu-pura, or “the city of (the) Malayu,” thus indicating that the polity itself was known as “Malayu.” In the same inscription he is given titles traditionally used in Sriwijaya and Malayu.25 His last inscription dated 1375 adds the further title of Kanakamedinindra (Lord of the Golden Earth), which Kern believes is syn-onymous with Suvarnadvipa (Golden Island), the ancient name for Sumatra.26 Adityawarman thus regarded himself as part of the continuum of Sriwijaya and Malayu rulers whose centers had moved from the coast to the upper Batang Hari River and finally to the Minangkabau highlands. For this reason it was only appropriate that he assume the title of Kanakamedinindra, Lord of Sumatra. In accordance with Sriwijaya and Malayu traditions, Adityawarman, as datu of Malayu, sought to attract and maintain the allegiance of his sub-jects through the demonstration of spiritual prowess. Throughout his reign, images were created to emphasize his supernatural qualities. The 1347 inscrip-tion mentions a Tantric Buddhist ceremony performed at the re-erection of the Amoghapasa statue at its new location in Suruaso, and commemorates Adityawarman’s initiation as the Tantric Siva-Buddhist deity Bhairawa. He is described holding a knife in the right hand, a skull in his left, and standing on a man folded backward in sacrificial position surrounded by eight large human skulls. Enthroned on a pile of corpses and engulfed in the swirling smoke of human sacrifice, he drinks the blood of his victims while laughing diabolically.27 The large imposing statue of the Bhairawa found near the vil-lage of Sungai Langsat in Suruaso may have been regarded as a representa-tive of Adityawarman and an awe-inspiring reminder of the ruler’s claims to supernatural powers. Finally, in the Kuburajo I inscription, Adityawarman is referred to as kalpataru, the “wish-granting tree,” where oaths and curses and the granting of wishes are made.28

The languages and scripts used in the Suruaso I inscription are worth not-ing. The words on the left side of the inscription are in Sanskrit and written in a variant of Old Javanese script with, according to Krom, “Sumatran idio-syncrasies.” This is the script most commonly associated with Adityawarman’s inscriptions. On the right side, the same message is written using the South Indian Grantha script, which raises the possibility that there was a strong Indian presence in the highlands.29 A ninth-century inscription found at Takuapa on the northern Malay Peninsula mentions the presence of members of the Man-ikkiramam, a Tamil merchant guild. After the Chola invasion of Sriwijaya terri-tories in 1024–5, Tamil economic activity in the western archipelago increased



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


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of Adityawarman‘s inscription at Lubuk Layang in the Pasaman district, on the boundary between his polity of Malayu and the Padang Lawas complex, was intended to protect his borders against invasion.35 Though both Panai and Malayu shared the same historical heritage via Sriwijaya and Malayu, in the fourteenth century they came to regard each other as rivals. In seeking economic and political advantage, each would have attempted to emphasize difference rather than commonality. As a result, Panai came to focus on its Batak aspects to distinguish itself from the Malayu polity (see chapter 5). After Adityawarman’s last inscription, there is nothing more about Mala-yupura or the court he established in central Sumatra. What is clear, however, is the continuing importance of Tantric Buddhism in the highlands. In several of his inscriptions, the yuvaraja or crown prince is called Ananggawarman and referred to as Hevajra, another form of Heruka.36 With the disappearance of Adityawarman and Ananggawarman from any further historical docu-mentation, the name Malayu as a political entity also ends. Malayu remains, however, as the general appellation for a people who lived in areas formerly under the Malayu polity and who acknowledged a common Malayu civiliza-tion based on a shared language and history. The expansive Malayu identity became a spur to others to resist its encroachment and to further their own interests by creating new identities and ethnicities. This process of “ethniciza-tion” of groups owes much to the intrusive Malayu ethnicity found primarily in and around the Straits of Melaka.

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.



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


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identity. The root word “rantau” generally means “reaches of a river” or “shore-line.” In Minangkabau usage it has come to mean “abroad,” wherever Minang-kabau came to settle outside the darek, or heartland of the Minangkabau in the interior highlands.40 Overpopulation, conflicts, new economic opportu-nities, and the emphasis on precedence in determining social hierarchy were all contributory factors in the movements of people.41 Political and economic events in the Malay-Indonesian archipelago between the sixteenth and nine-teenth centuries contributed further to the phenomenon of voluntary and forced movements of people. For the Minangkabau, the dominant type of merantau up to the early nineteenth century was village segmentation caused by overpopulation and shortage of agricultural land.42 It has been argued that the institution of the merantau is essential to the survival of matrilineality because it serves to release excess population and thereby preserve matrilineal principles in the inheritance of land in the darek.43 In the rantau, however, matrilineal practices are weakened through contact with patrilineal societies and the absence of crucial elements that support matriliny. Movements of people between communities and the adoption of new identities are commonplace. Among the Minangkabau, there are kampueng (villages) with names such as Malayu (Malay) and Mandailing (a Batak dis-trict), which reflect an earlier in-migration of Malay and Batak and their absorption into Minangkabau society.44 Until the seventeenth century, the area of Rau and Lubuk-Sikaping to the north of the Minangkabau heartland was inhabited almost exclusively by Batak, but in later centuries they were either displaced by Minangkabau or absorbed into Minangkabau society.45 The flow in the opposite direction was particularly evident between the sev-enteenth and nineteenth centuries as the Minangkabau moved down the riv-ers to the east coast and settled among the downriver populations.46

Intermarriage between Minangkabau men and local women in the rantau resulted in the children adopting the adat or customary laws of their mothers, thus modifying Minangkabau traditions. Even when Minangkabau women married their own people in the rantau, the absence of close male relatives made it difficult to implement matrilineal practices.47 It has been argued that the inability of Minangkabau families on the Malay Peninsula to replicate the elements necessary to maintain a matrilineal structure led to greater emphasis on region and ethnicity, rather than matrilineality, as the basis of their iden-tity.48 But it is difficult to generalize about the rantau phenomenon because of its complexity and variability due to adaptation to local conditions.49 What is evident, however, is that the rantau, in keeping with the dynamism of bor-derlands, was the site of ethnic re-evaluation and movements in and out of ethnicities based on comparative advantage. Such decisions were often more



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



Early hints of Javanese imperial designs on Malayu had become a real-ity by the early sixteenth century. The move of the Malayu capital to Dhar-masraya in upriver Jambi in the mid-thirteenth century and then into the Minangkabau highland in the fourteenth century was likely caused by the well-justified fear of the Javanese. Pires noted that by the early sixteenth cen-tury both Palembang and Jambi were ruled by representatives of the Sultan of Demak. The Javanization of Jambi and Palembang meant that by the early sixteenth century the former core of the Malayu polities was being absorbed into bhumi Jawa. Alienation between the Javanizing downriver courts of Palembang and Jambi and the upriver Minangkabau is evident in an incident recorded by the Dutch in the seventeenth century. The Jambi ruler had such high regard for Javanese attire and language that he demanded that anyone from the interior appearing in his court be dressed in a Javanese manner.55 The decision to emphasize ethnic difference was not received well by the Minangkabau. The Dutch in 1632 noted that some Minangkabau planters preferred to take their pepper to the west coast, where the inhabitants were their own people, instead of to the Javanized polities of Jambi and Palembang.56 For both economic and cultural reasons, therefore, the Minangkabau often chose to avoid the Javanese-centered downriver courts in Palembang and Jambi by transferring their goods to other river systems leading to the Straits of Melaka.57 The Siak and particularly the Indragiri Rivers benefited from the diversion of Minang kabau traders from Palembang and Jambi. Minangkabau settlements in the eastern rantau and the darek also traded with the growing western rantau focused on the west coast Sumatran ports. This development would explain why Pires remarked that the west coast ports of “Panchur [Barus], Tico, and Priaman, are the key to the land of Menang-kabau, both because they are all related, and because they possess the sea coast, so that the Gujaratees come there every year and do a great trade; and all the merchandise is gathered together in these kingdoms and they do their trade with the said Gujaratees.”58 An important component of this trade was gold. To safeguard the gold brought from the interior to the west coast ports, the Minangkabau rulers created a system of security along the gold routes, the most important of which was that from Tanah Datar to Pariaman under the protection of the Tuan Gadang of Batipuh.59

The west coast became a favored rantau area for the relatively large inte-rior Minangkabau population, and specific ports were associated with certain communities in the darek. By the seventeenth century, Padang had emerged as the leading port on the west coast because of its proximity to the Minang-kabau darek. Most of the inhabitants along the west coast were either immi-grants from the darek or descendants of immigrants, and they came to identify


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themselves as Minangkabau. Survivors of a Spanish ship wrecked at Muko-Muko on the southwest coast of Sumatra in 1561 described the treachery of the local inhabitants whom they called “Minangkabau.”60 Minangkabau eth-nicity was becoming a prominent form of self-identity in the rantau through increasing contact with those regarded as different. The distinction made by Europeans in the sixteenth century between Malayu and Minangkabau indi-cates that the latter ethnicity was becoming more commonly acknowledged. One particularly important area of the Minangkabau rantau was the Malay Peninsula. Some carved standing stones in the Negri Sembilan highlands on the Malay Peninsula are believed to date to an early migration of pre-Islamic Minangkabau to the area because of the similarity with some west Sumatran prototypes. Benjamin postulates that one of the earliest Malayu settlements in Pahang on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula predates the founding of Melaka (c. early fifteenth century) and constituted a population of Malayu intermarrying with Orang Asli and earlier peoples of a west Sumatran (pre-sumably Minangkabau) origin.61 In the early sixteenth century, Minangkabau settlements in Naning and Rembau in the vicinity of the city of Melaka are noted in the Suma Oriental. The Dutch in Melaka in 1645 expressed concern that the lack of rice and salt among the three thousand “forest Minangkabau” (oerwoede manicabers) in seven Minangkabau settlements, including Naning, Rembau, and Tampin, would lead to a raid on Melaka for slaves to sell in Pahang.62

Minangkabau on the Malay Peninsula and in the rantau generally had multiple allegiances. They selected heads among their own people, acknowl-edged the authority of their host ruler, and heeded the royal words of their Minangkabau lord in the highlands of central Sumatra. This pragmatic atti-tude is captured in a saying retained among the Minangkabau of Negeri Sem-bilan in Malaysia:

The Raja rules in the world (Raja menobat didalam alam);

The Penghulu rules in the district (Penghulu menobat didalam luak);

The Lembaga rules in the clan (Lembaga menobat linkungannya);

The elder rules the people (Ibu bapak menobat pada anak buahnya);

The individual rules in the home (Orang banyak menobat didalam

terataknya).63

The continuing obeisance to the Pagaruyung ruler sustained a sense of belong-ing to one ethnic community. The Dutch themselves unwittingly reinforced this perception by treating the scattered Minangkabau communities as one. In one example the Dutch demanded that the Perak sultan surrender some of



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.


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Role of Pagaruyung Rulers in the Ethnicization of the Minangkabau

While the social construction of Minangkabauness has shifted over time in accordance with the particular needs of the community, the first docu-mented attempt to establish a unique Minangkabau ethnic identity occurred in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But the inspiration came from events that occurred several centuries earlier with the establishment of Aditya-warman’s Malayu in the Minangkabau highlands. The relative isolation of Adityawarman’s polity and its diminishing influence in international trade would have strengthened local interests and identity and prepared the ground for a distinct ethnic identity. The actual process leading to the ethnicization of the Minangkabau, however, occurred in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a result of the convergence of the economic interests of the VOC and the widespread and intense devotion to the sacred Pagaruyung ruler. Evolution of the idea of what it meant to be Minangkabau was shaped to a great extent by contacts with other ethnolinguistic groups. The confronta-tion between Minangkabau and other communities in coastal and interior Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula contributed to a growing sense of a sepa-rate Minangkabau identity. In addition to the Malayu on the coasts and the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing communities in the interior, there was increasing contact with the Batak, who were moving southward from their homeland in northern Sumatra.69 Crucial to the strengthening of a distinctive Minang-kabau ethnicity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were the rulers in Pagaruyung. They retained the mystique and fearsome spiritual reputation associated with Adityawarman. By the mid-seventeenth century the name Pagaruyung came into general use for the royal settlement, even though Paga-ruyung was only one of a number of royal sites used by the rulers. Until the dissolution of the monarchy around 1833, it also became an accepted practice among the Europeans to refer to the rulers of “Pagaruyung” as the “Emperors of Minangkabau.” The alam Minangkabau was beginning to take form, with Pagaruyung as its core and the rantau as its periphery. As with the concept of bhumi Malayu in the days of the Sriwijaya/Malayu polity, alam Minangkabau came to mean all those who obeyed the royal words of the ruler. Sometime in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the Minangkabau were forced to acknowledge the overlordship of Aceh. When they rose in rebellion against some of the Aceh governors in their lands, the VOC saw the opportunity to break Aceh’s monopoly in the gold and pepper trade. Responding to Minang-kabau appeals for assistance, the VOC dispatched a series of military expe-ditions between 1665 and 1667 that effectively removed Acehnese presence from the west coast.70 The Dutch authorities believed then that the best way



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


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from the interior highlands of Sumatra and flowed to the coastal towns. In the eyes of the VOC authorities, the prize was well worth the charade being played out between themselves and the Pagaruyung court. Yet when the ruler sent a mission to Padang in 1690 to request that the Dutch commander collect the tribute due Pagaruyung from the west coast settlements, his request was politely refused. The Dutch reasoned that the authority of the ruler, “whose palace was barely distinguishable from the miserable huts of his poor sub-jects,” had long been in decline so that “the veneration shown him by the west coast inhabitants was more of a spiritual than a secular nature.”78

Little time was wasted by the Pagaruyung ruler in exercising his new authority. Just prior to returning to the coast, members of the mission were summoned to court, where the ruler asked that the royal letter (éseuteumi) be delivered to his regent, the Dutch commander in Padang. The appoint-ing of regents to govern in the most important territories of the kingdom was an Acehnese practice readily adopted by the Pagaruyung ruler. Another was the use of royal letters known as sarakata (or tarakata) and éseuteumi (or seuteumi). In seventeenth-century Aceh, the sarakata was an edict sent by the ruler without the royal seal and had to be observed until it was formally retracted. The éseuteumi was the more important document, which carried the royal seal and was intended to be a permanent royal mandate.79 These seals were conveyed by the ruler’s officials throughout the land and demanded immediate obedience.80

The Dutch at Padang translated éseuteumi as mandement brief (letter of mandate) and sarakata as bevel brief (letter of command), and regarded them as harmless pretensions. They would have been amused by a letter from the Pagaruyung ruler that described the Dutch commander in Padang as “the protector of my subjects and the contributor to my greatness, who will wash away the blackness with which I have so long been smeared.”81 In enlisting the aid of the Dutch to protect his subjects, the Pagaruyung ruler emphasized his function as the guardian of the interests of all those who acknowledged his authority as the “great king of kings of the Minangkabau.” This claim that the Dutch were protectors of the ruler’s subjects added yet another weapon to an already formidable arsenal of supernatural sanctions for which the court of Pagaruyung was widely known. The VOC was greatly feared because it not only removed Acehnese control over the Minangkabau areas, but in 1667 it also defeated the Makassar kingdom of Gowa in southwest Sulawesi, which hitherto had been considered practically invincible.82 From the late 1660s onward the letters from Pagaruyung began to flow to the rantau along the rivers and the coasts of Sumatra, but also to the Malay Peninsula and beyond. The extent of alam Minangkabau could thus be determined by those who responded to these letters.



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


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proceeds to recount the fortunes of this family while completely omitting any further mention of the other two brothers.88 There is, however, another popular version of the Sejarah Melayu, a hybrid text known as the Shella-bear recension, which gives paramountcy to the prince who became ruler of Minangkabau. In this version Sang Sapurba, the prince who becomes ruler in Minangkabau, is depicted as the father of Sri Tri Buana, thus demonstrating the primacy of the Minangkabau royal house over the Malayu Melaka dynasty.89

The process of unraveling Minangkabau ethnicity from that of the Malayu was not yet complete by the late eighteenth century, which may explain why European observers continued to regard the Minangkabau and the Malayu as one. William Marsden, who wrote the first detailed account of Sumatra in a European language in 1783, explained that the name “Malayu” referred not only to those on Sumatra but those living on the opposite coast of the Straits of Melaka and on the numerous surrounding islands, as well as to “every Mussulman [Muslim] speaking the Malayan as his proper language, and either belonging to, or claiming descent from, the ancient kingdom of Menangkabau; wherever the place of his residence may be.”90 Later Dutch and English commentators reinforced the view of Minangkabau as the cradle of Malayu civilization, which then spread to the “Malay” Peninsula and else-where in the archipelago.91

While external observers continued to equate the Minangkabau with the Malayu, a separate identity was already well on its way by the second half of the seventeenth century. The sense of being Minangkabau was being strengthened by the activities of the rulers of Pagaruyung and was being spread through its royal missives and emissaries. A clue to their efficacy lies in the reputation of Pagaruyung rulers as repositories of extraordinary sacral powers and as mother/father figures to all Minangkabau (anak Minangkabau).92 Such pow-ers were believed to be conveyed by Pagaruyung’s letters and by messengers described as “sons” of the Pagaruyung ruler. On the west coast of Sumatra these royal princes were able to raise armies and even pose a military threat to communities.93 Further afield in the upper reaches of rivers in the interior and the downstream areas of east Sumatra such royal personages had to rely on the credence of the Minangkabau communities for their support. The excep-tional success of such messengers in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries is testimony to the real influence exerted by the Pagaruyung court and to its success in forming a distinctive Minangkabau identity.

Pagaruyung Emissaries in the Ethnicization Process

In 1677 the Minangkabau settlements of Rembau, Sungai Ujong, and Naning (then under the VOC) requested and received a ruler called Raja Ibrahim from



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


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ruler, Sultan Mahmud, by his nobles. The letter requested that the Dutch provide the royal emissary with whatever he lacked, “whether guns, gunpow-der, or lead.”98 This was the beginning of a remarkable career that included the conquest of the Johor kingdom and the eventual establishment of a new dynasty and kingdom at Siak in east coast Sumatra.99 The Raja Kecil episode as depicted in both oral and written traditions encapsulates the complexity of the Minangkabau-Malayu relationship and the eventual formation of two separate identities. According to the Hikayat Siak,100 Raja Kecil is portrayed as the son of Sultan Mahmud of Johor. He is conceived when his mother, a secondary wife of the ruler of Johor, is ordered by the latter to swallow his semen which had been ejaculated onto a mat. The ruler’s deviant ways and cruelty lead to his death at the hands of his nobles. Soon thereafter Raja Kecil is born and taken away from the Johor court to Muar and eventually to Pagaruyung. Here the Raja Pagaruyung entrusts Raja Kecil’s upbringing to his mother, the Putri Jamilan, who expresses great love for the fatherless child (terlalu kasihan aku akan dia, kerana tiada bapaknya) and raises him as her adopted child.101 As a child he exhibits certain qualities that demonstrate his royal origins. When Raja Kecil is thirteen, he asks the Putri Jamilan for permission to go abroad to seek knowledge (mencari ilmu). He spends some time in the service of the Palembang ruler and then returns to Pagaruyung. On his return the Raja Pagaruyung and the Putri Jamilan ask why he had spent such a long time abroad (Mengapa engkau lama di laut?), to which he replies, “to observe the customs of other people (menengok cupak gantang orang), or literally “to observe the measures of other people.” It is interesting that the metaphor is one dealing with measurements used in trade, reinforcing other evidence that points to the prominent role of Pagaruyung rulers in promoting trade and hence the well-being of their Minangkabau subjects in the rantau. Although Raja Kecil appears ambivalent about his future plans, the Putri Jamilan interprets his true desire. She advises him to go abroad again, this time to Siak, and to seize Johor and avenge the death of his father. He is then installed by the Pagaruyung ruler with the sacred Minangkabau regalia. The special drum of sovereignty made of the skins of lice102 is sounded, and Raja Kecil stands against a stake made of the hardwood teras wound around with stinging nettle vines. He is then provided with a letter containing the royal seal, which called upon all Minangkabau to accompany him on his mission or to provide him with twenty rials. Those who refuse are threatened with punishment by the bisa kawi, the supernatural force associated with Paga-ruyung kingship. With support from the Minangkabau and the Orang Laut, or sea people, he defeats the usurper on the throne of Johor and becomes the ruler. But his time on the Johor throne is short, and he is forced to abandon



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 Minang kabau 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.


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When the VOC became involved in the affairs of west Sumatra because of its desire to monopolize the trade in gold and pepper, it unwittingly brought into existence, or possibly resuscitated, Pagaruyung’s claim as sovereign lord of Minangkabau. A contender to the throne of Jambi claimed in 1694 that “the original owner[s] (d’oorsponkelyk eygenaar) of the Jambi kingdom were Sultan Ingalaga [of Jambi] and Sultan Abdul Jalil [of Pagaruyung], with the entire Minangkabau kingdom (ryk) also belonging to the latter.” The letter describes Sultan Abdul Jalil as the ruler of the island of Andalas (Sumatra). The Minangkabau claims to suzerainty were not rejected by such local Malayu kingdoms as Jambi because the Pagaruyung ruler was viewed as a protective parent seeking only the welfare of his or her children by re-establishing safe passage or peace in the zone between the highlands and the coast.108 Even when the “Emperor of Minangkabau” installed a new sultan in the upriver areas of Jambi as a rival to the downstream kingdom, the ostensible reason was to provide a lord who could offer protection to the local Minangkabau inhabitants.109

The VOC authorities regarded Pagaruyung’s claims as pretentious and unsubstantiated, yet they continued to refer to the rulers as “emperors.” Since it was the practice for letters to be read aloud within hearing of many gath-ered at the edges of an open court, the impact of a Pagaruyung ruler being addressed by the VOC as “emperor” must have caused tremendous pride. Moreover, the Malayu term used for “emperor” would have been “maharajadi-raja,” a title infused with the supernatural powers attributed to the legendary Adityawarman. Little wonder, then, that the missives and emissaries sent from Pagaruyung were received with such great respect and its royal commands so faithfully obeyed. On rare occasions in the Minangkabau highlands and the west coast settlements not far from the Pagaruyung courts, commands were implemented through force. In more distant regions in the eastern rantau, on the other hand, compliance was obtained through the threat of supernatural punishment in the form of the bisa kawi. For approximately two centuries, from the late 1660s until 1833, Paga-ruyung provided the locus for Minangkabau identity. Its realm was the alam, a world consisting of those on Sumatra and beyond who acknowledged and obeyed the missives and emissaries sent from Pagaruyung. Regarded as pusaka, or sacred heirlooms, these emissaries of Pagaruyung embodied the spiritual powers of the court and helped to give shape to the Minangkabau alam. Princes purporting to be from Pagaruyung were eagerly sought as rulers by Minangkabau communities on Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, not only to win prestige but also to benefit from their special protective powers. Until the dissolution of the monarchy in the early nineteenth century, the belief in an alam Minangkabau with Pagaruyung as its center was well established.



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


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comply with the demands from a distant and hitherto quiescent court. Since the late fifteenth century the name Malayu and things Malayu had been appro-priated by the kingdom of Melaka and later by its self-styled successors Aceh and Johor. Along the coasts it was quite common to assume Malayu ethnicity in order to participate in the economic and political success of these Malayu kingdoms between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. Those who emi-grated from the highlands of central Sumatra to the coasts were confronted with a large and economically influential ethnic group, the Malayu. They also had the opportunity to associate themselves with the growing influence of Pagaruyung and the new Minangkabau ethnic identity. As was often the case in the Straits of Melaka, the inhabitants made choices according to their best interests and moved easily between these two ethnicities. What Pagaruyung provided was another option, one that became increasingly attractive as the numbers of Minangkabau in the rantau grew larger and strengthened their influence in the downstream polities. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many chose to be Minang-kabau for a variety of reasons. Family links to the Minangkabau darek were one factor, but perhaps of greater importance were the benefits of being asso-ciated with the Pagaruyung court. The Pagaruyung rulers became the basis for the construction of a Minangkabau ethnicity, and aspects of matrilineal-ity and even the rantau were selected as “cultural discontinuities” to form the ethnic boundaries with the Malayu. Helping to strengthen Minangkabau ethnic consciousness was the gold and pepper trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries conducted by people originating from the Minangkabau darek. Pagaruyung not only offered protection of the trade routes but also mediation in disputes and even princes to govern areas acknowledging its authority. In these two centuries many examples are cited in the VOC records of Minangkabau communities in the upper reaches of east coast Sumatran rivers falling prey to rapacious downriver Malay kingdoms. For these communities the intervention of Pagaruyung was particularly welcome and a good reason for becoming or remaining Minangkabau.112 Becoming Minangkabau essen-tially meant heeding the wishes of the rulers of Pagaruyung, a minor require-ment for membership in an ethnicity that could assure economic advantage and protection. The prestige of Pagaruyung remained high among the Minangkabau communities in the rantau, and when the members of the court were scat-tered following a failed rebellion against the Dutch in 1833, one of the princes was invited to become ruler in Kuantan.113 The destruction of Pagaruyung brought an end to the activities of the royal family, but by then Minangkabau identity had been firmly implanted in the minds of the local populations.



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.


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Chapter 4

From Malayu to Aceh

For political reasons, histories written by the Malayu states of the Malay Peninsula and by the Dutch and British colo-nial administrators have encouraged the view that Aceh

always had a unique entity with stronger links to lands “above the winds” than to those “below the winds.”1 A closer examination of the sources reveals, however, that in Aceh’s period of greatness in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was very much an integral part of alam Malayu.2 It assumed the mantle of Malayu leadership after the conquest of Malayu Melaka by the Por-tuguese in 1511. Although Johor at the southern end of the peninsula was eventually chosen as the site for the refugee royal family from Melaka, for much of the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries Johor was on the defensive against invasions from both the Portuguese and the Aceh-nese. Unable to sustain international trade, Johor could not maintain its claim to be the standard-bearer of Malayu culture and identity. This role came to be assumed instead by Aceh, thus reverting to the earlier association of the Malayu with Sumatra. Following in the traditions of its predecessors Pasai and Melaka, Aceh became the leading Malayu entrepot in the Straits of Melaka and the center of Malayu culture.3 But it was Aceh’s successful integration of Islam into society that represented its most significant bequest to the Malayu world. Through its thriving international trade with Islamic kingdoms in India and central Asia, Aceh came to adopt many features associated with these polities. Its lit-erature, court practices, style of governance, distinctive version of the Malayu language, and the prominent role of Islamic leaders in government provided a new image and model for Malayu kingdoms. The establishment in Aceh of a Malayu identity based on Islam was pro-moted by two Malayu texts written in the Acehnese court: the Taj al-Salatin


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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


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Malayu heritage.8 But for almost two hundred years an Aceh dominated by inter-national commerce conducted by port polities along the northeastern Suma-tran coast provided the foundations for Aceh’s leadership in alam Malayu.

The Northeastern Coast of Sumatra

The northeastern coast of Sumatra is clearly included in the Desawarnana’s (1365) list of lands that make up bhumi Malayu. Ports were established along this coast in response to international traders using the transisthmian/transpeninsular routes and later the all-water route through the Straits of Melaka. The earliest known account of this coast is from a third-century Chinese document that speaks of cannibals in a land called either “Pulo” or “Bulo.” If, as is likely, this is a reference to the Batak who live in the interior of north Sumatra, then it may explain the importance of ports along the north-eastern coast of Sumatra. Two of the most desired products from Southeast Asia in the early centuries of the Common Era were camphor and benzoin, which were gathered from the forests in the Batak lands. In later centuries the pepper trade also contributed to the continuing importance of northern Sumatran ports in international trade. Another of the sites called “Ramni” was visited regularly by Arabic and Persian ships, and is generally believed to be Lamuri.9

With the growth and dominance of Sriwijaya and Malayu between the late seventh to the fourteenth centuries, the northeastern Sumatran ports became secondary centers feeding the leading entrepots in Palembang and Jambi. The withdrawal of the Malayu court to the upper reaches of the Batang Hari River in Jambi in the late thirteenth century, and further into the Minangkabau uplands in the mid-fourteenth century, created an opportunity for an ambitious port to replace the Malayu polity as a major entrepot in the Straits of Melaka. For the Chinese, Arab, Persian, and Indian traders, the northeastern Sumatran coast was an ideal site for an entrepot. It was a shel-tered coast located within the protective waters of the straits, and it was close to the highly valued camphor and benzoin that grew in the interior forests of northern Sumatra. Scholars have attempted to piece together the history of this coast from the scattered references of foreign merchants, pilgrims, and visitors. The reconstruction, however, has been very much shaped by discussion of the location of sites. Even on the rare occasion when a toponym can be positively identified, usually little else is known about it. Fortunately, the historical pic-ture becomes more detailed after the arrival of the first Portuguese to Melaka in 1509. Of considerable value is the oft-cited Portuguese work of the early sixteenth century, the Suma Oriental by Tomé Pires, a compendium of the



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


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economically and culturally the center of Aceh. Prior to that time the con-tinuing pre-eminence of Aceh’s coastal culture reaffirmed Aceh’s position as a leading Malayu polity. A second theme that emerges from the history of the northeast coast is the close links between the elite groups in the various port polities. Because of the nature of early foreign sources, where lists of toponyms each followed by short descriptions is the norm, one can be forgiven for believing that the coastline was littered with small, independent polities with an existence separate from their neighbors. Despite the tendency among early Portuguese chroniclers to characterize local politics as being riddled with coups and countercoups involving a ruler, a regent, and external allies,14 the reality was far less dramatic. In Pasai, leadership was obviously seized and held by “men of prowess,” whatever and wherever their origin.15 Within a space of about seventy-five years and nine rulers, four of the latter are clearly recognizable as outsiders: one from Aru, another from Pidië, a third from Pidada, and the last from Oman. Aru, Pidië, and Pidada were neighboring ports, and the will-ingness of Pasai to accept a prince from these places to become its ruler was based on marriage ties that had created a single family. Pasai’s rise, therefore, may not have been due to any inherent superiority to its neighbors, but to an agreement by neighboring polities who were bound together through mar-riage. The ease and frequency with which leaders from the other ports were raised to be rulers in Pasai appear to confirm this view. Pasai itself was later absorbed by Aceh in a political scenario typical of this coast. Pasai emerged as an important entrepot not only because it could supply forest products, but also because it became a major producer of pepper grown in the interior. By the early sixteenth century, Pires reports that Pasai produced some eight to ten thousand bahar of pepper (Piper nigrum, Linn.) annually.16 Pepper was introduced to Southeast Asia from India as early as perhaps the beginning of the Common Era and was grown alongside the indigenous pep-per varieties. In Sumatra the earliest date for pepper cultivation is either the fourteenth or the fifteenth century, with Pasai listed as a major pepper-growing area. One of the attractions of the pepper plant as a crop is that it does not require fertile soils, but flourishes under hot, humid conditions and an annual rainfall of about 2,500 millimeters (98 inches). These requirements are met in the interior of Sumatra. In early centuries, despite the plant’s slow matura-tion, cultivators were encouraged to grow pepper because it commanded high prices in the international marketplace. Major demand came from China and Europe, while Gujarati traders were eager to supplement their own Indian supplies destined for the European market. Pepper consumption in Europe reached saturation point by the 1680s, and subsequent VOC policy discour-aged production, leading to a decline in pepper cultivation in Sumatra.17



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


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as between fellow rulers. The occasion of Majapahit’s invasions of Pasai was therefore used to emphasize how the justness of a cause would determine the outcome. The Javanese campaigns against Pasai, if they ever occurred,22 would have been sometime in the second half of the fourteenth century during the height of Majapahit’s power under Hayam Wuruk and his famous minister, Gajah Mada. It was a period of Majapahit expansion and was likely the reason for Adityawarman’s decision to move his court into the safety of the Minang kabau highlands. Pasai could have been a target because of its commercial success. In the Suma Oriental, Pires comments that the establishment of Melaka at the turn of the fifteenth century had little impact on Pasai “because of the large number of people who were there.” There were few traders “from the east,” but many from Gujarat, southern India (Keling), Bengal, Pegu, Siam, Kedah, and Beruas.23

In the Sejarah Melayu, Pasai is regarded with great respect as a center that rivaled Melaka in trade, heroes, and Islamic learning.24 Nevertheless, the author of the Sejarah Melayu could not resist depicting the ruler of Samudera/Pasai as being duped by the Siamese and made to tend the ruler’s fowls.25 By the middle or late fifteenth century Melaka had obviously surpassed Pasai as a trading emporium, for Pires mentions that with the defeat of Melaka “Pase [Pasai] will return to its former state.”26 This, however, was not to be. Pasai as an independent power only survived Melaka, its principal rival as the center of the Malayu world, by some thirteen years and was absorbed by its northern neighbor Aceh in 1524. Another northeast Sumatran coastal polity that appears in the historical sources is Aru. Unlike the other polities, however, little is known about its government or society, and it is often depicted as a land primarily devoted to piracy. According to Pires, Aru was a large kingdom, more extensive than any of the others mentioned north of it, including Pasai, and its ruler was “the greatest king in all Sumatra.” Pires estimated that there were some one hundred boats at the disposal of the ruler of Aru and even more if required, and that these boats were built for speed rather than for carrying cargo. The description of Aru’s fleets and their activities resemble tasks the Orang Laut had performed for Sriwijaya and Melaka. Aru’s officials and subjects con-ducted raids and presented a certain percentage of their booty to the ruler, although he himself sponsored some of these expeditions. Melaka was one of the major targets of Aru raids, which Pires attributes to a long-standing “quarrel” between these two polities.27 What was really at issue, as in the past, was control of the sea lanes to determine the leading entrepot in the Straits of Melaka.



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


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Melayu states explicitly that he was a son of a Sultan Sajak, “who descended from the Batak.”31 There was a steady flow of interior Batak to the coasts in response to the international demand for camphor and benzoin. While Barus on the west coast continued to be an important market for traders coming from the west, the Chinese preferred to go to the closer and more accessible ports on the Straits of Melaka. This enabled such ports as Kota Cina, Tamiang, and Aru to participate in this trade dominated by the Chinese. Since the Chinese would have been accustomed to trading with the Malayu since the days of Sriwijaya, and since so many of the intermediaries were Malayu on both sides of the straits, it made good economic sense for the Batak traders to assume a Malayu identity when on the coast. But it was equally important to maintain Batak ethnicity in order to perform special Batak rites necessary to maintain access to land. There was thus the emer-gence of the Batak Malayu (or the Malayu Batak), or individuals who were Malayu on the coast and Batak in the interior.32 The rulers of both Aru and Tamiang had become Muslim and regarded themselves as both part of the alam Malayu and the world of the Batak interior. In 1365 the Desawarnana listed Barus, Lamuri, Samudera, Perlak, Daya (“Barat”) Aru, Tamiang, and Panai as part of bhumi Malayu.33 Except for Barus, these ports are located on the northeastern coast of Sumatra and would have shared a common Malayu language and culture. It was this Malayu world on the northeastern coast of Sumatra that laid the foundations for the rise of Aceh.

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



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


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separate quarters respectively for some 500 Peguans and 500 Bengali. The houses were lined along two principal streets. Past the foreign quarters was the Great Mosque facing a square, and opening onto the square was a pavilion known as the Bunga Setangkai (A Branch of Flowers), where foreign envoys were received and official audiences held. Next to it was another pavilion serv-ing as a courthouse, where judges gathered to decide cases. In the royal enclo-sure amidst some trees was a pavilion known as Sida-Sida, which housed the special royal guards of eunuchs. Below the living area of the Sida-Sida was an arsenal containing the ruler’s cannon, while the cannonballs and other guns were kept in an adjoining house.43

Aceh’s early success was due principally to its ability to build upon the traditions of those lands it absorbed. Until about the middle of the sixteenth century, Samudera/Pasai and to a lesser extent Pidië provided Aceh’s commer-cial links to the Indian Ocean and to the South China Sea. The profitable route westward went from northern Sumatra to Coromandel and Cambay (via the Maldives) to the Red Sea. Persuaded by arguments of foreign merchants set-tled in Pasai after the Portuguese conquest of Melaka, Aceh maintained Pasai as one of its major ports and preserved the well-established Pasai currency as the principal medium of exchange. Among the international trading com-munity in the realm, the Bengali merchants constituted the largest and most influential. Another factor favoring the new kingdom was the introduction of pepper cultivation from seeds obtained from Malabar, which provided Aceh with a product highly desired in international trade. It sought to control the production and distribution of pepper by seizing the major pepper-producing area of Perlis on the Malay Peninsula and in conquering its chief rivals Aru and Johor in 1564. Finally, Aceh assumed Pasai’s role as the leading center for the study and dissemination of Islam.44 The successful integration of Islam in Aceh forever transformed the understanding of what it meant to be Malayu.

Aceh’s Links to the Islamic World

Aceh’s attitude toward Islam was shaped by the long presence of this reli-gion in northern Sumatra. When Marco Polo arrived in Perlak in c. 1292 on his way home to Venice from China, he commented that the population was predominantly “idolaters,” though with a substantial number of Muslims. He further noted that “many of those who dwell in the seaport towns have been converted to the religion of Mahomet by the Saracen merchants who con-stantly frequent them.”45 In the mid-fourteenth century, Ibn Battuta was a visitor in Samudera at the time of Al-Malik al-Zahir, who is mentioned in the Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai as the ruler who succeeded the first Muslim sultan of the kingdom. He commented that the current sultan was a devout “Shafi’i in



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


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beginning of the seventeenth century noted the presence of a community of Turks who bought pepper from the Acehnese and then resold it from their own stalls to other foreign traders.53 With the Ottomans in control of the Islamic cities of Mecca and Medina, there was a flow of ideas between the Ottoman Empire and Aceh, the Southeast Asian gateway for the Muslim pilgrimage to the Holy Land. This influence is readily discernible in certain names and practices adopted by the Aceh kingdom that are traceable to the Ottoman Empire. The Safavid Empire with its core in the Persian heartland had an equally important influence on Aceh, but much of it came indirectly through their sub-jects serving in the Indian Muslim lands of Golconda, Bijapur, and the Mughal Empire. The major expansion of Persian trade under Abbas I (1587–1628) and Abbas II (1642–66) occurred after what has been called the “second wave” of Islamic expansion in India from the Indo-Gangetic plains to the Deccan in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.54 Through sharing a common Islamic way of life, there was an ease of movement of traders, scholars, and travelers in the Islamic world. Even in the Mughal court of Sultan Akbar (1556–1605), most of the significant cultural figures were from abroad, especially from the Safavid Empire.55

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, “Persian” merchants living in the fringe areas of the Safavid Empire were influential in the affairs of South-east Asian kingdoms.56 This is especially notable in Aceh and Ayutthaya, where the Persian connection may have been at work during the annual exchange of envoys.57 Ample evidence exists to show that Southeast Asian rulers, including those of Aceh, were eager to hear about the prestigious Muslim courts from Muslim traders, envoys, and religious teachers. Islamic and secular literature written in Persian, the literary language of the Muslim courts, was eagerly translated by the Muslim kingdoms of Southeast Asia into Malayu, the liter-ary language of the Muslim courts in the archipelago. Perso-Arabic-Turkic and Islamic themes and ideas, along with a large number of Perso-Arabic words and a modified Arabic script, were therefore transmitted in the Malayu language primarily through Aceh to the rest of Southeast Asia.58

The sixteenth century and much of the seventeenth witnessed a period of Islamic expansion in all fields led by the brilliance of the three major Mus-lim courts. They provided models of behavior and statecraft, the occasional armed expedition, religious scholars, administrators, and traders to the other Islamic lands. But most important of all, they offered an entrée to an estab-lished and highly lucrative worldwide Islamic trading network. In the early sixteenth century, Aceh profited more than any other kingdom in Southeast Asia from its Islamic connection. A Frenchman visiting the kingdom in the years 1601–3 noted:



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

As bearers of highly desired goods from the west and as representatives of prestigious Islamic centers, these traders were welcomed by rulers in South-east Asia. The presence of foreign Muslim communities in the port cities became commonplace, and it was not unusual to find Muslim officials occu-pying influential positions in the courts.60

Because of Aceh’s location at the northern tip of Sumatra, it was the logical first port of call for traders coming from the west. Aceh’s reputation as an Islamic kingdom and its ability to provide desired local commodities and the facilities to promote effective and profitable exchange quickly made it a favored entrepot with Muslim traders. Asian shipping avoided Melaka after its fall to the Portuguese in 1511, sailing instead to Aceh and to Banten in west Java. Powerful Acehnese rulers such as Sultan Alauddin Riayat Syah al-Mukamil and Sultan Iskandar Muda encouraged foreign traders by assur-ing the availability of pepper, tin, and elephants for exchange in the port. Under these two rulers, Aceh conquered pepper-producing areas on the east and west coasts of Sumatra, as well as in the tin-rich mining states of Perak and Kedah on the Malay Peninsula. Other tin areas on the east and west coasts of the peninsula came under Aceh’s control when Iskandar Muda extended his conquests to Johor and Pahang.61 Elephants were so highly prized that an Ottoman chronicler devoted more attention to this subject than to any other aspect of Aceh.62

Among the most prominent of the Indian traders were the Muslim Gujarati from northwest India. After 1511 they transferred their trade to Aceh, where they could obtain such prized commodities as pepper, nutmeg, cloves, mace, tin, gold, ivory, and elephants. Other Muslim communities, including the Malabari Mapillah and merchants representing the powerful Mughal dynasty, also patronized Aceh. The Mughal princes Aurangzeb and Dara Shukoh participated in Aceh’s trade, and Aurangzeb even exchanged presents with Aceh’s sultan in 1641. For two decades after the Dutch conquest of Portuguese Melaka in 1641, the VOC tried to attract trade to Melaka by restricting Muslim trade to Aceh. Angered by this action, the Mughal emperor threatened retaliation in Gujarat for any losses due to Dutch intervention. He issued a farman, or royal decree, “instructing the Dutch to issue passes


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to any Indian ship wanting to sail to Aceh.” By the 1660s the VOC backed down and allowed Indian traders to sail to Aceh, Perak, and Kedah without restriction.63

Another important trading community in Aceh consisted of Indians from the Coromandel coast who had been prominent in Malayu Melaka. Gol-conda’s ruler, nobles, and officials began investing in international shipping and trade in the late sixteenth century. Under Ibrahîm Qutb Shah (1550–80), Golconda encouraged the immigration of Persians, especially those of Sayyid clans residing in the vicinity of Isfahan. These Persians arrived in substantial numbers in the late sixteenth century and were joined in the seventeenth by other Persian merchants heartened by Golconda’s Sultan Muhammad Qutb Shah’s (1612–24) close ties with the Safavid Empire. The courts and admin-istration of both Bijapur and Golconda became dominated by three major Muslim factions: the Persians, the Dakhnis (local converts), and the Habshis (Abyssinian Muslims).64 Together, the Persian and Golconda Muslim com-munities provided the resources that fueled this strong Muslim trade from the northern Coromandel centered on the port of Masulipatnam. In south-ern Coromandel it was the Muslim Chulias who participated in the textile and elephant trade by visiting every major port in Southeast Asia, particularly Aceh.65

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Coromandel merchants used Aceh as their primary trade center in the region. Coromandel textiles were especially admired for the designs and colors with specific names associ-ated with the markets for which they were destined. Coromandel traders also brought rice, iron, steel, indigo, and some slaves, in return for pepper, tin, ivory, elephants, cloves, nutmeg, and mace. Aceh so valued this trade from the Coromandel that it retained a permanent agent in Masulipatnam, which Golconda reciprocated with an agent in Aceh. Elephants were highly valued in Bengal and in the Muslim kingdoms of Golconda, Bijapur, and Tanjore, but they required special care in the long voyage from Southeast Asia to India. Bengali merchants favored Aceh because of its ability to supply the burgeon-ing demand for elephants for the Mughal army in the seventeenth century.66 Commercial ties were strongly reinforced by personal links between rulers. Sultan Iskandar Muda of Aceh, for example, preferred to establish state-to-state trade based on agreements between himself and his royal counterparts rather than between merchants. Aceh continued to be the main focus of Coromandel traders in the 1660s and for the rest of the century. By mid-century, however, the Persian shippers based in Golconda were gradually being replaced by Europeans.67

The key to Aceh’s success as an entrepot was its continuing ability to supply the region with a rich variety of Indian textiles brought by Muslim



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


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as the champion of Islam. Because of Aceh’s strong links to the wider Islamic world, it is likely that Acehnese scholars would have known the Perso-Islamic tradition of Iskandar Zulkarnain. Although this tradition describes Iskandar’s role as conqueror, seer, and prophet in search of the water of life, the central message is his destiny to establish a universal kingdom, a kingdom of Islam.72 The reign name taken by Aceh’s ruler, Iskandar Muda, or the “Young Alex-ander” or even the “Heir of Alexander,” clearly proclaims Aceh’s decision to make Islam a central tenet of the land in the advancement of the kingdom of Islam. For Aceh, claiming descent from the legendary Islamic hero Iskandar was convincing because its kings had already begun to establish Aceh’s cre-dentials as a Malayu nation with Islam as its major defining characteristic. Through Islamic teachings, the concept of the Malayu ruler was expanded to make it obligatory for the ruler to possess sufficient power to implement laws and preserve the territory of Islam. Such religious precepts are contained in a sixteenth-century Malayu text originating from Aceh, a kingdom which one scholar has called “the intellectual and spiritual center of Islam in the Malay world at that time.”73 Building upon Pasai’s reputation as a center of Islamic knowledge, Aceh demonstrated its Islamic cosmopolitanism by adhering to the latest religious and secular fashions from the Islamic world. Scholars, traders, and foreign envoys from Muslim lands brought their wares, tracts, and ideas to Aceh. They enticed the ruler and the people to institute changes that would update their society in the image of their illustrious coreligion-ists in the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires. As was characteristic of Southeast Asia, Aceh only selected those aspects that were compatible with the society.74

Islam thus became a defining feature of Aceh and was central to all of its institutions. It was during the heyday of Aceh in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that it became the center of alam Malayu and made Islam an indis-pensable part of Malayu identity. Aceh attracted the best Islamic scholars from the region and became the hub of Islamic reformist ideas that were spread throughout Southeast Asia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.75 It is no surprise that the Indian author of the Akbar Nama, who wrote this pan-egyric to the great Mughal sultan Akbar before his death in 1605, showed little interest in the Europeans but was very much aware of Aceh.76 In a five-volume work on various parts of the Islamic world written in Mughal India sometime between 1602 and 1607, Pegu and Aceh are the only places in Southeast Asia that merit extended discussion. Although the description of Aceh focused on its commercial products, especially camphor, there is a specific reference to the dispatch of agents and gifts to the Mughal court, showing that it was suf-ficiently respected to be accorded diplomatic relations by one of the most



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.

Islamic-Influenced Malayu Literary Works from Aceh

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Aceh became the most productive center of literary activity in alam Malayu and excelled particularly in Malayu Islamic literature.78 Aceh built upon a growing number of imported Islamic Arab and Persian works that had been brought to alam Malayu and integrated into an indigenous corpus heavily influenced by Hindu-Buddhist literature. Didactic and entertaining works such as the Hikayat Muhamat Hanafiyyah, translated into Malayu sometime around the fifteenth century; the Hikayat Iskandar Zulkarnain, based on the Alexander Romance; and the Hikayat Amir Hamzah, a story of the Prophet Muhammad’s uncle, became popular among the Malayu accustomed to similar messages in Indian epics.79

The fact that most extant Islamic theological texts from the precolonial period originated from Aceh suggests that it was the major center of trans-mission of religious knowledge in the region. Non-Sufi ideas were deliber-ately conveyed in narrative-based form of exegesis to appeal to the bulk of the population. The interest of the Malayu exegetes in the qira’at, or variant readings of the Qur’anic text, indicates that Islamic scholars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were transmitting a whole range of Islamic knowledge and not simply Sufism.80 Nevertheless, it was Sufism that was the inspiration for much of the religious literature written and read by Aceh’s intellectual elite. The rulers’ principal Islamic advisors (Syaikh al-Islam) were Sufi schol-ars with strong influence in the theological direction of the country. Aceh’s regional prestige can to a considerable extent be attributed to its support for Malayu-Islamic scholars. The language and style of Malayu works originating in Aceh were influenced by Arabic and Persian syntax and poetic genres because of the practice of translating Arabic and Persian poetry into the Malayu language.81 One of the earliest of these religious and literary medi-ators was Hamzah Fansuri, who rose to become the Syaikh al-Islam to Sultan Alauddin Riayat Syah (1589–1602). After traveling through the Middle East to study at different Islamic centers, he was initiated into the Sufi Qadiriyyah tarekat or brotherhood. Hamzah wrote Malayu sya’ir inspired by Persian verse, as well as Islamic tracts on Sufism, making him one of the earliest Malayu-Islamic scholars in the archipelago.82

A second significant influence in the Islamic literary world of Aceh was the Sufi scholar Bukhari al-Jauhari, who also used Persian sources in writing


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his Taj al-Salatin (Mirror of Kings). If he were, as his name could suggest, a Johorese who was writing in Aceh, it would be yet another indication of the common culture shared by Malayu courts that encouraged movement of scholars and even prominent officials between kingdoms. Instead of engaging in philosophical discussions or definitions of concepts, the Taj al-Salatin uses a popular narrative technique to provide models of good Muslim behavior, particularly for rulers and ministers. It enabled Aceh to create a model of Muslim Malayu kingship in the seventeenth century, which reached its pin-nacle under Sultan Iskandar Muda. Syams al-Din al-Samatrani of Pasai, the Syaikh al-Islam under Sultan Iskandar Muda, was a third important Malayu-Islamic scholar in Aceh. He and Hamzah Fansuri fostered the Wujudiyyah interpretation of Sufism and dominated the religious and intellectual life in the archipelago until con-demned by al-Raniri.83 In 1601 Syams al-Din wrote the Mir’at al-Mu’min in Malayu, which he termed “the language of Pasai [bahasa Pasai],” because “so many of my honorable religious brothers do not know Arabic and Persian but only the language of Pasai.”84 Syams al-Din is also thought to be the author of the Hikayat Aceh, which may have been written as a response to a challenge from Johor, Aceh’s chief rival in alam Malayu in this period. According to the Bustan al-Salatin (chapter 12, section 12), Raja Abdullah of Johor commis-sioned the Bendahara Tun Sri Lanang to undertake the writing of the Sulalat al-Salatin (The Genealogy of Kings, better known as the Sejarah Melayu) in May 1612. The decision to undertake the writing of the genealogy of the kings of Melaka at that time was part of the renewed effort by the Malayu of Johor to return to Melaka and reclaim the city of their ancestors. Unsuccessful attempts to retake the city from the Portuguese in 1606 and 1608 did not deter them from their ultimate goal. It has even been suggested that the scribe of the new text deliberately sought to omit references to the Perak line, which had a stronger claim to being directly descended from the Melaka royal family.85

The rest of alam Malayu, including Aceh, would have been aware of the renewed vigor with which Johor was attempting to reclaim the leadership once held by Melaka. This would have been the provocation leading to the Acehnese attack on Johor in June 1613, a year after it became known that a legitimizing text, the Sulalat al-Salatin, had been compiled in the Johor court.86 After the Acehnese invasion, the Johor ruler Sultan Alauddin Riayat Syah (1597–1613) and a number of the princes and nobles, including Ben-dahara Tun Sri Lanang, the author of the Johor text, were brought as prison-ers to Aceh.87 Sultan Alauddin died soon after his arrival, and Raja Abdullah, given Iskandar Muda’s younger sister in marriage, was sent back to govern Johor accompanied by two thousand Acehnese.88 On his return Raja Abdul-lah ordered Tun Sri Lanang to resume the Sulalat al-Salatin. In 1615 Aceh



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


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Aceh being recited by the court singers in Malayu, the language of Pasai and of the Aceh court. Nur al-Din al-Raniri was the fourth major figure who contributed to the growing corpus of Malayu-Islamic literary works that justified Aceh’s claim as the center of alam Malayu. Although he was born in Ranir, a harbor in Gujarat in northwest India, today he is regarded as a Malay-Indonesian ulama. He came from a Hadrami family of religious scholars, studied in the Hadramaut, and followed the same scholarly route as other itinerant Muslim teachers who helped to strengthen links among Muslim communities. It was such scholars who were responsible for generating interest in Sufism in Aceh. Al-Raniri gained prominence when he became Syaikh al-Islam in 1637 to Sul-tan Iskandar Thani (1636–41) and for a short period to Sultanah Taj al-Alam Safiyat al-Din (1641–75).95

Al-Raniri wrote no fewer than twenty-nine works both in Malayu and Arabic, of which fourteen were kitab, or books with a strong Islamic con-tent. The Bustan al-Salatin, written in 1638 at the behest of his patron, Sultan Iskandar Thani, shows the influence of a number of Malayu works including the Hikayat Iskandar Zulkarnain, which he translated into Malayu, the Taj al-Salatin, and the Sejarah Melayu.96 The Bustan was similar to the earlier Taj in drawing on Islamic collections of stories written in Persian from India, but the Bustan was intended for scholars and theologians rather than for the ordinary reader.97 The length of this work and the coherence of individual sections may explain why only parts of the Bustan have ever been edited. Its importance, however, is unquestioned, and it served as a source for many later Malayu literary texts. For example, the introduction to the Bustan was bor-rowed for the nineteenth-century Shellabear version of the Sejarah Melayu, and the Bustan was the basis for the Hikayat Hang Tuah’s description of the garden of a Turkish ruler.98

It is as an Islamic scholar that al-Raniri is particularly noted. His stud-ies on sharia (Islamic law) and fikh (jurisprudence) culminated in the Sirat al-Mustaqim, which served as a popular manual for basic religious duties. One of the extracts from the latter work was said to have been instrumental in the Islamization of Kedah. In addition to making Islamic knowledge more accessible to the Malayu world, al-Raniri also introduced the Muslims in the archipelago to comparative religion. Although he spent a mere seven years (1637–44) in Aceh, he had a far greater impact on Islam in the archipelago than any of his predecessors. His strong network of religious teachers extend-ing to the Middle East made him one of the leading transmitters of Islamic reformism in the archipelago in the seventeenth century. Because of his net-work and that of his most famous disciple, the Makassar Syaikh Yusuf, known



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.

An Islamic Model for Malayu Court and Administration

While Aceh shared many features with Malayu Melaka, a fundamental differ-ence was its active pursuit of ideas and models from Islamic civilizations.102 Malayu culture as represented by Melaka and later Johor was an amalgam of indigenous, Hindu-Buddhist, and Islamic ideas,103 whereas Islam formed the underpinnings of society in Aceh. This was especially evident in the organization of the administration and the royal court. The activities of the Syaikh al-Islam in Aceh as the personal spiritual and secular advisor to the ruler suggest that



this office was modeled after that in the Ottoman Empire. During the reign of the Ottoman sultan Sulayman the Magnificent (1520–66), the Syaikh al-Islam became the highest ranking individual in the religious bureaucracy. As grand mufti, he was the personal Islamic advisor to the ruler, but he also supervised judges, jurisconsults (an advisory position), and religious teachers. Sultan Sulayman gave the Syaikh al-Islam authority to control the entire religious hier-archy, which in effect meant everyone in the religious teaching establishment. For the first time the Syaikh had the authority to discredit scholars through his control over the religious schools.104 A similar exercise of power by the Syaikh al-Islam in Aceh may have been inspired by the Ottoman example. Hamzah Fansuri was apparently the first Syaikh al-Islam in Aceh, serving Sultan Alauddin in the late sixteenth century. The latter’s successor, Sultan Iskandar Muda, then appointed Syams al-Din, the well-known Sufi mystic and probable author of the Hikayat Aceh, to be his Syaikh al-Islam. After Syams al-Din, the position continued to be filled by important religious scholars who were also Malayu literary figures at court. They were Nur al-Din al-Raniri under Iskandar Thani, and Saiful-Rijal and Abd al-Rauf under Sultanah Taj al-Alam Safiyat al-Din. According to the Bustan al-Salatin, written in the reign of Iskandar Thani, though the Qadi Malik al-Adil was the supreme court judge and the first minister in the land, the Syaikh al-Islam Syams al-Din was the most prominent of the Acehnese dignitaries. All of Aceh’s Syaikh al-Islam in the seventeenth century exercised considerable religious and secular influ-ence. As the chief advisor to the ruler, the Syaikh had considerable esteem and power and became the most important official in matters of religion, state, and international trade.105

As Aceh became acknowledged as a leading center of the Malayu world, many Malayu on the Malay Peninsula came to serve its rulers.106 Like their counterparts on the peninsula, Aceh’s leaders dispensed titles to favored for-eigners in exchange for specific services. One of the most profitable of offices was that of saudagar raja (king’s merchant), who was often an Indian mer-chant in charge of trading on behalf of the ruler.107 Even European traders were honored with such descriptive titles as raja suci hati (the pure-hearted king), raja putih (the white king), or the more Acehnese title uleebalang raja (the warrior king), and were expected to offer their highly respected military skills and armaments to the ruler.108

Aceh’s strong Islamic orientation is evident in the principal minister, who was also a religious figure. When Aceh ambassadors to the VOC headquar-ters in Batavia in 1644 were asked to name the most powerful figures in the kingdom other than the sultanah, they said it was the first councilor (eersten ryxraet), the Leubè Kita Kali. Despite his religious title of Qadi Malik al-Adil, he presided over both religious and secular matters.109 Next in importance


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was the Orang Kaya Maharaja Sri Maharaja, chief minister of state affairs. He was followed by the Orang Kaya Lakasamana Perdana Menteri, who was also the panglima dalam in charge of court affairs. The fourth in rank was the panglima bandar, who was entrusted with international trade and oversight of the lucrative tin and pepper trade in Aceh’s territories of Perak and west coast Sumatra.110 Law and order in the port were the responsibility of the penghulu kawal and the tandil kawal.111

Aceh’s model for the four ministers of state owed less to Melaka than to the Mughal dynasty in India.112 Even the use of military titles for Aceh’s officials is a borrowing from the Islamic world. In Aceh, local lords were referred to as uleebalang, and governors assigned to vassal areas and certain court officials as panglima. Although these lords and officials were supposed to assemble and lead their forces in times of war, their primary function was nonmilitary. The uleebalang were heads of villages or larger units in the coun-tryside, while the panglima were appointed by the court to the major fiefs in the kingdom. There were panglima of the major parts of the kingdom such as Pidië, Pasai, Daya, and Deli, as well as panglima for the pepper-producing west coast Sumatra Minangkabau settlements of Barus, Pasaman, Tiku, Pariaman, Padang, Silida, and Indrapura. Panglima titles were also assigned to officials in the court itself, such as the panglima bandar in charge of international trade. Although “hulubalang” and “panglima” are Malayu terms, the use of military titles for civil functions is a practice borrowed from the great contemporary Islamic empires in Asia. Both the Ottoman and the Mughal Empires regarded central power with its administrative branches as one great army.113

Aceh’s use of “karkon” for scribe was a borrowing from the Persian, and the chief scribe was given a combined Malayu-Persian title of penghulu kar-kon. The position of scribes and the chief scribe in Aceh, at least in the seven-teenth century, may have been held by trusted “capados” (Port. eunuchs) of the court, a practice also found in the Ottoman Empire. These scribes were responsible for recording goods and gifts being brought into the port by for-eign merchants.114 While Aceh, like Melaka and Johor, used the Persian term syahbandar, or harbor master, only in Aceh was the syahbandar assisted by a nazir (inspector of trade) and a dalal (middleman), which were also Persian titles.115

A Malayu court practice that was far more developed in Aceh than in other Malayu courts was the widespread and varied use of the royal edict and the royal seal, presumably borrowed from the Islamic empires’ institution of the farman. There were two distinctive Acehnese royal orders bearing seals: the sarakata or tarakata, which had to be observed until formally retracted, and the éseuteumi or seuteumi, which was intended to be a permanent com-mand.116 These orders were conveyed throughout the kingdom and the vas-



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


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sida-sida.”), raises a question whether the sida-sida were actually castrated.126 In Aceh, however, sida-sida did refer to eunuchs and is confirmed in a late sixteenth-century description of a pavilion built specifically for the eunuchs and referred to as “Ida-Sida” [sic].127 Further evidence is found in a Malayu conversation recorded in Aceh sometime between 1599 and 1601, where the term “sida-sida” is translated into Dutch as “ghelubden,” which is the equiva-lent of the Portuguese “capado” or eunuch.128

In classical Malayu literature most references to sida-sida are simply listed alongside a number of other court officials who supervise ceremonies or are present before the ruler. In describing a ceremony at court, the Sejarah Melayu notes that the sida-sida emerge from “within” (dari dalam), which could have only meant the inner chambers of the court, or where the women of the court are housed.129 The link between the sida-sida and the court women is also implied in the eighteenth-century Perak court poem the Misa Melayu, which groups the sida-sida and the dayang (“court maidens”) together.130 In the Sejarah Melayu the sida-sida are also described as bearers of letters.131 In contrast to the Malayu courts on the Malay Peninsula, in Aceh there is substantial evidence of the prominent role played by the sida-sida. They formed part of the ruler’s bodyguard and lived in a special pavilion in the royal enclosure.132 Their primary function was to serve the court and the rulers, and they had free access to the innermost chambers of the court, including the harem. In Islamic sultanates the main task of eunuchs was to enforce the strict seclusion of Muslim women of the royal harem. Khadim, or eunuch-servants, were widely employed in Muslim society because their presence enabled the sequestered women to move more freely through the royal enclosures or the homes of the well-to-do.133 In Aceh, no one was allowed access to the ruler except through the capados, some of whom were the ruler’s closest advisors. They served the guests at court and were the primary bearers of messages from the throne. Whenever there was a royal procession, they marched as a group and were easily recognized by their weapons. An Englishman in Aceh in 1637 witnessed a procession where the capados rode horses without saddles and bore on their shoulders long swords in gilt or gold scabbards. At another procession in 1642, the Dutch described some 150 capados carrying halberds and royal gold ornaments.134 Thomas Bowrey also witnessed the procession of the sultanah’s royal barge, which was accompanied by some one hundred eunuchs: “Each of them wore his Turban after the Arabian mode of beaten pure Gold and very large Shakels of beaten Gold quite up their arms and leggs, and bore each of them a lance of beaten gold of 7 or 8 foot longe, and proportionately thick.”135

The capados were regarded as the personal messengers of the ruler and hence treated with great respect. They were entrusted with the royal seal,



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


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and are dressed in the style of the Ottoman warriors. Others carry shields made from iron brought from Khurasan. In describing Iskandar Muda at prayer, the Adat Aceh comments that his piety is known even to the caliph in Istanbul. The grand procession from the palace to the mosque led by Iskandar Muda is said to resemble the setting out to war of the great legendary Muslim ruler Iskandar Zulkarnain.145

The ambience of the Aceh court owed much to the models from the major Islamic empires. In Aceh, more than any other court in the archipelago, ele-phants and horses were an indispensable part of the royal presence. A Malay sya’ir146 from Deli recounting events in the late sixteenth century describes Aceh as “an enormously large kingdom with numerous ministers and offi-cials, with elephants and horses beyond count, and a harbor full of ships and boats.”147 Both elephants and horses came to represent the power of the Aceh ruler. In a letter sent in 1640 to the Dutch governor-general in Batavia, the greatness of the Aceh ruler Sultan Iskandar Thani is strongly associated with his elephants and horses. He is referred to as:

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-



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.

From Malayu to Acehnese Identity

Aceh became Melaka’s de facto successor in the Straits of Melaka for about 150 years, from the reign of Sultan Ali Mughayat Syah (1514?–30) to that of Sultanah Taj al-Alam Safiyat al-Din (1641–75). It built upon the earlier Islamic traditions that developed in Samudera/Pasai, and it dominated trade in the straits and beyond through its ability to attract to its port the consid-erable traffic in Indian cloth, a commodity in great demand in the region. Its scholars produced religious and secular Malayu literary works of high quality in the court, and its institutions reflected the latest ideas and models from the illustrious Islamic empires of the Ottomans, the Safavids, and the Mughals. Aceh’s model of a Malayu kingdom, therefore, owed much to its Islamic connection. In contrast, Melaka embraced Islam in the mid-fifteenth century, and the new religion had to contend with a deeply embedded amal-gam of Hindu-Buddhist and indigenous beliefs. The Sejarah Melayu clearly demonstrates the coexistence and equality in Melaka of indigenous, Indian, and Islamic ideas. In the fifteenth-century composite text called the Undang-Undang Melaka (The Laws of Melaka), customary law (adat) prevailed with some attention given to Islamic law.153 It was a code of laws that reflected the times, but it was not as appropriate in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when Islam was playing such a dominant role in the archipelago. Aceh, on the other hand, was founded as an Islamic kingdom in the early sixteenth century and had nearly two centuries to integrate the religion into the lifestyle of the court and society. As the leading Malayu kingdom, Aceh was admired and emulated by other Malayu societies in the region of the Straits of Melaka. Perak and Pahang acknowledged its overlordship in the first half of the seventeenth century, and though Kedah was under the suzerainty of Ayutthaya, it did not fail to offer


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allegiance to the Aceh ruler.154 Areas on the northeast and northwest coasts of Sumatra were counted among Aceh’s territories. Many of these lands con-ducted their affairs in the Aceh manner by following Acehnese court protocol and by employing Acehnese titles and functions for their officials. They were responsive to the royal seals dispatched from the Aceh court, and they regu-larly intermarried with Aceh’s royal family.155 Aceh’s reputation as a center for religious learning was strengthened by the steady output of Islamic tracts, written either in Malayu or translated into Malayu from the original Arabic or Persian. By the end of the seventeenth century, Aceh’s conscious adoption of Islamic models in court and its leading role as the disseminator of Islamic ideas and Malayu Islamic literature established a new standard of Malayuness in the region. A combination of internal conflict in Aceh and a resurgent Johor under the leadership of the Laksamana family in the last quarter of the seventeenth century saw Johor replace Aceh as the most prestigious kingdom in alam Malayu.156 Melaka traditions were resurrected and reinterpreted in the Johor court, and thus was born the myth of an unbroken line of Malayu customs and history extending back to Melaka. In the process of asserting the Melaka-Johor Malayu identity, there was a conscious rejection of the Aceh model. Sometime in the eighteenth century, Aceh was also displaced by Palembang as the center of religious and secular Malayu literature.157 Yet Aceh’s infusion of Islamic ideas into the society was emulated in Malayu lands, and Islam became regarded as an essential component of Malayu ethnic identity. The more exotic features of the court at Aceh, such as the role of the capados and the place of elephants and horses as part of the royal ambience, never took root in other Malayu courts. The transition from a Malayu to an Acehnese identity was facilitated by a shift in power from the ruler, whose authority was based on the coast and international trade, to the local leaders (uleebalang), whose source of strength was in the territorial unit known as the mukim in the agricultural interior. Only after being overshadowed by Johor in the late seventeenth century did Aceh begin to orient its affairs more and more toward the interior. The shift in orientation and power is captured in the words of the Hikayat Pucut Muha-mat, an eighteenth-century text written not in Malayu but in Acehnese:

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



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


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syntax, as is evident in a collection of conversations in Malayu recorded by a Dutchman at the beginning of the seventeenth century.163 The Dutch were well aware of the bilingual nature of Acehnese society, which was not peculiar to Aceh but a general phenomenon in Southeast Asia.164

Bilingualism was a feature of courts in maritime Southeast Asia in the early modern period, with Malayu spoken widely in the ports and in the cos-mopolitan environment of urban centers. When the Portuguese commander Affonso de Albuquerque wished to make contact with the Thai court of Ayut-thaya, he was pleased that he could send one of his men who was versed in the Malayu language.165 Malayu was a language of trade and diplomacy even in the Thai court. There was no established standard for Malayu, though the form written and spoken at the most prestigious court would naturally be regarded as fashionable or, in the parlance of a later age, “modern.”166 Written Malayu was not immune to the influence of a local language or dialect, and the spoken version was as varied as the people who spoke it. In the sixteenth century, Aceh was considered to be a Malayu kingdom, and the language spo-ken in the land was peppered with “Acehnisms.” This spoken language influ-enced the written Malayu works produced in the court, and in the seventeenth century certain Acehnese Malayu writings were criticized because the Aceh-nisms were incomprehensible in Borneo.167 In the bilingual environment of Aceh, the borrowing of languages and literary styles was a two-way process. In the late nineteenth century, Malayu hikayat, or metrical romances, were often retold to fellow villages in the Acehnese language using a prose style known as haba.168 The cross-fertilization of languages can also be seen in the Malayu Hikayat Sultan Aceh Marhum, which originated as a prose version of the Acehnese Hikayat Malem Dagang in verse form.169

Acehnese hikayat are in verse form and are intended to be read aloud. Both the Hikayat Malem Dagang and the Hikayat Pocut Muhamat express ideas and attitudes that challenge earlier views advanced by the Malayu hikayat written in the Aceh courts. The Hikayat Malem Dagang was written not later than the end of the seventeenth century, a time when it was already apparent that Aceh was losing its dominance in alam Malayu. Unlike the Malayu hikayat, written in praise of rulers, the Hikayat Malem Dagang is a panegyric to the Laksamana under Sultan Iskandar Muda. The focus is not on the courts and the courtiers, but on the countryside and the ordinary people. The unques-tioned obedience to the awe-inspiring rulers as portrayed in the Malayu court hikayat is replaced in the Acehnese hikayat by resentment expressed by the people because of the exactions of the court, particularly in times of war. Another theme found in the Hikayat Malem Dagang is the strength of Islam among the Acehnese and their superior understanding of the religion. The reciters of this hikayat would have known the story of the theological



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


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the sultan’s.175 This development may be linked to a shift in emphasis in Sufism, which played a major role in Acehnese society. Before the eighteenth century, succession in a Sufi brotherhood (tarekat) passed from the syaikh (leader of a tarekat) to a disciple elected for his spiritual mystical knowledge. A change in determining succession appears to have occurred sometime in the eighteenth century, when the transmission of such knowledge was no long er as important as the baraka, or God’s blessing working through a favored one.176 Although scholars have tended to focus on the Sufi writings of the great Syaikh al-Islam in the Aceh court, there were other Sufi syaikh who were more focused on worldly activity. In the neighboring Minangkabau highlands, the Sufi syaikh and their disciples were active participants in the development of commercial agriculture beginning in the late seventeenth century.177 With the growing importance of agriculture in the interior of Aceh, it is likely that Sufi ulama were similarly involved. Many of the tarekat had become peace-fully integrated into Acehnese society, and their influence in the countryside is clearly evident in the Hikayat Malem Dagang. The other major Acehnese language epic is the Hikayat Pocut Muhamat, which was written sometime in the middle of the eighteenth century by a man of religious learning (teungku). One notable feature of the Hikayat is the role played by agriculture and the mukim. In the early nineteenth century, the Mukim XXII was located in the interior highlands and focused on agriculture, while the Mukim XXV and Mukim XXVI were on the coast and involved in trade.178 In earlier centuries there may have been different mukim configu-rations, and their association with interior agriculture may have been what distinguished them from the coastal settlements. The Hikayat Pocut Muhamat describes rice fields and irrigation works in the mukim and declares that “agri-culture is the best of trades.”179

These princely sentiments reflect the shift in the eighteenth century from a Malayu culture based on coastal trading settlements to an Acehnese cul-ture characterized by irrigated rice cultivation, mainly in the interior but also along the coast. The distinction and the greater importance of the interior are clearly expressed in this hikayat when Pocut Muhamat states that recruits from coastal Pidië will be sought only after he has assembled all the Acehnese in the interior.180 Not long after taking office in 1641, Sultanah Taj al-Alam Safiyat al-Din publicly chastised the Orang Kaya Seri Maharaja for seizing the best lands in Pidië for himself and leaving the poorest to the ruler.181 Although Pidië was earlier noted as one of the important ports along the northeastern coast, it is clear from these later references that its later claim to fame was its agricultural lands. The Hikayat Pocut Muhamat emphasizes the power of the mukim leaders in relation to the sultan. Pocut Muhamat informs the leader of Pidië that



“[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

The Hikayat Pocut Muhamat is explicit in citing family as crucial to one’s power, that authority is dispersed and localized, and that kingship is subor-dinated to local lords. These themes reflected Aceh’s political situation in the first half of the eighteenth century, where the landed elite played the role of kingmakers.

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


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and religious teachers arriving from the western lands. Building upon the Islamic traditions established in Pasai and other northeastern Sumatran com-munities, Aceh became the pre-eminent Malayu kingdom in the region. It borrowed models of literature, court protocol, governance, and amusements from the great Islamic civilizations in India and central Asia. Its greatest leg-acy to alam Malayu was to make Malayu synonymous with Islam. From the middle of the seventeenth century, Johor, with the assistance of the VOC, began its steady recovery as a power in the Straits of Melaka. By the end of that century, it had displaced Aceh as the leader of alam Malayu. As things Malayu became increasingly associated with the Malay Peninsula, Aceh began to create a distinctive Acehnese ethnic identity often in direct contrast to the Malayu. The Hikayat Malem Dagang, written in the Acehnese language, stresses the importance of Islam, but differs from the Malayu emphasis by elevating the position of the ulama over even that of the sultan. Its focus and sympathies are with the ordinary people, rather than with the ruling classes, and the occupation that is most highly valued is that of a farmer rather than a trader. The Hikayat Pocut Muhamat, another Acehnese work, praises agricul-ture as the fundamental basis of Acehnese society and identifies the agricultural interior as the core of the kingdom. It also depicts the mukim and their leaders as wielding the true authority in the land, displacing the all-powerful rulers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Trade in Aceh remained important, but agriculture was becoming increas-ingly dominant with the expansion of rice and pepper cultivation. By the late seventeenth century, restrictive VOC trade policies and the increased compet-itiveness of the ethnicized Minangkabau fanned out on both the eastern and western rantau eroded some of the advantages that Aceh had enjoyed in inter-national trade. The beginning of the shift in economic priorities from trade to agriculture is evident during the long reign of Sultanah Taj al-Alam Safiyat al-Din in her efforts to expand the cultivation of rice and pepper in the inte-rior. According to the Adat Aceh, this was the period that Aceh’s lands under-went reorganization into mukim to form the three sagi (provinces) named after the number of mukim in each: Mukim XXII, Mukim XV, and Mukim XVI. It was this reorganization which led to the rise of the landed uleebalang and the importance of the interior, along with Islam and the ulama, as major features of Acehnese ethnic identity.185

By the late nineteenth century Snouck Hurgronje, a leading scholar of Aceh, observed that Malayu was rarely spoken in the kingdom.186 Yet as recently as two centuries before, Malayu was the primary language of Aceh’s court and administration and one of two languages spoken in the kingdom. In general, the coastal populations spoke Malayu and those in the interior spoke mainly Acehnese and a few other languages. From being a model of



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.


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Chapter 5

The Batak Malayu

T he Batak form a major ethnic community in the vicinity of the Straits of Melaka.1 As in the case of the Minang-kabau and the Acehnese, the formation of Batak eth-

nic identity in their early history was shaped by the presence of the Malayu. Despite certain common features, however, the Batak are not as closely related as the other three ethnic communities. Certain Austronesian-speaking groups such as the Batak and the Gayo of northern Sumatra were not part of the expansion of Western Malayo-Polynesian languages beginning c. 1500–1000 BCE. Instead, they formed a later development due to language replacement occurring long after the initial dispersal. Certain cultural features came to be identified with the Batak, such as a strongly patrilineal tendency, extensive lineages (marga),2 and secondary burial in stone sarcophagi and urns.3

The ethnonym “Batak” is probably ancient, but as yet no scholar has been able to provide a satisfactory derivation.4 One of the first occurrences in written sources is in the Zhufan zhi written sometime in the mid-thirteenth century by Zhao Rugua, the Chinese inspector of foreign trade in Fujian. He mentions a dependency of San-fo-tsi (Sriwijaya) called Ba-ta, which is likely a reference to the Batak.5 The next definite identification comes from Pires’ Suma Oriental, which mentions the kingdom of “Bata,” bordered on one side by Pasai and on the other by Aru.6 From the sixteenth century onward, refer-ences to the Batak as inhabitants of the interior of north Sumatra and also of certain kingdoms along the northeast coast become more frequent. Foreign interest in the Batak can be explained by the fact that in the forests of their homeland grew two of the most valuable products in the international mar-ketplace: camphor and benzoin. The single most important feature that was historically associated with the group and became a distinctive identity marker was their reputation as


The Batak Malayu 147

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


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Padang Lawas are both written in a square type of early Kawi script, indi-cating strong Batak links to the Java-Sumatran Indianized polities.12 Despite the sharing of a common culture, however, the Batak developed a distinctive identity as a way of maximizing their advantage in international trade. This chapter describes the circumstances that led to the ethnicization of the Batak. Crucial in the forging of the larger identity from the numerous clans and subclans known as marga was the indigenous religion and its prac-titioners, who provided the common bond and the structure for the creation and maintenance of a Batak ethnic identity. The major stimulus in this pro-cess was Batak involvement in trade as collectors of commodities in great demand in the local and international marketplace. Among these products, the most valuable for many centuries were camphor and benzoin, two oleo-resins obtained from the forests in the Batak lands.

The Camphor and Benzoin Trade

Camphor and benzoin were among the products of greatest demand at the major port cities in the Straits of Melaka from the early fifth century, and at Sriwijaya between the seventh to the eleventh century. These valuable res-ins are found in the northern Sumatran forests in the Batak lands, and so it was the camphor-benzoin trade that provided the first indirect evidence of Batak participation in international commerce.13 By the sixth century in southern China, benzoin became widely accepted as a substitute for myrrh (Commiphora mukul Engl.) and later came to replace it as a permanent and valuable commodity not only in China but also in western Asia and Europe.14 The value of these resins—considered to be on a par with gold in China—lay both in their much-vaunted medical properties as a cure for a host of illnesses and shortcomings as well as in their scarcity (see chapter 2). The camphor tree is one of the largest of the dipterocarps in western Indonesia, reaching a height of between 60 and 70 meters (196 to 226 feet). It grows at altitudes of 60 to more than 365 meters (196 to 1200 feet) above sea level on well-drained soils and often on steep ridges. These conditions are met in the Batak lands in northwest Sumatra between Singkel and Air Bangis. Benzoin trees grow in the same areas and under similar conditions as the camphor trees. They are found in clumps from the north of Padang Sidem-puan to the area around Tarutung, as well as in another three locations from the mountain valley of the Lai Cinendang, a tributary of the Singkil River, northward to Sidikalang. Camphor crystallizes in the wood from an oleoresin present in the tree itself, and it accumulates irregularly in the cavities of the trunk. Only after twelve years does the tree produce camphor, with the oldest trees supplying the greatest quantity and others yielding nothing at all.15



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


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Bonan Dolok to Penyabungan and Hutanopan in the Batang Gadis valley. It then crossed the mountains at Muara Sipongi to Rao.21

From Rao one could go directly to Muara Takus in the valley of the Batang Mahat, a tributary of the Kampar Kanan. But the more frequently used route went through the valley of the Batang Sumpur, a tributary of the Sungai Rokan Kiri, then passed through Tanjung Medan and Lubuk Sika ping via Bonjol into Minangkabau territory. The Batak most likely transferred the products to the Minangkabau, who then completed the journey through their own lands downriver to the Malayu in Sriwijaya. There were again two alter-nate routes leading from Bonjol to Buo, where it was possible to reach the headwaters of the Batang Hari, the major river through Jambi.22 From the Batang Hari the goods could be sold to the Malayu downriver and then trans-ported by sea to Sriwijaya. Another possibility was to use the tributaries linked by land routes leading from the Batang Hari River in Jambi to the Musi River in Palembang. One such route followed the tributary Tembesi River, which flowed down along the Jambi-Palembang border. From Ulu (upriver) Tem-besi it was only eight days’ travel to Palembang and about twelve to Jambi.23

The method used to transport the camphor and benzoin in earlier cen-turies is not mentioned explicitly in the sources. From available evidence it appears that men carried the cargo on their backs using a series of narrow footpaths that ran along the hills from the interior to both east and west coasts. Such trails were found on the summits of the Batak highlands, as well as along the upper reaches of rivers, such as the Panai and the Bila.24 Even as late as the mid-nineteenth century, a Dutch linguist recalled an evening when he hosted half a dozen Toba Batak in Barus who had transported their cargo of benzoin on their backs.25 Though horses are mentioned as an item of trade, it is difficult to find evidence of horses being used to transport export prod-ucts. Marsden writes that there were numerous horses in the Batak lands and that many were supplied to Bengkulen. Nevertheless, the Batak kept their fin-est for ritual purposes and apparently as special delicacies for their festivals. “Horse-flesh,” according to Marsden, “they esteem their most exquisite meat, and for this purpose feed them upon grain, and pay great attention to their keep.”26 Such precious animals would most likely not have been used as beasts of burden. For nearly four centuries, Sriwijaya controlled the trade of forest products in the region. Its success as a major entrepot to traders from around the world attracted the envy of other major kingdoms seeking economic dominance in the area. As previously noted, in 1024–5 the Cholas launched an attack and subdued Sriwijaya and its dependencies along the Straits of Melaka.27 Although Sriwijaya was reconstituted on the Batang Hari River in Jambi, the name Sriwijaya disappeared from the records and was replaced in the elev-



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.

Barus and Kota Cina

The location of the Tamil inscription dated 1088 from Lobu Tua near Barus is the strongest evidence so far demonstrating Barus’ return to prominence since the late seventh century. The inscription was erected by a Tamil mer-chant guild, the Ayyavole-500 (The Five Hundred of the Thousand Direc-tions), which enjoyed the patronage of the Chola dynasty in Tamil Nadu, the Tamil homeland in southern India. By the end of the eleventh century the guild in India had begun to incorporate several ethnolinguistic groups among its ranks and had become established in a number of coastal towns. The Lobu Tua inscription refers to the guild “having met at the velapuram in Varocu, also called the . . . pattinam.” The word “Varocu” is the name for Barus, but there is a difference of opinion on the significance of the terms velapuram and pattinam. Subbarayalu suggests that the former refers to the harbor while the latter describes the town itself. Christie, on the other hand, interprets “pattinam” as designating Barus as a commercial center of the first rank and “velapuram” as referring to the enclave of Lobu Tua as a trading settlement of secondary rank.29 Permission was required for admission to the city, and fees for the trade in aromatics (kasturi) were calculated in gold.30 As an international port, Barus would have had a mixed population, though its core inhabitants may have been Batak. Direct overland routes from the nearby camphor forests directly to Barus helped assure the city’s reputation as a reli-able supplier of that valued commodity. Camphor from Barus could demand such high prices that Batak collectors in the sixteenth century working on the right bank of the Singkel River did not sell their product at nearby Singkel, but took it to the more distant port of Barus.31

Ptak believes that although Barus was frequented by Indians and other traders from the west, it was not a major port for the export of camphor to China. Song and Yuan texts, i.e., information from the tenth to the fourteenth century, do not indicate a regular trade contact between west coast Sumatra and the southern Chinese ports of Guangdong, Fujian, and Zhejiang.32 The


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strong Chinese trade in camphor and benzoin was most likely focused on another port located on the northeast coast with the revealing name of Kota Cina (Chinese Stockade).33 Chinese traders were more familiar with Suma-tra’s northeast coast and the Straits of Melaka34 and would presumably have gone to Kota Cina, rather than to Barus itself, to obtain forest resins. The exis-tence of Song and Yuan sherds in interior sites of Kota Bangun and Deli Tua appear to support this contention. Moreover, access to gold from the nearby mines located in such areas as the Bohorok and Pengkuruan Rivers, some fifty kilometers (thirty-one miles) west of present-day Medan, would have been an added attraction.35

Kota Cina was inhabited between the late eleventh and the fourteenth centuries, and grew from a small village into a large settlement of some ten thousand inhabitants by the middle of the twelfth century.36 The ruined site was mentioned by John Anderson on his trip to east coast Sumatra in the early nineteenth century and was only “rediscovered” in 1972.37 Located some three to four miles from the port of Belawan Deli, between the confluence of the Belawan River (known also as Hamparan Perak or Buluh Cina) and the Deli River, it was once accessible to seagoing ships.38 Although Miksic stresses the Chinese component of the settlement, Edwards McKinnon argues that Kota Cina was predominantly a Tamil trading settlement established by merchants like those responsible for the Lobu Tua inscription in Barus. The existence of permanent religious structures, including a Siva sanctuary and a Buddhist vihara, is indicative of the economic importance of the Tamil community for whom they were built.39 A Ganesa figure atop a pillar, one of the few Hindu images in Padang Lawas, contains an inscription in both Old Malayu–Java-nese and in Tamil.40 Nevertheless, the Chinese were also a major presence in the city judging by the “tens of thousands of Chinese porcelain sherds” found on the site dating between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries.41

The rise of Kota Cina should be viewed in the context of Tamil trading activity in Sumatra in this period. So far there are three known Tamil settle-ments at Kota Cina, Lhok Cut (Aceh), and Lobu Tua, as well as four possible settlements at Neusu (Aceh, thirteenth century), Bahal 1 (Tapanuli Selatan in the Padang Lawas area), Buo (west Sumatra), and Kota Kandis on the western branch of the Batang Hari inland from Muara Sabak in Jambi.42 The Tamil-inspired Buo inscription and other Tamil inscriptions reinforce the view of a fairly extensive Tamil trade involvement in Sumatra. A provisional reading of the Tamil inscription found at Neusu appears to refer to trade regulations, while the nearby site of Lhok Cut is believed to be the remains of an eleventh-century port. Two further Tamil inscriptions have been found that date from the second half of the thirteenth century. The first was found at Batu (or Bandar) Bapahat, near Suruaso, in the Minangkabau highlands. Though no



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


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The economic opportunities offered by both Kota Cina and Barus as major sources of camphor and benzoin encouraged the Batak to move toward both the east and west coasts to profit more directly from this international trade. Batak communities also began to grow along the various land routes that, though difficult because of the rough and broken terrain, provided a safer alternative than the sea voyage from the west coast around Aceh into the Straits of Melaka. In addition, the increasing demand for rice from the burgeoning coastal centers encouraged other Batak to seek new lands to plant rice. All these factors led to the spread of the Batak out of their homeland to various parts of Sumatra.

Expansion of the Batak World

The Toba area is said to have been populated by those migrating from the leg-endary first Batak village, Sianjur Mulamula, situated on the slopes of the sacred Pusuk Buhit on the western shore of Lake Toba. Pusuk Buhit is considered to be the birthplace of their common ancestor, Si Raja Batak, and the home of the most powerful deities. From here groups left and settled the series of val-leys along the west coast of Lake Toba and then to the southern shores of the lake (Toba-Holbung) in search of rice-growing lands similar to those found in their homeland. They later fanned out to the island of Samosir, to the highlands west of the lake (Humbang), to the Silindung valley, and then westward to the coast.49 In subsequent periods emigration from the Toba lands continued to occur in response to economic conditions. The process is known among the Toba Batak as marserak, whose original meaning was the migration within the territories of one’s marga or into lands not yet occupied by other marga.50

Based on marga origin tales, the point of dispersal was in the Toba home-land (specifically the island of Samosir and the areas to the west and south of Lake Toba) and the Pakpak region west of the lake.51 Daniel Perret suspects there is a direct correlation between European placement of the origins of the Batak peoples somewhere south of the lake and the strong presence there of the German mission. These European reports, he infers, may have influ-enced later marga tales that acknowledge the Toba lands as the origin of their group.52 There is, however, evidence in the form of a pollen core from Pea Sim Sim swamp near Lake Toba indicating minor forest clearance that could have started as early as 4500 BCE, with a major phase marked by an increase in grass pollen during the first millennium BCE.53 What this suggests is early human habitation in the Lake Toba area, which would lend support to the marga origin tales. As a result of the economic opportunities provided by Kota Cina and other east coast Sumatran ports between the eleventh and fourteenth centu-



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


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by Malayu. In the nineteenth century a Dutchman reported seeing a stone inscribed in Batak characters in the neighborhood of Kota Gelugur on the Kampar River. He explained that the stone was a commemorative tablet to honor the first village heads, assumed to be Batak in origin, since the people in this area exhibit unique traits that can be traced to the Mandailing. Until the middle of the thirteenth century, Neumann believes, the Batak occupied the northern half of the Pasoman mountains (Dolok Pasoman in Batak). These mountains were the source of the Rokan, Siak, and the Kampar Rivers and marked the southernmost border of the Batak lands. In support of this latter point, he notes that the word “Pasoman” indicates “the end of a world.”60 The fourteenth-century Lubuk Layang inscription found on the border of South Tapanuli near Padang Lawas dates from the time of Adityawarman and is believed to have marked a frontier post to guard against attacks from the presumably Batak kingdom of Panai.61

Ideas of a single Batak ethnicity were strengthened because many of those who moved into new lands had a common origin. Based on genealogies collected in Portibi and Mandailing in the early nineteenth century, Willer concludes that these areas were settled by migrants from the Toba homeland. Only after they had been in the area for a long time did a new noble lin-eage arrive claiming to be linked to the legendary rulers of Minangkabau.62 Other origin tales collected by Batara Sangti indicate that the Lubis and the Nasution, two of the largest marga in Angkola-Mandailing, stem from ances-tors in the Lake Toba region.63 The Lubis marga itself acknowledges that its founding ancestor Namora Pande Bosi, the great ironsmith, came originally from Toba. Also claiming an origin in Toba is the Rangkuti, one of the oldest marga in Mandailing. They believe that their ancestors were from the marga Parapat, part of the Borbor group whose datu are particularly feared for the potency of their black magic. This may account for the Rangkuti’s fame as the home of powerful datu.64 Smaller marga in Mandailing, such as the Pulungan, Parinduri, Rangkuti, and Borotan, all acknowledge a Toba origin. According to Keuning, two of the largest marga, the Mandailing Godang and Mandailing Julu, trace their ancestors to Toba lands.65

This movement of Batak people may have occurred between the eighth and the fourteenth centuries, when use of the camphor-benzoin routes to Sriwijaya/Malayu and Kota Cina was greatest. Once these groups became established in their new lands, others were encouraged to join them in response to economic opportunities that rose and fell in accordance with the rhythm of international trade in the Straits of Melaka. The emergence of pepper as an important export commodity proved to be a new factor contributing to further Batak emigration from the well-populated areas around Lake Toba. At about the fifteenth century black pepper (Piper nigrum, Linn.) gained a



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


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lands to serve the burgeoning market for rice. When the missionaries Burton and Ward visited the Silindung valley in 1824, they remarked that rice and sweet potatoes were widely grown.72 In the Karo lands, sawah fields irrigated by small streams were established in the dusun (the Karo plains from the foothills to the east coast), but sawah was also planted in the ravines in the highlands in addition to the more common ladang (dry rice). The Simalun-gun areas also supplemented ladang east of the Karei River with sawah in the ravines. While ladang was the preferred form of rice cultivation in the Purba district and some pockets adjoining Lake Toba, sawah also became common.73 In the lands south of Lake Toba, rice surpluses were created through the exten-sive cultivation of sawah in the fertile valleys of the lowlands of Mandailing Godang (Large Mandailing) and ladang in the highlands of Mandailing Julu (Little Mandailing).74 The sawah fields brought into production in the Padang Lawas region, particularly those in Ulu Barumun, were noted for their pro-ductivity.75 Much of the extra labor required to bring these new lands under cultivation would have come from the populous and experienced food pro-ducers in the Lake Toba region. While international demand for camphor, benzoin, pepper, and rice was a major stimulus for Batak migration (marserak), other factors contributed to the process. Among them were status enhancement through founding of new villages, desire for land, disputes in a family, safety from enemy threat, and the necessity of finding new lands for a burgeoning population.76 Other rea-sons for the Toba Batak migrations are long life and numerous descendants (hagabeon), prosperity and well-being (hamoraon), social status (hasanga-pon), ability to exercise authority (sahala harajaon), and the ability to achieve respect (sahala hasangapon).77

Immigration into the new expanded Batak world would have originated in the region of Lake Toba, but in time new groups would have emerged based on modifications to the marga system. Individuals became members of these new marga through migration, adoption, and birth from an “incestu-ous relationship” (i.e., a marriage between members of the same marga).78 It is noteworthy that lands now occupied by the Karo, the Simalungun, and the Angkola-Mandailing have far more examples of newly formed marga than in the Toba areas. Unlike these groups in the expanded Batak world, the Toba have extensive genealogies tracing the groups to the primeval ancestor, Si Raja Batak, whereas the Simalungun genealogies, for example, rarely go beyond three generations.79 When van der Tuuk was in the process of translating the Old Testament into Toba Batak in the mid-nineteenth century, he found that what interested the Toba most was the long biblical genealogies.80 In the fol-lowing century Keuning also noted the great Toba interest in and knowledge of the links among the marga. They would explain how the various marga



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 Merga82 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.

Indian Influence and Batak Identity

The Tamils were a formative influence on Batak society. Although a ninth-century inscription at Takuapa on the Malay Peninsula mentions the pres-ence of members of the Manikkiramam, a Tamil merchant guild, it was only after the successful Chola invasion of Sriwijayan territories in 1024–5, per-haps at the behest of Tamil traders, that there was a noticeable increase in Tamil economic activity in the region.87 In the 1088 Lobu Tua inscription described above, mention is made of local armed men, oarsmen, agents, and


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merchants serving the Tamil guild. Through daily intercourse between the Tamils and the local inhabitants in this thriving settlement, ideas would have been exchanged.88 Another direct consequence of the Chola invasion was the emergence of Kota Cina. Edwards McKinnon, the foremost expert on this historical site, has stated unequivocally: “I now see Kota Cina as a predomi-nantly Tamil trading settlement established by a community of merchants such as the Ainnurruvar [also known as the Ayyavole] who left an inscription at Lobu Tua.”89

In response to the rise of Kota Cina, there was a movement of some of the Tamil population from Barus toward the east coast. Edwards McKinnon found that the Sembiring marga of the Karo established itself on strategic points along the routes leading from the west to the east coasts, and that two of the villages, Deli Tua and Hamparan Perak, were located within easy reach of Kota Cina.90 The Sembiring marga is believed to have had direct ties with Tamil traders. The name “Sembiring,” meaning “the black one,” is often cited as a major clue. Certain names of the sub-marga—Colia, Berahmana, Pan-dia, Meliala, Depari, Muham, Pelawi, and Tekan—are clearly of south Indian derivation.91 A particular way of disposing of the dead, believed to have been borrowed from the Tamils, has been cited as further support for a southern Indian origin of the Sembiring marga. This practice, which involves second-ary cremation and setting the ashes adrift [the pekualuh ceremony], is found only in the Dairi lands in the west and among the Karo.92 There may also have been some Tamil influence on Karo ideas of village structure. Urung, the term for a village federation in Karo, is believed to be a form of organization found in medieval Tamil society.93 Another source of Indian ideas, particularly in the realm of magic and religion, was the Indianized Malayu communities. This influence is especially evident in the Padang Lawas complex. Some scholars contend that the presence of Tantrism in the Padang Lawas complex was due to Indian influence coming from the Malayu polity in the Minangkabau highlands via east Java. To support this view, they cite the famous fourteenth-century Adityawarman statue in the form of the god Bhairawa, one of the important deities in Kalacakra or Left-Handed Tantric Buddhism (see chapter 2). Inspiration for the statue can be traced directly to the Singasari court of east Java, where Adityawarman spent some years of his life and left an inscription in 1343. The model was a similar statue dated 1292 of the Bhairawa seated on a dais surrounded by skulls, with a crown, earrings, and a necklace of skulls. Tantric influence appears to have been maintained by Adityayarman’s son Anangavarman, who identified himself as Heruka, a demon figure.94 At Kampung Lubuk Layang in Rao, in the Pasaman district, a head-less weather-worn statue broken in two was found exhibiting Hindu elements, possibly Tantric, and similar to the guardian statues in Padang Lawas.95



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

Religion and the High Priests in the Service of Trade

Whatever the ultimate source of Indian religious inspiration in Padang Lawas, the evidence suggests that Indian magico-religious ideas were eagerly sought by the Batak to strengthen their belief systems in the ongoing effort to improve their spiritual and material well-being. Indigenous Batak religion, known as Perbegu or Pemena,101 was not overwhelmed by religious concepts from India, but came to coexist with them. It was therefore possible for the Batak to practice their own beliefs while also adopting Mahayana Buddhist, Saivite, and Tantric rituals.


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Parkin explains that Perbegu can be considered “a cult of the human soul,” which in a living person is known as “tondi” and for a dead person is generally called “begu.”102 Tondi is sometimes translated as “soul stuff” and is found in smaller quantities in animals and plants. It is present in every part of the human being, including the hair, fingernails, sweat, tears, urine, excrement, shadow, and even in the name of a person. The most powerful tondi resides in the placenta and amniotic fluids at birth, so great care is taken to dispose of them with the utmost secrecy. Ritual cannibalism provides the opportunity to strengthen one’s tondi at the expense of the victim by consum-ing those parts of the body potent with tondi, such as the blood, heart, palms of hands, and soles of the feet. When a person dies, the tondi becomes begu (ancestral spirit).103 The most powerful begu, and hence subject to the most frequent appeals, is the sombaon, an ancestral spirit who when living founded great communities.104 Through public feasts of homage, a begu is transformed to sumangot, then to sombaon.105 The ultimate test of potency was the pos-session of sahala, which can be succinctly translated as the “manifestation of supernatural power.”106 Sahala is manifested in successful economic and other ventures, numerous children and grandchildren, influential relatives, skill in oratory, or bravery in battle. Respect (hasangapon) accompanies one possessed of sahala, while refusal to obey and venerate such a person courts disaster.107 This “cult of the human soul” became an important marker of Batak identity and a recognizable ethnic boundary with their neighbors. From early times, religion was closely linked to trade among the Batak. Religious edifices were built along trade routes to protect the trader from adverse human and natural forces and thus assure the economic success of the venture. Edwards McKinnon notes that from Padang Lawas southward is a line of candi or religious temples marking a route from Tapanuli down to the Minangkabau lands. More candi are found along rivers used to gain access to the east coast. The Padang Lawas or Panai complex arose due to its strate-gic location at the crossroads of several riverine and land routes. The ancient kingdom of Panai, sufficiently important to have warranted an attack by Chola forces in 1024 –5, benefited from its links to the interior areas through the important transinsular portage in the Panai-Barumun river valley.108

In the Padang Lawas site, as well as in the Tamil settlements at Lobu Tua and Kota Cina, religious temples are prominent. With the withdrawal of the Tamil population and/or their absorption into the Batak community, per-haps after the demise of Kota Cina in the fourteenth century, the candi were replaced by tombs erected to honor important Batak ancestors (sombaon). In the late nineteenth century, “Malayu” (most likely Batak who moved easily between two worlds, perhaps more properly termed “Malayu Batak”) horse traders going to the Karo plateau from the east coast made offerings at the



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


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was told that the Sisingamangaraja could go seven months without food and three months without sleep because the gods supplied his every need.116

The divine origins of the Sisingamangaraja made him an ideal intermedi-ary between the gods and the human community. He could make peace, create laws, and expose both truth and lies—qualities that made him unsurpassed in settling disputes. If a war continued unabated, he sent a staff as a sign that a ceasefire should be declared and the parties submit to his mediation.117 Inter-vention in disputes took place not only among the Batak, but also between the Batak and the outside world.118 Early European observers believed that these high priests exercised very little authority because there were no visible signs of political power. Heine-Geldern, for example, acknowledged that the Sisin-gamangaraja was effective in settling quarrels and mediating peace between warring parties but concluded, “otherwise his political power was weak.”119 What he failed to realize was that the Sisingamangaraja and the other high priest figures exercised effective control not so much through the use of force as through the threat of supernatural sanction contained in their words, let-ters, and widely recognized spiritual powers.120

Although Lance Castles characterizes precolonial Batak society as “state-less,” there was a hierarchy of institutions under these high priests that pro-vided a form of supra-village unity. The basic social unit was the huta, a village, with a varying number of huta forming a horja, and a number of horja con-stituting a bius.121 The parbaringin were the religious officials under the high priest’s jurisdiction, with the chief official in the bius (known variously as raja bius, raja oloan, or raja na ualu) chosen by the heads of the horja.122 At the apex of this hierarchy stood the Sisingamangaraja, who instituted the bius markets and legitimized the officials through letters of appointments. Among the responsibilities of the bius was the hosting of the “large market” (onan na godang or onan bius), where the “great council” (rapot bolon) mediated dis-putes and made binding decisions on important public issues.123

Situmorang traces the origins of the bius to the need for management of the irrigation system, and hence the organization of agriculture and the implementation of laws. The bius is usually described as a “sacrifice commu-nity” because the culmination of its activities is the annual agricultural ritual and sacrifice officiated by the parbaringin. In addition to assuring the fertility of the harvests, the sacrifice provides the occasion for community integra-tion and the renewal of commitment to its customs and traditions. Perhaps the most important agricultural function of the bius was the promotion of ongoing feasts and rituals throughout the year devoted to the cycle of rice growing and the appeasement of spirits.124 The network of bius organizations throughout the land provided a supra-village structure based on a melding of economic, political, and religious authority.



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


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Ward reported the influence of the Sisingamangaraja who was considered by the inhabitants as “bertuah” or “invested with supernatural power.” His rep-resentatives, whom Burton and Ward believed to be village chiefs from the surrounding districts, were known as parbaringin. They received their appoint-ments from the Sisingamangaraja and had the important responsibility of maintaining the viability of the markets.129

By the nineteenth century it was possible to conceive of a heartland and an extended network of communities forming a single Batak cultural unity, promoted and strengthened by the activities of the high priests. Although the latter had arisen among the Toba, their influence extended to the other areas where the Batak had settled. The Ompu Palti Raja was the high priest with greatest influence among those in the Simalungun lands involved in the trade between Lake Toba and the east coast, while the Jonggi Manaor’s area of jurisdiction was in the lands between the interior and Barus. Of these three, however, the Sisingamangaraja exercised the greatest influence among the Batak communities in general. Representatives bore their insignia and exer-cised authority on their behalf because of the awe and veneration with which the Batak regarded these high priests.130 As the Batak became increasingly involved in international trade, these magico-religious figures became the foci and facilitators of the production and delivery of rice and forest products between the interior and the coasts. Their expanded functions contributed to the evolution of a supra-village authority and a growing sense of belonging to a single ethnic group under the leadership of the high priests and their religious network.

Ethnicization of the Batak

As the Batak moved toward both coasts and southward from Lake Toba in response to economic opportunities, they came into direct competition with their neighbors. In the face of this development, the institution of the high priests was invoked to promote ethnic unity. The acknowledgment of the Sisingamangaraja as the overarching spiritual authority over all Batak may have been a deliberate economic decision by the Batak to compete effectively against the newly ethnicized Malayu, Minangkabau, and Acehnese. Through the appointment of the parbaringin, a hierarchy was created whose major responsibility was the maintenance of agriculture and the marketplace. If not the threat of supernatural sanction, then the promise of economic advantage assured the appeal of the high priests. A European report from the early nineteenth century confirms the elevated status and veneration enjoyed by the Sisingamangaraja among the Batak. In a letter to Marsden, Raffles wrote that among the Batak was



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 pusta ha 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


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archaeological finds at Padang Lawas. Yet despite these cultural incursions, the Batak were not absorbed into the expansive Malayu language and culture.135 The survival and persistence of the pustaha tradition may have been a delib-erate political choice at a time when the Batak were becoming increasingly involved in economic rivalry with their neighboring communities. As Pollock so succinctly explained, “Vernacular literary languages do not ‘emerge’ like buds or butterflies, they are made.”136 A Batak world was thus inscribed and circumscribed by the pustaha, which not only performed a magico-religious role but also became an important marker of Batak identity. Often in the introduction to the pustaha, a chain of transmission of knowledge from the legendary founder to the current writer is listed. Teachers and pupils from different regions traveled together throughout Batak areas because their services were sought everywhere.137 When the intrepid Italian traveler Elio Modigliani journeyed through the Toba Batak area in 1890, he befriended the great datu Guru Somalaing. From him, Modigliani was able to obtain a text from the “wandering datu” of the Simanjuntak marga intended for his pupils belonging to the Siagian marga. The itinerant quality of these datu is emphasized in another of Modigliani’s collected texts, where one of the great masters is called “Singa Mortandang,” or “the wandering lion.”138 It was commonplace for pupils to travel long distances to study with famous datu.139

Through long and intensive study the datu acquired an incomparable knowledge of the future, the characteristics of plants, and the wisdom con-tained in the writings of the ancestors. The wandering datu was described as not simply a religious practitioner, but also “a man of science who embod-ies all current available historical, medical, theological and economic knowl-edge.” Through his mastery of the contents of the pustaha, he became the primary source of old tales, legends, and traditions from which the Batak gained an understanding of their ritual ceremonies.140 This latter function continues to survive among the Batak today. Ginting describes a Karo guru (the Karo equivalent of the datu) who can “recite in a sing-song tone the old legends and myths which are important in the performance of a ritual so that the participants understand its background and can therefore experience the ritual more intensely.”141 The datu was also able to use his knowledge of plants and the spirit world to concoct the various medicines to treat and to prevent illnesses, conduct special rituals to ward off evil or recall a spirit which had wandered away from a body, and prescribe potions to assist in affairs of the heart and to give self-confidence.142

Because of the datu’s ability to assure the well-being of the community in so many different ways, he gained the confidence and support of the people. He thus became an influential advocate and ideal conduit of information



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


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from the latter half of the fourteenth century the Javanese regarded the Batak areas as part of the Malayu world. Involvement in international trade encouraged Batak responsiveness to political and economic shifts that had a direct impact on their livelihood. While Sriwijaya was still the dominant entrepot in the Straits of Melaka, the Batak used routes from the camphor and benzoin forests to the northwest and southeast of Lake Toba southward to Padang Lawas, then onward to the Batang Hari and eventually to Sriwijaya on the Musi River in Palembang. When Sriwijaya was conquered by the rival Chola dynasty, the Batak sought other outlets for their products. The rise of Kota Cina on the east coast and the re-emergence of Barus on the west coast as ports for the export of camphor and benzoin drew the Batak toward both coasts. Though Kota Cina disap-peared sometime in the fourteenth century, in later centuries other east coast kingdoms came to provide an outlet for the export of Batak forest resins and rice. Batak groups sought to profit from international trade by following these routes and settling within proximity of these export centers. Another major economic stimulus to Batak migrations was the growing demand for rice among pepper growers in Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula beginning in the fifteenth century. To meet this new demand, there were migrations from the Toba region in search of new rice lands to the south and east of Lake Toba. Crucial to the success of Batak involvement in international trade was their religious institutions. Candi and ancestral tombs were judiciously erected along major trade routes to assure spiritual protection and success for Batak traders. With the increasing tempo of trade and the dispersal of Batak communities from the Lake Toba region, there was a need for some form of mediating power among the scattered communities. This was provided by the institu-tion of the high priest, which originated in the Toba lands but gained support in the other Batak areas. Through their claims of supernatural powers, access to agricultural deities, and creation of a network of officials and markets, the high priests were instrumental in the promotion of Batak trade until their demise in the early twentieth century. The activities of the datu/guru helped to assure ongoing support for the high priests among the Batak in the preco-lonial period. As different ethnic groups became increasingly competitive in interna-tional trade, particularly between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries, every avenue was explored to gain advantage over others, including ethniciza-tion. The Batak became “ethnicized” by stressing cultural discontinuities with their neighbors, particularly the Malayu. A Batak acknowledged origins in the Toba highlands, a belief in Perbegu/Pemena, compliance with the author-ity of the high priests, and reliance on the knowledge and spiritual powers of the datu/guru and their pustaha. In the early modern period the option


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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 Minang kabau, 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.


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Chapter 6

The Orang Laut and the Malayu

T he Orang Laut are well known in the history of South-east Asia because they are associated with trade and piracy. The strong negative image of piracy has partially

defined and delimited the Orang Laut’s ethnic boundaries. Yet it should be noted that in the past when the Orang Laut were an integral part of a Malayu polity, they were proud of their status and the high offices held by their lead-ers. They were arguably the most valued subjects or allies of the Malayu rulers because of their indispensable role in promoting international trade. Their intimate knowledge of their home seascapes enabled them to gather edible seaweeds, pearls, and turtle shells for the China market. But their most valu-able contribution to Malayu rulers was maintaining security in the sea lanes and in “persuading” international merchant vessels to frequent the ruler’s port. In return, the Orang Laut were honored with titles, social status, and access to foreign goods. Only with the major shift in Malayu economies to agricultural and extractive industries in the late nineteenth century did this profitable complementary relationship end. The historical shifts in the eco-nomic and social fortunes of the Orang Laut within the Malayu world, and the corresponding adjustments made in their ethnic identities, are the subject of this chapter. In the ethnography of the Orang Laut, three divisions are usually men-tioned: the Sama-Bajau, the Orang Laut, and the Moken/Moklen. The Sama-Bajau are located on the northeastern coast of Borneo, the Sulu archipelago, and in smaller groups in Sulawesi, the Lesser Sundas, and Maluku. The Sama-Bajau will not be discussed because they are not associated with the Straits of Melaka, which is the focus of this study. Nevertheless, many of the obser-vations made about the Orang Laut and the Moken/Moklen would prob-ably apply equally well to the Sama-Bajau.1 “Orang Laut” is the term usually


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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.


The Orang Laut and the Malayu 175

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


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boats.10 Another explanation for their wandering lifestyle on the sea is found in an epic tale of their sacred ancestor, the golden-haired queen, who was ruler of a prosperous land-based people. In this story she falls in love with a visiting Muslim Malayu who teaches the Moken about fire and rice. They are married, and on their wedding night, spent on his father-in-law’s boat, the groom is entranced by the queen’s youngest sister and sleeps with her. This act of betrayal so angers the queen that she expels the people from her land and condemns them to live forever on boats in search of food.11

The Urak Lawoik and the Moken/Moklen have been very little studied, and much of the information about them has come from modern ethnogra-phies. In reconstructing their past, I have relied on an understanding of the trade patterns in the areas where the Urak Lawoik and the Moken/Moklen operate and have assumed that they had certain practices in common with the Orang Laut groups at the southern end of the Straits of Melaka. Based on settlement patterns reconstructed from oral traditions referring to the prehistorical period and those observed in more recent times (1989), Patte-more and Hogan postulate that the Urak Lawoik originated in the south and then moved north, with the islands of Rawai, Sireh, Peepee, and Sepum their northernmost limit. The Moken, on the other hand, were originally located farther north and then moved southward to the Urak Lawoik’s northern lim-its, though they rarely ventured beyond Surin and Phra Thong island.12

Information on the Orang Laut at the other end of the Straits of Melaka is comparatively richer than those for the sea peoples in the north. This is because the former played a prominent role historically in the Malayu mari-time kingdoms and are therefore far more visible in the documents. While the evidence suggests that the Moken and Urak Lawoik were also involved with some of the northern Malayu polities, there is too little information to be able to reconstruct a detailed study of their activities. For this reason, this chapter focuses primarily on the Orang Laut found in the islands and coasts at the southern entrance of the straits. The languages spoken by the Orang Laut in the straits area belong to the Austronesian family, and variations are attributed to a number of factors, including slow expansion and adaptation to the environment, intergroup contact, and influences from external civilizations. They, like the Orang Asli (chapter 7), are said to occupy the “cultural fringes of the Indo-Malaysian world.”13 Yet in past centuries both were regarded as important components of lowland societies, with skills and economic contributions that comple-mented those of the Malayu. For this reason, considerable care was given by the Malayu lords to maintain and strengthen ties with these groups. The Orang Laut in particular responded with a devotion that often surpassed that of Malayu subjects themselves.



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.

The Orang Laut Seascape

The areas frequented by the Orang Laut are located principally in the numer-ous islands in the Riau-Lingga archipelagoes and the southern portion of the South China Sea. The difficulty of navigating through this Orang Laut seascape is captured in an early nineteenth-century description of the Riau-Lingga archipelagoes:

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


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through the Singapore Straits, but also southward through the Riau Straits. Ships sailing on these currents became prey to Orang Laut groups operating in teams, particularly in the Bolang Straits, although there were many areas in the islands south of Singapore that provided ideal conditions for Orang Laut attacks on passing ships.16

In addition to the treacherous maritime conditions in the region south of the Straits of Melaka, other dangers faced ships intending to reach the early Malayu entrepots by entering the mouths of the Musi River in Palembang and the Batang Hari in Jambi. The Batang Hari was difficult to locate because of the absence of any prominent landmark and because the mouth was divided into a number of tributaries flowing through the marshy delta. Only two of these tributaries enabled large ships to enter, and great skill and knowledge of the river were necessary to navigate through the many sandbanks that lay close to the surface. Equally difficult were the conditions on the Musi River. Knowl-edgeable native pilots were needed to guide foreign vessels to the principal settlements located upriver. From early times the Orang Laut were employed to perform this vital function, and they were strategically positioned not only to guide ships but also to provide early warning of any intended attack from the sea. The Orang Laut village of Simpang in Jambi was located some thirty kilometers (18.6 miles) from the sea at the junction of the two tributaries that allowed access to the Batang Hari, while in Palembang the Orang Laut village of Sungsang lay near the mouth of the Musi.17

The Orang Laut formed the first line of defense for the Johor rulers whenever they shifted their capitals to the Riau-Lingga archipelagoes, the home waters of many of Johor’s Orang Laut.18 An 1857 treaty signed between the Dutch government and the sultan of Lingga lists some 467 islands as being under the sultan’s jurisdiction. These numbers increased further in 1864 when other islands, particularly in the archipelagoes in the South China Sea, were documented by the Dutch for the first time.19 Many others would have been left uncounted, either because they were regarded as too small and insignificant or simply because they were reefs which only emerged at low tide. Yet the Malayu themselves had special terms to identify differences in the “islands.” “Tokong” refers to any small islet with only a few or no trees, and “malang” to rocks that are not totally submerged at high tide.20 The Orang Laut would have had even finer distinctions to identify the various “seamarks” for safe navigation and the search for sea products. In the nineteenth century only a few main islands in the West Anambas or Jemaja group in the South China Sea were inhabited and cultivated, while “all the other islands [were] uninhabited and only visited by the Orang Laut.”21 This comment reflects the general view that a sedentary population, preferably involved in agricultural activity, was necessary for a piece of land to be considered “inhabited.”


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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



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


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Laut in Singapore.30 In the Hikayat Siak he is the leader of the Orang Laut who save the famous Raja Kecil, the purported son of the Johor ruler assassinated in 1699 and the eventual founder of the Siak dynasty.31

In von Ranzow’s report, the suku (“tribe” in the Orang Laut context) Galang were apparently regarded as pre-eminent in the Orang Laut hierarchy. They numbered some thirteen hundred people and their principal task was to carry out “piratical” activities, though their women were engaged in the profitable trade of gathering and preparing tripang for sale to the Chinese. Yet what von Ranzow and the Dutch regarded as “piracy,” the ruler of Johor con-sidered laudable service performed by the suku Galang in controlling the sea lanes at his behest. Other smaller groups were boat builders (suku Gelang and Gelam), woodcutters (suku Gelang, Gelam, and Ladi), preparers of kajang mats (suku Mantan), collectors of ebony and eaglewood (suku Temiang, Muru, Pekaka, and Sugi), and sago producers (suku Buru). The suku Tambus were considered different because they lacked a “fixed residence,” engaged in coastal piracy from Temiang to Sugi, and were enemies of the other Orang Laut.32 There were sub-suku, including some on the Sumatran coast opposite Riau, whose identities were only known to the larger groups and were, like the major suku, named after islands, rivers, or creeks.33

In 1854 Netscher tried to bring some general order to the bewildering numbers of Orang Laut groups by making a distinction between two types: the Orang Rakyat, who were “part of the population that wandered about, living not in fixed villages but on the periphery mostly on boats,” and the so-called “native Malayu tribes that are divided into suku as in Sumatra.”34 In this division he tried to characterize a group by the degree to which it adhered to a nomadic lifestyle. Yet later he remarked that two suku, the Orang Buru and the Orang Tambus, both listed in the second category, lived on the sea and “in their lifestyle have some similarity with the Bajau of Celebes.”35 Begbie had earlier noted that the Orang Tambus “have not even a fixed abode, but wan-derers [sic] like sea gypsies, from island to island, shifting with the monsoon, and finding shelter in every creek.”36 It is clear that Netscher’s categories were inadequate in explaining the many and subtle distinctions among the Orang Laut groups. Schot’s 1883 description of the duties of Orang Laut reveals certain differ-ences with von Ranzow’s account. He states that the suku Ladi were provided with lances in order to perform guard duty for the Riau-Lingga ruler, and that they also served as rowers in wartime. The Orang Laut fighters came from the suku Galang, Gelam, Sekanna, and Sugi, but Bugis descendants held the most important ranks in the fighting force. They were under the direct orders of the Bugis Raja Muda of Riau. While all four suku had to provide rowers when required, the suku Gelam had the further duty of providing boats. The suku



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


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mattered. The Dutch noted that in disputes among Orang Laut over fishing rights in an area, the group with the larger population invariably gained the upper hand.39 Except for collecting sea products and guarding the sea lanes, the other tasks entrusted to the Orang Laut were directly related to the royal household, from conveying royal missives to foreign rulers to caring for the ruler’s hunt-ing dogs. Certain historical incidents suggest that the Orang Laut’s relation-ship with the ruler was far more intimate than that with the rest of the ruler’s subjects and was more in the nature of a lord and his or her personal retainers. When the Orang Laut from Singapore heard of the death in 1685 of Sultan Ibrahim Syah of Johor, they shaved their heads in mourning.40 The 1699 regi-cide in Johor also provoked an Orang Laut response far stronger than those from the Malayu subjects themselves.41 The only explanation for this relation-ship is given in the Sejarah Melayu, where the Orang Laut remind Permaisura that “[w]e too belong to thy ancient lordship of Palembang; we have always gone with thee.”42 In this simple remark the Orang Laut justified their loyalty to the rulers because it was an ancient bond established and hence legitimized by the ancestors. This tradition would have encouraged the formation of an Orang Laut collective identity because of the special status it enjoyed with the Malayu ruler. The Orang Laut, however, were never united under one leader, and rival-ries and enmities did occur. In the nineteenth century, it was reported that the suku Enam, who were located along the Mandau and Gaong Rivers in southeast Sumatra, often roamed the archipelago and came into conflict with other Orang Laut groups.43 Other factors that militated against the creation of a single Orang Laut leader were the strong identification of the various suku to their specific areas of exploitation and their fierce devotion to their own elders. Yet despite such differences, some sense of Orang Laut identity did develop because the groups shared a common loyalty to a powerful Malayu patron and were valued for their specialized skills associated with the sea. Their favored status with the Malayu ruler encouraged the maintenance of a lifestyle and collective identity that clearly distinguished Orang Laut from Malayu.

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



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


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Hamba Raja of Mapar, under whose jurisdiction belong all the so-called Orang Laut from the islands in Lingga’s waters, and the Raja Long from the island of Bulang, under whom are placed the Orang Laut of Galang, Bulang, and some other islands lying in or near the entrance of the Straits of Melaka.” For raiding expeditions, these two Orang Laut leaders and their people acted under the orders of a Malayu with the title of “panglima,” who provided the boats, weapons, and supplies for the expedition and shared in the booty.49

The Malayu lords were quick to reward Orang Laut service but found it difficult to punish insubordination because of the Orang Laut’s highly mobile lifestyle. Acts of Orang Laut piracy without Malayu direction did occur and were often condoned, but all this changed with the signing of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824. Pressure from both the British and the Dutch to eradicate piracy eventually forced the Malayu lords to make or be seen to be making a greater effort to cooperate. The Tuhfat al-Nafis describes one expedition in the mid-1830s led by a member of the Raja Muda family based in Riau. His task was to visit the various Orang Laut groups between Riau and Lingga and satisfy the Europeans that everything was being done to control Orang Laut piracy:

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



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


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The Orang Laut raids extended as far east as the north coast of Java and as far west as Ujung Salang (Junk Ceylon), but their primary hunting grounds were the shores of the Straits of Melaka and the islands to the south. In Febru-ary, March, and April, the Orang Laut collected edible seaweed for the China market. By June, with the change of monsoons and the onset of fine weather, they set off in different directions grouped according to individual settlement units or by suku. A group normally consisted of about twenty boats, each capa-ble of carrying about a hundred people, though even larger expeditions have been recorded. Some notion of the scale of these Orang Laut raiding activi-ties can be obtained from a 1669 Dutch report, which claimed that the Jambi Orang Laut alone had seized and brought back more than twenty-five hundred people. The Orang Laut then returned to their respective settlements in Octo-ber to await more favorable weather in February to resume a new cycle.57

The valuable service performed by the Orang Laut gave them consider-able leverage in their dealings with the Malayu lords. The rulers of the Malayu kingdoms on both sides of the Straits of Melaka competed for the loyalty of the Orang Laut and had to be ever vigilant in preventing their being “poached” by a neighboring lord. One way the Malayu lords sought to strengthen their rela-tionship was in satisfying the desire of Orang Laut leaders for Malayu titles and accoutrements of office to “legitimize” their activities. Equally important was the assurance that the Malayu lord would provide a reliable market for their goods. The turmoil that followed the 1699 regicide in Johor encour-aged some of the Orang Laut to abandon the usurping Bendahara family and to seek new legitimation from the Palembang ruler.58 After the upheaval in Johor, Palembang’s stable marketplace would have been appealing to the Orang Laut. The valuable but at times volatile relationship between the Orang Laut and the Malayu lords was part of the politics of the Straits of Melaka. The Malayu kingdoms that bordered the straits were all reliant on the services of the Orang Laut as guides for ships maneuvering through the dangerous waterway or seeking a safe channel through treacherous sandbars and hid-den entrances to rivers leading to the Malayu royal capitals. This function of the Orang Laut was perhaps the most valuable to the Malayu lords because it assured that foreign traders would continue to patronize their ports and therefore guarantee the prosperity of the polity. In addition, the Orang Laut constituted the major naval force of the rulers and an important supplier of export products and slaves. Understandably, therefore, there was a stiff rivalry among the Malayu lords in the vicinity of the straits to seek the cooperation of Orang Laut groups. Raids on passing ships in the northern end of the Straits of Melaka would have been conducted by the Urak Lawoik and the Moken, particularly in ear-



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


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later compensated by the orang kaya with a prized rarity seized in the raid, which in the nineteenth century was anything European. Some arrangements were seasonal, as was the case between one orang kaya and the Mapar Orang Laut, where the latter were expected to go on extended raids along the coast of Java at the end of the west monsoon. Generally the Orang Laut conducted their piratical activities at sea, but if they were unsuccessful, they would go ashore at night to seize unsuspecting men, women, and children for the slave market.66 The Orang Laut would also fish so that if the raids were unsuccessful they did not return empty-handed.67 At times, groups cooperated in trapping unsuspecting ships passing through the notorious Bolang Straits in the Riau-Lingga archipelagoes.68 This widespread practice of cooperation between Malayu lords and the Orang Laut in raiding expeditions was one reason the VOC fostered a close relationship with the Johor ruler in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Dutch believed that the ruler of Johor was the key to maintaining control over Orang Laut activities and hence assure the peaceful flow of trade through the Straits of Melaka.69

The arrangements made in the early nineteenth century between the Temenggong of Johor and his Orang Laut clients offer another view of this relationship. The Temenggong provided an advance in money, called ayuman, to enable the leader of the expedition to defray costs for equipment, etc. At the successful conclusion of an expedition, the Orang Laut were expected to return the amount plus a 50 percent interest. In addition, the Temenggong was given a present, artillery, guns above a certain size, ammunition, kerisses and other weapons, female captives, and the hull of any boat seized. The Orang Laut for their part retained all other booty, but more importantly they were provided legitimacy for their activities and protection by the Temenggong.70

While the patron-client relationship between Malayu rulers and notables with specific Orang Laut groups appears to have been the norm, there are also frequent examples of Orang Laut acting on their own accord. In a volatile maritime environment where the skills of the Orang Laut were valued and even essential for the prosperity of Malayu polities, the Orang Laut were never fully constrained by their loyalty to just one ruler. In 1629, the victims seized from a Cambodian ship were divided between Jambi and Palembang. To complicate matters further, the Orang Laut came to serve individual princes and were at times even emboldened to attack royal vessels.71 Orang Laut vio-lence at sea has been termed a legitimate form of Malayu statecraft when it occurs as part of the patron-client arrangement, but as piracy without such legitimation. These independent Orang Laut activities grew more frequent during periods of upheaval in the Malayu kingdoms, when political condi-tions disrupted Malayu–Orang Laut cooperation. Under such conditions, the tendency was for Orang Laut groups to transfer their loyalties or to forgo any



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.

The Orang Laut in the History of Sriwijaya and Its Heirs

The limited sources for the Sriwijaya/Malayu period provide too little infor-mation to describe the links between the Orang Laut and the rulers except in general terms. It is believed that during the heyday of Sriwijaya from the seventh to the eleventh centuries, the Orang Laut were responsible for guard-ing the shipping lanes and encouraging traders to frequent Sriwijaya’s ports. The details and nature of the relationship are never explicitly stated and can only be surmised from arrangements in a later period. In nineteenth-century Johor, for example, it was said that “the sea peoples possessed the seas and


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what floated on them by hereditary feudal right from the Sultan of Johor.”77 But it is not known whether this statement is also applicable for the earlier period. Only from the sixteenth century does material provide more than simply a bare mention of the role of the Orang Laut in Malayu kingdoms. The Sejarah Melayu and Suma Oriental indicate that the Orang Laut and the Malayu shared the desire to find a suitable site for an entrepot (chapter 2). The Palembang prince Sri Tri Buana/Permaisura was a refugee seeking a new home, and the Orang Laut were searching for a new market for their goods and a new lord to provide legitimacy to their activities. To cement their common endeavor, marriages were arranged between their leading families.78 After the decline of the Malayu kingdoms along the southeastern coast of Sumatra in the fourteenth century, there was no single important entrepot that could re-establish the order and the facilities necessary to attract international trade. The former Sriwijaya site in Palembang was in the hands of Chinese pirates, and no powerful Malayu or any land-based ruler could offer the Orang Laut a special place in the kingdom and provide a market for their goods. Any member of the royal family, particularly from Palembang, would have raised the hopes of the Orang Laut for the re-establishment of an entrepot and the restoring of past relationships. It was such hopes that may have encouraged the Orang Laut to take such an active role in the peregrinations of the Palem-bang prince. This partnership born of mutual needs and benefits informed the long historical relationship between the Orang Laut and the Malayu. The valuable function of the Orang Laut in protecting and promoting Sriwijaya and Malayu trade is documented in early Chinese and Arab sources. A similar function would have probably been played by the Urak Lawoik and the Moken at the northern end of the Straits of Melaka, though direct evi-dence is more difficult to obtain. The origin tale of the Urak Lawoik and the Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa from Kedah imply a close relationship between the rulers of Kedah and the sea people. Since it is known that the ports in “Kalah” formed the western termini of the transisthmian/transpeninsular route, it is likely that the Urak Lawoik and the Moken had a role in promoting this trade in the first millennium and a half CE. With their presence on Lang-kawi and the neighboring coastline, they would have been ideally situated to patrol the northern entrance to the straits. In a recent archaeological reconstruction of the early indigenous inhabit-ants of the Malay Peninsula, Bulbeck draws an intriguing conclusion regarding the offshore islands (known collectively as Pulau Kelumpang) near the mouth of Kuala Selinsing in Perak. These islands were occupied from the beginning of the Common Era and their inhabitants had access to imported beads and ceramics. Sometime after 500 CE they themselves produced beads made of glass and semiprecious stones. Bulbeck believes that a maritime exchange net-



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


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subject (hamba orang Sayung),” the Tuhfat states that Badang was one of the sea people.84 The authors of the Tuhfat, Raja Ahmad and his son Raja Ali Haji, were prominent members of the Raja Muda court in Riau and were probably repeating a popular tale current in the islands. The Orang Laut also figure prominently in Pires’ Suma Oriental, which relied on both Malayu traditions collected after the Portuguese conquest of Melaka in 1511, as well as on the experiences of the Portuguese in Asia, including Pires’ own. Pires writes that “the Celates [Orang Laut]85 . . . are cor-sairs [corsairos] in small light craft . . . who go out pillaging in their boats and fish, and are sometimes on land and sometimes at sea, of whom there are a large number now in our time. They carry blow-pipes with their small arrows of black hellebore which, as they touch blood, kill, as they often did to our Portuguese in the enterprise and destruction of the famous city of Malacca [Melaka], which is very famous among the nations.” He further explains that they lived “near Singapore and also near Palembang,” and when they accom-panied the Palembang prince in exile they came to live also in Karimun and Melaka.86

This is the first time direct mention is made of the Orang Laut role in assisting the Melaka ruler to defend the citadel. What impressed Pires was their use of blowguns and poison darts, which he describes as being highly lethal, thus adding to the Orang Laut’s reputation as feared fighters.87 The Orang Laut’s specific responsibility was the ruler’s safety, for Pires’ states that “when Paramjçura [Permaisura] fled from Palembang the Orang Laut followed his company and thirty of them went along together protecting his life.”88 Safe-guarding the ruler was a task the Orang Laut would have considered essential to re-establishing the conditions for the revival of a successful entrepot. The relatively rapid emergence of Melaka as a leading entrepot could very well have been the result of the experience brought by the Palembang prince and his followers as heirs of Sriwijaya. Wheatley earlier proposed such a link when he concluded that “Malacca [Melaka] was founded as, rather than developed into, a trading port.”89

In the Suma Oriental, the prince who succeeds his father as ruler in Palem-bang refuses to assume the Javanese title of “sangaji,” which was imposed on Palembang rulers by Majapahit. His influence in “neighboring lands,” indicat-ing the many islands that were part of the Orang Laut domain, encourages him to declare his independence from Majapahit and to assume the new title of Permaisura.90 The impending arrival of a Majapahit punitive expedition forces him to place a thousand men and their wives on junks and native boats, while he remains on land with some six thousand men to resist the Javanese. When the battle is clearly lost, the Permaisura sails off with his followers to the islands.91



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


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thee; if the land [in Bertam] seem good to thee, it is right that thou shouldst give us alms for our good intentions, and that our work should not be without reward.” He should then call himself king and give them “honor and assis-tance.” Once the Permaisura is established and becomes ruler in Bertam, he makes hereditary nobles of the eighteen Orang Laut, plus their sons and wives. “Hence it is,” says Pires, “that all the mandarins [fidallguos, nobles] of Malacca are descended from these.”95 At the time of the arrival of the first Portuguese to Melaka in 1509, according to Pires, the Laksamana and the Bendahara of the kingdom were the fifth grandson descended of the original Orang Laut ennobled by the Permaisura.96 The Permaisura is succeeded by his son, Iskan-dar Syah, who moves downriver to the coast with his Orang Laut father-in-law and three hundred followers to participate in international trade. He estab-lishes the port city of Melaka, and within three years the population increases to two thousand and Melaka begins its transformation into the most impor-tant entrepot in the region.97

It is this unique relationship between the Orang Laut and the ancient rulers of Sriwijaya/Malayu, reaffirmed by their descendants in Melaka and in subsequent Malayu kingdoms, that proved a lasting legacy well into the nine-teenth century. What is striking in Pires’ account is the claim that a sizeable number of Orang Laut were ennobled by the Melaka ruler and that the two most important offices of the Melaka kingdom, the Laksamana and the Ben-dahara, were held by Orang Laut and their descendants until 1509, or just two years prior to the seizure of Melaka by the Portuguese. If, as argued earlier, Pires relied on Malayu sources in reconstructing this early period of Melaka, the important role of the Orang Laut in the kingdom was still acknowledged at the time of the Portuguese conquest and may have been edited out in sub-sequent Malayu histories. The Bendahara was the highest nonroyal position in the land, and the early rulers of Melaka married the daughters of the Bendahara to reaffirm the special ties between the the Malayu and the Orang Laut at a very precarious time in the history of the kingdom. There was the ongoing threat from Maja-pahit, but the more immediate danger was Ayutthaya, which was founded in 1351. It rose to become the leading entrepot in the region and rightly regarded Melaka as a threat to its status. The intervention of the Chinese emperor, who warned Ayutthaya against attacking Melaka, was probably a key factor in ensuring Melaka’s continuing existence.98 Under these circumstances, main-taining the Orang Laut as loyal subjects would have been a major priority of the Melaka rulers. After the fall of Melaka to the Portuguese in 1511, the last ruler of the kingdom fled upriver to the royal residence in Bertam. From there he went to Muar, then upriver via the Penarikan route to the Pahang River, then down-



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


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and, according to Pires, was initially filled by an important Orang Laut leader. In the Sejarah Melayu, one of the Bendaharas was such an influential figure that he rose for no one but the ruler, and ships’ captains “from the regions above the wind prayed for a safe voyage to Melaka and for the Bendahara Sri Maharaja.”104 The Laksamana was another powerful official in the Melaka and Johor kingdoms whose function was often likened to an admiral of the fleet. Since the fleets of both Melaka and Johor were predominantly manned by Orang Laut, it is not surprising that the most famous Laksamana in Malayu history, Hang Tuah, is depicted in the Hikayat Hang Tuah as being originally a member of the “sakai,” a reference in the Hikayat to the Orang Laut. In the major confrontation between the Bendahara and the Laksamana in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, the role of the Orang Laut as guardians of the ruler is made abundantly clear. The Laksamana and his sons had managed to arrogate all the major positions of power in the kingdom, thereby relegating the Bendahara family to a minor subsidiary role. As regent to the young Johor ruler, the Laksamana was placed in an ideal position to pursue the goals of both the kingdom and his family. What became apparent in the episode was the importance of the person of the ruler. As long as the Laksamana retained official as well as physical control of the young ruler, he remained unopposed in the kingdom. A graphic account in contemporary Dutch accounts describes how the Laksamana and his family were removed from power. One day the Bendahara faction somehow managed to kidnap the young ruler. When the Laksamana family realized what had happened, they understood the gravity of the situation and sought to escape by boat with all their accumulated riches and the kingdom’s regalia. The Bendahara then had the royal drums (nobat) and the reed pipes (nafiri) played to indicate to the Orang Laut crew of the Laksamana’s boat that the ruler of the kingdom was with the Bendahara. The Orang Laut crews thus abandoned the Laksa-mana and his family and came over to protect their lord. The abandonment of the Laksamana and his family sealed their fate, and the last we hear of the Laksamana is of his desperate attempt to ward off the attacking Orang Laut by firing coins from his cannon once his ammunition had been exhausted.105 The dramatic intervention of the Orang Laut in this affair highlights their rec-ognition that the Malayu ruler was indispensable to their livelihood. He not only provided legitimation for their activities, but he also assured a reliable international market for their products.

Conclusion: Maintaining Ethnic Boundaries

The lifestyle and economic pursuits of the Orang Laut formed a meaningful and appropriate ethnic boundary distinguishing them from the Malayu. In



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


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deliberate effort to emphasize their nomadic lifestyle by using boats and tech-nologies distinct from those found among the inhabitants on land. As one scholar noted, despite the use of metal tools in the building of their boats, the Moken retain the long-held tradition of lashing the planks with rattan. The metal blade of the adze is also bound with rattan, and the design of the adze is the same as the stone implements found in museums.108 They also consciously avoid using various modern means of catching fish and reject accumulation and storage. All these are technically within their means and capability, but they refuse to employ them, preferring to maintain their ethnic boundary with the more sedentary coastal dwellers.109 Even the deprecatory views of outsiders are repeated because they reaffirm the Urak Lawoik/Moken’s chosen way of life.110

For the sea peoples in general the seascape remains the source of knowl-edge for survival in their environment and a living history of their past. Each of the islands provides not only shelter and sustenance, but represents a group’s specific storehouse of information for present and future genera-tions. Inhabiting an island claimed by an Orang Laut group, or preventing that group from visiting its islands, is tantamount to denying the Orang Laut access to their ancestors, their history, and their source of knowledge. These form the building blocks of their ethnic identity and distinguish them from others. Because of the crucial role played by the Orang Laut (and most likely the Urak Lawoik and Moken in the period when the northern Sea of Malayu routes were favored by traders) in maintaining the power of a Malayu ruler, the ruler sought to bind them closer to him through intermarriage, the link-ing of traditions, and the awarding of titles. All three methods were used in the establishment of Melaka and continued to be the policy of the Malayu rul-ers in subsequent centuries. So important were the Orang Laut to the Malayu ruler that in the Sejarah Melayu the Orang Laut remind the Permaisura that “[w]e too belong to thy ancient lordship of Palembang; we have always gone with thee.”111 In this Malayu document there is no evidence of the denigra-tion of the Orang Laut, which is so often found in more recent accounts. Moreover, many of the Orang Laut leaders were granted spouses from the Malayu royal family and presented with major offices in the Melaka kingdom. Intermarriage as a policy continued to be a strategy pursued by wealthy, land-based patrons seeking the services of the Orang Laut.112

As the Orang Laut became less useful to the Malayu or the land-based societies, this avenue for establishing strong relationships disappeared. While in earlier centuries they could bargain from a position of strength and there-fore preserve a much more equitable relationship with the Malayu, the readi-ness with which they are willing to recite self-demeaning tales to outsiders is



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.


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Chapter 7

The Orang Asli/Suku Terasing and the Malayu

T he interior of the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra is home to numerous groups who are distinguished from the Malayu by their nomadic or seminomadic lifestyles. In

the past they were referred to by distinctive names or more generally by the areas where they lived or which they exploited. Only in the twentieth cen-tury were names such as “Orang Asli” (indigenous people) in Malaysia and “Suku Terasing” (isolated tribes) in Indonesia applied to all such groups as an administrative convenience.1 While such terms convey marginality, this was not always the case in the long history of intercourse between these interior communities and the Malayu. For many centuries the complementarity of their economies encouraged the maintenance of their differing lifeways. The interior groups were the principal collectors of forest products in demand in the international marketplace, while the Malayu provided the facilities for international trade and were the source of the iron, salt, cloth, ceramics, and other necessary and prestige goods desired by the interior communities. There was every reason to encourage the preservation of these complementary and mutually beneficial lifestyles. This chapter provides another example of the manner in which a shift in trade affected relationships between groups, leading to a reassessment of ethnic boundaries. Prior to the late nineteenth century, the relations between the Malayu and the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing were marked by profitable eco-nomic arrangements. But the transformation of the land from forests to agri-cultural export plantations in the nineteenth century removed the relevance and value of the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing as the suppliers of highly desired forest products. Pressures of modernity, the nation-state, and the competitive global economy made the lifestyle and economic pursuits of the forest and hill people increasingly irrelevant and undervalued. While some succumbed to the pressures, others fought a dispiriting battle to retain their unique life-styles and ethnic identities.


The Orang Asli/Suku Terasing and the Malayu 203

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


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the state, thus being labeled “tribal.” These “tribals” then adopted a style of life that came to be termed Semang, Senoi, and Melayu Asli.9 In the follow-ing discussion the three generalized categories of Semang, Senoi, and Orang Asli Malayu will be maintained with the awareness that these are not fixed or inflexible categories but instead merge into one another. Despite perceived differences between groups, they would likely echo the sentiments of the Orang Asli and Orang Laut in Johor who previously regarded themselves as “leaves of the same tree.”10

A common belief persists that the Orang Asli practice a nomadic lifestyle and roam the forests without any fixed territorial base. But already in the late nineteenth century Swettenham observed that a Senoi group kept exclusively to its own valley and was frequently at odds with neighbors on either side.11 The Senoi on the Kampar River in the Kinta district of Perak were reported in 1915 to move within a small radius of the foothills and regarded the Pahang border area as an unknown, unexplored land.12 In his observations of the Semang early last century, Schebesta noted that they did not wander ran-domly in the forest but as far as possible remained within their own territo-ries.13 The Semang Batek will move beyond their lands in search of spouses, but they tend to operate within their own familiar landscape because they know where food and other resources are found and where their close kin are located.14 Having occupied a specific bounded area of exploitation for genera-tions enables an Orang Asli community to gain an intimate knowledge of its resources.15 Such knowledge is indispensable in locating and extracting the valuable resins, aromatic woods, and rattans for international trade.16 More-over, traditional lands nurture physical and emotional well-being among the Orang Asli and reinforce their unique identity.17

In Sumatra, the term Suku Terasing, or “isolated ethnic groups,” is offi-cially used for those whose lifestyle is regarded as “not yet fully integrated in the process of national development.”18 The term rejects any claim to indigeny and subsumes official and public attitude toward the group’s “backwardness” (terkebelakang) in relation to mainstream Indonesians.19 Although the term is now widely used, the people continue to refer to themselves by what they believe are more accurate and less offensive names. The Suku Terasing communities in Sumatra live either between the major rivers or between tributaries of a river, and they collect forest products for the downstream Malayu polities. In east coast Sumatra the main Malayu kingdoms in the past had their core population living along riverbanks, peat swamps, and peneplain zones of Palembang, Jambi, Indragiri, Kampar, Siak, and the downstream areas of Rokan. More heavily populated were the pied-mont floodplains in the Rokan, Siak, Kampar, the Indragiri basin, and the northernmost parts of the Batang Hari River, where many of the Minang-



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


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downstream by the ruler to defend the kingdom from attack.25 Similar duties would have been expected of other groups, such as the Batin Sembilan (the Nine Batin),26 who generally live east of the Tembesi River in Jambi. The degree of contact between the forest groups and the Malayu was greatest in the nineteenth century. A dipati of the Orang Batin Sembilan in Jambi informed a Dutch expedition sent to the interior of Sumatra in 1877–9 that he, his father, and grandfather had always spoken the language of the Malayu. He even admitted that he could not understand the “Forest Kubu” (Orang Rimba), whose language, he said, was “purer.”27 The dipati lived only some twenty miles from Jambi, and members of his community could speak Malayu. It was noted, too, that in Palembang the Forest Kubu had already adopted Malayu clothing and cuisine to a great extent. When a Kubu fam-ily dressed as Malayu went to Jambi to sell rubber, they were indistinguish-able from the Jambi people. For the Orang Batin Sembilan groups, becoming Malayu was not difficult since it was not an uncommon practice for Malayu men from Jambi and Palembang to take one and sometimes even two Batin Sembilan wives.28

While the Jambi and Palembang men would have appreciated the value of such marriages in assuring a successful exchange with the local community, the Orang Batin Sembilan families would have regarded the addition of a for-eign trader favorably, as a useful mediator with the outside world. Although it was necessary in international trade to have intermediaries who could oper-ate comfortably and profitably in two or more cultural worlds, there would have been strong pressure to maintain ethnic boundaries between the forest people and the Malayu to assure the continuing success of the trade in forest products. A change occurred in the relationship by the late nineteenth cen-tury when forest products were no longer a major source of revenue for the Malayu kingdoms or the British and Dutch colonial states. The rationale for the maintenance of ethnic boundaries between the forest groups and the out-side world came to be less a function of economic benefits and more a matter of ethnic pride. Among the Orang Rimba today, there is a strong avoidance pattern in the culture, which makes any intimate relationship with an out-sider a contravention of customary law (adat) punishable by both supernatu-ral sanction and societal rejection.29

The Orang Rimba live west of the Tembesi River in the Bukit Duabelas region and north to the borders of contemporary Riau province.30 They pur-sue a lifestyle based on hunting wild animals with spears and dogs, fishing, and the gathering of wild fruits and roots, while the Orang Batin are more likely to be semisedentary swidden agriculturalists. In the past, however, they were reported to have used camouflaged pits to hunt large game, and it was believed that their intensive hunting activities might have contributed



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


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were not: they had no settled existence, ate “unclean” (haram) food, and left their bodies uncovered except for breechcloths. Regarded as little more than animals, they were then hunted and sold as slaves, with some eventually work-ing for the Malayu in the pepper plantations.34

As a result of these traumatic experiences, one Orang Rimba group came to associate the name “Malayu” with “layu,” a root word in their language that is used to indicate the death of growth tissue, hence to refer generally to any-thing that had a wasting effect on a living thing or soul. In this way the name Malayu became a reminder of the danger of the “Orang Malayu,” or “people who cause a wasting effect.” Even among their deities, the Orang Rimba dis-tinguish between those from upstream (where the Orang Rimba themselves live), who were benign, and those downstream (where the Malayu live), some of whom were malicious.35

In earlier centuries the relationship between the Malayu and the Orang Rimba was far more sanguine. Leaders of the Orang Rimba were given titles and formally incorporated into the Malayu system of government. Their principal tasks were to facilitate the movement of trade goods and to assure the Orang Rimba of the protection of their Malayu lord. Of equal importance to the Orang Rimba was the legitimizing role the lowland Malayu ruler could provide in trade with the outside world, particularly in determining accept-able weights at a time when there were no fixed standard measurements. At the turn of the twentieth century, some Orang Rimba continued to weigh valuable goods with a copper plate said to have been given to the group by the legendary Palembang queen Ratu Sinuhun. She reputedly presented them with their first cloth and salt in return for forest products, thus initiating the Orang Rimba to world trade.36

The importance of the relationship between the Kubu (Orang Batin/Orang Rimba) and the Malayu is noted in various reports reaching VOC officials. In one case in Jambi, the Kubu indicated their wish to follow one particular Malayu official rather than another. Their wishes were taken seri-ously because they could physically threaten the Malayu subjects living in the interior, but more importantly they could refuse to deliver the forest prod-ucts that were key to the prosperity of the downriver kingdoms.37 The Orang Batin, who were more acculturated to the Malayu than were the Orang Rimba, found ways to continue to participate in beneficial economic arrangements. Even after the demise of the Malayu kingdoms, former Malayu officials were preferred as patrons and links to the outside world.38 The Orang Rimba fol-lowed a different path because of the devastating effects of diseases, unpleas-ant experiences with outsiders, and the threat of slave raiders. They chose to erect ethnic boundaries strongly reinforced by customary law to limit and even end further contact.39



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


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the Petalangan and the Minangkabau may have intensified in the seventeenth century with the large movements of Minangkabau out of their homeland down the rivers to the east coast.44 According to Petalangan traditions, when the last ruler died without a successor, the kingdom was dissolved and the people fled to the forest (talang) and became the ancestors of the Petalangan. No corroborating documents have been found that mention the Gassip king-dom, though one Dutch account claims that it existed only for a brief time from the late sixteenth to the early seventeenth centuries.45 The relationship between the Petalangan and the Malayu courts con-tinued with the foundation of the Siak kingdom by Raja Kecil sometime in 1722–3.46 In the nineteenth century the Malayu offices of bintara kanan and bintara kiri were appointed by the court to serve as intermediaries between the sultan and the Petalangan. Among the duties requested of the Petalangan were building fortifications when required, assisting in the ruler’s travels, and delivering some of their rice harvests in exchange for salt and iron goods at a price fixed by the ruler. Specific pengkalan, or posts, established at strategic market crossroads in the interior, were designated as the points of exchange. The Petalangan were exempt from participation in foreign wars but were expected to maintain the security of the interior.47

The Petalangan are also linked to the kingdom of Pelalawan, located in the area bearing that name on the Kampar River. Little is known about the origins of this kingdom, which was autonomous but subordinate to the Siak kingdom established by Raja Kecil in the early eighteenth century. Approval of the four Pelalawan datu was essential for any claimant to the Siak throne, and Pelalawan was one of only three areas where the descendants of Raja Kecil originated.48 The Petalangan would have been valuable to the Pelalawan ruler because of their role in collecting forest products. Malayu rulers did not interfere in the customary laws of the forest peo-ple. Because the batin were believed to have an affinity with spirits and the supernatural,49 they were given the authority to deal with land issues within their jurisdiction. This was especially important among the Petalangan, who distinguished between various types of land. There was the “village land” (tanah kampong), where the homes of the people could be built; the “orchard land” (tanah dusun) for their fruit trees; “swidden land” (tanah peladangan) for dry rice cultivation, where a year of cultivation required a five-year fal-low period; and the “protected forests” (rimba larangan), which were divided into the “reserved forest” (rimba simpanan), the area of special fauna and flora, and the “reserved stands of sialang trees” (rimba kepungan sialang), or trees infested with honey bees. These lands were not simply to provide for the physical well-being of the community but were a source of social and spiritual knowledge.50 Rights to the land were determined by the tombo or



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


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There are other less numerous Suku Terasing groups in Sumatra, for example the Bonai along the Rokan River, and the Orang Talang Kerumutan and Orang Talang Napuh along the coasts. Off the coast of Sumatra is also a group of islands that are valuable because they are a source of sago and fresh water. The harvesters of the sago are the Suku Terasing inhabitants of these islands and of the low marshy lands of the Sumatran coast, such as the Akit and the Orang Utan.58 These and other small Suku Terasing communi-ties often only appear in historical sources in relation to trade with the outside world, but precisely which group is being discussed is often unclear. Like the Orang Laut groups, smaller Suku Terasing tend to either merge or be absorbed by a larger group. Numbers mean strength, and in disputes over areas of exploitation, whether in the seas or in the rain forests, the numerically dominant almost always emerge victorious. Among the Orang Laut and the Suku Terasing, the groups that became the most influential were those that had strong economic and social relationships with the Malayu polities down-stream. These were the Orang Batin and the Orang Rimba in Palembang and Jambi, and the Petalangan in Siak, Indragiri, and Kampar. Despite the great benefits accruing from their special relationship with the Malayu, these Suku Terasing groups (with the known exception of the Orang Rimba) were also the most vulnerable because of the constant temptation to become increas-ingly Malayu at the expense of their own identity. The forest peoples have been characterized as “opportunistic foragers,” who follow a strategy of foraging widely and diffusely on a variety of plants and animals rather than focusing only on a few species.59 This strategy is ideal in the rain forest with its numerous species of plants but only limited quan-tities of each. The absence of larger animals as a source of protein is com-pensated by a rich variety of insects and other smaller creatures. In moving through the landscape, the forest dwellers snack frequently on berries, small fruit, and small insects or creatures found on or near their paths. As a survival strategy, they do not limit themselves to forest foraging but also exploit the littoral and riverine environments. On the Malay Peninsula and on Sumatra, sago palms grow in lowland forests and at the edges of mangrove swamps. These palms are a source of starch for the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing and occa-sionally a good hunting site for wild boar, which knock down the trees and rip the trunks with their tusks to get at the edible soft fibrous core. The forest, then, is not the “green desert” it is often depicted to be, but an integral part of the forest dwellers’ larger food gathering and hunting economy that exploits different ecozones in a strategy of survival.60

A symbiotic relationship existed at the edge of the forests between the Malayu and the interior communities. Forest clearance by the Malayu for slash and burn agriculture brought an unintended benefit for the more



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

Prehistoric and Historic Relations

Malayu–Orang Asli relations can be traced back to about 1000 BCE when the ancestors of the two groups first confronted each other on the Malay Penin-sula.64 This initial encounter favored the Orang Asli, who had settled the land some five hundred to one thousand years previously and were numerically the larger of the two. The Malayo-Polynesian speakers who remained were therefore restricted to the coast. From the early Malayo-Polynesian speakers in the south of the peninsula evolved some of the first Orang Malayu Asli, while in the center and the north the Semang and the Senoi populations had greater contact with the civilizations to the north and came to speak Aslian languages belonging to the Austroasiatic family. The generally held belief that the Semang and the Senoi populations developed from Hoabinhian and Southern Mongoloid ancestors is disputed by Benjamin and Bulbeck, who argue that local evolution rather than external migration accounts for dif-ferences among the Orang Asli communities. Both processes were probably involved in the formation of the ethnic communities on the peninsula in this early period. The traditional view is that the Orang Asli can be traced to the migra-tion of two major races in the past: the Australoid and the Southern Mon-goloid, although there is a recognition that in situ evolution also had a role.65 The Semang population stemmed from the Australoid, while the Senoi were descendants of the later Southern Mongoloid migration. The archaeological record becomes more detailed later on the Malay Peninsula with assemblages found in Hoabinhian sites dated between 16000 and 8000 BCE. The hunt-ing and gathering Hoabinhians were ancestral to the Semang and to a lesser extent to the Senoi. The Senoi’s biological affinity was more with the Neolithic


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Southern Mongoloid population that migrated into the peninsula about 2000 BCE. There appears to have been a sharp transition from the Hoabinhian to the Neolithic, with the change marked by the introduction of agriculture and Austroasiatic languages.66 The Semang adopted Austroasiatic languages, and so today both the Semang and the Senoi speak Austroasiatic languages in the subgroup Aslian, which has distant relationships with Mon and Khmer.67 The Semang, however, continued to maintain their hunting and foraging life-style and did not adopt the agricultural developments of the Neolithic. In this regard they were much more descendants of the Hoabinhians than of the Neolithic Southern Mongoloids associated with the Senoi.68

An alternate reconstruction of the Orang Asli population on the pen-insula has long been advocated by Geoffrey Benjamin, who basically shares Solheim’s view (see chapter 1) in emphasizing local adaptation rather than migration in explaining group differentiation. Benjamin believes that until 2500 to 2000 BP, the wet-zone Southeast Asian Neolithic enabled hunting and gathering to be combined with vegeculture involving root crops, mainly yam, and sago and bananas. With the principal emphasis on “protein-gathering,” populations remained mobile and limited. Most technical activity was based on cane, bamboo, or wood readily available to all, eliminating the need for intercommunity trade. As a result, population increase was slow, and self-sufficient communities existed without any larger form of social organization. By about 2000 BP, some became more efficient in farming, which became their main economic activity. As they moved into lower altitudes, the areas left to foragers were confined to the foothills, with a new area of exploitation at the edges of the farmed areas. The foragers began to intensify their gathering and hunting activities and gradually reduced their reliance on swidden farm-ing. The rise in importance of the transisthmian/transpeninsular routes in the north at about this time encouraged the foragers to concentrate on collecting activities that were now a useful activity that complemented the more agri-cultural pursuits of their neighbors. To maintain their chosen way of life, the various groups then created their specific forms of kinship patterns and social relations.69 In a more recent paper, Benjamin claims that the indigenes of the Malay Peninsula, which include the Malayu, shared the same gene pool and body of ideas, and the differences can be accounted for by history, process, and the sociocultural traditions they developed.70

The latest reconstruction of the Orang Asli past has been proposed by David Bulbeck. In examining all extant Orang Asli skulls from peninsular Malaysia, he concludes that there is no evidence of an original occupation by an “Australoid” Hoabinhian hunter-gatherer population. “Australoid” affinities only emerge during the Neolithic, although the accepted theory is that this was the period of the arrival of the “Southern Mongoloid.” Affinities



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.


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Interaction between the Malayu and the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing becomes much clearer in the first millennium and a half CE. Strong interna-tional demand for forest products encouraged the coastal Malayu polities to enlist the services of the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing, whose specialized knowl-edge was needed to locate the various varieties of rattan, the resin-bearing trees, and the aromatic gaharuwood. The collection of gaharuwood was par-ticularly difficult because not all trees contained the fragrant diseased core that was used for perfumes and incense,77 and determining which tree con-tained the aromatic core required special skills. The Orang Asli/Suku Terasing practice of roaming within a fixed territory enabled them to acquire an inti-mate knowledge of what the forest contained. As groups revisited sites, years of practical experience passed down by oral tales helped to preserve commu-nity secrets in collecting elusive but profitable forest products.78 In addition, the Orang Asli living on the Malay Peninsula and in the Isthmus of Kra region acted as guides and porters in periods when traders preferred to use the prin-cipal transpeninsular or transisthmian routes linking the Bay of Bengal with the Gulf of Siam. The economic relationship between the Malayu and the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing was formalized through the appointment of either Malayu represen-tatives or the heads of the various Orang Asli suku as the intermediary between the two communities. The Malayu ruler dispensed titles and gifts in return for the forest products collected and presented as tribute. Such titles and gestures of royal munificence were received with great pride and reverence, not only for their practical value and prestige, but also because they contained the potent spiritual powers of the Malayu ruler. When the Dutch replaced the Malayu rulers as overlords in Sumatra, the Suku Terasing requested titles and other paraphernalia of office for reasons that went beyond simply demonstrations of status. Any object associated with the ruler was believed to contain supernatu-ral powers. To force his interior subjects to comply with his wishes, the sultan of Palembang in 1644 sent envoys armed only with his letter and seal.79

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Orang Asli/Suku Tera-sing groups began to adapt to a changed economic situation. They became employed in extracting tin and gold, performing casual labor, producing food for mining communities, and working in pepper plantations and Malayu rice fields. The economic and social intercourse that occurred at the perimeters of these communities occasionally led to intermarriage and mixed offspring who served as intermediaries. There was less hindrance to, and even encour-agement of, unions between members of the two communities for a variety of reasons, including economic and spiritual. This easy relationship is evident in both the Malayu and Orang Asli oral and written traditions from an earlier period.



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


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as intermediaries between the Temiar and the outside world. They lived on the borders of the two worlds, usually had Temiar wives, and appointed penghulu among the Temiar to represent their people. Finally, the Temiar demonstrated their willingness to defend themselves against the slave raiders.84

These disturbing accounts reflect the more recent past of the Orang Asli. Prior to the nineteenth century, however, the Orang Asli and the Suku Terasing were far more appreciated by the Malayu because of their vital tasks as collec-tors of forest products greatly valued in international trade.

The Forest People in International Trade

The forest people have an ancient tradition of exchange with the outside world. Archaeologists have been able to determine that on the Malay Pen-insula in the Hoabinhian period, the Orang Asli were involved in a trade of coastal shells for forest products such as rattan, resin, tree bark, and stone for making tools. By about 3000 BCE this trade extended to communities as far away as northwestern and central Thailand, then increased briskly from about 2000 BCE. Maritime trade involving forest products continued to be strong from about 500 BCE to the founding of Melaka at the turn of the fifteenth century, promoted without a doubt by the important polities in southern Thailand, the Isthmus of Kra, and the northern half of the Malay Peninsula (see chapter 1). In the north and center of the peninsula, the interior Senoi negotiated the exchange of certain products with the Semang, who brought these goods to the Malayu or Chinese traders at the fringe of the forest or on the coast. The Semang exploited the forests within their territories, and studies of the Semang have identified a particularly adaptive social system suited to shifts in subsistence or economic situations.85 With the increase in external trade asso-ciated with Indianization, the Semang would have been ideally placed to par-ticipate and benefit from this new development. In the southern third of the peninsula, forest products would have been collected by the Orang Malayu Asli to be traded directly to the Malayu and to foreign traders. The importance of the Orang Asli was further strengthened because they occupied lands through which the transisthmian and transpeninsular routes passed. Traders arriving from the west often used these routes leading from the Bay of Bengal to the Gulf of Siam to avoid the dangers of pirates in the Straits of Melaka. Even if traders successfully avoided piratical attacks, they still faced the navigational dangers of islands and hidden reefs and sandbanks in the waters off the Malay Peninsula. The narrow isthmus and the northern part of the peninsula became favored crossing points, and ancient settlements were found along these major trade routes or at the sites of gold mines.86



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:

Upriver between the territory of Naning and Muar is a mountain called

Ledang, that is to say ‘cursed land’, because there are many ghosts there (so

the people say). Residing there is a nation of Malayu called “Bouirousse”

[Benuas], or “wildmen,” where the men and women go about completely

naked and live off tubers, fruit, and wild animals. Their huts are made of

leaves of trees, and they seldom stay in one place longer than two or three

days, settling mainly at the foot of the most important mountains. From the

coals of their fire they cook their food and keep warm against the cold nights.


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These wild folk have on occasion good bezoar stones, eaglewood [gaharu-

wood, Aquilaria Lam.] and kelembak [a medicinal rhubarb, Rheum offici-

nale, Baillon].90

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



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


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These products were gathered principally by the forest people and brought to traders, some of whom had married women of forest groups to foster this trade. The Malayu were the principal buyers, though other groups competed for the products. In return the forest people received iron, salt, cloth, exotic objects obtained through international trade, and various types of food to sup-plement their diet. As long as forest products remained a major component of international trade, Malayu rulers encouraged the lifestyle of the forest people to ensure the continuing flow of interior products to their ports.100

The Malay Peninsula is rich with tales and legends from both the Orang Asli communities and the Malayu, which reveal the shifting attitudes in their relationships. Tales from both the peninsula and Sumatra provide an internal interpretation of this relationship and are a useful complement to European documentary accounts.

Malayu Boundary Making

The lowland Malayu view the interior forest peoples with awe because they reside in a dangerous domain. To have tamed the forest, the Malayu reason, its inhabitants must possess powerful black magic (ilmu hitam, lit. “black sciences/knowledge”) that could be used against their enemies.101 Despite this perception, the Malayu in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries began to depict the forest people in demeaning ways, which reflected the latter’s increasing economic and social marginalization. Yet in earlier centuries the relationship was characterized by cooperation and respect. In the Sejarah Melayu, the “raja” of Palembang named Demang Lebar Daun enters into a covenant with Sri Tri Buana, the youngest of three supernatural princes who had descended on Bukit Siguntang. In the agreement, Demang Lebar Daun lays down one condition before granting permission for Sri Tri Buana to marry his daughter:

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



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


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chosen from non-Malayu communities. When a prince from Palembang is sent by his father to govern Bintan and Singapore, among his retinue are biduanda composed of “outsiders” (orang keluaran). Upon arrival in Bintan, the prince orders his minister to summon the people of the interior or local inhabitants (anak orang dalam negeri) to become court biduanda.109 In these two episodes it appears that the indigenous inhabitants of the land are referred to as biduanda, or court followers who perform certain special functions for the ruler. During the Melaka period it is already possible to detect a shift in the meaning of the term biduanda. Melaka-born Chinese were given this honorary title as a favor by the ruler, as were the sakai and the rakyat.110 The eighteenth-century Malayu text from Perak, the Misa Malayu, makes a number of refer-ences to the “sakai,” which could be interpreted as either “subject” or “Orang Asli.” There is, however, no doubt in one particular passage that the sakai accompanying the Panglima Larut are Orang Asli. They are listed as the orang bukit gantang (the people of Mt. Gantang), the orang pengkalan (people of the pengkalan111), and the orang pematang (the people who inhabit the banks of the marshlands).112

The text that perhaps best captures the tone of the early relationship between the Orang Asli populations and the Malayu is the Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa. Although the earliest known recension dates from the first half of the nineteenth century, most scholars acknowledge the inclusion of oral legends from the early history of Kedah and the northern areas of the Malay Peninsula. The Hikayat recounts the arrival of a stranger prince, Raja Kelana Hitam, who seeks to become ruler of Kedah because it has no king. He asks the penghulu or leaders of the bangsa113 Semang, Wila, rakyat bukit (people of the hills), and sakai to meet in council to help him find good land to settle. They accomplish this task, then come to serve him faithfully. When the Raja Kelana Hitam’s kingdom is attacked by monsters (gergasi), these four bangsa suffer the brunt of the fighting and their bravery is measured by the mounds of those killed in battle.114

The use of the term “bangsa” to refer to different groups among the Orang Asli is noteworthy. Sometime in the past each group was considered to be a unique ethnic entity and often given an exonym related to their areas of exploitation and the stage they had reached in achieving “civilization” as understood by the lowland or coastal groups such as the Malayu. In this text the Semang are located in the forests and maintain minimal contact with out-siders. The Wila or Semang Bila are lowland Semang in the vicinity of Gunung Jerai (Kedah Peak) and in the swamps of Perai (Province Wellesley), with more assimilation into lowland culture because of their greater interaction with the Malayu. The rakyat bukit, or hill people, are the Senoi, most likely the Temiar, and the sakai are the sea and riverine populations in the north.



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


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poyang of the Pasemah people, but the thread linking all the versions is Si Pahit Lidah’s supernatural birth and extraordinary powers. His adventures throughout southeast Sumatra provided the material for localized interpreta-tions and opportunities to create links with other groups.118 Another signifi-cant cultural hero was Puteri Pinang Masak, a Minangkabau princess, who is courted by Tun Telanai of a downriver kingdom. In the tale the suitor is unsuccessful, but the relations between the two remain cordial and the prin-cess is accepted as a daughter and her brothers come to settle along upriver tributaries. The princess eventually marries a Turk, and from their union comes Orang Kaya Hitam, one of Jambi’s greatest ancestors. The story of his rejecting Majapahit overlordship, obtaining supernatural objects for his king-dom, and establishing the Jambi royal house contribute to the popularity of this figure. In these tales there is an acceptance of the interconnectedness of all the groups through common ancestors.119

In the folklore and earlier literature of the Malayu in both Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing communities were regarded with respect and even awe. As noted above, their association with the forests, which held such terror for most Malayu, reinforced the belief in their spiritual potency and ability to wield supernatural powers against their enemies. The relationship was also characterized by economic interdepen-dency. The downriver Malayu kingdoms provided the essential iron, salt, and cloth for the interior communities. In exchange, the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing delivered forest resins, aromatic woods, and rattans, which were highly valued in the international trade conducted in the Malayu port cities. In addition to collecting forest products, the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing provided a useful function in safeguarding the trade routes. All these factors contributed to the positive portrayal of the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing in early Malayu tales and legends. The recognition of the necessary link between the two groups is also evident in early Orang Asli/Suku Terasing portrayals of the Malayu.

Orang Asli/Suku Terasing Boundary Making

The oral tales of the interior forest and hill communities are a storehouse of societal knowledge regarding great deities, the origins of the world and of the group, proper behavior, and customary laws that use avoidance to strengthen ethnic boundaries. Despite local differences, certain themes emerge in many of these tales. One of the most important is the depiction of the Orang Asli and the Malayu as siblings, with the former being the first to settle the region. Juli Edo, a Semai anthropologist, collected a number of “true tales” (chermor) from his people. According to one of these, the Orang Asli are the younger siblings of the Malayu, both of whom are children of Adam living in Meng-



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


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A major theme of this and many of the Orang Rimba dongen is the main-tenance of a separate adat from that of the Malayu. In the stories of the cre-ation of the people, the forests, and the animals that inhabit them, a strong underlying theme is the uniqueness of the Orang Rimba and the sacred duty to maintain their chosen way of life. These stories are constructed deliberately in opposition to the dominant downstream Malayu culture. Distinctions are clearly drawn between the forest and the village dweller: their homes are con-structed of different materials and their diet consists of domesticated animals for the Malayu and wild forest animals for the Orang Rimba. The forest is said to be inhabited by many dangerous spirits, the most powerful of which is the “Mato Merego,” the Tiger God spirit. But none of the spirits would ever harm an Orang Rimba who adheres strictly to his or her own customary laws, with their unique beliefs, dietary restrictions, housing requirements, technology, and religion. According to tradition, the laws of the Malayu and the Orang Rimba were given by two different angels and sanctioned by a curse. Contra-vening the adat or ignoring the separation between the realm of the forest and that of the village would cause the deities to abandon the Orang Rimba and end their life in the forest. Maintenance of Orang Rimba customary practices is of the greatest importance and rigidly enforced by supernatural sanction.123

Although the tales speak of a primordial unity of the Orang Asli/Suku Tera sing and the Malayu, which is eventually broken to form two distinct groups, intermarriage helps to maintain the relationship. In the above Semai chermor collected by Edo, after the Malayu leave Mengkah to join their younger siblings, the Orang Asli, they land first in Sumatra and occupy the entire island. After many years they move to Melaka. The royal shaman then advises the prince to marry an Orang Asli woman from Gunung Ledang who is said to be the bearer of luck and fortune (bertuah). He follows this advice and acquires the support of the Orang Asli in the establishment of Melaka.124 The chermor continues and describes an episode involving a Johor prince, Tok Betangkuk (or Nakhoda Kassim according to others), who marries a Semang girl with white blood and establishes the kingdom of Perak.125

While most commentators on Malayu–Orang Asli relationships have emphasized intermarriage and trade, Marina Roseman has also highlighted ritual practice. She convincingly argues that the color “white” among the Orang Asli was associated with the sacred forces of nature, the supernatu-ral, and the heavens. The tale of the Semang girl with white blood marrying a Johor prince can therefore be regarded as “one of the vessels imbuing the Malay royalty with divine qualities.”126 The direct link between the white-blooded Semang girl and royalty may have a Bugis origin. Among the Bugis in South Sulawesi, white-blooded beings descend (tomanurung) from the upper world and become the progenitors of the royal houses.127 In 1766, Raja Lumu,



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


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In one of the Semai chermor, the ancestors of the Orang Asli leave Meng-kah and first land in Sumatra, where some leave the raft and establish the set-tlement of Pagaruyung. Others of the group go ashore at Siam or Siap on the Maluk mountain (said to be in the northern part of the Malay Peninsula), a third continues southward to the Sahine mountain (believed to be in the east-ern side of central Perak), and the remaining members disembark at Melaka and settle at Gunung (Mt.) Ledang.133 The Malayu follow much later to join their younger brothers, the Orang Asli. They land in Sumatra and occupy the entire island. Initially, they reside among the earlier settlers at Pagaruyung, but their aggressive ways force the Pagaruyung people to flee to Melaka. At Gunung Ledang the people from Pagaruyung reunite with their relatives from the first exodus, and they become known as Temuan because they had met (temu). The Temuan decide not to stay at Gunung Ledang but to occupy the coastal areas of Melaka.134 Origin tales from another Orang Asli group, the Semelai, depict Pagaruyung as a sacred place at the time of creation, when there was no differentiation between the Malayu and the Semelai.135

The Minangkabau also figure prominently in other stories. The Sakai in Siak trace their ancestors to Minangkabau and Mentawai,136 and an Orang Rimba dongen sees Minangkabau as the home of the principal god, Tuhan Kuaso, who creates the earth, the forest, the human beings, and the animals.137 For the Orang Rimba, the Minangkabau kingdom possesses stronger magic and sacred power, and hence greater stability, than any other Malayu polity. Nevertheless, they seek to maintain common cause with the Malayu, which is reflected not only in their origin stories but also in their tendency to “share” cultural heroes with the Malayu and other Sumatran groups. Ultimately, of greatest importance to the Orang Rimba is the emphasis on difference, that though they share a common origin with the Malayu, they are the elder sib-ling and hence have precedence over the Malayu. This precedence is the legiti-macy they claim for occupying various tracts of forest lands.138

These stories of origin from Minangkabau are also found among the Talang Mamak, who live along the tributaries of the Indragiri River and were once closely linked to the coastal Indragiri kingdoms. While their subsistence is based more on swidden rice agriculture, they are also forest collectors, which explains their relationship with the Malayu kingdoms on the coast.139 According to their “langkah lama” (lit. “old behavior or conduct,” i.e., adat), three sons of the Parapatih nan Sebatang (one of the two Minangkabau law-givers) leave Pagaruyung because of a family quarrel and become leaders of the Talang Mamak in Indragiri.140

The identification of Pagaruyung and Minangkabau as the place of ori-gins of many of the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing groups may be explained by the extraordinary spiritual reputation of the Pagaruyung rulers among the



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


232 Chapter 7

This trimbow clearly stresses the aggression of the Malayu toward the Ma’ Betise’. Perhaps for this reason, the Ma’ Betise’ make a deliberate distinction between people like themselves, who are called “Ma’ Meri” (people of the for-est), and the Malayu.147

In many of these tales the Straits of Melaka do not form a boundary but a causeway linking the various communities, further undermining the view that forest groups were isolated. A related theme also contained in these sto-ries is the family links between the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing and the Malayu. Despite having opted for different ways of life, they remain “leaves of the same tree.” The strong relationship depicted in the tales, however, underwent a sig-nificant shift when the importance of forest products declined in the overall economy of the Malayu. Trust was then replaced by suspicion and increasing depredations perpetrated by the Malayu on the interior forest and hill com-munities. Unlike earlier tales where complementarity between the two groups is emphasized, in the more modern tales the theme is more of aggression and violence committed by the Malayu on the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing.148

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


234 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.


235

Conclusion

Framing the Southeast Asian Past in Ethnic Terms

A well-established principle in ethnic theory is that eth-nicity only emerges when one community encounters a distinct other. Such encounters produce separate ethnic

affiliations that are identified by a name given by their members and/or a name imposed by outsiders. These ethnic names, however, do not determine their membership for all times. At some historical point a name attached to an ethnic community may incorporate a different membership because of the tendency for ethnic groups to redefine themselves periodically to maxi-mize their advantage. Ethnic labels often survive, but they may represent an expanded or more restricted membership in accordance with the times and circumstances. Even the most isolated communities have undergone this pro-cess, albeit more slowly and less spectacularly, because of the need to maintain a specific lifestyle for survival in difficult ecological conditions or to facilitate the gathering and export of products for international trade. Ethnicity, there-fore, is far more than simply a form of identification; it is also a protective mechanism that is readily invoked to assure the well-being of the group. When a community redefines itself in ethnic terms, certain practices and beliefs are declared sacred traditions, old cultural heroes are reaffirmed and new ones proposed, values are reinterpreted, and membership is restructured. Social scientists have long acknowledged this process in ethnic forma-tion, but historians have been slow to appreciate its implications for the inter-pretation of Southeast Asian history. If ethnic labels, membership, and even attributes undergo change as a result of significant encounters with the other, then it becomes necessary for historians to examine much more critically who we mean when we write about a specific ethnicity in the past. Southeast Asian history has been shaped to a considerable extent by an emphasis on ethnic struggles: the Mons against the Tai and the Burmese, the Khmer against the


236 Conclusion

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


Framing the Southeast Asian Past in Ethnic Terms 237

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

Even though the Orang Laut and the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing were pri-marily small independent communities under their own leaders and regarded themselves as distinct ethnic units, they acted as one under a Malayu official whenever summoned for service. Through these circumstances, the Malayu applied the general exonyms “Orang Laut” for all those who followed a life-style associated with the sea. The exonyms “Orang Asli” and “Suku Terasing” for those in the interior forests and mountains are modern labels applied by the Malaysian and Indonesian governments, respectively. In the past, these latter groups were classified by a variety of exonyms that reflected the more localized nature of the relations between the forest and hill peoples with the Malayu. These exonyms were not rejected but adopted by the groups them-selves because they were in a sense badges that distinguished them favorably from others. But when the forest and sea peoples were no longer viewed as necessary for the economic advancement and security of the Malayu, they suffered the ignominy of having their way of life ridiculed, and their once proud exonym become a term of alienation and abuse. By privileging ethnicity as a perspective, I have attempted to understand the context in which particular ethnic groups emerged. The presence of a dom-inant ethnic community, such as the Malayu, may not necessarily result in the absorption of smaller or weaker communities. On the contrary, some groups may split off from the dominant ethnicity, as occurred with the Minangkabau and Acehnese and to a certain extent with the Batak. The smaller communi-ties, on the other hand, may survive simply because their distinctive lifestyles complement that of the dominant group, as was the case with the Orang Laut and the many forest and hill communities that later made up the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing. In all these cases, what is important to reiterate is the porosity and flex-ibility of ethnic communities. Groups were never rigid, and even if an eth-nic name survived, the ethnic boundaries could very likely have shifted over time in response to circumstances. The dynamics of ethnic formation help to explain the functioning of the mandala/galactic model of early Southeast Asian polities. In this model, borders were porous and the polity was main-tained through personal relationships established between the ruler and his subject lords. Within the domains of these subject lords, a similar arrange-ment would have been made with the local leaders. Any mandala/galactic polity, therefore, consisted of a congeries of such relationships, and any part of the system could easily move and re-form in a new arrangement. For this reason it was imperative that leaders find a means to maintain the loyalty of groups, whether through a mythomoteur legitimizing the use of supernatural punishment or through establishing kinship links via marriage, milk moth-ers, and adoption. Only if these measures proved inadequate would groups


Framing the Southeast Asian Past in Ethnic Terms 239

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.


241

Notes

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


242

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.

Notes to Pages 6–10


243

37. Benjamin, “On Being Tribal,” 21.

38. White has argued for a similar polysemy in the kastom (customs, traditions)

in Melanesian political histories. White, “Three Discourses,” 477. On hybridity, see

Abu-Lughod, “Writing against Culture,” and Bhabha, Location of Culture.

39. Wolters, History, Culture, 27–40, passim; Tambiah, “Galactic Polity.”

40. This metaphor was first used by Benedict Anderson in reference to the Java-

nese ideas of power. Anderson, “Idea of Power,” 22.

41. Kubitscheck, “Horja and Bius,” 192–3.

42. Perret, La formation, 137–8.

43. Kahn, Constituting Minangkabau, 32. As noted above, Barth in 1998 empha-

sized this very same point.

44. See, for example, Timothy Barnard, ed., Contesting Malayness.

45. A recent volume of essays recognizes the intercourse in the late eighteenth

and nineteenth centuries of areas principally on the Lower Mekong region, from mod-

ern south Vietnam to eastern Cambodia and southwest Thailand. To avoid reference to

national borders, the participants in that volume agreed to call this functioning entity

the “Water Frontier.” Cooke and Li, Water Frontier, xi–xiii.

Chapter 1: Malayu Antecedents

1. The meaning of “Malayu” is not known, despite the various folk etymolo-

gies that have been proposed over time. One popular reasoning is that it derives from

“malaju,” meaning “to flee,” because the Malays had fled presumably to their new

homes on the Malay Peninsula.

2. For an instructive discussion of the dangers of nationalistic conceptualization

of ethnicities that elevate one particular group over others, as in Nazi Germany, see

Jones, Archaeology of Ethnicity, 1–3.

3. Irwin, Prehistoric Exploration, 5–6, 19; Tanudirjo, “Structure of Austronesian

Migration,” 87.

4. For a summary of the changing views of what constituted “Funan,” see Chand-

ler, History of Cambodia, 13–21.

5. Al-Masudi (d. 956) called the network of maritime communities from the

shores of present-day Mozambique to Vietnam the “Cham Sea.” Michael Laffan, per-

sonal communication.

6. See, for example, the contributions to Barnard, Contesting Malayness.

7. Bellwood, Prehistory, 97–127, passim.

8. Thurgood, From Ancient Cham, 34–6.

9. Bellwood, Prehistory, 120–2.

10. Thurgood, From Ancient Cham, 5, 42–3.


12. In the Sejarah Melayu, a chronicle of events in the fifteenth- and early sixteenth-

century Malayu kingdom of Melaka, there is a reference to a Cham prince who flees to

Aceh after Champa is destroyed by the Vietnamese. Brown, Sejarah Melayu, 110.

13. Bellwood, “Austronesian Prehistory in Southeast Asia,” 103–4.



244

14. Bellwood, “Hierarchy, Founder Ideology and Austronesian Expansion,” 18–40.

15. Solheim, “The Nusantao,” 7–9; Tanudirjo, “Structure of Austronesian Migra-

tion,” 87.

16. Solheim, “The Nusantao,” 45–6.

17. Tibbetts, Study of the Arabic Texts, 43, 182.

18. Mills, “Eredia’s Description,” 42.

19. A similar conception was found among the Chinese who in early centuries

conceived of a single ocean linking all of maritime Asia and saw the Malay Peninsula

as a major obstacle. Wolters, Fall of Srivijaya, 21.

20. Glover, “Southern Silk Road,” 79; Jacq-Hergoualc’h, Malay Peninsula, 81;

Higham, Early Culture, 181–2.

21. Glover, “Southern Silk Road”; Bellina, “Beads, Social Change,” 286–9.

22. Higham, Early Cultures, 181–2.

23. Glover, Early Trade, 31, 47; Glover, “Southern Silk Road,” 62, 74, 79.

24. Leong, “Collecting Centres,” 29–30; Francis, Asia’s Maritime Bead Trade,

216–7.

25. Jacq-Hergoualc’h, Malay Peninsula, 89–92.

26. Bulbeck, “Indigenous Traditions,” 323–4.

27. Smith, “Indianization,” 12–4.

28. Wolters, Early Indonesian Commerce, 32–3.

29. McPherson, Indian Ocean, 83–5, 90.

30. The Periplus mentions a place called “Malai-oo Kolon,” which the editor

believes “so positively intimates the country of the Malays.” Vincent, Commerce and

Navigation, 609. If Vincent is correct in his identification, then this would have been

the first known reference to the name “Malayu,” far earlier than the seventh-century

Chinese transcription of “Malayu.”

31. Wolters, Early Indonesian Commerce, 33–7; McPherson, Indian Ocean, 96–7.

32. Coedès, Indianized States of Southeast Asia, 36.


34. O’Connor, “Introduction,” 8–10.

35. Glover, “Southern Silk Road,” 58, 63, 74, 79.

36. Ray, “Early Trans-Oceanic,” 43, 45, 50, 53–4; Ray, Winds of Change, 154–61.

37. Sen, Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade, 165, 178–82.

38. Guy, “Pan-Asian Buddhist,” 3–4.

39. Manguin, “Archaeology of Early Maritime Polities,” 297–8, 303–5.

40. Smith, “‘Indianization.’”

41. Hourani, Arab Seafaring, 69–75; Flecker, Archaeological Excavation, 33, 37.

42. Wolters, Early Indonesian Commerce, 34.

43. Lubeigt, “Ancient Trans-peninsular,” 50, 52–4, 61.

44. Wheatley, Golden Khersonese, xxvi.

45. Lubeigt, “Ancient Trans-peninsular,” 60, 62–3, 68.

46. Miksic, “Entrepots,” 117; Wolters, Early Indonesian Commerce, 15.

47. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation, 39, 102.

48. Leong, “Collecting Centres,” 23.



245

49. Francis, Asia’s Maritime Bead Trade, 5.

50. Lubeigt, “Ancient Trans-peninsular,” 48–9, 64, 66.

51. Wheatley, Golden Khersonese, 15–21.

52. Jacq-Hergoualc’h, Malay Peninsula, 103.

53. Wheatley, Golden Khersonese, 48–51; Jacq-Hergoualc’h, Malay Peninsula,

104, 107.

54. Jacq-Hergoualc’h, Malay Peninsula, 104, 114–5, 128, 141, 159 (quote), 160–1.

55. Wheatley, Golden Khersonese, 252–65.

56. Jacq-Hergoualc’h, Malay Peninsula, 171–88.

57. Wheatley, Golden Khersonese, 26–36; Jacq-Hergoualc’h, Malay Peninsula,

229–31.

58. Wolters, “Tambralinga,” 588; O’Connor, “Si Chon,” 125; O’Connor, “Tam-

bralinga,” 135, 591; Jacq-Hergoualc’h, Malay Peninsula, 114, 362.

59. Stargardt, “Hydraulic Works,” 24–5, 28, 30.

60. Allen, “In Support of Trade,” 63, 70–1. After examining the pedological, sedi-

mentological, geomorphological, and historical evidence, Allen concludes that overly

intensive dry-land farming of the inland slopes to meet the requirements of a bur-

geoning population in the urban areas led to progradation and the creation of the

plains. Allen, “In Support of Trade,” 73.

61. Wheatley, Golden Khersonese, 42–3, 46, 222–4, 279–80.

62. Lamb, “Takuapa,” 83–4.

63. Allen, “In Support of Trade,” 14–5.


65. Allen, “Trade, Transportation, and Tributaries,” 585, 590, 592; Jacq-Hergoualc’h,

Malay Peninsula, 197–202.

66. “Red Earth,” or Tanah Merah in Malayu, is a name frequently encountered on

the Malay Peninsula. There are differing opinions as to its location, and places in India

as well as on the peninsula have been suggested.


68. Leong, “Collecting Centres,” 27–8; Jacq-Hergoualc’h, La Civilization, 300.


70. Jacq-Hergoualc’h, Malay Peninsula, 216, 221–2, 228–9.

71. Hourani, Arab Seafaring, 78, 83, 146.

72. Jacq-Hergoualc’h, La Civilization, 300–4.


74. Wolters, Early Indonesian Commerce, 180–1.

75. Wolters, Early Indonesian Commerce, 181, 184–5, 193.

76. Donkin, Dragon’s Brain Perfume, 131.


78. Miksic, “Trade Routes,” 78.

79. Malleret, L’Archéologie du Delta.

80. Ray, “Early Maritime Contacts,” 51.

81. Vickery, Society, 282–8.

82. Manguin, “Archaeology of Early Maritime Polities,” 298–300.



246

83. Stark et al., “Results,” 8, 12, 26–7, 30; Bishop et al., “A 3.5 ka Record,” 364,

387–8; Stark and Sovath, “Recent Research,” 91–4; Bishop, Sanderson, and Stark, “OSL

and Radiocarbon,” 333–4.

84. Southworth, “River Settlement,” 4.

85. Hall, Maritime Trade, 178.

86. Vickery, Society, 325. This traffic appears to have continued into later cen-

turies. Vickery suggests that the rise of the Cham port polity of Vijaya in the twelfth

century was due to the desire of Angkorian rulers to take part in the lucrative interna-

tional trade flowing to the Cham coast. Vickery, “Revising Champa History,” 47.

87. Thurgood, From Ancient Cham, 5.

88. Ray, “South and Southeast Asia,” 412.

89. Diem, “Significance of Cham Ceramic Evidence,” 3.



92. Southworth, “River Settlement,” 3.

93. Vickery argues that there is no strong evidence to indicate the language or the

ethnicity of the people of Lin Yi. He believes it is more likely that Lin Yi was a Mon-

Khmer speaking polity. Vickery, “Revising Champa History,” 6, 11, 14.

94. Southworth, “Notes on the Political Geography.”

95. Vickery, “Revising Champa History,” 49.

96. Aoyagi, “Champa Ceramics,” 3.

97. Vickery, “Revising Champa History,” 26.


99. Marrison, “Early Cham,” 53.

100. Li, Nguyen Cochinchina, 31–2.

101. Hickey, Sons of the Mountains, 106–7.


103. The dates of the Ming dynasty are 1368–1644, but the records of a dynasty

were written by its successors and are of a later date than the dynasty.

104. Wade, “Ming Shi-lu,” 388.

105. Brown, Sejarah Melayu, 238 fn 427. The word “Kuchi” is very likely the

Malay rendering of “Cochin” or Cochin China, the name given by the Portuguese to

the southern portion of Vietnam.

106. Brown, Sejarah Melayu, 110.


108. Although the Chams continued to survive, particularly in the south, their

civilization and language underwent major changes over the centuries as a result of

contact with the dominant Vietnamese. Most of the Chamic languages today are spo-

ken in the highlands among the hill tribes. Thurgood, From Ancient Cham, 26 –9.

109. Wade, “Ming Shi-lu,” 226, 351–2.

110. Cooke and Li, Water Frontier, 2.

111. The remnants of this earlier civilization still present in the northern states

of the Malay Peninsula have become the basis of what Malaysians today refer to as

“traditional Malay culture.”



247

Chapter 2: Emergence of Malayu

1. Christie, “Trade and State Formation,” 50–1.


3. At various times in the past the Chinese have used “kunlun” to refer to the

most prominent of Southeast Asian inhabitants, including the Malayu.

4. Manguin, “Southeast Asian Ship,” 274–5; Manguin, “Trading Ships,” 258–63.

5. Wolters, Early Indonesian Commerce, 153, 199–200; I-Tsing, Record of the Bud-

dhist Religion.


7. Wolters, Early Indonesian Commerce, ch. 13.


9. Wolters, Early Indonesian Commerce, 220–5; Manguin, “Archaeology of Early

Maritime Polities,” 303–4.

10. Wolters, Early Indonesian Commerce, 106, 111, 126–7, 129, 181–3.

11. Donkin, Dragon’s Brain Perfume, 127. In the nineteenth century it was esti-

mated that anywhere from 280 grams to 8.38 kilograms of camphor could be collected

per tree, and one picul (56 kilograms) of camphor could cost four thousand guilders,

a considerable sum in that period. Zeijlstra, “Boschproducten,” 826.

12. References abound on the multiple uses to which camphor and benzoin were

used among early societies. They range from a cure for nasal polyps to a deterrent to

plagues and epidemics to preventing “voluntary emissions by males.” Wolters, Early

Indonesian Commerce, 118–9; Ptak “Possible Chinese References,” 138; Stéphan, “Le

Camphre,” 234–9; Marsden, History of Sumatra, 153, 155.

13. Wang, Nanhai Trade, 96; Wolters, Early Indonesian Commerce, 230, 235.

14. The transcription used by Takakusu, who translated Yijing’s account, is “Sri-

bogha,” which is another way of transcribing the Chinese characters for “Sriwijaya.”

Although Yijing used “Sribogha” indiscriminately to refer to both the capital city and

the country, only Bhoga was used for the capital city. I-Tsing, Record of the Buddhist

Religion, xxx, xl–xli; Wolters, Early Indonesian Commerce, 240–1.

15. Wolters, “Studying Srivijaya,” 17.

16. Casparis, “Some Notes,” 29.

17. Coedès, “Les Incriptions Malaises,” 34, 35, 37, 53, 58.

18. Coedès, Indianized States, 82–3. Chhabra has challenged this interpretation,

arguing that siddhayatra simply refers to a successful undertaking and had no asso-

ciation with magic. Chhabra, Expansion of Indo-Aryan Culture, 24–6. In an effort to

reconcile these two positions, Stutterheim suggested that the term in the inscription be

translated as “a pilgrimage of victory, meaning that it was a pilgrimage to obtain magi-

cal powers to gain victory. Nilakanta Sastri then entered the debate by reinterpreting

the texts used by Chhabra to demonstrate that the references to siddhayatra in these

texts did indeed have an element of the search for magical powers to gain success.

Nilakanta Sastri, South India and South-East Asia, 213–9.

19. Boechari, “New Investigations.”

20. Casparis, Prasasti Indonesia, 1–46.



248

21. Damais, “Bibliographie Indonésienne,” 555.

22. Casparis, “Some Notes,” 29, 34.

23. Boechari dated the inscription to the seventh century and believed that this

Dapunta Selendra was the founder of the Sailendra dynasty in central Java. Boechari,

“Preliminary Report,” 242–3, 245–6. It is now generally accepted that this inscription

originated much later in the ninth century.

24. Christie, “State Formation,” 273.

25. Bosch, “Een Maleische Inscriptie,” 49–50.

26. Casparis, “Some Notes,” 34.

27. Postma, “Laguna,” 185, 187, 190, 195, 197.

28. The transformation of the name from Sriwijaya to Zabag is due to an old

Arabic system of transcription. Early Arab geographers who relied on purported eye-

witness accounts applied the name to a town, an island, a bay, a sea, and an empire.

Tibbett supports Coedès’ view that “Zabag” was first applied to the Sailendras in Java

and later became equated with the Chinese “Sanfoqi,” or Sriwijaya. Coedès, Indianized

States, 130–1, 320 fn 173; Tibbetts, Study of the Arabic Texts, 102–7.

29. Tibbetts, Study of the Arabic Texts, 33–4.

30. Wolters, Early Indonesian Commerce, 17, 185, 192, 238.

31. Ferrand, Relations, 91–4, 99–100; Coedès, Indianized States, 242–3.

32. Tibbetts, Study of the Arabic Texts, 52; Ferrand, Relations, 175.

33. Manguin, “Archaeology of Early Maritime Polities,” 308.

34. Manguin, “Trading Ships,” 270–4.

35. I-Tsing, Record of the Buddhist Religion, 34.

36. Coedès has even identified the source of the Tantric school in Bengal, where

the first guru would have been the head of the Nalanda monastery. Coedès and Dam-

ais, Srivijaya, 50–2, 59–60. The significance of this connection appears later in the

Nalanda Charter of 860. In that year King Devapala of the Pala dynasty in Bengal

dedicated a number of villages for the upkeep of a monastery built at Nalanda by

Balaputra, the first Sailendra ruler of Sriwijaya. Coedès, Indianized States, 108–9.

37. Casparis, Prasasti Indonesia, 29.

38. Wolters, Fall of Srivijaya, 128–9.

39. Coedès and Damais, Srivijaya, 50.

40. I would like to thank Geoffrey Wade for sharing the information via Michael

Laffan of the earliest mention of Chan-pei in Chinese sources.

41. Wang, Nanhai Trade, 96; Hirth and Rockhill, Chau Ju-kua, 66 fn 18.

42. Wolters, Fall of Srivijaya, 45, 194 fn 9; Hirth and Rockhill, Chau Ju-kua,

66 fn 18.

43. Most scholars agree that the name refers to “Malayu,” the objective of the

expedition. It is unclear, however, whether the name refers to the Malayu polity in

Jambi or to a wider area in Sumatra associated with the Malayu.

45. Berg, “Pril Majapahit I,” 485; Casparis, “Sriwijaya and Malayu,” 247–8.

45. C. C. Berg argues that the sending of the Amoghapasa Buddha statue to

Dharmasraya was equivalent to the presenting of his real/sacred daughter Tapasi to



249

Champa. In both cases it was a sign of great favor in the transferal of sakti or sacred

power. Berg, “Pril Majapahit I,” 501; Berg “Pril Majapahit II, 195.

46. Krom, Hindoe-Javaansche, 235–6, 393–4.

47. Schnitger, Archaeology, 8; Casparis, “Kerajaan Malayu,” 9.

48. Adelaar, “Borneo at a Cross-Roads,” 84; Robert Blust, personal communica-

tion, 15 May 2001.

49. Blust, “Austronesian Settlement.”

50. Damais, “Language B.”

51. Bellwood, “Aslian, Austronesian,” 351.

52. In 2005 John Miksic conducted a survey of the Batang Hari but found no

pre–eleventh-century sites downstream from the Jambi capital. Perhaps, he suggested,

a survey conducted further upriver would reveal earlier sites. Personal communica-

tion, 2 August 2005.

53. Andaya, To Live as Brothers, 15–6.

54. This is a variation of Bronson’s model, where he located the chief port along

the coast. See Bronson, “Exchange,” 42. Although Sumatra served as the basis for his

model, the southeastern Sumatran principal settlements, or Bronson’s A settlements,

were further inland because of the mangrove swamps along the coast. Miksic also

suggests that the major site would have been where the tides did not penetrate, nipah

palms (a source of food and housing materials) could flourish, and large vessels could

not proceed further upriver because of the shallow waters. The city of Palembang is

the first high ground encountered in going up the Musi River. Miksic, personal com-

munication, 2 August 2005.

55. Collins, Malay, 5. John Miksic believes that the finds would more likely date

to the ninth or even tenth century. Personal communication.

56. Adelaar, “Borneo as the Homeland,” 2.

57. Blust, “The Linguistic Macrohistory of the Philippines: Some Speculations.”

58. For a period in the early 1970s there was some skepticism expressed con-

cerning Palembang as the site of Sriwijaya and the extent of its power. See Bronson et

al., Laporan Penelitian. Subsequent archaeological expeditions led by P.-Y. Manguin,

O. W. Wolters, E. Edwards-McKinnon, and Satyawati Suleiman have left little doubt not

only of Sriwijaya’s location in Palembang but also of its extensive influence. See espe-

cially Manguin, “Études Sumatranaises,” “Palembang and Sriwijaya,” and Bibliography

for Srivijayan Studies.

59. These comments are based on Wolters’ two major works, Early Indonesian

Commerce and Fall of Srivijaya in Malay History, as well as later refinements and

reassessments of some of his early ideas. See bibliography for a list of the works by

Wolters.

60. Casparis, Prasasti Indonesia, 1–46. Even in the seventeenth and eighteenth

centuries, the Palembang and Jambi courts downriver devoted much time and effort

to woo upstream communities. Andaya, To Live as Brothers, passim.

61. Woodward, “Esoteric Buddhism,” 330–6.

62. Wolters, History, Culture and Region, 118–21.



250


64. Coedès and Damais, Sriwijaya, 52–6.

65. Christie, “State Formation,” 267.

66. Smith, “Indianization.”

67. See Kulke for the original Sanskrit for these occupations. Kulke, “Epigraphi-

cal References,” 8.

68. Blust, “Early Austronesian Social Organization,” 216–7.

69. This is one of the most beloved of the Malayu tales. Though the printed ver-

sion dates from the nineteenth century, the stories occur during the period of great-

ness of the kingdom of Melaka in the fifteenth century.

70. Kassim, Hikayat Hang Tuah, 329. In Malaysia, where grass practically grows

in front of one’s eyes because of ideal conditions of sun, rain, and temperature, grass

becomes a metaphor for life and fecundity.

71. Muhammad Yusoff, Hikayat Siak, 112.

72. Kozok, “A 14th Century Malay Manuscript,” 37 –45.

73. Kozok, Tanjung Tanah Code, 27–9.

74. Andaya, To Live as Brothers, 146.

75. Mus’ discussion of the religious ideas of the early Chams contains one of the

clearest expositions of the relationship between the chief/ruler and fertility. Mus, India

Seen from the East.

76. Coedès and Damais, Sriwijaya, 55; Casparis, Prasasti Indonesia, 43–5.

77. Apparently it is the equivalent of the Javanese kawula-gusti, in which kawula

refers specifically to a bondsman or retainer, and gusti to a master or lord. I am grateful

to John Miksic for alerting me to this comparison.

78. Casparis, Prasasti Indonesia, 26, 42 fn 49; Kulke, “Epigraphical References,” 8;

Christie, “State Formation,” 267 fn 2.

79. The glosses are those of Christie, “State Formation,” 267–8. Coedès compiled

a glossary of words found in four Sriwijayan inscriptions he had studied, with cross-

references to previous interpretations by his Dutch and English colleagues. Based on

this glossary, the term punta hiyang or dapunta hiyang can be translated literally as

“Our Holy Master.” Coedès and Damais, Sriwijaya, 71, 76, 84.

80. Christie, “State Formation,” 267–8.


82. For a provocative discussion of how kinship acts upon political processes, see

Day, Fluid Iron, ch. 2.

83. White, “Incorporating Heterarchy,” 113–6.

84. The above reconstruction is based on Kulke, “Kedatuan Sriwijaya.”

85. Wolters, History, Culture, 27–31; Anderson, “Idea of Power,” 22.

86. Kulke, “Kedatuan Srivijaya,” 162–5.

87. Kulke, “Epigraphical References,” 10.

88. Christie, “State Formation,” 270; Christie, “Trade and State Formation,”

46–7.

89. Barendregt, “Representing,” 281, 294.



251

90. Although the traditions from which many of the stories in the Sejarah Melayu

were taken may have originated in the fifteenth century, the earliest extant recension

is the Raffles 18 manuscript dating from 1612. For a detailed study of the various ver-

sions, see Roolvink, “Variant Versions.” A useful compendium of articles about the

Sejarah Melayu and the full Malay text in romanized script of the Raffles 18 can be

found in Cheah, Sejarah Malayu. The author refers to his work as Sulalatu’l-Salatin or

in Malayu Penurunan Segala Raja-Raja (The Genealogy of Kings). Roolvink believes

that what we now know as the Sejarah Melayu began as a list of kings with dates, but

the dates were later dropped as various stories were added at various places and at dif-

ferent times to produce the current version. Roolvink, “Variant Versions,” 304–6.

91. Cortesão, Suma Oriental.

92. Wade, “Ming Shi-lu.”


94. Both titles are linked to Siva, with “Permaisura” meaning “Lord of All” and

“Sri Tri Buana” meaning “Lord of the Three Worlds.” The latter appears to have been

a favored title linked to royalty and kingship in early Southeast Asia. Wolters, Fall of

Srivijaya, 232 fn 18; Wilkinson, Malay English Dictionary, vol. 2, 890.

95. Cortesão, Suma Oriental, vol. 2, 231.

96. Brown, Sejarah Melayu, 20–1, 40–1.


98. Brown, Sejarah Melayu, 35–6.

99. Wade, “Ming Shi-lu,” 413–4.

100. Wang, “Opening of Relations.”

101. Wolters, Fall of Srivijaya, ch. 13.


103. Cortesão, Suma Oriental, vol. 1, 148–57.


105. Milner, Kerajaan, 104–11, passim.

106. Bowen cites Louis Dumont in formulating the following distinction: “While

descent theory views marriage as largely the consequence of negative prohibitions

between already constituted groups, alliance theory emphasizes the contribution made

by the exchange of women to the interrelation and definition of social units.” Bowen,

“Cultural Models,” 164.

107. Bowen, “Cultural Models,” 173.

108. In the Malay world a copyist’s task was to “improve” a text to accord with

current social and political realities. It often resulted in the expunging and inserting of

information to support the genealogical claims of powerful families.

109. Schulte Nordholt describes the situation in Bali in the mid-nineteenth cen-

tury when Dutch officials were overwhelmed by the conflicting representations of the

competing factions. But it was by means of such histories (babad) that some families

were able to regain their positions of authority on the island. Schulte Nordholt, Spell

of Power, 1; Schulte Nordholt, “Origin”, 54–5.

110. Andaya, “Bugis Diaspora, Identity.”



252

111. Brown, Malay Sayings, 126.

112. http://online.anu.edu.au/asianstudies/ahcen/proudfoot/MCP/.

113. This particular role of powerful ancestors is a general phenomenon. In

Palembang the eighteenth-century sultan Mahmud Badaruddin fulfilled this role,

while in seventeenth-century South Sulawesi it was Arung Palakka. See Andaya, To

Live as Brothers, ch. 6; Andaya, Heritage of Arung Palakka.

114. Cheah, Sejarah Melayu, 193.

115. Khalid, Taj al-Salatin, 147, line 38.

116. Mohd. Yusof, Salasilah Melayu dan Bugis, 120, line 16.

117. Kassim, Hikayat Hang Tuah, 170–1.


119. Farah, Marriage and Sexuality in Islam, 81, 154.

120. Lai, “Settled,” 14–8.

121. Lai, “Settled,” 18–9.


123. Andaya, Kingdom of Johor; Barnard, Raja Kecil. The event is mentioned both

in contemporary Dutch accounts as well as in the Hikayat Siak, the Salasilah Melayu

dan Bugis, and the Tuhfat al-Nafis.

124. Muhammad Yusoff, Hikayat Siak, 122

125. Andaya, Kingdom of Johor. See also Drakard, Kingdom of Words.

126. Kassim, Hikayat Hang Tuah, 32.


128. Kassim, Hikayat Hang Tuah, 331 (1975 edition)

129. Brown, Sejarah Malayu, 157; Cheah, Sejarah Malayu, 254.

130. Andaya, To Live as Brothers, 60, 217.

131. Winstedt, Hikayat Bayan Budiman, 185, line 14: “yang suka beranak angkat,

maulah pilih bangsanya serta ditatap af‘ alnya pada hal yang baik, maka sempurnalah

orang itu beranak angkat.”

132. Mohd. Yusof, Salasilah Malayu dan Bugis, 229, line 33.

133. Brown, Sejarah Malayu, 61.

134. Foreest and Booy, De Vierde Schipvaert, vol. 1, 225; Hamilton, A New

Account, vol. 2, 28, 96.

135. Andaya, “Orality, Contracts,” 25.

136. Berg, “Pril Majapahit I,” 501; Berg, “Pril Majapahit II,” 195.

137. Kiefer, Taosug, 29; Warren, Sulu Zone, 93, passim.

138. Kiefer, Taosug, 42–3; Junker, Raiding, Trading, 68–73.

139. Cheah, Sejarah Malayu, 179 “istiadat hamba Melayu tiada pernah durhaka.”

140. Brown, Sejarah Malayu, 111–2.

141. See Andaya, Kingdom of Johor, for evidence of the roles of the Bendahara and

Laksamana families in the Malay world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

142. Brown, Sejarah Malayu, 68, 88, 92, 157–8, passim; Cheah, Sejarah Malayu,

170, 254, passim.

143. Duara, Rescuing History, 65; Barth, “Introduction,” 10–11.

144. Brown, Sejarah Malayu, 80–2, 90; Cheah, Sejarah Malayu, 179.



253

Chapter 3: Ethnicization of the Minangkabau

1. Kahn reminds us that it is important to determine when and why individuals

or groups decide it is necessary to make these decisions. Kahn, Constituting Minang-

kabau, 15. In the case of the Minangkabau, the contemporary records of the Dutch

East India Company have made it possible to answer the “when.” The “why,” however,

is more problematic and can only be inferred by a close reading of the circumstances

described in the records.

2. This twin concept is discussed in Kato, Matrilineality and Migration. See also

the classic formulation of these characteristics in Josselin de Jong, Minangkabau and

Negri Sembilan.

3. Taufik Abdullah in his writings has stressed that the interplay of adat and

Islam is a major feature of Minangkabau identity. Yet this has not often been cited as

a distinctive Minangkabau quality, and therefore it has not been used as a marker of

ethnic identity. For one of the earliest exposition of Taufik’s ideas on the subject, see

Taufik, “Adat and Islam.”

4. Marsden, History of Sumatra, 41.

5. Kapferer, Legends of People, 211.

6. Barendregt, “Representing.”

7. Robson, Desawarnana, 33.

8. Westenenk, “Opstellen II,” 261–2.

9. Berg, “Pril Majapahit I,” 501; “Pril Majapahit II,” 195.

10. Dobbin, Islamic Revivalism, 61–2.

11. Wolters, Fall of Srivijaya, 57–8, 75.

12. Casparis, “Kerajaan Malayu,” 6–9. De Casparis’ suggestion accords with a sev-

enteenth-century practice where the line of succession of the Minangkabau kings of

Pagaruyung followed the matrilineal pattern. Andaya, Kingdom of Johor, 329–32.

13. Casparis, “Kerajaan Malayu,” 9–10, 15, 17.

14. Coedès, Indianized States, 232.

15. Krom, Hindoe-Javaansche, 393–4; Kern, Verspreide Geschriften, vol. 7, 165–75.

One of the principal functions of Tantrism has always been the protection of the state.

Woodward, “Esoteric Buddhism,” 331.

16. In Sumatra there is still a belief in the sacred nature of sharpening knives.

Status was also measured by the number of rice mortars owned by an individual, and

the importance of rice mortars is still evident in funerary ceremonies. Reichle, “Vio-

lence and Serenity,” 295–6.

17. Reichle, “Violence and Serenity,” 289.

18. Satyawati, “Archaeology and History,” 9–10.

19. Kern, Verspreide Geschriften, vol. 7, 174.

20. Krom, Hindoe-Javaansche, 394 fn 4.

21. Sjafiroeddin, “Pre-Islamic,” 44, 51.

22. Andaya, To Live as Brothers, 23–9, passim.

23. Krom, Hindoe-Javaansche, 393–4; Westenenk, “Opstellen II,” 261–2.

24. Casparis, “Sriwijaya and Malayu,” 246–7.



254

25. Coedès, Indianized States, 232; Kern, Verspreide Geschriften, vol. VII, 172.

26. Kern, Verspreide Geschriften, vol. VII, 219; see also Krom, Hindoe-Javaansche,

413.

27. Moens, “Buddhisme,” 579; Schnitger, Forgotten Kingdoms, 31; Krom, Hindoe-

Javaansche, 394.

28. It is believed that the Bhairawa, like the standing Ganesa statues in east Java,

was placed on an open public platform easily accessible to devotees. Reichle, “Violence

and Serenity,” 284–5 fn 88.

29. Krom, Hindoe-Javaansche, 414–5.

30. Nilakanta Sastri, “Takuapa,” 25–30; Miksic, “Cola Attacks,” 120–1; Edwards

McKinnon, “New Light,” 87.


32. Edwards McKinnon, “Kota Cina,” 31–3.

33. Parkin, Batak Fruits, 84–6; Schnitger, Forgotten Kingdoms, 96.

34. Miksic, “Archaeology,” 93; Parkin, Batak Fruit, 87.

35. Satyawati, “Archaeology and History,” 6.

36. Krom, Hindoe-Javaansche, 415; Satyawati, “Archaeology and History,” 5–6;

Reichle, “Violence and Serenity,” 207–8.

37. Andaya, Kingdom of Johor, 329–32.

38. Josselin de Jong, Minangkabau and Negri Sembilan, 93.


40. Kato, Matriliny and Migration, 78.

41. James Fox has argued that all Austronesian-speaking societies (which includes

the Minangkabau) make use of precedence as a means of social and individual dif-

ferentiation. Fox, “Austronesian Societies and Their Transformations.” This would

have encouraged ambitious individuals to found new communities and hence gain

the prestige and privileges of a founder status. Bellwood, “Hierarchy,” 28–31.

42. Kato, Matriliny and Migration, 22, 29–31.

43. Taufik, “Studi tentang Minangkabau,” 192–3; Kato, “Social Change,” v. 75.

44. Josselin de Jong, Minangkabau and Negri Sembilan, 69. A study based on a

survey made in the 1970s and on statistics gathered in 1955 show the suku Malayu with

the second largest representation among the Minangkabau nagari (unit of settlement

consisting of the “mother” village and its associated “children” villages) after Caniago.

A Minangkabau source even claims that the oldest suku (matrilineage) in West Suma-

tra is Malayu. Kato, Matriliny and Migration, 80–1.

45. Willinck, Rechtsleven, 66.

46. Numerous examples can be found in Andaya, To Live as Brothers; Barnard,

Multiple Centres; Andaya, Kingdom of Johor; Dobbin, Islamic Revivalism; and Drakard,

Kingdom of Words.

47. Willinck, Rechtsleven, 33–4. The mamak, or mother’s brother, plays the domi-

nant role in the lives of the kemanakan, or his sister’s children. In the rantau one often

finds a modification of this customary practice.

48. Peletz advances this idea in discussing the situation of the Minangkabau

families in Rembau in the Malay Peninsula. Peletz, Share of the Harvest, 22.



255

49. Hadler believes there are “multiple concepts of rantau” and that the colonial

state may need to be examined as a factor in the increasing patrilineal tendencies in the

rantau. Jeffrey Hadler, personal communication.

50. Drakard, Kingdom of Words, 101.

51. In the Dutch translation of these letters kept in the National Archives in The

Netherlands, the Dutch term “keizer” or “emperor” was used for maharajadiraja, “the

great king of kings.”





56. Coolhaas, Generale Missiven, vol. 1, 351.

57. This was a pattern continued in the later centuries. Andaya, Kingdom of Johor;

Barnard, “Multiple Centers”; Andaya, To Live as Brothers; Oki, “River Trade.”



60. Boxer, Further Selections, 98–103.

61. Benjamin, “Issues in the Ethnohistory of Pahang,” 92, 97.

62. NA, VOC 1151 Malaka, van Vliet, 14 January 1645, fols. 538v–539r.

63. Buxbaum, Family Law, 25. I have retranslated the original Malay into English.

64. NA, VOC 1157 Atjeh, Diary of Arnold de Vlamingh v. Outshoorn, 1644, fol.

606r.

65. Hale, Adventures, 163.

66. Mills, Eredia’s Description, 22.

67. With the growing strength of Islam in the interior, the Arabic term alam

came to replace the Sanskrit bhumi for “world.”

68. Haan, “Naar Midden Sumatra,” 355–6; Andaya, History of Johor, 111. Part of

“Naar Midden Sumatra,” which was a journal of Tomas Dias, has been translated by

Drakard, “A Mission,” 152–61.

69. Joustra, Batakspiegel 20, 23–9.

70. Kathirithamby-Wells, “Acehnese Control,” 476–7.

71. Basel, “Begin en Voortgang,” 24–6.

72. Satyawati, “Archaeology and History,” 3. In an early nineteenth-century letter

written in Malay from Pagaruyung, the term maharajadiraja was still being used to

refer to the ruler. Drakard, Kingdom of Words, 156–7, Appendix I, 273.

73. The name comes from the words pagar (fence) and ruyung (the outer portion

of a palm trunk, which can be used for fences or palisades). According to legend, a fence

made of the palm trunk was erected in the river to protect the royal child from crocodile

attacks while bathing. It was a well-known story and would have reinforced the per-

ceived role of rulers as “parents” offering protection for their Minangkabau “children.”

74. Andaya, Kingdom of Johor, 331

75. The mission itself consisted solely of Minangkabau leaders from the west coast

settlement of Padang acting on behalf of the VOC. It did not include any Europeans.

76. NA, VOC 1272, Mission to Pagaruyung, fols. 1027r–v.



256

77. NA, VOC 1272, Diary of a Mission to Pagaruyung, fols. 1032r–v.

78. Basel, “Begin en Voortgang,” 47–8.

79. NA, VOC 1237, Bort, fol. 340v.

80. NA, VOC 1191, Truijtman, fols. 751r, 752v.

81. NA, VOC 1272, Letter from Pagaruyung, fol. 1039.

82. Andaya, Heritage of Arung Palakka, 44.

83. Drakard, Kingdom of Words, 221–9.

84. Drakard, Kingdom of Words, 32–7.

85. Taufik, “Some Notes,” 1–4.

86. Drakard, Kingdom of Words, 229–30. Iskandar Zul-Karnain in Malay tradi-

tions is the legendary “Islamic” hero, Alexander the Great of Macedonia. While the

Perso-Islamic tradition of the Romance of Alexander the Great emphasizes his role as

conqueror, seer, and prophet in search of the Water of Life, the crucial message is his

destiny to establish a universal kingdom, a kingdom of Islam. Subrahmanyam, “Per-

sianization,” 79–83.

87. Drakard, Kingdom of Words, 253 fn 80.

88. Wolters argues that the compilers of the Sejarah Melayu attempted to elimi-

nate all references to the Malayu-Jambi past in order to demonstrate an unbroken line

in the Palembang-Melaka family. Wolters, Fall of Srivijaya, 94–5. The aim, I believe,

was not to eradicate references to Malayu-Jambi but to appropriate the whole Suma-

tran tradition of Sriwijaya Malayu for itself and thus shift the center of Malayu identity

to the Malay Peninsula.

89. Shellabear, Sejarah Melayu, 31, 37.

90. Marsden, History of Sumatra, 40–1.

91. Angelbeek, “Korte Schets,” 18, 20; Newbold, British Settlements, 215–6;

Wilkinson, “Malay Adat Laws,” 7.

92. Although the Dutch translation of Pagaruyung letters tended to refer to

“Minangkabau subject,” the Malay would have been anak Minangkabau or “Minang-

kabau child.” A common way of referring to a patron-client or lord-subject relation-

ship throughout the Malay-Indonesian region is by the kinship terms of bapak-anak

(father-child).

93. Basel, Begin en Voortgang, 65–6, 76–9, 81, 87; Coolhaas, Generale Missiven, 15.


95. Begbie, Malayan Peninsula, 137.

96. Andaya and Andaya, History of Malaysia, 132. There are other examples in

Sumatra where rulers were sought from Pagaruyung, including Rau and Kuantan.


98. NA, VOC 1895, Malacca, 30 January 1718, fols. 55–6; Andaya, Kingdom of

Johor, 251–2.

99. Barnard, Multiple Centers; Drakard, Kingdom of Words, 196–200; Andaya,

Kingdom of Johor, ch. 9.

100. This manuscript, Cod. Or. 7304 from the Leiden University Library, is a ver-

sion of the Sejarah Melayu with an additional section devoted entirely to the kingdom

of Siak. It has been called Hikayat Siak, or the Siak Chronicles, because of its Siak



257

viewpoint. A romanized version of the text was published in 1992. Muhammad Yusoff

Hashim, Hikayat Siak.

101. In Asahan there is a tradition of the father of the founder of the Asahan

kingdom being a child born of a princess impregnated and then given away by the

ruler of Aceh. Once the child is born, a member of the royal family in Pagaruyung

is brought to Asahan to raise the child. Kroesen, “Geschiedenis van Asahan,” 87–8.

Pagaruyung was obviously regarded as the source of great legitimizing power, which

enabled these “fatherless” children to be enveloped into the parentship/guardianship

of Pagaruyung’s rulers.

102. In Malay “skins of lice” is kulit tuma. Leyds suggests that this was a misread-

ing of kulit umo, not tumo (-a). Umo, he was told, was a cat-sized animal once found

everywhere in the forests. It had a thin skin that tore at the slightest contact. Leyds

identified it as the Sumatran hare (Neosolagus Nescheri). Leyds, “Larassen,” 401.

103. Muhammad Yusoff Hashim, Hikayat Siak, 111–27; Andaya, Kingdom of

Johor, 158–65.

104. The role of the Putri Jamilan in this Hikayat is very similar to that of the

Bundo Kanduang (Real Mother) in the well-known Minangkabau Kaba Cindua Mata.

In this kaba it is the Bundo Kanduang who is the repository of knowledge of the his-

tory and customs of the Minangkabau. She conveys this knowledge to her son, the Raja

Pagaruyung. See Syamsuddin, Cindua Mato. In both cases, the queen mothers occupy

an elevated position in keeping with matrilineal emphasis in Minangkabau society. It

is also part of the idea of the protective parent, in this case a mother figure, who not

only protects but nurtures the child.

105. The Hikayat Siak, which was written sometime in the early nineteenth cen-

tury, and the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century letters from Pagaruyung use the

metaphor of “seas” or “coasts” to refer to the rantau. By contrast the Minangkabau

heartland is known as the “land” (darek).

106. Kratz, Peringatan, 50.

107. Andaya, Kingdom of Johor, ch. 9.

108. A letter from the king of Jambi in 1694 informed the Dutch that the ruler

of Pagaruyung was present to witness the establishing of peace between the warring

Jambi and Minangkabau communities in the upper reaches of the Batang Hari River

in Jambi. NA, VOC 1557, Jambi, 1 April 1694, fols. 35–6.

109. NA, VOC 1609, Jambi, 28 October 1698, fol. 20.

110. Drakard, Kingdom of Words, 233.

111. Willinck, Rechtsleven, 69.

112. Andaya, To Live as Brothers, 133, 140, passim; NA, VOC 1557, Jambi,

15 March 1694, fol. 51v; NA, VOC 1596, Jambi, 28 January 1697, fol. 33.

113. Anon, “Mededelingen,” 130.

Chapter 4: From Malayu to Aceh

1. Although Arab and Malayu commentators tend to attribute the other for the

origin of the term “below the winds,” Laffan suggests that both “below the winds”



258

and “above the winds” may have been a Malayu creation. The seventeenth-century

Persian author of The Ship of Sulaiman used the Arabic term “Zirbadat” (“below the

winds”) to distinguish Siam, Java, Makassar, and Aceh from India and Sri Lanka. In

the fifteenth century the word “Zirbad” was used in a more restricted sense of region.

Two Malay sources, the Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai and the Sulalat al-Salatin, referring

to events in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, use the Malay term “bawah angin,”

“below the winds,” to refer to a region of mainly Muslim kingdoms stretching from

northern Sumatra to Maluku. The lands “above the winds” would then presumably

be those lands to the west of northern Sumatra. Although it is possible to cite Malayu

letters written from the sixteenth century using the term “bawah angin,” the earliest

usage cannot be determined from extant material. Laffan, “Finding Java,” 4, 59–62.

2. “Alam Malayu,” or “the Malayu world,” is the direct translation of “bhumi

Malayu” but with the Sanskrit “bhumi” replaced by the Arabic “alam.” The change

would have occurred at the time of the Islamization of northern Sumatra beginning

sometime in the late thirteenth century.

3. Iskandar, Kesusasteraan Klasik Melayu, 317.

4. Taufik, “Formation of a Political Tradition,” 46–8, 52.

5. It is generally believed that this work was composed by Syams al-Din al-Suma-

trani, but Braginsky has recently disputed his authorship. Braginsky, “Structure,” 451–2.

6. Iskandar, Hikajat Atjeh, 17, 22–4.

7. Riddell, Islam, 112. Calling a monarch a “Sufi ruler” must have been regarded as

the highest compliment in the seventeenth century when Sufism was so prominent in the

archipelago. In a panegyric written about the great Bugis ruler Arung Palakka (1672–96),

he is referred to as “The Heroic Ruler of the Sufists.” Bugis Manuscript 183, 7.

8. Snouck Hurgronje, Atjehers, 2 vols.

9. Wolters, Early Indonesian Commerce, 181, 184–5, 193; Andaya, “Trans-Sumatra

Trade.”

10. Alves, O Dominio.

11. Alves, “Princes contre marchands.”

12. Wolters, Early Indonesian Commerce.


14. For a discussion on Portuguese commentaries on local politics in Maluku,

see Andaya, World of Maluku, 143–5.

15. Wolters, History, Culture and Region, 93–5, 112–3.


17. Kathirithamby-Wells, British West Sumatran, 16, 60, 72–4; Andaya, To Live as

Brothers, 43–8; Bulbeck, Southeast Asian Exports, 60.

18. Masefield, Travels of Marco Polo, 338–9.

19. Jones, Hikayat Raja Pasai, v.

20. Jones, Hikayat Raja Pasai, 13–6, 21.

21. Jones, Hikayat Raja Pasai, 60–75.

22. While the Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai recounts two invasions of Pasai by Maja-

pahit, Sweeney has argued on the basis of language and style that the episodes involv-

ing Majapahit were a later addition to the text. Sweeney, “Connection,” 110–1.



259

23. Cortesão, Suma Oriental, vol. 1, 144; vol. 2, 241.

24. Teeuw, “Hikayat,” 231.

25. Brown, “Sejarah Melayu,” 36.




29. Nik Hassan, “Art, Archaeology,” 110; Wolters, Early Indonesian Commerce,

187, 193, 220; Milner, Edwards McKinnon, and Tengku Luckman, “Note on Aru,”18–9;

Tengku Luckman, Sari Sejarah Serdang, 39; Hirosue, “Prophets and Followers,” 40–1.

30. Rice, which was ordinarily scarce in Aceh, was available in great abundance

under Sultan Iskandar Muda. A major source of Aceh’s supply was the east coast poli-

ties of Tamiang, Deli, and Asahan, which he seized in order to gain control of the rice

grown in their hinterlands mainly by Batak. By the mid-seventeenth century, Aceh

was importing about four hundred metric tons of rice from Deli alone. Lombard, Le

Sultanat d’Atjeh, 73; Hirosue, “Port Polities,” 21.

31. Brown translates the passage to read that Sultan Sajak was descended “from

the Rock,” which is totally unreferenced and appears meaningless. In his footnote

he provides the Jawi, which can be read as “daripada Batak,” or “from Batak,” which

makes more sense in the context. See Brown, “Sejarah Melayu,” 112, 239.

32. In 1891, “Malayu” horse traders from the east coast were going to the Karo

highlands and presenting offerings at the tombs of Batak lords. Westenberg, “Aanteek-

eningen,” 227.

33. Robson, Desawarnana, 33; Pigeaud, Java in the Fourteenth Century, vol. 4, 30.

34. Alves, O Dominio, 157, quoting Castanheda’s phrase, “povoação de pescadores.”

35. Iskandar, Hikajat Atjeh, 31–4.

36. Lombard, Le Sultanat d’Atjeh, 37.

37. Alves, O Dominio, 60, 173–4.

38. Catz, Travels of Mendes Pinto, 54.

39. Drakard, Kingdom of Words.

40. Alves, O Dominio, 165.

41. The above account of Aceh is based principally on Djajadiningrat, “Cri-

tisch overzicht,” 152–3, 157–60, 167, 191–2; and Lombard, Le Sultanat d’Atjeh, 35–8,

69–70.

42. Alves, “Une Ville,” 96. Alves does not give the actual years that Gil was in

Aceh.

43. Alves, “Une Ville,” 102–5, 111 fn 84.

44. Lombard, Le Sultanat d’Atjeh, 32–4; Alves, O Dominio, 159, 171, 176; Alves,

“Princes contre marchands,” 128, 175.

45. Masefield, Travels of Marco Polo, 338.

46. Gibb, Travels of Ibn Battuta, 876–7.


48. Djajadiningrat, “Critisch overzicht,” 157, 159–60.

49. “Mughal” is the Indo-Persian form of the word “Mongol.” The conquering

armies that established the so-called Mughal dynasty, however, were not Mongols but



260

Chaghatay Turks. As descendants of Timur, they should properly be referred to as

Timuris rather than Mughals. The correct name of the dynasty founded by Babur in

1526 is Timurid, acknowledging the ancestry of Timur. Those who came to serve the

dynasty were a mixed group that should be called the “Timuri” or “Indo-Timuri.” But

the term “Mughal” came to be used incorrectly for the Chaghatay and others who

served the Timurids. See Hodgson, Venture of Islam, 62. Because of the greater famil-

iarity of the name, Mughal will be used to refer to this powerful Muslim kingdom and

its subjects in India.

50. Hodgson, Venture of Islam, 47.

51. Reid, “Sixteenth Century,” 395–414; Boxer, “Achinese Attack,” 109–21; Reid,

Southeast Asia, vol. 2, 146–7.

52. Andaya, World of Maluku, 134–5.

53. Lombard, “Martin de Vitré,” 8.

54. Aubin, “Marchands,” 89.

55. Hodgson, Venture of Islam, 81.

56. Andaya, “Ayudhya and the Persian,” 133–41.

57. NA, VOC 1240, Malacca, Missive, fols. 1142–3. The ties between Aceh and

Siam appear to have been fairly close. When the Englishman James Lancaster was in

Aceh in 1602, he mentioned the arrival of an envoy from the ruler of Siam asking what

help Aceh required for the conquest of Portuguese Melaka. Markham, Voyages, 87.

58. Braginsky, System, 71; Iskandar, Kesusasteraan; Winstedt, History of Classical

Malay, 1969.

59. Lombard, “Martin de Vitré,” 8.

60. For some examples, see Reid, Southeast Asia, vol. 2, 144, 146–7; and Andaya,

World of Maluku, 135–7.

61. Lombard, Le Sultanat d’Atjeh; Ricklefs, History of Modern Indonesia, 32–6.

62. Alam and Subrahmanyam, “Southeast Asia as Seen from Mughal India,”

214.

63. Arasaratnam, Maritime India, 40, 46, 59, 67–8, 72–3.

64. Subrahmanyam, “Persians,” 504–5.

65. Arasaratnam and Ray, Masulipatnam and Cambay, 26; Arasaratnam, “Chu-

lia,” 128–9.

66. Arasaratnam, Maritime India, 119–22, 155–6.

67. Arasaratnam, Maritime India, 124, 128, 137; Arasaratnam and Ray, Masulipat-

nam and Cambay, 11, 26–9; Subrahmanyam, “Persians,” 511, 513–16, 524–25.

68. NA, VOC 1157, Atjeh, Relaas Arnold de Vlamingh van Oudthoorn, fols.

547r–548v, 570v; NA, VOC 1237, Atjeh, Verbaal Bort, fols. 345v, 350r–352v.

69. Leeuw, Het Painansch Contract.

70. NA, VOC 1200, Atjeh, Advijs Arnold de Vlamingh van Oudtshoorn, fol.

225v; NA, VOC 1214, Atjeh, Missive Thijssen, 126v; VOC 1237, Batavia, Verbael Bort,

351r–v–373r–v; VOC 1240, Malacca, Memorie Thyssen, fols. 1144v–1450v; VOC 1258,

Malacca, Missive, fol. 2007.

71. Abdul Rahman Haji Ismail, “Teks/Text of the Raffles MS. No. 18,” 67–73. The

description of the marriage between Iskandar and the daughter of the Raja Kida Hindi



261

in the Sejarah Melayu is borrowed almost word for word from the Hikayat Iskan-

dar Zulkarnain, a Malay version of an Arabic copy of the Romance of Alexander the

Great. According to Winstedt, the Hikayat Iskandar Zulkarnain was a popular tale in

the Melaka kingdom. Winstedt, “Date, Authorship,” 1–35.

72. For a brief but informative discussion of the Iskandar legend in the Perso-

Islamic tradition, see Subrahmanyam, “Persianization,” 79–83.

73. Al-Attas, Oldest Known Malay Manuscript, 33, 61–2, 73–4.

74. Andaya, “Interactions,” 345–401.

75. Azra, Origins of Islamic Reformism; Riddell, Islam.

76. Alam and Subrahmanyam, “Southeast Asia as Seen from Mughal India,” 211.

77. Alam and Subrahmanyam, “Southeast Asia as Seen from Mughal India,”

216–25.

78. Works collected by a trader in Aceh in 1604 for a Dutch Orientalist in Leiden

suggests that in the second half of the sixteenth century the bulk of Malayu literary

output in Aceh consisted of Islamic texts. Iskandar, Kesusasteraan, 317, 320.

79. Braginsky, System, 23.

80. Riddell, Islam, 101–3, 139, 166–7.

81. This appears to have been a common process, for in the early seventeenth

century, themes from Persian and Indo-Persian literature were also being transmitted

and reinterpreted in Bengali. Equally noteworthy is that this process of transmission

gave rise to a local language in the late fourteenth century. See Subrahmanyam, “Per-

sianization,” 77.

82. Azra, Origins of Islamic Reformism, 52–3.

83. Azra, Origins of Islamic Reformism, 54.

84. Iskandar, Kesusasteraan, 389.

85. Winstedt, “Date, Authorship,” 54.

86. Djajadiningrat, “Critisch overzicht,” 179–80 fn 4.

87. The Englishman James Lancaster was in Aceh when the Acehnese army

returned on 28 June 1613 after its victory over Johor. Markham, Voyages, 255.

88. Andaya, Kingdom of Johor, 24.

89. Episodes 35 to 38 are the story of the flight and are among eight episodes that

were omitted from the printed version. Liaw, Sejarah Kesusasteraan, vol. 2, 97.

90. Andaya, Perak, 41.

91. This idea is advanced by Braginsky in his reconstruction of the development

of what he terms “medieval” Malay literature. He minimizes the influence of social

and economic factors on Malay culture in general because they were mutatis mutandis

fairly unchanging. Instead, he attaches greater importance to ideology as the deter-

mining factor in Malay society and hence the key to the periodization of its literary

output. Braginsky, System, 5–10.

92. Such a development was noted in the transition to literacy in the Makassar

kingdom of Gowa. Cummings, Making Blood White.

93. Parnickel, Penth, and Johns reject the notion that the Hikayat Aceh was

modeled after the Persian Akbar Nama, apparently on the basis of the latter’s greater

sophistication. Iskandar, Kesusasteraan, 393. Johns believes that the Hikayat Aceh is



262

far more similar to the Hikayat Malim Deman and the Hikayat Awang Sulung Merah

Muda. Liaw, Sejarah Kesusasteraan, 115. Braginsky suggests that the model was most

likely the Malfuzat-I Timuri (Autobiography of Timur) by Abu Talib al-Husayni, who

presented it to the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan (1628–58). Braginsky, “Structure,”

446–8.

94. NA, VOC 1143, Atjeh, Daghregister Pieter Sourij, fol. 565v.

95. Azra, Origins of Islamic Reformism, 54–5, 59.

96. Iskandar, Bustanu’s-Salatin, 3.

97. Hooykaas, Over Maleise Literatuur, 173–4.

98. Iskandar, Bustanu’s-Salatin, 5–7.

99. Azra, Origins of Islamic Reformism, 65–8.

100. Liaw, Sejarah Kesusasteraan, 62–7; Azra, Origins of Islamic Reformism,

77–80.

101. Iskandar, Kesusasteraan, 380–7, 418–20.

102. Schrieke attributes many Acehnese practices to influences from the Mughal

court, from palace and garden architecture to names of officials, though he simply

cites a variety of sources without providing any detail. Schrieke, “Penetration of Islam,”

249–53.

103. Winstedt, The Malay Magician.

104. Bulliet, “Shaikh al-Islam,” 53–4, 66–7; Hadi, Islam and State, 148–61.

105. Ito, “World,” 164, 250, 259–60; Nieuwenhuijze, Samsu ‘-Din van Pasai, 360–1;

Azra, Origins of Islamic Reformism, 57–9, passim; Hadi, Islam and State, 148–66.

106. NA, VOC 1144, Atjeh, Daghregister Soury, fols. 668v, passim; Ito, “World,”

42 fn 92.

107. Andaya, “Indian ‘Saudagar Raja.’”

108. Strachan and Penrose, The East India Company Journals, 137; NA, VOC

1157, Atjeh, Relaas De Vlamingh van Oudtshoorn, fol. 546v; NA, VOC 1237, Batavia,

Verbael Bort, fols. 346v, 366v.

109. NA, VOC 1157, Atjeh, Dagregister Arnold ve Vlamingh van Oudtshoorn,

fol. 574r.

110. NA, VOC 1144, Atjeh, Daghregister Soury, fols. 664v–665r–v; NA, VOC

1155, Atjeh, Daghregister De Vlamingh van Outshoorn, fols. 441r, 443r, 445v, passim.

111. Ramli and Tjut Rahma, Adat Aceh, 73–4; Ito, “World,” 287–8; Meilink-

Roelofsz, Asian Trade, ch. 3.

112. Richards, Mughal Empire, 58. For a discussion of the differences in Melaka’s

and Aceh’s principal ministers, see Andaya, “Aceh’s Contribution,” 52–4.

113. Hodgson, Venture of Islam, 64, 99, 101–2.

114. Ramli and Tjut Rahma, Adat Aceh, 99, passim, ch. 4.

115. Ramli and Tjut Rahma, Adat Aceh, ch. 4.

116. NA, VOC 1237, Batavia, Verbael Bort, fol. 340v.

117. NA, VOC 1191, Atjeh, Rapport Truijtman, fols. 751r, 752v.

118. NA, VOC 1241, Westkust Sumatra, Daghregister Groenewegen, fol. 378v.

The royal messengers sent to the rantau from the Pagaruyung court bearing the sacred



263

word of the ruler in a formalized missive may have been a practice borrowed from

Aceh. See chapter 3.

119. Bowrey, Geographical Account, 300.

120. Colenbrander, Jan Pietersz. Coen, 129, under date 22 October 1615.

121. Large harems were not limited to Muslim societies but were also found else-

where. See “Introduction” in Walthall, Servants of the Dynasty. Nevertheless, Aceh was

unusual among Malayu polities in maintaining large numbers of palace women, a

practice undoubtedly borrowed from the Islamic lands.

122. “Expedition of Commodore Beaulieu,” 744.

123. Bowrey, Geographical Account, 310.

124. These were the actual functions of the palace women in the Ottoman

Empire. See, for example, Lybyer’s study, “The Government of the Ottoman Empire,”

56.

125. Wilkinson, Malay-English Dictionary, vol. 2, 1103; Klinkert, Nieuw Maleisch-

Nederlandsch Woordenboek, 418.

126. Winstedt, “Raffles Ms. No. 18,” 115. Stuart Robson, in a personal commu-

nication, has suggested that it could refer to the fact that Tun Indera Segara may have

come from a family that provided sida-sida.

127. Alves, “Une Ville,” 111 fn 84.

128. Lombard, Le “Spraeck ende Woord-Boek,” 14.

129. Abdul Samad Ahmad, Sulalatus Salatin, 75.

130. Raja Chulan bin Hamid, Misa Melayu, 89.

131. Abdul Samad Ahmad, Sulalatus Salatin, 71.

132. Alves, “Une Ville,” 103.

133. Ayalon, “On the Eunuchs,” 68.

134. Temple, Travels, vol. 3, pts 1 & 2, 1919; NA, Atjeh, VOC 1143, Daghregister

Willemsz., fol. 512r; VOC 1143, Atjeh, Daghregister Soury, fol. 563r–v.

135. Bowrey, Geographical Account, 325–6.

136. Bowrey, Geographical Account, 300–2.

137. NA, VOC 1237, Batavia, Verbael Bort, fols. 354r–v.

138. NA, VOC 1143, Atjeh, Daghregister Willemsz., fol. 503r; Memorie Willemsz.,

594v; NA, VOC 1157, Atjeh, Rapport Arnold de Vlamingh van Oudtshoorn, fol. 546v;

NA, VOC 1157, Atjeh, Journaal Arnold de Vlamingh van Oudtshoorn, fol. 599r.

139. Such indigenous priests can be found in many parts of the Austronesian

world. They are particularly well known in South Sulawesi, where they are called bissu

and continue to perform rituals at various rites of passage. Andaya, “The Bissu”; Peletz,

“Transgenderism,” 312–4, 322.

140. Strachan and Penrose, The East India Company Journals, 138.

141. Richards, Mughal, 62.

142. Subrahmanyam, “Persianization,” 77.

143. Gibb and Bowen, Islamic Society and the West, vol. 1, pt. 1, 329–33; Lybyer.

“The Government of the Ottoman Empire,” 57; Peirce, Imperial Harem, 11, 46, 49,

passim.



264

144. NA, VOC 1226, Malacca, Missive Thyssen, fol. 592v.

145. Ramli and Tjut Rahma, Adat Aceh, 45, 51.

146. A sya’ir is a long poem composed of verses of four lines rhyming together,

with the best-known sya’ir focusing on romantic tales.

147. Abdul Rahman, Sja’ir Puteri Hidjau, 15.

148. Reid, “Elephants and Water,” 27.

149. NA, VOC 1214, Atjeh, Missive Truijtman, fol. 171v.

150. NA, VOC 1214, Atjeh, Missive Truijtman, 171v; VOC 1177, Perak, Mis-

sive, fol. 82v. The title “Lord of the White Elephant” is prominent in the Theravada

Buddhist lands and may be a borrowing from mainland Southeast Asia. On the other

hand, so many of Aceh’s institutions in this period were based on Islamic models that

it is more likely the practice was patterned after Muslim courts in India.

151. Iskandar, Bustanu’s-Salatin, 40.

152. Hadi, Islam and State, 120–42.

153. Liaw, Undang-Undang Melaka, 31–2; Hadi, Islam and State, 217–20.

154. It was common for a frontier area to accept suzerainty from more than one

overlord. Thongchai, Siam Mapped, 84–8. Kedah was a typical frontier area, located

between two powerful cultural zones and loyalties: the Siamese and the Malayu.

155. NA, VOC 1157, Atjeh, Relaas De Vlamingh van Outshoorn, fol. 549v; NA,

VOC 1194, Malacca, Missive Thyssen, fol. 318r; NA, VOC 1221, Malacca, Daghregister

Pitts, fol. 451v; NA, VOC 1229, Atjeh, Missive Keyser, fol. 297r.

156. Andaya, Kingdom of Johor.

157. Liaw, Sejarah Kesusasteraan, 79.

158. Drewes, Hikajat Potjut Muhamat, 167, 169.

159. Djajadiningrat, “Critisch Overzicht,” 191, 197–9.

160. In contemporary Dutch accounts from the western half of the archipelago,

no distinction is made between the Bugis, Makassar, and Mandar people. Whichever

group made the greatest impression on an area tended to be the generalized term for

the others. On Java, for example, all people from South Sulawesi were regarded by the

Javanese and the Dutch as “Makassar,” whereas in alam Malayu, “Bugis” was used for

all ethnic groups from South Sulawesi. Andaya, “Bugis-Makassar Diasporas.”

161. Andaya and Andaya, History of Malaysia, chs. 3–4; Matheson and Andaya,

Precious Gift.

162. NA, VOC 1157, Atjeh, Daghregister De Vlamingh v. Oudtshoorn, fol. 554r.

163. Lombard, Le “Spraeck ende Woord-Boek.”

164. In the Hikayat Hang Tuah, for example, there is an explicit reference to the

Malayu language of Melaka being mixed with Javanisms. See Kassim Ahmad, Hikayat

Hang Tuah, 175.

165. Commentaries, vol. 3, 114.

166. Andaya, “Historicising ‘Modernity,’” 391–409.

167. A certain Muhamat Arsyad al-Banjari in Borneo composed the Sabil al-

Huhtadin as a companion volume to Nur al-Din’s Sirat al-Mustakim, considered to be

the oldest work on jurisprudence (fikh) in the Malayu language. He did this because



265

he claimed that the Sirat contained too many Acehnese words and expressions. Liaw,

Sejarah Kesusastraan, vol. 2, 1993, 50.

168. Snouck Hurgronje, The Achehnese, vol. 2, 69.

169. Hooykaas, Over Maleise Literatuur, 95.

170. Cowan, Hikayat Malém Dagang, 1–2, 75.

171. Cowan, Hikajat Malém Dagang, 11, 78, 80.

172. Aceh did not emerge as a power in the Straits of Melaka until after the fall of

Malayu Melaka in 1511. The name Melaka remained because the rulers re-established

the center of the kingdom on the Johor River. In subsequent centuries, other names

were used for the kingdom to refer to a new site, but it was still possible to call all of

them Melaka or Johor after the “mother” kingdom.

173. Cowan, Hikajat Malém Dagang, 78–9.

174. Cowan, Hikajat Malém Dagang, 91–2.

175. The text is strongly anti–Iskandar Muda, and at least four episodes depict

Iskandar Muda as abandoning the field of battle or quaking from fear in battle. Drewes,

Hikayat Potjut Muhamat, 15.

176. Levtzion, “Eighteenth Century Sufi Brotherhoods,” 151.


178. Ritter, “Korte Aanteekingen,” 446.


180. Drewes, Hikajat Potjut Muhamat, 43.

181. Andaya, “Very Good-Natured,” 70.




185. Andaya, “Very Good-Natured,” 64, 75–6.

186. Snouck Hurgronje, Atjehers, vol. 2, 4.

Chapter 5: The Batak Malayu

1. The major Batak groups today are listed as the Karo, the Simalungun, the

Pakpak-Dairi, the Toba, and the Angkola-Mandailing. It was the Europeans who first

“identified” the Toba as those who lived in and around Lake Toba, spoke a similar dia-

lect, and shared customary practices. Following this usage, I apply the term “Toba” to

refer to the communities living on Samosir and the surrounding lands of Lake Toba,

including those of Silindung. There is a growing tendency to use the word “Batak” only

for the Toba, since many of the other groups prefer to be regarded as non-Batak and

simply as Mandailing, Karo, Simalungun, etc., in the ongoing process of redefinition

of ethnic groups. Before the twentieth century, however, the term “Batak” appears to

have been a general term used by outsiders to refer to all these different groups living

in the interior of northern Sumatra.

2. In Batak social organization the marga is one of the basic kinship units

and traces descent to a single male ancestor. Membership of a marga is determined



266

patrilineally, with children of both sexes belonging to the marga of their father. The

marga can represent an ancient grouping, as well as groups that have developed from

the original unit. There is evidence that some of the marga are of mixed origin and

have been formed by in-migrants joining with the local population. Gonda is not

totally convinced of van der Tuuk’s derivation of the term marga from the Sanskrit

varga, meaning “company, party, group.” In the Old Malayu inscription at Talang

Tuwo in Palembang from the seventh century, the Sanskrit term marga is used to

mean “way.” Gonda, Sanskrit in Indonesia, 129 –30, 205. This derivation appears to

have been retained in later centuries. In the Palembang-Jambi area the term marga

was used for a lineage group. When the Dutch in the early nineteenth century asked

a Palembang man what “marga” meant, he replied: “One road, people of one incli-

nation, one relationship and the same origin.” Andaya, To Live as Brothers, 17. It is

likely, therefore, that the Batak marga stems from the Sanskrit term marga, meaning

“way, road, path.”

3. Bellwood, Prehistory, 122, 151–2.

4. In the literature on the Batak, a common explanations for this ethnonym

is that Muslims used it to refer to “pig eaters.” Rita Kipp cites other possible deriva-

tions provided by her informants: from the Sanskrit bhata or bhrta, meaning “mer-

cenary, soldier, warrior, hireling, servant” because of their functions in the past; and

“savage” or “bumpkin.” See Kipp, Dissociated Identities, 27. It is tempting to define

“Batak” as “human beings,” which is a common definition of ethnonyms of many

indigenous groups around the world. The Batek on the Malay Peninsula, for example,

gloss their name as “human beings.” Despite the lexical similarity, however, there is no

link between the two terms because “Batek” is from an Austroasiatic language, while

“Batak” is derived from an Austronesian language. There is an Austronesian-speaking

group called the “Batak” in Palawan in the Philippines, but no one appears to know the

meaning of the name.

5. Hirth and Rockhill, Chau Ju-kua, 35, 62, 66.


7. Latham, Travels, 255.

8. Vermeulen, Gedenkwaerdige Voyagie, 42.

9. Andaya, “Upstreams,” 542.

10. Anderson, Mission, 34. The “sultan” was the Malayu ruler of Deli who claimed

many of Deli’s hinterland Batak as his subjects.

11. The complexity of the whole issue of cannibalism is discussed by Rodney

Needham in a witty scholarly review of W. Arens, The Man-eating Myth: Anthropology

and Anthropophagy (Oxford University Press, 1979). Needham, Times Literary Supple-

ment, 25 January 1980, 75–6.

12. Casparis, Indonesian Palaeography, 45.

13. Wolters, Early Indonesian Commerce, 111–2, 124–5, 230–1. The resin comes

from a variety of species. The Styrax paralleloneurum produces a better quality ben-

zoin, but the most frequently mentioned in pharmaceutical and botanical literature is

the Styrax benzoin. Katz, “L’exploitation,” 243–5.




267

15. Burkill, Dictionary of Economic Products, vol. 1, 876–81.

16. Marsden, History of Sumatra, 150, 154–5, 184.

17. Wolters, Early Indonesian Commerce, 230–1, 233, 235–7.

18. Katz, “L’Exploitation,” 259.

19. Ptak, “Possible Chinese,” 137.

20. Miksic, “Classical Archaeology,” 59.

21. Miksic, “Archaeology, Trade,” 97: Edwards McKinnon, “Kota Cina,” 31–3.

22. Edwards McKinnon, “Kota Cina,” 340–2.


24. Miksic, “Archaeology, Trade,” 97, 106.

25. Nieuwenhuys, Herman Neubronner van der Tuuk, 46.

26. Marsden, History of Sumatra, 381.

27. Edwards McKinnon suggests that the Tamil merchant guild may have

encouraged Chola intervention in Sriwijaya in order to gain economic advantage in

the increasingly international trade flowing through the Straits of Melaka. Edwards

McKinnon, “Mediaeval Tamil,” 88.

28. Soo, “Dissolving Hegemony,” 306–8.

29. Subbarayalu, “Tamil Merchant-Guild,” 30–3; Christie, “Medieval Tamil-

Language,” 257. Joustra explains that “lobu” means “an abandoned settlement.” Jous-

tra, Batakspiegel, 28. “Lobu Tua,” meaning “the old abandoned settlement,” could have

been an earlier center which later moved to the town of Barus.

30. In Sanskrit the word “kasturi” refers to “musk.” Since musk does not occur in

the Baros area, Subbarayalu has suggested that the term may have been used to refer

symbolically to aromatics in general. Subbarayalu, “Tamil Merchant-Guild,” 31–2;

Edwards McKinnon, “Mediaeval Tamil,” 91.

31. Miksic, “Archaeology, Trade,” 94.

32. Ptak, “Possible Chinese,” 139–40. This may account for Edwards McKinnon’s

speculation based on Chinese ceramic evidence at Lobu Tua that the site was aban-

doned around the time Kota Cina was founded. Edwards McKinnon, “Mediaeval

Tamil,” 89.

33. The origin of the name comes from a common Chinese practice of erecting

a fortified enclosure to protect themselves and their goods while awaiting a shift in

monsoon winds to resume their journey to India. Miksic, “Archaeology, Ceramics,”

292.

34. Pulau Kompei on Aru Bay is another important site on the northeast Suma-

tran coast that produced trade ceramics in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This is

probably the site of “Kompei” mentioned in Chinese sources as having sent a mission

to China in 662 CE. Wolters has suggested that “P’o-lo,” which also sponsored a mis-

sion to China in the seventh century, was located in northeast Sumatra. On the same

coast, Panai flourished between the tenth and fourteenth centuries and Aru from the

late thirteenth to the early seventeenth centuries. Milner et al. suggest that Aru and

Deli were different names for the same site. According to Tengku Luckman, the king-

dom of Serdang then split off from the old Deli kingdom in the seventeenth century.

Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries Asahan, also on the same coast,



268

became a prominent kingdom and outlet for products from the Batak interior. Nik

Hassan, “Art, Archaeology,” 110; Wolters, Early Indonesian Commerce, 187, 193, 220;

Milner, Edwards McKinnon, and Tengku Luckman, “A Note on Aru,” 18–9; Tengku

Luckman, Sari Sejarah Serdang, 39; Hirosue, “Prophets and Followers,” 40–1.

35. Nik Hassan, “Art, Archaeology,” 109–10.

36. Edwards McKinnon, “Mediaeval Tamil,” 89; Miksic, “Archaeology, Ceramics,”

292.

37. Anderson, Mission, 294.

38. Edwards McKinnon, “Kota Cina,” 9.

39. Edwards McKinnon, “New Light,” 86–7.

40. Reichle, “Violence and Serenity,” 216.

41. Miksic, “Heterogenetic Cities,” 111.

42. Edwards McKinnon, “Mediaeval Tamil,” 87.

43. The main Minangkabau gold-producing areas are in Tanah Datar. According

to Dobbin, the main route to the east coast from Buo and Sumpur Kudus was by water

or land to the headwaters of the Indragiri River and then overland to the headwaters

of a tributary of the Kampar Kiri. Dobbin, Islamic Revivalism, 60–1. Satyawati sug-

gests that Adityawarman moved his center to the Minangkabau highlands in order to

control the gold and camphor trade shipped to the Kampar and Batang Hari Rivers.

Satyawati, “Archaeology and History,” 9.

44. Christie, “Medieval Tamil-Language,” 259–63.

45. Casparis, Indonesian Palaeography, 69.

46. Miksic, “Heterogenetic Cities,” 111–2.

47. Leong, “Collecting Centres,” 29.

48. Soo mentions Kampar and Lamuri, but other possible ports were Pulau

Kompei on Aru Bay and Panai. Nevertheless, archaeological evidence seems to support

the belief that Kota Cina was the dominant port during its existence. Soo, “Dissolving

Hegemony,” 296.

49. Situmorang, Toba Na Sae, 41–2.

50. The meaning of marserak has now expanded to mean economic and social

mobility. Other words are currently in use to describe different types of migration.

Purba and Purba, Migrasi Spontan, 22–5.

51. This statement is based on genealogical stories contained in a number of

sources, including Sangti, Sejarah Batak; Hoetagaloeng, Poestaha Taringot; Boer, “Een

en Ander”; Keuning “Toba-Bataks”; Willer “Verzameling”; Dijk, “Eenige Aanteekenin-

gen”; and Neumann, “Bijdrage.”

52. Perret, La Formation, 56, 60.

53. Bellwood, Prehistory, 233.

54. See Perret, La Formation, 37, map “Karo Migrations according to Traditions.”

Sinaga also cites evidence that the Karo trace their roots to the Pakpak area, which in

turn acknowledges an origin in Toba. Sinaga, Leluhur, 46–7.

55. Westenberg,”Bataksche Rijkjes,” 603.

56. Edwards McKinnon, “Mediaeval Tamil,” 69; Edwards McKinnon, “New

Light,” 11, 22–4; Miksic, “Archaeology, Trade,” 254.



269

57. Bronson, Besoeki, and Wisseman, Laporan Penelitian, 77.

58. Miksic, “Archaeology, Trade,” 97, 103. In support of this view, Edwards McKin-

non believes that the name of the village “Portibi” (Batak for “region or quarter”) may

derive from the Sanskrit pertiwi, referring to a center of power. In the Padang Lawas

area are two villages called Portibi Jae (Downriver Portibi) and Portibi Julu (Upriver

Portibi), which may have been associated with groups representing the uplands and

the lowlands. Edwards McKinnon, “Kota Cina,” 30–1.

59. Neumann, “Het Pane-,” vol. 2, 17–8.

60. Neumann, “Het Pane-,” vol. 2, 17–8.

61. Satyawati,” Archaeology and History,” 6.

62. Willer, “Verzameling,” 262, 344–5, 400–2, 405.

63. Sangti, Sejarah Batak, 129–30. In the current climate of strong identification

and pride in ethnic difference, some may take issue with these findings since Batara

Sangti himself is a Toba Batak.

64. Ypes, Bijdrage, 141–2.

65. Keuning, “Toba-Bataks,” 160–1; Vergouwen, Social Organization, 12. Lubis,

a modern local historian, rejects any idea of a Toba origin for the Nasution marga,

but argues that the ancestral figure, Si Beroar, was indigenous to Mandailing. Lubis,

Sejarah Marga-Marga, 193–6. This view represents a common trend among various

groups who stress their difference with the Toba as a way of emphasizing their non-

Batak identity.

66. Lombard, Le Sultanat d’Atjeh, 66.

67. “Hamparan Perak,” 9.

68. Anderson, Mission, 258.

69. Andaya, To Live as Brothers, 43–6; Lombard, Le Sultanat d’Atjeh, 66.


71. Lombard, Le Sultanat d’Atjeh, 73; Haan, “Een Oud Bericht,” 647–8.

72. Burton and Ward, “Report of a Journey,” 510.

73. Westenberg, “Bataksche Rijkjes,” 579–80.

74. Willer, “Verzameling,” 370, 373.

75. Joustra, Batakspiegel, 286, 293, 302–3.

76. Vergouwen, Social Organization, “Nota,” 15.

77. Purba and Purba, Migrasi Spontan, 21.

78. Ypes, Bijdrage, v.

79. Claus, Economic and Social Change, 44.

80. Nieuwenhuys, Herman Neubronner van der Tuuk, 47.

81. Keuning, “Verwantschapsrecht,” 15–6.

82. Merga is the Karo term, but I have used the Toba rendering marga through-

out to avoid confusion.

83. Neumann, “Bijdrage,” 2–3. Rita Kipp first raised doubts about Neumann’s

interpretation which identified this marga as the first or original Karo because it was

found in only one ward in a village. Kipp, Dissociated Identities, 44. Neumann’s views,

however, seemed to have been adopted by Batak authors themselves. See, for example,

Sangti, Sejarah Batak, 129–30.



270

84. Kipp, Dissociated Identities, 34; Singarimbun, Kinship, Descent, 71–6; Sinaga,

Leluhur Marga-Marga, 283. See also Sinaga, Leluhur Marga-Marga, 284–7, for a descrip-

tion of how immigrants from the Toba and Pakpak areas became part of newly formed

Karo merga.

85. Singarimbun, Kinship, Descent, 70, 72.

86. Tarigan, “Structure and Organization,” 47; Joustra, Batakspiegel, 184.

87. Nilakanta Sastri, “Takuapa,” 25–30; Miksic, “Cola Attacks,” 120–1.

88. Subbarayalu, “Tamil Merchant-Guild,” 31–3.

89. Edwards McKinnon, “New Light,” 87.

90. Edwards McKinnon, “New Light,” 90–1.

91. Edwards McKinnon, “New Light,” 85–6; Parkin, Batak Fruit, 82, 94 fn 47;

Singarimbun, Kinship, Descent, 78–80; Neumann, “Bijdrage,”16–7.

92. Siahaan, Sedjarah Kebudajaan, 114–5; Parkin, Batak Fruit, 94 fn 47; Singa-

rimbun, Kinship, Descent, 75.

93. Edwards McKinnon, “Mediaeval Tamil,” 93.

94. Parkin, Batak Fruit, 254–64; Heine-Geldern, “Le Pays,” 326; Casparis, “Sriwi-

jaya and Malayu,” 246; Fontein, Sculpture of Indonesia, 162–3.

95. Satyawati, “Archaeology and History,” 2, 6; Bronson et al., Laporan Penelitian,

19.

96. Parkin, Batak Fruit; Pederson, Religion; and Rae, Breath Becomes the Wind,

include detailed discussion of the impact of Indian ideas on Batak indigenous religion.

97. Bronson, Besoeki, and Wisseman, Laporan Penelitian, 19, 61, 64, 77; Satya-

wati, “Archaeology and History,” 2.

98. Satyawati, “Archaeology and History,” 6.

99. Casparis, Prasasti Indonesia, 29–31.

100. Reichle, “Violence and Serenity,” 216; Christie, “Medieval Tamil,” 264.

101. The old religion is referred to by Christian Batak as Perbegu, or the worship

of ancestral spirits. Because of the perceived derogatory nature of this description,

adherents prefer the term Pemena, meaning “the First [Religion].”

102. Parkin, Batak Fruit, 6. There are variations among the Batak languages. For

example, tondi is Toba, tendi Karo, and tenduy Simalungun. In the following discussion

the Toba terms are used.

103. Joustra, however, subscribes to the view that the last breath of a person

becomes the begu. This is based on the belief that the breath cannot be destroyed, that

what is spoken is immortal because it is the wind. Joustra, “Het Leven en Zeden,” 416.

104. Pedersen, Religion, 19–26; Rae, Breath Becomes the Wind, 18–20. Warneck

describes the sombaon as the highest stage that the spirit of the dead can attain. War-

neck, Toba-Batak.

105. Sherman, Rice, Rupees, 82. Sombaon is a general term for earth spirits or dei-

ties, and Ypes believed that it referred also to the dwelling place of these beings. Ypes,

“Bijdrage,” 196.

106. Sahala is in essence the same idea as mana in Pacific Island societies. These

communities share a common Austronesian past, and the concept is one which can be



271

traced to the Austronesian language. For a discussion of mana, see Shore, “Mana and

Tapu,” 137–43.

107. Castles, “Political Life,” 13–4.

108. Edwards McKinnon “Kota Cina,” 31–3, 330; Miksic, “Archaeology, Trade,” 97.

109. Westenberg, “Aanteekeningen,” 227.

110. I have opted for the term “high priest” rather than the more commonly used

“priest-king.” “High priest” appears more appropriate to their function in Batak soci-

ety and accords with Uli Kozok’s belief that it was only the last Sisingamangaraja XII

(1875–1907) who referred to himself as king. In Sisingamangaraja XII’s letters he claims

to be “Ruler of the Batak Clans” and even “Ruler of Sumatra.” Kozok, “Seals,” 274–6.

111. According to Keuning the Borbor was initially part of Lontung. Through

expansion into areas of both the Lontung and the Sumba, the Borbor became regarded

as a separate major marga. Keuning, Verwantschap, 16.

112. Situmorang, “Position,” 221–4. In a more recent work, Situmorang asserts

that the Sorimangaraja was the title of the high priests prior to the formation of the

Sisingamangaraja institution in the sixteenth century. Situmorang, Toba Na Sae, 218.

This date, which is widely cited in the literature, has been obtained through the ques-

tionable method of counting backward by allotting a certain number of years per sun-

dut or generation. Oral traditions (which include those surrounding the origins of

the Sisingamangaraja) tend to telescope years and often refer to events that began far

earlier. The Sorimangaraja may have preceded the Sisingamangaraja, but when that

occurred cannot be determined with any certainty.

113. Situmorang, Toba Na Sae, 77–8.

114. The afterbirth is regarded as one of the most important sources of a per-

son’s tondi. The story of the removal of the afterbirth to the heavens emphasizes the

Sisingamangaraja’s divine origins.

115. Pleyte, “Singa Mangaradja,” 3, 6–7, 15, 17. There are variations to the story,

but the general outline is the same. For a very detailed account of the miraculous birth

and life of the first Sisingamangaraja, see Tobing, Si Singamangaradja, 23–47.

116. Haan, “Verslag,” 30.

117. Tideman, Hindoe-invloed, 25–6; Meerwaldt, “Aanteekeningen,” 530.

118. Cummings, “Cultural Interaction,” 63–4.

119. Heine-Geldern, “Le Pays,” 376.

120. Heine-Geldern points out, however, that the Sisingamangarajas had

employed force in the past. The first had led a war against the Lotung marga, another

against the Padris, and a third against the Dutch. Heine-Geldern, “Le Pays,” 374. But

these rulers were obeyed not so much for their military as for their spiritual prowess.

121. Sangti says that some twenty huta would then form a horja, and seven horja

would make a bius. Sangti, Sejarah Batak, 293–4. Other commentators give varying

figures.

122. Situmorang further divides the bius into three categories, with the most

developed being the bius under the parbaringin. The others are characterized as

“developing” and “backward” bius. Situmorang, Toba Na Sae, 42–3.



272

123. Kubitscheck, “Horja and Bius,” 193; Sangti, Sejarah Batak, 303; Siahaan et

al., Monografi Kebudayaan, 112; Castles, “Statelessness,” 74; Tobing, Si Singamanga-

radja, 40–4, 100–2. So great was the reverence for the Sisingamangaraja institution

that even after the last had disappeared in the nineteenth century, the Batak continued

to respond to rumors of his continued presence. In the 1920s a man emerged in Karo-

land who claimed that the Sisingamangaraja had commanded everyone to slaughter

a white chicken. The response was immediate and widespread, causing an unprec-

edented rise in the price of white chickens. In Angkola, people began eating a certain

type of fish because it was rumored that the Sisingamangaraja had ordered it to ward

off evil. Castles, “Statelessness,” 74.

124. Korn, “Bataksche Offerande,” pt. 1, 36, pt. 2, 126; Sherman, Rice, Rupees,

80–5. In studying the ritual functions of the bius, Sherman has concluded that the bius

may be compared to ancestral cults of the earth found elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

Sherman, Rice, Rupees, 82.

125. Tideman, Hindoe-invloed, 25–6; Meerwaldt, “Aanteekeningen,” 530; Situ-

morang, Toba Na Sae, 42–3.

126. James, “De Geboorte,” 137; Dijk, “Eenige Aanteekeningen,” 300–1; Hirosue,

“Prophets and Followers,” 20, 22.

127. Korn, “Bataksche Offerande,” 32–3.

128. Raffles, Memoir, 436.

129. Burton and Ward, “Report of a Journey,” 514; Castles, “Political Life,” 18–9;

Castles, “Statelessness,” 74.

130. Hirosue, “Prophets and Followers,” 22.

131. Raffles, Memoir, 435–6.

132. Kozok, Warisan Leluhur, 65.

133. Kozok, “On Writing,” 34–5.

134. In addition to the pustaha, there were other forms of writing such as letters,

pulas (a type of threatening letter), and laments. The latter two forms tended also to

have a strong magico-religious intent. Kozok “On Writing,” 43–4.

135. Teeuw, “History of the Malay Language,” 148–51; Collins, Malay, 9.

136. Pollock, “Cosmopolitan Vernacular,” 7. I have based my arguments on Pol-

lock’s stimulating discussion on the process of vernacularization in India. Of particu-

lar value and relevance for the Batak situation is his argument that there is a division of

labor in languages, in which Sanskrit retains its position as “the public literary expres-

sion of political will,” while the vernacular is restricted to the “business” or practical

aspects. He terms this language division “hyperglossia.” Pollock, “Cosmopolitan Ver-

nacular, 11–2.

137. Voorhoeve, “Overzicht,” 10, 13.

138. Voorhoeve, “Elio Modigliani’s,” 62, 78, 82.

139. Kozok, Warisan Leluhur, 17.

140. Neumann, “De Bataksche Goeroe,” 2, 10. Ginting, however, reminds us that

not all guru [or datu] achieved the same state of competence. Those with exceptional

skill acquired the reputation of guru mbelin, or “great guru.” Ginting “Pak Surdam,”

94, 96.



273

141. Ginting, “Pak Surdam,” 86–7.

142. Willer, “Verzameling,” 295–6; Ginting, “Pak Surdam,” 86–7.

143. Voorhoeve, “Some Remarks,” 39.

144. Bellwood, Prehistory, 122, 233. Linguists warn against equating language

with language speakers since an earlier population could adopt the language of the

newcomer. Unless more conclusive evidence is presented on the ethnicity of the group

that occupied the Toba highlands, I will assume that the inhabitants were ancestors of

the group that came to be identified in later centuries as the Batak. I am grateful to

K. A. Adelaar for his informed comments on this subject.

145. The process is described in a typewritten document owned by Tengku Luck-

man Sinar titled, “Hamparan Perak,” 1–15.

Chapter 6: The Orang Laut and the Malayu

1. For an excellent study of the Sama-Bajau, see Sather, Bajau Laut.

2. The word “hanyut” is also the word used by the Orang Laut when they speak of

a time when they were swept away from land by a large storm and washed out to sea.

3. Hogan, “Men of the Sea,” 210, 219–20.

4. Pattemore and Hogan, “On the Origins,” 76.

5. Ivanoff, Moken, 115.

6. Hogan, “Men of the Sea,” 207; Pattemore and Hogan, “On the Origins,” 76.

7. Ainsworth, Merchant Venturer, 138.

8. Bernatzik, De Geesten, 37.

9. Hogan, “Men of the Sea,” 210.

10. Ainsworth, Merchant Venturer, 21–2.

11. Ivanoff, “Les Moken,” 27.

12. Pattemore and Hogan, “On the Origins,” 76.

13. Bellwood, Prehistory, 135.

14. Hs. 494, Rapport Ch. van Angelbeek, KITLV, fol. 22.

15. Bruijn-Kops, “Sketch,” 386.

16. Schot, “De Batam Archipel,” 30, 163.

17. Andaya, To Live as Brothers, 46–7, 222.

18. Matheson and Andaya, Tuhfat al-Nafis, 159.

19. Overeenkomsten, A1 Treaty of 1857, 8–9; A2 Note of Revision, 5.

20. Thomson, “Description of the Eastern Coast,” 85–6.

21. Netscher, “Togtjes,” vol. 14, 5.

22. The association of certain groups with specific areas is implied in the sultan

of Lingga’s prohibition in the nineteenth century of movements of people from one

Orang Laut group to another without the approval of the sultan or his representative

(batin). Netscher, “Beschrijving,” 133.

23. Adatrechtbundels, vol. 20, 242.

24. Adatrechtbundels, vol. 20, 244–5.

25. Ivanoff, “Les Moken,” 11–14.

26. Chou, “Contesting,” 613–4, 618.



274

27. Begbie, Malayan Peninsula, 270–2.

28. Ranzow, “Genealogie,” unpag.

29. Begbie, Malayan Peninsula, 270–2.

30. Andaya, Kingdom of Johor, 256.

31. Muhammad Yusoff, Hikayat Siak 113–4.

32. Von Ranzow’s comment that the suku Tambus lacked a “fixed residence” may

be a reference to the fact that unlike the other Orang Laut, there was no island regarded

as the “center” for the suku Tambus. Ranzow, “Genealogie,” unpag.

33. Netscher, “Beschrijving,” 132–3.

34. Netscher, “Beschrijving,” 127–8, 132–3.

35. Netscher, “Beschrijving,” 140. The Bajau, known in the southern Philippines

as the Sama-Bajau, were reputed in the past to have led an itinerant existence, living

almost exclusively in their boats.


37. Schot, “De Batam Archipel,” vol. 1882, 472–3.

38. Schot, “De Batam Archipel,” vol. 1882, 164.


40. NA, VOC 1415, Missive Malacca, fol. 758r.

41. Andaya, Kingdom of Johor, 189, 256–7.



44. Andaya, Kingdom of Johor, 45–52, passim.




48. Matheson and Andaya, Tuhfat al-Nafis, 376, fol. 265 fn 4.

49. Hs. 494, KITLV, Rapport van Angelbeek, fols. 21–3; Matheson and Andaya,

Tuhfat al-Nafis, 391, fol. 338 fn 4.



52. Kassim, Hikayat Hang Tuah. Although Hang Tuah is widely regarded as a

Malayu cultural hero, the Orang Asli also have traditions which make him an Orang

Asli (see chapter 7). Hang Tuah, therefore, has come to represent all three groups in the

Malay Peninsula: the Malayu, the Orang Laut, and the Orang Asli.

53. Trocki, Prince of Pirates, 43.


55. Sutherland, “Slavery and the Slave Trade,” 266–7.


57. Tarling, Piracy and Politics, 39; Andaya, To Live as Brothers, 96.


59. NA, VOC 1151, Melaka Missive, 11 November 1644, 527v.

60. See the “Introduction” by Ivanoff in Ainsworth, Merchant Adventurer, xi. I

am inclined to believe that this was a well-known method of creating a familial rela-

tionship to establish trust in any exchange. There are many examples of such relation-



275

ships established in the trading world of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Jambi

and Palembang. Andaya, To Live as Brothers, passim.

61. Andaya, Kingdom of Johor, 97–100; Andaya, To Live as Brothers, 95, 223.

62. Matheson and Andaya, Tuhfat al-Nafis, 69; Hooker, Tuhfat al-Nafis, 225.


64. Matheson and Andaya, Tuhfat al-Nafis, 333, fol. 83 fn 4.

65. Tarling, Piracy and Politics, 102, 206.

66. Hamilton, New Account, 84–5.

67. Angelbeek, “Korte schets,” 56–9.



70. Tarling, Piracy and Politics, 40.

71. Andaya, Kingdom of Johor, 97–100; Andaya, To Live as Brothers, 95, 223.

72. Tarling, Piracy and Politics, 69; Trocki, Prince of Pirates, 45.

73. Andaya, Kingdom of Johor, 79, 321.


75. All these treaties, both Dutch and Malay versions, are contained in NA, “Col-

lection of Treaties with the Sultan of Riau-Lingga 1784–1909,” Min. v. Kol., 2.10.01,

box 5–9.

76. NA, “Extract uit het Algemeene Jaarlycks Verslag,” Riau Resident H. Cornets

de Groot), Min. v. Kol., 2.10.01, 3080.

77. Trocki, Prince of Pirates, 56.

78. A strikingly similar example can be found in southeast Sulawesi between

another refugee prince and the Bajau in the establishment of the entrepot in Kendari.

For a discussion of this episode and the general phenomenon, see Andaya, “Historical

Links.”

79. Bulbeck, “Indigenous Traditions.”

80. White, Sea Gypsies, 170; Sutherland, “South Tennasserim,” 458.

81. Kassim, Hikayat Hang Tuah, 14, 16, 24, 57, 69, 353, 459–60.

82. Kassim, Hikayat Hang Tuah, 16.

83. Hikayat Negeri Johor, stanzas/verses 284a, 92a, 143b, 290b.

84. Cheah, Sejarah Melayu, 98; Hooker, Tuhfal al-Nafis, 130. The term actually

used for “Orang Laut” is “rakyat,” which in the Riau archipelago refers to the Orang

Laut. Wilkinson, Malay-English Dictionary, 955. English sources contemporaneous

with the Tuhfat state that Orang Laut and rakyat were used interchangeably. Matheson

and Andaya, Tuhfat al-Nafis, 316, fol. 19 fn 2.

85. The term “Celates” is derived from a Portuguese rendering of the Malay

“selat,” meaning “straits.” Although there is an Orang Laut group known as the Orang

Selat, the “people of the straits,” Pires clearly uses the term to refer to the Orang Laut

in general.

86. Cortesão, Suma Oriental, vol. 2, 233, 467.

87. The widespread belief that such poisoned missiles brought almost instanta-

neous death gave those who employed these weapons a psychological advantage over

their enemies. In South Sulawesi, where the inhabitants were also wont to use blowguns



276

and poison darts, the efficacy of the poisons made from the ipoh tree varied according

to the preparation, the length of time of the application of the poison on the darts, and

their actual use. Carey, “Political Economy of Poison.”


89. Wheatley, Golden Khersonese, 311.

90. Formerly a title used for the Hindu god Siva and meant “Lord of All.” Wilkin-

son, Malay-English Dictionary, 890.





95. Cortesão, Suma Oriental, vol. 2, 233–8, 469.



98. Wang, “Opening of Relations”; Wade, “Ming Shi-lu,” 413–4, passim.




102. These straits are clearly marked in a map of the Riau-Lingga archipelago

dated 1883. Map Collection, University of Leiden Library, 006-05-004, “Riouw en

Lingga Archipel,” Os Port. 57N 146.

103. Piracy along these valuable straits and in the vicinity of Pedra Branca

continued into the nineteenth century. Thomson, “Account of the Horsburgh Light-

house.” In the seventeenth century the Dutch East India Company was well aware

of the importance of these straits and used Orang Laut techniques to try to redirect

Chinese trade from Johor to Dutch Melaka. Andaya, Kingdom of Johor, 71–5.

104. Brown, Sejarah Melayu, xi, 62, 160.

105. Andaya, History of Johor, 157–60.



108. Hope, Outcasts, 160.

109. Ivanoff, Moken, 106; Bernatzik, De Geesten, 37.

110. Hogan, “Men of the Sea,” 219–20, 223; Pattemore and Hogan, “On the Ori-

gins,” 75.


112. In the twentieth century the Moken offered wives to a Chinese and an Eng-

lishman to assure a secure economic relationship. White, Sea Gypsies, 112; Ainsworth,

Merchant Venturer, 76.

Chapter 7: The Orang Asli/Suku Terasing and the Malayu

1. I have used Orang Asli and Suku Terasing to refer in a general way to all inte-

rior communities who share a nomadic or seminomadic lifestyle distinct from that of

the Malayu.



277

2. The origin of the term “Semang” is most likely the northern Aslian “semaaq,”

meaning “people” or “human being.” Senoi in Temiar and Seng-oi in Semai both mean

“people.” Semai is a term the Temiar use for their southern neighbors, though the

Semai themselves refer to their group collectively as “Seng-oi.” There has been a variety

of names applied to the Semai in the literature, but the practice is for the group to call

themselves by the name of their village or territory. Edo, “Claiming Our Ancestors’

Lands,” 10, 17–8.

3. In the early twentieth century, Schebesta commented that the areas regarded as

Semang country included lands from Chaiya and Ulu Patani (Singora and Patthalung)

to Kedah and to mid-Perak and northern Pahang. Schebesta, Among the Forest Dwarfs.

4. Evans, Semang, 13.

5. Rambo, Primitive Polluters, 44.

6. Rambo, Primitive Polluters, 38; Evans, Semang, 11, 13.

7. Quoted in Benjamin, “Introduction” to Schebesta, Among the Forest Dwarfs,

viii.

8. Benjamin has maintained this view in a number of works, particularly in “In

the Long Term.” A more recent formulation is found in his “On Being Tribal.” Rambo

supports this perspective by suggesting that the “Semang” evolved out of a basic Mon-

goloid population in relatively recent times after the rise of agriculture. The latter

development ensured a distinctive lifestyle from the other two patterns described by

Benjamin. Rambo, “Why Are the Semang?”

9. Benjamin, “On Being Tribal,” 6.

10. Logan, “Orang Benua,” 247.

11. Quoted in Skeat and Blagden, Pagan Races, vol. 1, 521.

12. Evans, “Notes on the Sakai,” 23.

13. Schebesta, Among the Forest Dwarfs, 83, 149.

14. Endicott, “Batek History,” 49.

15. Among the Kintak, a Semang group from northern Perak, there is a specific

word, tempet, which is used to refer to the forested area where they and their ances-

tors have foraged. Among their most precious possessions in the tempet are the Ipoh

(Antiaris toxicaria Leschenault) trees, from which they extract the poisonous sap that

is applied to their blowgun darts used for hunting. Razha, “As the Forests,” 76.

16. In cases where it is rare and difficult to locate a specific product, such as

camphor, a taboo language is employed to assure the success of the venture. Dentan,

“Semai-Malay Ethnobotany,” 178–9.

17. Nicholas, Orang Asli, 32–3; Williams-Hunt, “Land Conflicts,” 36–7.

18. From an official document issued by the Social Department of the Province

of Riau in 1991, quoted in Djatmiko, “Masyarakat Traditional,” 34.

19. The ethnicization of the Orang Asli on the Malay Peninsula may have had

some influence on advocates, for there is now the occasional use of “Orang Asli” to

refer to Suku Terasing groups in Indonesia.

20. Sandbukt, “Precolonial Populations, 43–4.

21. Dongen, “De Koeboes,” 185.

22. Sager, personal communication.



278

23. Persoon, however, believes that the differences are overstated. Persoon,

“Vluchten,” 142.

24. Santy, “Schets,” 161.

25. Andaya, To Live as Brothers, 14, 89–90.

26. This is the name that Sandbukt was told during his brief visit to the group,

but since many groups in the interior use such endonyms as Orang Batin Five, Nine,

etc., it is not a satisfactory label. Because of the lack of any adequate description of the

group, Sager has decided to use that name in his Ph.D. dissertation. Sager, personal

communication.

27. Hasselt, Reizen, vol. 1, 199–200, 236–7, 240.

28. Hasselt, Reizen, vol. 1, 85, 236–7.


30. Two of the earliest accounts are Dongen, “Koeboes,” and Hagen, “De Koe-

boes” and Orang Kubu. Sandbukt has made a number of studies of the Kubu, including

“Kubu Conceptions,” while Sager is now completing a dissertation titled “If We Cross.”

See bibliography for full references.

31. Hagen, “De Koeboes,” 945; Hagen, Die Orang Kubu, 13; Persoon, “De Kubu,”

453; Persoon, “Vluchten,” 142. According to Sager, the Orang Rimba regard the ele-

phant and the rhinoceros as gods and thus have strong taboos against killing them.

Both animals are no longer found in the wild in the areas used by the Orang Rimba

today. Sager, personal communication.

32. Porath, “When the Bird Flies,” 214.

33. Keereweer, “De Koeboes,” 363.

34. This was a familiar scenario, which is better known in colonial literature

when the Europeans began to regard non-European peoples in the same light, hence

dispensable to the interests of the superior white European civilization. For an excel-

lent account of the evolution of these ideas over the centuries, see Adas, Machines as

the Measures of Men.

35. Sandbukt, “Kubu Conceptions,” 2–4; Sager, personal communication.

36. Dongen, “Koeboes,” 190–1. This is the tradition, but historically contact

between the Orang Rimba and the outside world was far older. For an extensive dis-

cussion of this legendary queen, see Andaya, To Live as Brothers.


38. Sandbukt, “Kubu Conceptions,” 4.


40. VOC 1517, Letter from Jambi, 2 October 1692, fol. 172v.

41. Oki, “River Trade.”

42. Barnard, Multiple Centres, 32; Effendy, “Orang Petalangan of Riau,” 364–6.

43. One group was said to be of Javanese origin because a Javanese patih had been

given the title of dulubalang besar and allowed to settle in Siak. Rijn van Alkemade,

“Reis van Siak,” 136.

44. Barnard, Multiple Centres, 20; Andaya, Kingdom of Johor, 111–2.

45. Rijn van Alkemade, “Het Rijk Gassip,” 222–5.



279

46. Barnard, Multiple Centres, 73–4; Netscher, De Nederlanders in Djohor en Siak,

59–61.

47. Rijn van Alkemade, “Reis van Siak,” 133–5. As an interior people, the Petalangan

would not have been summoned to participate in overseas campaigns. This task would

have been allocated to the kingdom’s Orang Laut groups.

48. Barnard, Multiple Centres, 158–63.

49. Suparlan, Orang Sakai, 214. The Ma’ Betise’ (a group that has been called

Btsisi’, Besisi, and Mah Meri) tell a tale of the powerful magic of their shaman, who

was able to make stone float and coconut husk sink, thus helping to preserve the group

from the depredations of the Siak people from Sumatra. Nowak and Singan, “Btsisi’,”

308. The Ma’ Betise’ call themselves Ma’ Heh, “We, People.” For a discussion of the

various names of the group, see Wazir, Ma’Betisék, 13–4.

50. Effendy, “Orang Petalangan of Riau,” 369–70, 377–9.

51. Effendy, Bujang Tan Domang, 27.

52. Effendy, “Petalangan Society,” 632–3.

53. Porath, “When the Bird Flies.”

54. Porath, “When the Bird Flies,” 4–5.

55. Porath, “When the Bird Flies,” 5. This concept is the underlying argument in

Barbara Andaya’s work To Live as Brothers.

56. Porath, “Developing Indigenous Communities,” 110. It is tempting to see this

reference to the “magical left hand” as a residual notion stemming from the association

of Adityawarman with Kalacakra or Left-Handed Tantric Buddhism (see chapter 2).

57. Brown, Sejarah Melayu, 26–7; Cheah, Sejarah Melayu, 86–7.

58. Barnard, Multiple Centres, 43.

59. Lye argues, however, that the Batek on the Malay Peninsula do not fit this

label because their foraging patterns are well planned and structured. Lye, Changing

Pathways, 11–3.

60. Dentan, “Potential Food Sources.”

61. In the past there would have been groups that practiced both foraging and

swidden agriculture. As the forested areas in both the Malay Peninsula and interior

Sumatra begin to disappear, the nomadic foraging is being increasingly replaced by the

semisedentary swidden agriculture.

62. Persoon, “De Kubu,” 454–5.

63. A striking example of this economic symbiosis is the relationship of the many

different nomadic Punan groups in Borneo with their sedentary Dayak neighbors. The

interdependence between these special pairings is so well established that when one

partner moves it is often expected that the other will also relocate. The partners tend

to have similar customs and language and regard themselves as one people. Many of

the “Punan” have nothing but their label and a nomadic lifestyle in common and feel

no affinity with each other, making the whole issue of ethnic labels highly problematic.

Hoffman, The Punan, 56–63.

64. There is no comparable study of the early prehistory of the Suku Terasing

in Sumatra. Studies on the Orang Asli are far more numerous and in general of a



280

higher quality than those on the Suku Terasing. More recently, however, an increasing

number of good ethnographies on the Suku Terasing are appearing.

65. Bellwood, Prehistory, 70. But as Bellwood points out, the use of such racial

terms is for heuristic purposes, and the reality is the intergrading of both.

66. This is not to say, however, that the Neolithic culture found in the Malay Pen-

insula was due entirely to the migration of the Southern Mongoloid population. It has

been argued that in the later Neolithic in the second half of the first millennium BCE,

stone and glass beads found in cist-graves in the Bernam valley and in sites in Kuala

Selinsing, Perak, indicate trade links of the inhabitants with India, Sri Lanka, the Medi-

terranean and possibly Africa. See Nik Hassan Shuhaimi, “Tracing the Origins,” 102.

67. Several DNA studies examining the genetic history of Orang Asli with other

groups suggest that the Semai at least show close affinity to Khmers, which is sup-

ported by their Austroasiatic language affiliation. Baer, “Genetic History,” 6; Baer,

“Genetic Studies,” 29. Baer’s study demonstrates the great variation among the Orang

Asli groups, but she tempers her conclusion with the observation that none of the

smaller groups had yet been examined. Baer, “Genetic Studies,” 27.


69. Benjamin, “Between Isthmus and Islands,” 12–4.

70. Benjamin, “Malay World as a Regional Array,” 3.

71. Bulbeck, “Indigenous Traditions.”

72. Bulbeck, “Indigenous Traditions”; Benjamin, “Issues in the Ethnohistory of

Pahang.”

73. Benjamin, “Austroasiatic Subgroupings.”

74. Bellwood, Prehistory, 258, 265–7.

75. Fix, “Genes, Language,” 12, 15.

76. Baer, “Genetic History,” 8.

77. An excellent description of the different qualities of gaharuwood and the

method of collecting by the Orang Sakai of Siak is in Suparlan, Orang Sakai, 142–3.

78. Lye explains the practice among the Batek, one of the Semang groups, who

return to old sites where they have traveled, hunted, collected. At such sites they

remember and narrate continuities and changes and reproduce this knowledge to the

younger generation. Lye, “Knowledge,” 150, 196.


80. Razha, “As the Forests,” 83.

81. In silent trade the collectors would leave their products at a spot, and the

traders would then place their own goods in a barter exchange. If the Orang Asli were

satisfied with the exchange, they would take what the trader offered. If the collectors

were not satisfied with the proffered goods, they would leave them behind. The trad-

ers would then adjust their offer until both parties were satisfied. During the entire

transaction neither side met together nor saw one another.

82. Endicott, “Effects,” 226–9, 232–3.

83. Wazir, “Transformations,” 112, 114–5.

84. Endicott, “Effects,” 231.

85. Benjamin, “Introduction,” viii.



281

86. Wheatley, Golden Khersonese, 151–9; Miksic, “Protohistoric Settlement,” 66–7.

87. Wheatley, Golden Khersonese, xi, xxvi–xxvii.

88. Noone, “Notes,” 18.

89. Lye, “Knowledge,” 216.

90. VOC 1141, Malacca, J. van Twist, 17 December 1642.

91. This type of oath is well known in the seventh-century Sriwijaya inscriptions,

including the Ligor [Nakhon Si Thammarat] Inscription of 775. Acquaintance with

this form of oath taking may have spread to the Orang Asli population on the Malay

Peninsula.

92. A subsequent report from Melaka in October 1643 simply noted that the

people of Tampin, an area settled by Minangkabaus, had killed some Benuas. VOC

1141, Malacca, van Vliet, 4 October 1643, 651r.

93. VOC 1141, Malacca, Report by Syahbandar Jan Menie on visit to the “Wilden”

[Orang Asli], 21 September 1642, fols. 275v–276v. The report was also published by

P. A. Leupe in BKI 8 (1862), 127–33.

94. Tachimoto, Orang Hulu, 76–7.

95. Tachimoto, Orang Hulu, 29–30.

96. Burkill, Dictionary of Economic Products, vol. 1, 871–3; Wolters, Early Indone-

sian Commerce, 123–4; Barnard, Multiple Centres, 17.

97. Barnard, Multiple Centres, 17–9.

98. Lockyer, Account of Trade, 49.

99. Andaya, To Live as Brothers, 7, 34; Barnard, Multiple Centres, 16. For an excel-

lent discussion of the collection and trade in and multiple uses of porcupine bezoars

in the early modern period, see Borschberg, “Trade, Use, and Forgery.”

100. Sandbukt, “Precolonial Populations, 45; Hasselt, Reizen, vol. 1, 199–200,

240; VOC 2410, Jambi Register, 2 December 1737, fol. 13; Barnard, Multiple Centres,

19–20.

101. Porath, “Developing Indigenous Communities,” 108–11.

102. Brown, Sejarah Malayu, 10, 23.

103. Cortesão, Suma Oriental, vol. 2, 235, 238.

104. Abdul Rahman Haji Ismail, “Teks/Text of the Raffles MS. No. 18,” 138.

105. Liauw, Undang-Undang Melaka, 68, 78, 176.

106. Liauw, Undang-Undang Melaka, 180.

107. Skeat and Blagden, Pagan Races, vol. 1, 22; Couillard, “The Malays and the

‘Sakai,’” 85. She also cites a description of the Jelai area prior to the arrival of Minang-

kabau migrants, where the penghulu appointed by a batin is placed in charge of the

Orang Asli who had converted to Islam. Based on this, she suggests that “Sakai” could

have referred to Orang Asli subjects of the ruler who had converted to Islam. Ibid.,

90–1. But as I try to show in this chapter, the term “Sakai” had varying meanings

depending on the text and context. See also Porath, “Developing Indigenous Com-

munities,” 98–101, for more modern uses of the term “Sakai.”

108. Wilkinson, Malay-English Dictionary, vol. 2, 1002, under “sakai.”


110. Wilkinson, Malay-English Dictionary, vol. 1, 137–8, under “biduanda.”



282

111. “Pengkalan” are usually located at a confluence of rivers and land routes and

serve as major intermediary collecting and redistribution points.

112. Raja Chulan, Misa Malayu, 99.

113. Although today the term bangsa refers to the nation, in earlier usage it was

used to denote an ethnic group. In Indonesia today the word sukubangsa is used to

mean “ethnic group,” thus retaining the original meaning of bangsa and combining it

with suku to indicate a part of the whole.

114. Sitti Hawa, Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa, 61, 63, 67.

115. The penglipur lara is usually a blind singer of tales using a two-stringed

violin or rebab as accompaniment.

116. Pawang Ana and Raja Haji Yahya, Hikayat Awang Sulong Merah Muda,

1–3, 50.

117. Andaya, To Live as Brothers, 10–13, passim.

118. Andaya, To Live as Brothers, 11, passim; Barendregt, “Representing.”


120. “Mengkah” is clearly “Mekka,” indicating a tradition influenced by the

Malayu. Anachronisms occur in the chermor, but as Edo points out, “[t]hese borrow-

ings and incorporations do not, however, erode the essence of the original Semai sto-

ries.” Edo, “Stories of Migration,” 42.

121. Gianno, “Malay, Semelai,” 63–4.

122. This is based on the tale recorded by Sager, ch. 3: 8–9 of his unpublished

thesis. I am grateful for his willingness to share this chapter with me.

123. Sager, “If We Cross,” ch. 3.

124. Edo, “Traditional Alliance,” 3–5. The story incorporates tales about the

supernatural queen of Gunung Ledang that are popular among the Malayu and can

be found in the Sejarah Melayu. The latter text also describes the cooperation between

the Malayu and the Orang Asli communities in the establishment of Melaka.

125. This story was first reported by W. E. Maxwell, “Two Malay Myths.” See also

Roseman, “Malay and Orang Asli Interactions,” for an anthropological analysis of the

tale. Other chermor collected by Edo have similar themes of marriage between Malayu

princes and Orang Asli women (with only one example of a Malayu princess marrying

an Orang Asli man). Edo, “Traditional Alliance,” 5–6.

126. Roseman, “Malay and Orang Asli Interactions,” 20–2.

127. Andaya, Heritage of Arung Palakka, 12.

128. Andaya, “Installation.”

129. Skeat and Blagden, Pagan Races, vol. 2, 267–73.

130. Edo, “Traditional Alliance,” 3–5.

131. Skeat and Blagden, Pagan Races, vol. 2, 267–9.

132. Hood Salleh, “Morality,” 57.

133. Gunung Ledang is the legendary mountain mentioned in the Sejarah

Malayu as the abode of a supernatural princess.

134. Edo, “Traditional Alliances,” 3–5.

135. Gianno, “Malay Semelai,” 63–4.

136. Suparlan, Orang Sakai, 80.



283

137. Sager, “If We Cross,” ch. 3: 5.

138. Sager mentions that Putri Selero Pinang Masak and Orang Kayo Hitam,

known for the spread of Islam and the establishment of civil law (considered sacred by

the Orang Rimba), are said to have been Orang Rimba who left to live in villages and

become Muslim (hence Malayu). Another cultural hero shared by the Orang Rimba

with many Sumatrans is Si Pahit Lidah. Sager, “If We Cross,” ch. 3: 2–8; Andaya, To Live

as Brothers, 11–3, passim.

139. Sager, “If We Cross,” ch. 3: 6.

140. Obdeyn, “Langkah Lama,” 354–60.

141. Josselin de Jong, Minangkabau and Negri Sembilan, 123.

142. Drakard, Kingdom of Words.



145. Gianno, “Malay, Semelai,” 81.

146. Nowak and Singan, “Btsisi’,” 305–8, 316. This story is still told even though

it is acknowledged that they can only communicate using the Malayu language. The

Ma’ Betise’ language is Aslian, while the Temuan speak an Austronesian language.

147. Wazir, Ma’Betisék, 13–4.

148. See, for example, Dentan, “Spotted Doves.”

149. Lim, Kisah-Kisah, xi, 77–89, 179–84, 225–40.

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

Abbreviations

BEFEO Bulletin d’École Française d’Extrême Orient

BIPPA Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association

BKI Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde

BSOAS Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies

EFEO École Française d’Extrême Orient

IG De Indische Gids

JAS Journal of Asian Studies

JESHO Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient

JIA Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia

JMBRAS Journal of the Malay(si)an Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society

JRAS Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society

JSEAH Journal of Southeast Asian History

JSEAS Journal of Southeast Asian Studies (successor to JSEAH)

JSS Journal of the Siam Society

KITLV Koninklijk Instituut van het Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde

KT Koloniale Studiën

MNZ Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsch

Zendelinggenootschap

NA Het Nationale Archief (The National Archives of The

Netherlands)

SPAFA SEAMEO (Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organizations)

Project in Archaeology and Fine Arts

TAG Tijdschrift van het Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap

TBG Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde

TNI Tijdschrift van Nederlandsch-Indië

VBG Verhandelingen van het Indische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde

VOC Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (The Dutch East India

Company)


287

Select Bibliography

Archival and Unpublished Documents

National Archives of The Netherlands (referred to as NA in the notes)

The VOC (Dutch East India Company) Archives forms a special collection in the

National Archives and is indicated by VOC numbers in the notes. The most

valuable documents are the Overgekomen Brieven en Papieren (Letters and

Papers sent from Batavia) containing monthly missives from VOC outposts

plus special reports, including the useful Memories van Overgave (Reports

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315

Index

Aceh: Bugis dynasty, 139; earliest accounts, 116, 117–118; elephants and horses, 123, 136, 138; eunuchs, 133–135, 138; harems, 133–134, 263n121; identity, 109, 124–125, 129, 138–139, 145; Islamic treatises written in, 10, 125–126, 128–129, 137; links to wider Islamic world, 117, 119–122, 124–125, 129–131, 132–133, 135–137; as Malayu kingdom, 108–109, 117, 124, 143–144; Malayu texts written in, 108–109, 129, 261n78; as patron of Islam, 109, 117, 119, 123–124, 136–137; royal command letters, 98–99, 132–133; Syaikh al-Islam, 125–126, 128–131, 142; territorial expansion, 116–117, 123; trade and trade routes, 118, 119–123

Adityawarman, 88–89, 96, 104, 113, 114, 268n43; inscriptions issued by, 85–86, 88, 153, 160–161; links to east Java, 84; and Pagaruyung, 91; relationship with legendary Minangkabau lawgivers, 85, 89; ruler of Malayu, 83, 84; as Tantric bodhisattva, 84–85, 86, 160, 279n56; titles of, 84–85, 86

Alauddin Riayat Syah al-Kahar of Aceh (1539–1571), 117

Angkor, 27, 28, 36, 48

Angkor Borei, 27, 36–37, 41–42, 46Arab: sources on Sumatra and Java, 22,

57–58; trade, 19, 30–31, 40Aru, 114–115, 116, 117, 199, 267n34Austronesian language, 19–20, 26,

60; distinct from Nusantao, 21; languages derived from, 20, 44

Ayutthaya, 69–70, 137, 140

Ban Don Tha Phet, 24bangsa, 224, 282n113Banjarmasin, 10Barus, 16, 40, 116, 151, 154, 160, 170Batak, 115; as bhumi Malayu, 169;

and “cannibalism,” 146–147, 266n11; collectors of camphor and benzoin, 115, 149; cultural features, 89, 146, 207; definition, 266n4; early references, 146–147; as ethnic group, 16, 156, 273n144; ethnicization of, 148, 166–167, 169, 170–172; horses in, 150; and Malayu, 115–116, 162, 170–172; marga and subgroups, 16, 146, 154–155, 156–157, 158–159, 160, 168, 172, 265nn1, 2, 269nn65, 82, 83, 270n84, 271n111; migration (marserak), 154, 155–159, 170, 268nn50, 54; and Minangkabau links, 90; pepper and rice producers, 115, 156–158, 170;


316 Index

pustaha and datu/guru, 167–169, 170, 272n140; religion (Perbegu, Pemena), 161–163, 170–172, 270nn96, 101, 103; routes, 155, 169–170; Sisingamangaraja and high priests, 163–167, 170, 271nn110, 112, 114, 120, 272n123; as Sriwijaya lands, 169–170

beads, 28, 47, 50, 61; Indian, 24–25; Indo-Pacific, 24, 30, 47; Malay Peninsula, 25, 38, 192, 215

Bellwood-Blust synthesis, 19–20, 29, 46benzoin. See camphor and benzoinbezoar stones (guliga), 221, 281n99bhumi Malayu, 14, 16, 46, 49, 82–83, 105,

107, 110, 115, 116, 169, 258n2Brahman: in Dunsun, 33–34; in Panpan,

34Buddhism, 29, 35–36, 47, 174; building

cultural bonds, 28; co-existence with Hinduism, 35; communities, 39; as economic centers, 27–28; images, 61; in Langkasuka, 35; Mahayana missionary activity, 35; in Panpan, 34; in Sriwijaya, 58, 62; Tantric, 84–85, 86, 87, 88, 153, 160–161, 279n56; trade, 27–28, 30

Bugis, 4, 13, 139, 181, 182, 185, 187, 228–229

Bukit Siguntang, 58, 68, 71; and Pagaruyung, 99

camphor and benzoin, 61, 221; collection, 149, 247n11, 277n16; description, 148, 266n13; location, 16, 35–36, 40, 110, 148, 149, 155; routes, 85, 149–150, 151, 155, 156, 170; trade, 2, 36, 87, 97–98, 115–116, 117, 124, 146, 148, 149, 151–154, 155, 158, 169–170; transport of, 150; uses, 52, 247n12

Cham, 51; civilization, 24, 42–45; inscription, 54; links to Malayu world, 45; and related upland groups, 44–45; “Sea of,” 19; settlements, 43–44, 45–46; speakers of, 43

Champa, 28, 30, 42, 43–46Chitu, 35–36

Chola: notified of Ming accession, 46; raids, 35, 58, 86, 159–160, 169, 267n27. See also Tamil

“cultural discontinuity,” 7, 169, 170customary law, 9

Desawarnana (also known as Nagarakrtagama), 14, 49, 83, 110, 115, 116, 169–170

Dharmasraya, 59, 83–84, 93Dong Son, 24, 44, 50Dunsun, 28, 33–34Dutch East India Company (VOC), 4,

15; blockade of Aceh, 123; supports Johor recovery, 144

Dvaravati, 34

ethnicity, 235; as defined by author, 6; elite and commoner ideals, 9–10; ethnie, 6; ethnoscape, 9; key terms, 6–7; mythomoteur, 9, 12, 238; reformulations, 11, 236–237; “soft” boundaries, 10, 237, 242n33; stances, 8–9; uses, 17

ethnicization, 49–50, 81, 145, 170–172; Aceh, 144–145; Batak, 148, 166–167, 169, 170–172; concept of, 4, 236; Malayu, 77, 81, 236; Minangkabau, 90–91, 105–107

“exemplary center,” 12

family networks, 12, 14, 71, 85, 232; in Hikayat Pocut Muhamat, 143; in Melaka, 73–74, 75–76, 77; methods in creating, 73–77, 79, 274n60, 276n112; in northeast coast Sumatra, 111; in Sriwijaya, 64–67. See also kinship

“founder-rank enhancement,” 20, 78Funan, 19, 26–27, 28, 34, 42, 46, 48

gaharuwood (eaglewood, aloeswood), 2, 35, 44, 52, 54, 61, 115, 216, 221, 280n77

galactic polities, 12, 13. See also mandala polities

Gantoli, 52Gupta, 25; bringing of Indianization, 29


Index 317

Hang Tuah: Hikayat Hang Tuah, 10; Malayu hero, 10

Hikayat Malem Dagang, 140–142, 144Hikayat Pocut Muhamat, 140, 142–143,

144Hinduism, 35; co-existence with

Buddhism, 35; Saivite, 34, 161; temple, 41; Vaisnavite, 28, 29, 34. See also Brahman

Indrapura, 10Iskandar Muda of Aceh (1607–1636),

109, 126, 127; in Aceh texts, 109; and pepper monopoly, 123

Islam: Aceh’s patronage of, 109, 117, 119, 144; civilizations, 79; conversion in Melaka, 71; features shared by Pathans, 7; first Sumatran evidence, 113, 118–119; in Hikayat Malem Dagang, 140–141; lactation and kinship, 71, 74–75; as Malayu identity, 124; Melaka and Pasai as centers, 15, 71, 141; in Minangkabau, 89; networks, 128; political legitimacy based on, 79–80; Sufism, 125–126, 142, 258n7; treatises from Aceh, 10

Jambi: adoption strategy in kinship, 75–76; early Malayu polity in, 19, 52; as Gantoli, 52; heir to Sriwijaya, 58, 84; intermarriages with Minangkabau nobility, 85; as Javanizing polity, 91–93; subject to Java, 59

Jerai (Gunung, Mt.) or Kedah Peak, 38, 174–175, 224

Jiecha. See KalahJohor (-Riau), 108, 137, 139, 141, 143–144

Kalah (also known as Kadaram/Kidaram, Kataha, Jiecha, Kolo), 30, 37, 39, 40, 47, 57, 174, 193

Kampung Sungai Mas, 37, 38, 39Kedah, 32, 37, 38, 40, 137, 174Kedah Peak. See JeraiKeling, 70, 113, 114Kertanagara, 84Khao Sam Kaeo, 24

kinship: by adoption, 75–76, 238; bilateral, 12, 73; as bond between ruler and subject, 9; communities based on, 11–12; by lactation, 73–75, 238; as link between center and periphery, 12; by marriage, 73, 85, 200, 206, 225, 228, 231, 238; networks in Melaka, 71; networks in Sriwijaya, 64–67; Orang Laut, 181, 200. See also family networks

Kota Cina, 16, 116, 154–155, 156, 162, 170, 268n48; founding of, 152, 153, 267nn32, 33; influence of Tamil and Chinese in, 152, 159–160, 161

Kra Isthmus, 3, 14, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 37, 38, 40–41, 47–48, 149, 174, 175, 216

Kuala Selinsing, 25, 38, 192, 193, 280n66kunlun, 51, 247n3

Laguna inscription, 56Lake Toba, 16Lamuri, 40, 116, 268n48Langkasuka, 34, 35, 39language: hybridity in, 11; as identity

marker, 10–11; as kacukan, 10; use under colonialism, 11

“leaves of the same tree,” 4, 204, 232Ligor, 32; inscription, 32, 33, 36, 55, 149Lin-yi, 34, 43–44Lobu Tua, 267n32; definition of, 267n29;

inscription, 151, 159–160

Majapahit, 49, 70, 183, 195; attack on Singapore, 69, 194; invasion of Pasai, 113–114, 258n22

Malayic languages, 60, 77Malayo-Polynesian, 20–21, 29Malayu, 14, 113; Acehnese form of

language, 10; ancestral “origins,” 19–20; as Batak, 115–116, 162, 170–172; culture of, 14, 61; distinct from Minangkabau, 82–83, 88, 91, 100; ethnonym, 14; as expansive ethnicity, 11, 88; features of polity, 67–68; identity, 13, 59–60, 207, 236–237; interaction with


318 Index

Orang Asli/Suku Terasing, 4, 94, 205–209, 212, 216–218, 222, 224, 225, 226–232, 234, 238; language, 4, 10–11, 19, 60, 139–140; meaning of, 208, 243n1; Melaka’s contribution to identity, 70–71; Moken tales about, 175–176; relationship between ruler and subject, 71, 113, 211, 222–223; spelling of, 241n3; as Sumatran polity, 51–52, 59, 60, 67, 84, 88; tales of relations with Orang Asli, 225, 226–232; as toponym, 52

mandala polities, 12, 13, 46, 66–67, 238Melaka, 15, 32, 49; as center of Islam,

71, 114; contribution to Malayu identity, 70–71; emulation of, 71; family networks in, 74, 75–76, 77; as favored entrepot, 70; founding, 68; Ming ties, 69, 70; Orang Laut role in, 70–71, 114–115; population, 38; rivalry with Pasai, 114

merantau. See Minangkabau: rantauMinangkabau: distinct from Malayu,

82–83, 88, 91, 100, 107; ethnicization of, 90–91, 105–107; European perceptions of, 94; first mentioned, 83; Islam in, 89; “law-givers,” 89; links to Batak, 90; links to Petalangan, 209–210; matrilineality, 82, 88–89, 90, 107; patrilineality, 89; rantau, 82, 88, 89–91, 93–95, 106, 107, 144; settlements, 91, 93, 94. See also Pagaruyung

Moken, Moklen: collectors of sea products, 193; customary rights in seascape, 180; establishing marriage relationships, 274n60, 276n112; lifestyle, 175–176; links to Andaman and Nicobar, 193; location, 174; maintaining ethnic boundaries, 199–200, 201; relationship to ruler, 200; role in Malayu trade, 192; source of knowledge, 200; tales, 175–176. See also Orang Laut

monsoon winds, 1–2, 24, 30, 33, 52

Nagarakrtagama. See DesawarnanaNusantao: communities, 29; as distinct

from Austronesian, 21; network, 21–22

Oc Eo, 26, 36, 37, 42, 51; culture, 41; manufacturing activity, 42

Orang Asli, 17, 279n64, 281n92; ancestors, 213–215, 280n67; collectors of forest products, 62, 210, 221, 225; divisions and groups, 203–204, 224, 277nn2, 8, 279n49, 281n107, 283n146; enslavement of, 217–218; exonym, 16, 276n1; interaction with Malayu, 4, 94, 207–208, 212–213, 216–218, 222–223, 224, 225–227, 228–232, 234, 282nn120, 124; land as source of material and spiritual benefits, 216, 280n78; lifestyle, 202–204, 212, 216, 219–220, 279nn59, 61; location, 203, 277n3; maintaining ethnic boundaries, 17, 202, 206, 223, 226, 232, 237–238; as “opportunistic foragers,” 212; other terms for, 223–224; relations with Malayu ruler, 17, 207–208, 210, 216, 223, 225, 282n125; relation to State, 203–204; role in founding of Melaka, 223; routes used by, 218–219; tales of relations with Malayu, 225, 226–227, 228–232, 282nn120, 124; titles of leaders, 223; trade, 195, 218–219, 220–221, 222, 280n81. See also Suku Terasing

Orang Laut, 4, 17; collectors of sea products, 62, 173; different groups, 181–184, 275n85; as exonym, 16, 275n84; as kunlun, 51; lifestyle, 180–182; maintaining ethnic boundaries, 17, 176–177, 198–200, 201, 237–238; maritoriality, 180–181, 273n22, 274n32; piracy, 32, 173, 175, 177–178, 182, 185–187, 189, 190–192, 194, 276n103; role in founding of Melaka, 194–197, 200; seascape, 62, 174, 177–178, 181, 200; service to


Index 319

Malayu ruler, 17, 62, 173, 178–184, 188–191, 192, 193–194, 196–198, 199, 200, 225; source of knowledge, 200; titles of heads, 181, 193, 273n22. See also Moken

Padang Lawas, 16, 156, 168, 169–170, 269n58; as ceremonial and trade site, 87, 149, 155, 162; inscriptions, 148, 152–153; Tantric influences, 160–161

Pagaruyung, 15, 75, 88; and Bukit Siguntang, 99; as “core” of alam Minangkabau, 96; emissaries, 100–104; “emperors” of, 91, 100, 104, 105; end of royal family, 106–107; influence in rantau, 94, 101; letters from “emperors,” 97–99, 105; links to Orang Asli/Suku Terasing, 230–231; role in Minangkabau ethnicity, 82, 91, 96–100, 104. See also Minangkabau

Palembang, 37, 138; adoption strategy in kinship, 75–76; as center of Malayu polity, 84; Chinese trade to, 58–59; as Gantoli, 52; intermarriages with Minangkabau, 85; as Javanizing polity, 91–93; peregrinations of prince to Melaka, 68, 75, 78–79; as site of Sriwijaya, 19, 61; subject to Java, 59; supernatural ruler from, 68, 71

Pamalayu expedition, 59, 84Panai, 87, 161, 267n34; as Batak polity,

88, 115, 156; as bhumi Malayu, 116; destroyed by Cholas, 169; religion and trade, 162

Panpan, 34–35, 39Pasai, 45, 117; absorbed by Aceh, 117;

contributions to Aceh, 118; favored by Muslim traders, 70, 113; history of, 111, 112–113; Majapahit campaigns against, 113–114; pepper in, 111–112; rival of Melaka, 114; Siamese attacks on, 69, 114; struggles between interior and coast, 111; themes in history of, 111. See also Samudera

Pengkalan Bujang, 37, 38, 39pepper, 110, 120, 144; Batak

participation in trade, 16, 157; grown in Pasai, 111–112; international demand, 112, 115, 121, 156–157; introduced to Sumatra, 16, 112, 118; Iskandar Muda’s monopoly of, 123; from the Malay Peninsula, 117, 118, 131; plant requirements, 112, 157; replaces forest products, 111; from west coast Sumatra, 117, 123, 132

Persian: sources on Sumatra and Java, 57; trade, 30, 40

Polu. See RamniPulau Tioman. See Tioman

Raja Kecil: as adopted son of Pagaruyung, 75–76; as emissary from Pagaruyung, 101–103; links to Petalangan, 210

Ramni (Ar.), Polu (Chi): as double kingdom to Sriwijaya, 57; identified with Lamuri, 110

routes: Batak trans-Sumatran, 154–155, 169; camphor and benzoin, 85, 87, 155; India to China sea, 26, 31–32; Mekong to Vietnam, 42; northern Malay Peninsula, 3; Palembang-Jambi to Minangkabau, 55–56; religious temples and trade, 87; segmenting of sea, 32; transpeninsular/transisthmian, 26, 30–32, 33, 39, 40, 42, 47, 56, 110, 216, 218–219

Sa Huynh: culture of, 24, 41, 43, 44; and Kalanay, 25, 43

Samudera, 113, 116, 137. See also PasaiSathing Phra, 34, 36–37“Sea of Malayu,” 27, 45–46; definition,

14, 22, 236; earliest references, 22; participants in, 27, 33, 40–41, 51, 236; shared cultural idiom, 14, 19, 42, 45–46, 48, 236

Selinsing. See Kuala Selinsingsida-sida, 118, 133–134


320 Index

Sriwijaya, 14, 36, 52–54, 83, 84–85; absorbs Kedah, 40; as birthplace of Malayu culture, 49; and camphor-benzoin trade and routes, 149–151; center of Buddhist learning, 58; Chinese trade to, 57–58, 70, 113; Chola raids on, 16, 58; datu in, 63–64; features of, 67–68; inscriptions, 54–56, 60, 62, 63–64, 281n91; links to Langkasuka, 35; as network of mandalas, 66; as “paddle culture,” 54, 78; political and administrative terms, 63–68; and spice substitution, 111; trading wealth, 57

Suku Terasing, 17, 277n19, 279n64; collectors of forest products, 62, 205, 212, 230; exonym, 16, 204–205; groups, 204–205, 212; interaction with Malayu, 94, 205–207, 208–209, 212–213, 216–218, 225–226, 227–228, 230–234; “Kubu” (Orang Batin, Orang Rimba), 205–209, 212, 227–228, 278nn26, 30, 31, 36, 283n138; land as source of material and spiritual benefits, 210–211, 216; lifestyle, 205–208, 209, 212, 216; location, 204–205; maintaining ethnic boundaries, 17, 202, 206–207, 208, 209, 226, 232, 237; as “opportunistic foragers,” 212; Petalangan, 209–211, 212, 279n47; relations with Malayu ruler, 17, 205–206, 210, 211, 216–217, 225; relations with Sriwijaya, 54; relation to State, 204; Sakai, 207, 211, 230, 280n77; tales of relations with Malayu, 225, 227–228, 230–232; titles of heads, 209. See also Orang Asli

sumptuary laws, 9

Suruaso, 59, 85, 86, 113; inscription, 86Suvannabhumi, 25, 27

Taj al-Alam Safiyat al-Din, Sultanah of Aceh (1641–1675), 128, 129, 131, 137, 142, 144

Tambralinga, 27, 36Tamiang, 115–116, 259n30; as bhumi

Malayu, 116Tamil: cultural impact on Batak, 160,

162; inscriptions written in, 33, 151, 152–153; merchant guilds, 33, 86, 151, 159, 267n27; settlements in Sumatra, 152, 153, 160, 162; texts, 25–26; trade and traders, 87, 113, 159. See also Chola; Keling

Tenasserim, 33, 37Tioman, 30

Urak Lawoik: collectors of sea products, 193; customary rights in seascape, 180; links to Andaman and Nicobar, 193; maintaining ethnic boundaries, 199–200; origins, 174, 175, 176; relations with Malayu, 192, 200; source of knowledge, 200. See also Moken; Orang Laut

“voyaging corridor,” 18

women, 12, 190; in establishing kinship relations, 79; as ethnic markers, 10; as guards, 133; harem, 133–134, 135, 263n121; as milk-mothers, 73–75, 79; among Orang Laut, 175, 181, 182, 183, 185, 193; and pepper planting, 157; in rantau, 90; sequestered, 7, 134

Yijing, 31, 37, 40, 51, 52–54, 58


About the Author

LEONARD Y. ANDAYA was educated at Yale University (B.A.) and Cornell

University (Ph.D.) and has held positions at the University of Malaya, The

Australian National University, and the University of Auckland. He is presently

at the University of Hawai‘i, where he has been professor of Southeast Asian

history since 1993. His previous books include The Kingdom of Johor (1975),

A History of Malaysia (with Barbara Watson Andaya, 1981, 2000), and The

World of Maluku, Eastern Indonesia in the Early Modern Period (1993).


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Andaya Leaves of the Same Tree

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Sejarah Melayu

Education

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