andaya, 'orang asli and melayu relations

7/22/2019 Andaya, 'Orang Asli and Melayu Relations'

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46ANTROPOLOGI INDONESIA 67, 2002

1 This article is based on the paper presented at thepanel on:Social-cultural Dynamics in the BorderRegions of Indonesia-Malaysia: Past Experience, thePresent, and Prospects for the Future at the 2nd

Orang Asli and Melayu Relations:A Cross-border Perspective1

Leonard Andaya

(University of Hawaii)

Abstrak

Tulisan ini berupaya untuk mendokumentasikan perubahan-perubahan dalamhubungan sosial di antara suku bangsa Melayu di Semenanjung Malaysia dengan komuniti-

komuniti Orang Asli. Dalam merekonstruksi kisah hubungan sosial itu, tulisan ini diawalidengan kajian tentang gerakan-gerakan pada masa prasejarah dan protosejarah dari nenekmoyang Orang Asli dan Melayu. Orang Asli berasal dari wilayah tengah dan selatan Thai-land. Orang Melayu berasal dari Taiwan dan berpindah menuju Semenanjung Malaysiamelalui Philippina. Dikisahkan pula berlangsungnya gelombang pertama, kedua, dan ketigadari orang Melayu hingga akhirnya mereka memiliki dampak yang permanen di wilayahSemenanjung.

Tulisan ini menyajikan peralihan hubungan di antara komuniti Orang Asli dan imigranMelayu dari Sumatera sejalan dengan perubahan nilai yang dimiliki orang Melayu terhadapOrang Asli dalam hal perdagangan internasional. Semula, Orang Asli sangat dibutuhkandalam memungkinkan orang Melayu membangun pelabuhan yang berhasil di Melaka. Selamahasil-hasil hutan seperti damar, kayu cendana, dan rotan tetap diperlukan secarainternasional, Orang Asli dihargai dan diterima oleh orang Melayu. Tetapi, dengan adanya

perubahan dalam permintaan dari hasi l-hasi l hutan ke timah dan lada se jak abadkeenambelas, dan beralih ke timah, karet, dan minyak kelapa sawit pada akhir abadkesembilanbelas dan abad keduapuluh, posisi Orang Asli menjadi semakin terpinggirkan.

Perubahan itu juga tertuang dalam tradisi-tradisi lisan dan tertulis Orang Asli dan Melayu.Pada masa kini, Orang Asli mulai mengupayakan diperolehnya kembali penghargaan dankerjasama yang sebelumnya telah menjadi karakteristik dalam hubungan sosialnya denganorang Melalyu. Walaupun prospek keberhasilan itu tidak cerah, kemajuan telah diperolehdalam mempertahankan ide-ide tentang wilayah hunian dan keaslian mereka di Semenanjung

Malaysia.

In present-day Malaysia the dominant

ethnicity is the Melayu (Malay), followed nu-merically by the Chinese and the Indians. A

very small percentage comprises a group of

separate ethnicities that have been clustered

together by a Malaysian government statute

of 1960 under the generalized name of Orang

Asli (the Original People). Among the OrangAsli themselves, however, they apply names

usually associated with their specific area or

by the generalized name meaning human be-

ing. In the literature the Orang Asli are di-

Internasional Symposium of Journal ANTROPOLOGIINDONESIA: Globalization and Local Culture: a Dia-lectic towards the New Indonesia, Kampus LimauManis, Andalas University, 1821 July 2002.


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livelihood from the jungle, they collected fo-

rest products to trade or sought wage labor

with the lowland communities (Rambo 1985:38;

Evans 1937:11,13).Unlike their Malay and

Senoi neighbors, who focus primarily on far-

ming with a little hunting and fishing, the

Semang adapt themselves to whatever eco-

logical space left by surrounding communi-

ties. This fact was also noted early in the twen-

tieth century by Schebesta (1973) who com-

mented that it is a condition of Negrito 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.3The Senoi comprise the largest of the

Orang Asli population and are divided into the

Temiar and the Semai. The Temiar occupy the

upper reaches of the rivers in the remote inte-

rior mountains of the Main Range and have

limited contact with the lowlands, while the

Semai live mainly in the plains and the foot-

hills of Perak. The Orang Melayu Asli are found

principally from Selangor southward. Perhaps

through long association with their dominant

Melayu neighbors, they are seen as far more

acculturated to Malay culture than the others.

A common misleading conception of the

Orang Asli is that they practice a nomadic

lifestyle and roam the jungles without any fixed

territorial base. Observers have remarked that

the Semang do not wander randomly in the

jungle but as far as possible remain within their

own territories (Schebesta 1973:83,149).TheNegrito Batek do move beyond their territo-

ries in search of spouses, but they tend to

remain within their own familiar territory where

they know where food and other resources

can be found and where they have close kin

(Endicott 1997:49). In the late nineteenth cen-

2 The origin of the term Semang is most likely thenorthern Aslian semaaq, meaning people or hu-man being. Senoi in Temiar and Seng-oi in Semaiboth mean people. Semai is a term which the Temiaruse for their southern neighbors, though the Semaithemselves refer to their group collectively as Seng-oi. There has been a variety of names applied to theSemai in the literature, but the practice is for thegroup to call themselves by the name of their villageor territory (Edo 1998:10,1718).

3 Quoted in Benjamin, Introduction to Schebesta(1973:viii).

vided into three groups: the Semang or Negrito,

the Senoi, and the Orang AsliMelayu.2 Among

the Orang Asli, however, the major distinction

is between themselves and the outside world,

and they would very likely second the senti-

ments of theOrang Asli and Orang Laut (Sea

People) in Johor who regard themselves as

leaves of the same tree (Logan 1847:247).

Today the Semang live in the coastal foot-

hills and inland river valleys of Perak, interior

Pahang, and Ulu (upriver) Kelantan, and rarely

occupy lands above 1000 meters in elevation.

But in the early twentieth century, Schebesta

(1973) commented that the areas regarded as

Negrito country included lands from Chaiyaand Ulu Patani (Singora and Patthalung) to

Kedah and to mid-Perak and northern Pahang

(Schebesta 1973). Most now live on the fringes

rather than in the deep jungle itself, and main-

tain links with Malay 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 settle-

ment site on the Perak coast believed to be

dated to Hindu-times (most likely sometime

in the early first millenium AD), revealed the

presence of skeletons showing distinct Ne-

gro affinities (Evans 1937:13). The Semang

appear to have had a long association with

farmers and merchants, and were active par-

ticipants in international trade (Rambo

1985:44). They were thus favorably placed to

exploit the resources of both the jungle and

the lowlands. In addition to maintaining their


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tury Swettenham observed that a Senoi group

kept exclusively to its own valley and was fre-

quently at odds with neighbors on either side

(Skeat, William, and Blagden 1906:521). In 1915

Evans (1916) cited an example from the Senoi

on the Kampar river in the Kinta district of

Perak, who moved within a small radius of the

foothills and regarded the Pahang border area

as an unknown, unexplored land (Evans

1916:23). The Orang Asli practice of remaining

for generations within a specific bounded ter-

ritory regarded as their field of exploitation

enables them to gain an intimate knowledge of

the resources of their traditional lands. Such

knowledge is indispensable in locating andextracting the valuable resins, aromatic woods,

and rattans for international trade. Moreover,

association with a specific territory nurtures

physical and emotional well being among the

Orang Asli (Nicholas 1997:3).

The marginal role of the Orang Asli in

modern Malaysia reflects the rapid transfor-

mation beginning in the early twentieth cen-

tury of the predominantly jungle landscape into

one of cleared lands for plantation agriculture.

In the past the Orang Asli had an economi-

cally important function in international trade

as collectors of jungle products. The decline

in demand for these goods, coupled with new

interests in timber, rubber, and palm oil, had a

disastrous effect on the livelihood of the

Orang Asli. Not only did they lose a major

source of revenue, but their way of life was

threatened by the rapid denuding of the jungle.Unable to bargain from a position of strength

as in the past, they became increasingly

marginalized in Malaysian society. Neverthe-

less, the Melayu have had to acknowledge the

special place of the Orang Asli in Malaysian

society because they can legitimately claim to

be Bumiputera (sons of the soil), a term

created by the Malaysian government to jus-

tify special privileges to the original inhabi-

tants of the land. The Orang Asli themselves

view the term cynically and continue to stress

that they and not the Melayu were the original

people in the land. A reconstruction of the

early history of the Orang Asli in the Penin-

sula supports this contention and highlights

the changing relationship between the Orang

Asli communities and the Melayu over the cen-

turies.

Early habitation of the peninsula

According to one reconstruction of the

Orang Asli past synthesized by Peter Bellwood

(1997), over the last 40,000 years there were

two major races which occupied the Peninsula:

the Australoid and the Southern Mongoloid.4

The Negrito population stemmed from the

former, while the Senoi were descendant of

the later Southern Mongoloid migration. The

archaeological record becomes more detailed

on the Peninsula with assemblages found in

Hoabinhian sites dated between 16,000 and

8,000 B.C. The hunting and gatheringHoabinhians were ancestral to the Semang and

to a lesser extent to the Senoi. The latters bio-

logical affinity was more with the Neolithic

Southern Mongoloid population which mi-

grated into the Peninsula about 2000 B.C.

There appears to have been a rather sharp tran-

sition from the Hoabinhian to the Neolithic,

with the change marked by the introduction of

agriculture and Austroasiatic languages.5 The

5 This is not to say, however, that the Neolithic cul-ture found in the Peninsula was due entirely to themigration of the Southern Mongoloid population. Ithas been argued that in the later Neolithic in thesecond half of the first millenium B.C, stone and glassbeads found in cist-graves in the Bernam valley and insites in Kuala Selinsing, Perak, indicate trade links ofthe inhabitants with India, Sri Lanka, the Mediterra-

4 As Bellwood(1997:70) points out, the use of suchterms is for heuristic purposes, and the reality is theintergrading of both.


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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.6 The Semang, however, con-

tinued to maintain their hunting and foraging

lifestyle and did not adopt the agricultural de-

velopments of the Neolithic. In this regard they

were much more descendants of the

Hoabinhians than the Neolithic Southern

Mongoloids associated with the Senoi

(Bellwood 1997:265266).

Geoffrey Benjamin (1985), on the other

hand, argues that the present distinction of

three major Orang Asli categories is not theresult of migration but of conscious choice of

groups refusing to become part of a state.

These so called tribals then proceeded to

adopt certain lifeways, thus creating three

institutionalised societal patternsthe

Semang, Senoi, and Malayic. The Semang

maintained their principally foraging activities;

the Senoi adopted swidden agriculture and a

more sedentary lifestyle, while engaging in

some trade and trapping; and the Malayic

(which includes the Orang Asli Melayu or the

Aboriginal Malay) combined a basic farming

or fishing subsistence with the more impor-

tant collection and trade of forest and marine

products.7 By a comparative analysis of Aslian

languages, Benjamin (1985) suggests that there

was a split between the ancestors of the nor-

thern Aslian-speaking Negrito (Semang) and

the central Aslian-speaking Senoi some 5000

years ago, thereby demonstrating a common

ancestry (Benjamin 1976).Bellwood (1997)

more recently has acknowledged the possibi-

lity that both processesmigration and inter-

nal peninsular developmentscontributed to

the differences (Bellwood 1997:265). The hope

that historical genetics may help determine the

early history of the Orang Asli has largely been

dampened by the warning that the history of

genetic loci is not equitivalent to the history

of populations and may tell us nothing usefulabout recent human history. The findings re-

garding possible links of the Orang Asli popu-

lations with other groups extend as far back as

60 millions years ago and to the more recent

58,000 years ago, far too early for any real use

for the reconstruction of the early prehistory

of the Orang Asli (Fix 2000:12,15). Baer (2000:8),

nevertheless, argues on the basis of genetic

findings that Malayan prehistory cannot be

encapsulated in terms of separate waves of

migrating peoples, thus supporting

Benjamins contention that the differentiation

of Orang Asli groups occurred within the

Malay Peninsula itself.

By the time that the Austronesian-spea-

kers began to appear in the region, the ances-

tors of the Orang Asli were already established

on the Malay Peninsula. According to linguis-

tic reconstruction, the ancestors of theAustronesian-speakers began to move out of

southern China (perhaps from Zhejiang or

Fujian) into Taiwan at about the late fifth or

the fourth millenium B.C. The move out of Tai-

wan southward to Luzon occurred sometime

in the third millenium B.C. By at least 2000 B.C

there was another move to the south of the

7 Benjamin (1985) has maintained this view in a num-ber of his works, particularly in his In the LongTerm. A more recent formulation is found in his OnBeing Tribal(forthcoming). Rambo (1988) supportsthis perspective by suggesting that the Semangevolved out of a basic Mongoloid population in rela-tively recent times after the rise of agriculture. Thelatter development ensured a distinctive lifeway from

nean and possibly Africa. See Nik Hassan Shuhaimi(1997:102).

6 Baer (2000:6) interprets the results of several DNA

studies examining the genetic history of Orang Asliwith other groups to mean that ...while Orang Aslishow general affinities to other Asians, Semai at leastshow closer affinity to Khmer.

the other two patterns described by Benjamin.


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Proto Malayo-Polynesian speakers, who were

separating from the other subgroups of

Austronesian-speakers on Taiwan. They

migrated to the southern Philippines, Sulawesi,

Borneo and Maluku. Austronesian-speaking

peoples arrived on the Malay Peninsula per-

haps sometime in the first millennium B.C.

They found the Peninsula already settled by a

hunting or foraging and an agricultural

Austroasiatic-speaking population which had

been there for at least 500 years previously

(Bellwood 1997:241242,265266). If we accept

Bellwoods reconstruction, then sometime bet-

ween 2000 B.C and 1500 B.C the Neolithic agri-

cultural community of Austroasiatic speakershad moved down from central Thailand to in-

habit the Peninsula as far south as Selangor.

It is believed that their having moved into

areas where the incidence of malaria was far

lower than in their original homelands, the

Austroasiatic-speaking population increased

substantially and spread both to the coasts

and the interior. The presence of these ances-

tors of the Senoi, and to a certain extent the

Negrito, prevented the further expansion of

the early Austronesian-speakers into the Pe-

ninsula (Bellwood 1997:258259).The picture

that is presented by archaeological and li-

nguistic evidence by the first millenium B.C is

one of the dominance of the ancestors of the

Orang Asli in the Peninsula over the restricted

numbers of the later arrivals of Austronesian-

speaking populations.

The expansion of the Austronesianand Malayic speaking communities

Elsewhere in the region the Austronesian-

speakers had spread rapidly along the coasts,

moving inland only after the coasts had been

settled. It has been suggested that the primary

motivation for the rapid expansion of the

Austronesian-speakers was rank enhance-

ment. Founder families achieved the highest

status in the community, thus spurring ambi-

tious individuals to open new lands and found

new communities. In this way the vast expanse

of ocean with its numerous lands were rapidly

settled from central Vietnam to New Zealand

and Easter Island. As the Austronesian-spea-

king communities settled areas and adapted

to their ecological niches, differences in lan-

guage and culture developed. the Malayic-

speakers were one of the largest linguistic com-

munities that evolved from this development.

While most linguists have argued for a

west Borneo homeland for the Malayic-spea-

kers Sumatra has also been mentioned as an-other possible original home. From a home-

land perhaps in west Borneo, linguists have

suggested that there was a move sometime

around 100 B.C of Malayic-speakers down the

rivers to the coasts, then out through the

Tambelan and Riau islands to the Malay Pe-

ninsula, and finally to southeast Sumatra. As

with the earlier migration of Austronesian-

speakers, the Malayic-speakers met resistance

on the Malay Peninsula due to the presence

of Austroasiatic-speaking communities. No

such obstacle was present in Sumatra, and so

they settled the coasts and the interior of

southeast Sumatra and perhaps also expanded

to other sites on the east Sumatran coast

(Bellwood 1995:105106).

In southeast Sumatra the Malayic-spea-

kers spread along the Musi and the Batang

Hari and their tributaries, and into the interiorhighlands (Andaya 1993:1516). In the first

millenium AD they created a riverine Melayu

culture very likely modelled after that which

had developed along the interior riverine and

lake environment of west Borneo (Collins

1996:3).From these settlements in Sumatra

emerged polities known in historical times as

Srivijaya and Malayu, which dominated both


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sides of the Straits of Melaka and the interior

of Sumatra between the seventh and the four-

teenth centuries. The traditions established at

these two riverine kingdoms spread inland and

became reconstituted in the Minangkabau

highlands in the mid-fourteenth century. Later

that century a prince from Palembang, one of

the early sites of Srivijaya, emigrated first to

Bentan, then to Singapore, Muar, and even-

tually to Melaka on the Peninsula. Accompa-

nying him were his loyal Melayu subjects from

Palembang, his Orang Laut, and possibly his

subjects among the forest dwellers.8 On this

princes peregrinations, he came to marry the

Queen of Bentan and the daughters of OrangLaut and Orang Asli leaders, thereby develo-

ping a kinship network to support his preten-

sions in his new homeland.

The arrival of these Melayu from Sumatra

comprised the third wave of descendants of

the Austronesian-speakers to the Peninsula.

The first was the initial Austronesian-spea-

kers sometime in the first millenium B.C; the

second was the movement of the Malayic-

speakers from west Borneo around 500 B.C;

and the third was the Melayu from Palembang

in the late fourteenth century AD. While the

first two waves were apparently unsuccessful

in penetrating beyond the coasts and were

restricted to only certain areas on the Penin-

sula, the Melayu established a strong and ul-

timately extremely successful settlement at

Melaka. The Austroasiatic populations, or the

Orang Asli, maintained their dominance on thePeninsula and were the primary inhabitants in

the interior until the nineteenth century

(Bellwood 1997:266). On the coast, however,

the rapid rise and economic success of Melaka

enabled the Melayu to deal with the Orang

Asli initially as equals and gradually as sub-

jects. This transformation in the relationship

was a direct result of changes in demand for

Southeast Asian forest products in interna-

tional trade.

History of external trade among theOrang Asli

Although it is generally believed that

Orang Asli involvement in international trade

began with the founding of the Kingdom of

Melaka, in fact the Orang Asli had a very an-

cient tradition of exchange with the outsideworld. About 8000 B.C in the Hoabinhian pe-

riod, archaeologists have been able to deter-

mine that there was a trade in coastal shells for

forest products such as rattan, resin, tree bark,

and stone for making tools. Then about 3000

B.C this trade involved the Orang Asli with

communities as far away as northwestern and

central Thailand, with the tempo of trade in-

creasing from about 2000 B.C. There is evi-

dence of an active maritime trade involving

forest products at about 500 B.C. This trade

would have continued as a result of the pre-

sence of important polities in southern Thai-

land, the Isthmus, and the northern half of the

Malay Peninsula from 500 B.C till the foun-

ding of Melaka in fifteenth century AD (Suhaimi

1997:103).

Among the main coastal ports mentioned

by foreign sources are Tambralinga (in the vi-cinity of Nakhon Si Thammarat or Ligor),

Takola (on the northwest coast perhaps in the

neighborhood of Trang), Kalah (on the west

coast of the Peninsula or in Tenasserim),

Kataha (Kedah), Chi tu (interior of Kelantan

on the east coast of the Peninsula), Pan pan

(Kelantan or Terengganu on the east coast)

and Dan dan (perhaps in Terengganu). The

8 Some have speculated that Demang Lebar Daunwas indeed a chief of a forest tribe because of hispeculiar name.Demangis a title associated with fo-rest dwellers, and Lebar Daun, or Broad Leaf ,resonates far more with the types of names of theinterior peoples than the Melayu.


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Bujang valley in southern Kedah around

Sungai Mas and Pangkalan Bujang was also

the site of a major entrepot between the fifth

and eleventh centuries AD. Another of the

ancient settlements in the north was Sathing

Phra, located on the eastern coast of the Isth-

mus between Songkhla and Nakhon Si

Thammarat. According to interpretations of the

archaeological evidence, agricultural surplus

contributed to the rise of urbanization in

Sathing Phra, though it was involved in inter-

national trade since the second century AD.

After the sixth century there was a great in-

crease in Sathing Phras trade due to the

completion of two canals linking the east tothe west, and by the conscious decision of

the leaders to sacrifice agrarian for trading in-

terests. Between the mid-ninth and the late

thirteenth centuries, it is said to have come

under Indonesian (Srivijaya and Melayu?)

dominance. The presence of moats and long

distance canals invites comparison with those

associated with Angkor Borei and Oc Eo in

present-day southern Cambodia (Stargardt

1986:2425,28,30).Based on these findings,

Sathing Phra appears to resemble a number of

other settlements in the Isthmus and the north-

ern half of the Peninsula. It was very likely

part of an extensive international trade system

which extended to the Mekong Delta, where

preliminary archaeological findings suggest a

complex occupation from approximately 500

B.C, with Angkor Borei being the center by

about 500 AD. It may have peaked in the sixthand seventh centuries and declined sometime

between the tenth and thirteenth centuries.

Angkor Borei may have been part of a larger

poli tical and economic system involving

Angkor (Stark 1999:8,12,2627,30), and per-

haps even the opposite shore on the eastern

coast of the Isthmus and the Malay Peninsula

The coastal settlements on the Isthmus

and the northern part of the Malay Peninsula

became the major redistribution centers for

forest products during the period of

Indianization in the first millenium and a half

AD. In the mid-fifth century Pan pan and Dan

dan were among the ports visited by Chinese

to purchase aromatic woods. Chi tu brought

camphor as tribute to China in 610 and is men-

tioned as part of Funan (Wang 1998:52,68).

By the early eighth century, Arab and Persian

merchants sailed from the Persian Gulf to ports

in Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, and

Tenasserim to purchase aromatics to trade for

silk in China (Simkin 1968:84). A tenth century

Arabic source cites Kalah as a port where alltypes of spices and aromatics, including cam-

phor and gaharu wood, were exported

(Tibbetts 1979:33). References to this trade are

found in foreign sources right into the early

modern period. By the mid-fifteenth century,

the port city of Melaka had become the heir of

a long tradition of coastal international empo-

ria in the region and the direct successor of

Srivijaya. Melaka not only served as a redistri-

bution center of the fabled spices from Maluku,

but also as the collecting point for the much

desired forest products of resins, aromatic

woods and rattan from the jungles of Sumatra

and the Malay Peninsula.

On the Peninsula the collection of resins,

aromatic woods, and rattans was a task that

ideally suited the Orang Asli with their know-

ledge of the jungle. A network of exchanges

developed among the different Orang Asligroups because of their areas of habitation.

The more interior Senoi would have nego-

tiated the exchange of certain products with

the Semang, who then brought these pro-

ducts to the Malay or Chinese traders at the

fringe of the jungle or on the coast. The

Semang themselves would have exploited the

jungles within their territories. As indicated


8/23


above, archaeological evidence of a site dated

sometime in the first millenium AD indicates

the presence of possibly Negrito remains on

the Perak coast. Studies of the Semang have

identified a particularly adaptive social sys-

tem suited to shifts in subsistence or economic

situations. With the increase in external trade

associated with Indianization, the Semang

would have been ideally placed to participate

and benefit from this new development. In the

southern third of the Peninsula, jungle pro-

ducts would have been collected by the

Orang Melayu Asli to be traded to the outside

world.

The importance of the Orang Asli was fur-ther strengthened because they occupied lands

through which the trans-peninsular routes

passed. Traders from the west often used the

trans-peninsular routes leading from the Bay

of Bengal to the Gulf of Siam to avoid the dan-

gers of pirates in the Straits of Melaka, par-

ticularly at the southern entrance. Even if tra-

ders successfully avoided piratical attacks,

they still faced the navigational dangers of is-

lands and hidden reefs and sandbanks in the

waters off the Malay Peninsula. The narrow

Isthmus and the northern part of the Malay

Peninsula became favored for these trans-pe-

ninsular routes. On the Malay Peninsula an-

cient settlements were found along these ma-

jor trade routes or at the site of gold mines

(Wheatley 1966:6667).These interior towns

would have served as secondary centers

feeding the ports on the coast. Once the aro-matics and gold were gathered from the Penin-

sula and the Isthmus, they were transported

from the interior forests to the coasts em-

ploying a complex series of rivers and streams

joined by short land routes serving as portage

areas. Wheatley has identified six such trans-

peninsular 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 towards upper Pahang, which of-

fered different river routes to the west coast.

In addition to these six peninsular routes, he

has listed a further five routes in the Isthmian

region: the Three Pagoda and Three Cedis, the

Tenasserim river, the Kra Isthmus, the Takuapa

river, and the Trang river. Along the Isthmian

region the historic routes went from the west

along rivers via low watersheds to the South

China Sea (Wheatley 1966:xi,xxvixxvii).

In describing the Orang Asli trade in aspecific type of bamboo highly prized for ma-

king blowguns, Noone (1954/1955) mentions

that the major routes across the Peninsula fol-

lowed 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 they could be crossed at va-

rious points without difficulty (Noone 1954/

1955:18). Among the Negrito Batek, for

example, the tributary systems are the true

waterways and principal focus of their fora-

ging activities (Lye 1997:216).Following these

tributaries as a major part of the trans-penin-

sular routes would therefore have been a natu-

ral decision by the Orang Asli in the delivery

of forest products to the coasts or in the trans-

shipment of goods between the coasts. The

choice of routes would also have been deter-

mined by the Orang Aslis intimate knowledgeof the lay of the land and the location of trees

bearing resins, aromatic woods, and rattans.

In this role as collectors of primary forest pro-

duce and as laborers and guides in the trans-

shipment of goods across their lands, the

Orang Asli became indispensable to the coastal

trading kingdoms. Their value to the lowland

communities is captured in the stories which


9/23


still survive in the traditions of the Melayu

people.

Melayu traditions on Melayu-OrangAslirelations

When the Portuguese seized Melaka from

the Melayu in 1511, local documents were stu-

died for an understanding of the Melayu foe

and for an assessment of the trade possibili-

ties for the Portuguese in the region. The re-

sult was a work known as the Suma Oriental,

written between 15121515 by the Portuguese

apothecary Tom Pires. It contains valuable

detail not only of trade prospects but also of

certain traditions regarding the Melayu, inclu-ding the story of the immigration of the

Palembang prince and his followers to Melaka.

These tales were based on stories read or re-

cited in Melaka at the time of the Portuguese

occupation of that city. One of these tales re-

calls a time when the local inhabitants on the

Muar and the Bertam rivers and at Melaka pro-

vided assistance to the Palembang prince and

his followers in founding the city (Cortesao

1990:235,238).These rivers were in Orang Asli

territories, and any outsider would have had

to seek accommodation with the inhabitants

of the land. The Sejarah Melayu (Malay An-

nals), a court text believed to have originated

during the time of Melakas greatness in the

fifteenth century, would have been among the

documents which Tom Pires must have con-

sulted for his work judging from the similarity

of the tales of the move of the Palembang princeto Melaka. But in the earliest known recension

of this work, which was edited in Johor in 1612,

some hundred years after Pires Suma Orien-

tal, there is no direct mention of the role of the

Orang Asli. The term Sakai is used once in an

ambiguous fashion, which could be interpreted

as Orang Asli or simply subjects of one of the

principal officials in Melaka (Abdul 1998:138).

By the early seventeenth century Johor, the

direct successor to the Melaka kingdom, was

beleaguered by both the Portuguese and the

Acehnese. The timing of the recopying ofthe

Sejarah Melayu coincides with this period of

serious challenge to the continuing dominance

of Johor as the center of the Melayu world

(Andaya 2001). In the established practice of

reediting while recopying Malay texts, a Johor

court scribe may simply have ignored any

mention of the contributions of non-Melayu

groups in order to emphasize the glory of the

Melayu.

But in the Hikayat Hang Tuah (The Ro-

mance of Hang Tuah), which is believed tohave originated as an oral epic depicting the

days of Melakas greatness, the role of the

indigenous inhabitants in the success of the

Melayu venture on the Peninsula is freely ac-

knowledged. There is frequent mention of the

Sakai, but here it is used to refer to the Orang

Laut inhabitants in the islands lying south of

the Malay Peninsula. In thisHikayatthe Sakai

are employed in building the rulers palace,

repairing the citys canals, protecting Melakas

traders from enemies, patrolling the seas and

reporting to Melakas rulers, transporting the

ruler and the nobility of Melaka to the islands

for pleasure trips, forming the fighting fleets

for Melaka, and defending the city (Kassim

1975:14,16,24,57,69,353,459460).In many of

these activities the Sakai are said to be under-

taking these tasks together with the people of

Melaka (i.e. the Melayu). There is no hint ofantagonism or subservience of one group to

another. Among those that are mentioned as

offering their support to the first Melayu ruler

of Melaka are the batin (Orang Asli or Orang

Laut heads) and followers who control the

tributaries, and the penghulu (a Malay title

used for those with some authority over the

Orang Asli communities) and their Sakai


10/23


(Kassim 1975:16).The Syair Perang Johor,

too, explicitly mentions the role of the Sakai

(referring to the Orang Laut) in the defense of

the kingdom of Johor against its enemies.9

Another Melayu document begun some-

time in the middle of the fifteenth century at

the height of Melakas power is the Undang-

Undang Melaka (Melaka Legal Digest). In

these legal prescriptions the Orang Asli are

listed among Melakas subjects and fighting

force (sakai bala tentara ) (Liauw:1976:68,78,

176). 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 (1976) explainsthat they refer to the various types of servants

or slaves mentioned in the Digest (Liauw

1976:180).It is difficult to know what distin-

guished the various categories in the Melaka

period. Couillard cites Skeat and Blagden in

tracing the etymology of the term Sakai to

the Sanskrit sakhi, meaning friend, compa-

nion, comrade. Apparently the wordsakhi of-

ten appears with seva orsiva (propitious,

friendly, dear) in Vedic hymns. Couillard (1984)

therefore suggests that Sakai may have been

the word used by Indian traders who regarded

the Orang Asli as partners in a trading alli-

ance (Couillard 1984:85,9091).Archaeologi-

cal evidence mentioned above indicates that

the Orang Asli communities in the northern

half of the Malay Peninsula were indeed ac-

tive in international trade in centuries past.

Wilkinson (1959:1002) believes that thedistinction between the various types of

Melayu subjects was based on the extent of

assimilation to Melayu culture. He suggests a

hierarchy with the lowest being thesakai who

were aborigines who did not speak Malay; then

the rakyatwho were aborigines who did speak

Malay; and finally the biduanda who were

aborigines who spoke Malay, accepted

Melayu culture, and had been received as

equals into Melayu community. In the Riau-

Lingga archipelagoes the term Sakai ranked

above that ofrakyat. Despite the neatness of

Wilkinsons conception, there is evidence that

such categories were never static. During the

Melaka period there was already the begin-

ning of a shift in the meaning of the word

biduanda. Melaka-born Chinese were given

the honorary title biduanda as a favor by the

ruler, as were the Sakai and the rakyat

(Wilkinson 1959:137138).The eighteenth cen-

tury Melayu text from Perak, theMisa Melayu,makes a number of references 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 accom-

panying the Panglima Larutare Orang Asli.

They are listed as the Orang Bukit Gantang

(the people of Mt. Gantang), the Orang

Pengkalan (People of the Landing Places,

which are usually located at a confluence of

rivers and land routes and serve as major in-

termediary collecting and redistribution

points), and the Pematang (the people who

inhabit the banks of the marshlands) (Raja

1962:99).

The text that perhaps best captures the

early mutually respectable relationship be-

tween the Orang Asli populations and the

Melayu is theHikayat Merong Mahawangsa.

Although the earliest known recension of thetext is in the first half of the nineteenth cen-

tury, most scholars acknowledge the inclusion

of oral legends from the early history of Kedah

and the northern areas of the Peninsula. The

Hikayat recounts the arrival of a stranger

prince,Raja Kelana Hitam, who seeks to be-

come ruler of Kedah because it has no king.

He thus asks the penghulu or leaders of the9 Syair Perang Johor stanzas/verses (1761:284a,92a,143b,290b).


11/23


bangsa (ethnic group) Semang, Wila, the hill

people (rakyat bukit), and the Sakai to meet in

council to help him find a good land where he

could settle. They perform this task, and then

come to serve him faithfully. When the Raja

Kelana Hitams kingdom is attacked by mon-

sters (gergasi), these fourbangsa suffer the

brunt of the fighting and their bravery is mea-

sured by their dead piled in heaps like moun-

tains (Sitti Hawa 1991:61,63,67). 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 defined by others by choice of

habitat and state of civilization as defined bythe lowland groups, such as the Melayu. In

this text the Semang refers to the populations

who are located more in the jungle areas and

have less contact with outsiders; the Wila or

Semang Bila are described in later commenta-

ries as those Semang who live close to the

Melayu or Chinese communities and are clo-

sest to assimilation into the dominant lowland

culture; the hill people is a reference to the

Senoi, most likely the Temiar; while the term

Sakai is used either for the Semai or the sea

and riverine populations in the north.

There is a striking similarity between the

legend of the foundation of Kedah as told in

the Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa and that

of Melaka in theSejarah Melayu. In both cases

there arrives a stranger prince seeking to be-

come king over a land without a ruler. The in-

digenous populations of Orang Asli andOrang Laut are not only instrumental in gui-

ding the prince to a desired site, but they also

then offer their allegiance and their lives in

defense of their new lords. There is, however,

a distinction in the tales of the roles of the

indigenous populations in Kedah and Melaka.

In the former the Orang Asli populations of

Semang and Senoi were relatively well-popu-

lated, and so their intervention on behalf of a

stranger ruler would have been crucial factor

in the success or failure of the venture. For

Melaka, the more important indigenous popu-

lations were the Orang Laut because of

Melakas orientation to the sea and interna-

tional trade.10 Of those texts originating from

Melaka and Johor, the word Sakai refers al-

most exclusively to the Orang Laut popula-

tions of the islands. But in all of the texts, many

of which were recopied in the nineteenth cen-

tury, the indigenous populations are never

described in a demeaning fashion. On the con-

trary, their contributions are openly acknow-

ledged and their sacrifices, as in theHikayatMerong Mahawangsa , poignantly described.

Orang Asli traditions on OrangAsliMelayurelations

Equally illuminating is the perception of

this relationship from the viewpoint of the

Orang Asli. Writing in the early twentieth cen-

tury, Skeat, William, and Blagden (1906) des-

cribes an OrangAsli tale of a batin (an Orang

Asli chief) called Chief Iron Claws (Batin

Berchanggei Besi). He leaves Minangkabau

with his followers and goes first to Java, where

some of his people remain behind, and then to

Melaka, which was then uninhabited. After

establishing a settlement called Pengkalan

Tampoi, he goes to Kelang where he disap-

pears. His position is taken by Hang Tuah,

who had been made batin of Pengkalan

Tampoi. He builds a house on a hill over-looking Melaka, and when that settlement be-

comes too large to contain the Orang Asli

population Hang Tuahdecides to go south to

Johor. The Orang Asli communities along the

Muar river settle in the two new communities

10 As a descendant of the rulers of Srivijaya, thePalembang prince would have known the value ofcontrol of the seas.


12/23


established by Hang Tuah, one in the interior

called Benua Dalam and the other on the coast

called Benua Laut Jagun. One day the Melayu

from Kedah demand the land occupied by the

Orang Asli at Pengkalan Tampoi. The latter

refuse, an attack ensues, and the Orang Asli

are defeated. Hang Tuahs sons Hang Jebat

and Hang Ketuwi (Kasturi in Malay) were

chiefs in settlements to the east and north of

Pengkalan Tampoi. With their followers they

flee southward, but the two brothers quarrel

over possession over lands and kill each other.

As a descendant of the rulers of Srivijaya, the

Palembang prince would have known the value

of control of the seas. Meanwhile, another sonin Kelang gives his daughter in marriage to a

Minangkabau chief settled downriver. Hang

Tuahs daughter becomes batin in Muar and

his youngest sonbatin in Sungei Ujong. Hang

Tuah and his offspring thus become the found-

ing batin in Sungei Ujong, Kelang, Johor, and

Melaka. When he and his descendants die out,

the Orang Asli never again enjoy the privilege

of electing a batin with the powers and duties

formerly held by Hang Tuah family (Skeat,

William, and Blagen 1906: 267273).

In this Orang Asli tale three important el-

ements are stressed. The first is the assertion

that Hang Tuah and his family, including Hang

Jebat and Hang Kasturi, were important early

leaders of the Orang Asli community. These

three heroes are well known in Melayu folk-

lore and in the most popular of Melayu litera-

ture, the Sejarah Melayu and the HikayatHang Tuah. In the former they are archetypal

Melayu heroes, while in the latter work they

are associated with the islands and implied to

be of Orang Laut origins. In this Orang Asli

tale and in a number of others, these heroes

are clearly Orang Asli who are prominent lead-

ers of the community. Only after the disap-

pearance of this family does the fate of the

Orang Asli decline.

A second feature of the Orang Asli tale is

the emphasis on the prior settlement of the

Orang Asli on the Peninsula and their large

numbers in the past. Archaeological evidence

discussed above leaves little doubt that the

Orang Asli were descendants of both

Hoabinhian period settlers and the later South-

ern Mongoloid population, hence perhaps

settling the Peninsula about a thousand years

earlier than the Austronesian-speakers from

whom the Melayu descended. What is per-

haps less known is the fact that the Orang Asli

population in the past, perhaps even up to the

early twentieth century, was much larger in re-lation to the Melayu than is the case today.

Oral tales describe the natural increase of the

Orang Asli population which leads to the

founding of new settlements. Here again ar-

chaeological evidence indicates the wide-

spread settlement of the Orang Asli and their

occupation of the prime lands on the Penin-

sula, resulting in the restriction of early

Austronesian settlements to the coast.

The third aspect in the tale is the link with

Minangkabau. A younger son (culturally re-

garded as the most spiritually endowed) goes

with his followers to Pagaruyung in the

Minangkabau highlands of central Sumatra.

Among the people of Sumatra the rulers of

Pagaruyung have always been regarded with

great awe because of the supernatural powers

associated with that royal house. The origins

of the Minangkabau royal family can be tracedto its founder Adityavarman in the mid-four-

teenth century. From the beginning this family

based in Pagaruyung11periodically dis-

11 Documents from the sixteenth to the nineteenthcenturies call the court of the Minangkabau rulers inthe Barisan highlands of Sumatra Pagaruyung,though the court shifted to different centers in accor-dance with the matrilineal and matrilocal successionprinciple.


13/23


patched royal scions from the court bearing

letters from theMaharajadiraja (Great King

of Kings, translated by the Dutch as Keizer

or Emperor) to the various rantau, or areas of

Minangkabau settlement outside the home-

land. These letters commanded the Mi-

nangkabau to lend assistance to the letter-bear-

ers or face supernatural punishment. The long

preamble of these letters listing the powers of

the ruler to control the natural elements to his

purpose or to invoke the dreaded supernatu-

ral sanction known in Minangkabau as the

bisa kawi were widely known and feared.12

Stories of the sacred powers of the Pagaruyung

rulers would have arrived in the Peninsuladuring the Melayu immigration of the late four-

teenth century or even earlier with the free flow

of goods and information across the Straits of

Melaka. It is likely that these stories preceded

the arrival in the sixteenth century of the

Minangkabau settlers to present-day Negeri

Sembilan on the Peninsula. This reputation of

the Minangkabau would have made the

Orang Asli leaders as eager as the newcomers

to create or, in accordance with their oral tradi-

tions, reaffirm a familial bond through marriage.

Thus were created the Orang Asli tales explain-

ing how the Minangkabau were really descen-

dants of earlier Orang Asli who had gone to

live in Minangkabau and were thus returning

home to the land of their ancestors.

Hood Saleh (1986) has recorded a creation

myth from an Orang Asli Melayu community,

theBiduanda , that also refers to a Sumatranconnection. According to this tale, the origins

of the group is attributed to the batinSri 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 barkcloth 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 (Hood Saleh 1986:57). While the

Biduanda myth does not mention the

Minangkabau specifically as relatives, its de-

scription of a people straddling both sides of

the Straits of Melaka is very likely a reference

to the Minangkabau. Since the sixteenth cen-

tury the Minangkabau had begun moving in

large numbers to both coasts of Sumatra andto the Malay Peninsula.

Juli Edo, an anthropologist from the Semai

group, collected a number of true tales

(chermor) from his people. According to one

chermor the Orang Asli were the last descen-

dants of Adam living in Mengkah, the land

created by God.13 On their journey from

Mengkah, some leave the raft at Sumatra and

establish the settlement of Pagaruyung. An-

other group goes ashore at Siam or Siap on

the Maluk mountain (said to be in the nor-

thern part of the Malay Peninsula); a third

group continues southward to the Sahine

mountain (believed to be in the eastern side of

central Perak); and the last disembark at

Melaka and settle at Mt. Ledang.14 Centuries

later there is a second exodus from Mengkah,

which also includes the Melayu, the second-

last of the descendants of Adam, who leaveto join their younger brothers, the Orang Asli.

They land in Sumatra and occupy the entire

island. Initially, they settle among the earlier

13 Mengkah is clearly Mekka, indicating a tradi-tion influenced by the Melayu.

14 Mt. Ledang is the legendary mountain mentionedin the Sejarah Melayu as the abode of a supernaturalprincess.

12 For an excellent account of the powers of theMinangkabau court and examples of these letters, seeJane Drakard, The Kingdom of Words.


14/23


migrants at Pagaruyung, but their aggressive

ways force the Pagaruyung people to flee to

Melaka. At Mt. Ledang the people from

Pagaruyung reunite with their relatives from

the first exodus, and they become known as

Temuan because they had met (temu). They

decide not to stay at Mt. Ledang but to oc-

cupy the coastal areas of Melaka.

Centuries later the Melayu from Sumatra

come to Melaka led by a prince who is unsuc-

cessful in becoming a ruler in his own land.

The Royal Shaman advises the prince to marry

an Orang Asli woman from Mt Ledang who is

said to be the bearer of luck and fortune

(bertuah). He follows this advice and thus ac-quires the support of the Orang Asli in the

establishment of his kingdom at Melaka. The

Orang Asli then become his palace workers,

guards, and army, tasks which they continue

to perform for the descendants of this first

Melakan ruler. Among these Orang Asli re-

tainers of the ruler are the Orang Asli broth-

ers, Hang Tuah and Hang Jebat. Later there is

a quarrel between the brothers, which results

in the death of Hang Jebat. Hang Tuah, ac-

companied by his wifes family and those of

Hang Jebat, as well as the Orang Asli from Mt.

Ledang, moves northward and settles the area.

Part of the group remains in central Perak and

comes to be known as mai bareh (i.e. the low-

land Semai), while Hang Tuah proceeds fur-

ther northward and becomes the leader of the

Orang Asli in Upper Perak. The last group even-

tually settles in an area now called Lambor(Edo 1997:35).The story then turns to an epi-

sode involving a Johor prince, Tok Betangkuk

(or Nakhoda Kassim according to others), who

marries an Orang Asli woman with white blood

(hence possessing supernatural gifts) and es-

tablishes the kingdom of Perak. Though the

Melayu then come to occupy the whole of the

Perak river, the relations between the ruler and

the Orang Asli remain good and the Orang

Asli come to perform such duties as palace

workers, guards, and hunting partners of the

ruler. Other tales collected by Edo (1997) have

similar themes of marriage between Melayu

princes and Orang Asli women (with only one

example of a Melayu princess marrying an

Orang Asli man). In these tales the Melayu

has a dream of the supernatural partner among

the Orang Asli and goes in search for the lat-

ter. Before the marriage is contracted, the

Orang Asli always asks and obtains a commit-

ment from the Melayu prince to assure good

treatment of the Orang Asli and to accept them

as subjects (rakyat) (Edo 1997:56).Certain themes are found in these Orang

Asli true tales from the Semai. The first is

that the Orang Asli are the original inhabitants

of the land. Although one chermor mentions a

common origin in the land of Mengkah

(Mekkah, a name which is obviously a later

addition), there is an acknowledgement that

the Orang Asli, the younger brothers of the

Melayu, were the first to come to the Penin-

sula. A second theme is the special relation-

ship established between the Melayu ruler and

the Orang Asli population because of an an-

cient agreement between the founder prince

and an Orang Asli woman. In return for good

treatment from the prince, the Orang Asli pro-

mise to serve as his fighting force and as pa-

lace workers. This particular theme is mirrored

in the Melayu texts, where the military contri-

bution of the Orang Asli groups is openly ac-knowledged. Finally, there is the theme of a

blood link with the Melayu established in the

beginning of time and reaffirmed in the mar-

riage between a Melayu prince and an Orang

Asli woman endowed with supernatural gifts.

For both the Orang Asli and the Melayu, a

blood relationship created trust and loyalty

within a family.


15/23


Until the establishment of British colo-

nial rule in the late nineteenth century, the

Orang Asli retained their importance as collec-

tors of resins, aromatic woods, and rattans from

the jungle. In the seventeenth and eighteenth

centuries, many adapted to a changed eco-

nomic situation by also becoming involved in

the extraction of tin or as casual laborers and

the producers of food for mining communi-

ties. Their commercial value was still recog-

nized, and there was very little pressure for

the expansion of the Melayu or the Chinese

into Orang Asli lands in the interior. Only after

sizeable Straits Chinese and European capital

began to flood into the Peninsula in the latenineteenth century for the development and

extraction of tin, rubber, palm oil, timber, and

plantation crops did intense pressure begin to

dispossess the Orang Asli of their lands. Rela-

tions between the Melayu and the Orang Asli

became increasingly strained as the Melayu

grew in dominance while the Orang Asli be-

gan to lose their value to the Melayu. The shift

in attitude was reflected in the increasing scorn

and contempt with which the Melayu began

to treat the Orang Asli. Increasingly to the

Melayu, the refusal of the Orang Asli to em-

brace Islam and to abandon their foraging and

shifting agricultural lifestyle was evidence of

their lack of civilization. The beginning of a

shift can already be detected in the early se-

venteenth century in the Sejarah Melayu, but

is far more obvious in the various episodes

recounted in Malay and foreign accounts fromthe nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By

contrast, the Orang Asli tales collected over

the last two centuries attempt to recall an ear-

lier period of harmony and cooperation with

thegop, a term which they use for the Melayu.

Yet sadly evident in these tales is the increas-

ing violence committed by the gop on the

Orang Asli.

The question of ethnicity

Because of the desire of the Malaysian

government to assimilate the Orang Asli com-

munities, the question of ethnicity has become

an important part of the debate. Melayu civili-zation has been termed an expansive ethnicity

because in the past it has tended to absorb

many different ethnic groups into its fold. Even

today the Constitution of Malaysia defines a

Melayu as one who speaks Malay habitually,

practices Melayu culture, and is aMuslim. In

the past the principal determinant of Melayu

ethnicity was Islam because many other eth-

nic communities in the Straits area shared the

same language and culture with the Melayu.

The Melayu language gradually became the

dominant language in Sumatra as a result of

the importance of the kingdoms of Srivijaya

and Malayu between the seventh and the four-

teenth centuries. The process of establishing

a dominant language in the region resulted in

the absorption of many smaller Malayic dia-

lects. With the establishment of the prospe-

rous kingdom of Melaka in the fifteenth cen-tury, the prominence of Melayu language and

culture continued. Many groups living around

the Straits of Melaka thus became bilingual in

Malay and in their own language.

Though Melaka attempted to make the

Malay spoken there the standard form of the

language, the Hikayat Hang Tuah recounts

an episode that perhaps reflects the thinking

of many of the Melayu in the period prior to

the twentieth century. In this episode HangTuah visits the kingdom of Indrapura on

Sumatra, and he asks the maidens of the court

to sing a Melayu song for him. They demur,

saying that they are embarrassed because their

Malay is mixed (kacokan), not pure as that

of Melaka. Hang Tuah then explains that the

Malay of Melaka is also mixed with Javanese,

and therefore not pure as the maidens of


16/23


Indrapura believed (Kassim Ahmad 1975).The

Malay spoken in Aceh in the seventeenth cen-

tury was regarded as the standard for Malay

in the period, but Malay speakers in the court

of Banjar on the island of Borneo found it dif-

ficult to understand because of the Acehnese-

isms.15 In other words, the Malay language

was spoken in many different ways without a

fixed standard dialect. The Malay spoken in

Indrapura or Aceh or Melaka was equally valid,

and therefore by mastering Malay one fulfilled

a major prerequisite for assuming Melayu

ethnicity.

With regard to Melayu culture, the long

domination of Srivijaya (and its successors inJambi and the highlands of Minangkabau from

the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries)

(Andaya 2000b:2526) and Melaka introduced

many of the customs of the Melayu to groups

in Java, Sumatra, and the Peninsula. So domi-

nant were the Melayu that in 1365 the lands

of the Melayu extended the whole length of

the east coast of Sumatra and around to the

west coast as far down as Barus, and to the

interior areas up the Batang Hari river into the

Minangkabau highlands. It did not, however,

include any lands on the Peninsula (Robson

1995:33). The story of the Melayu on the Pe-

ninsula only begins with the arrival of the

Palembang immigrants and the foundation of

Melaka in the beginning of the fifteenth cen-

tury. These lands of Melayu on Sumatra are

today inhabited by groups as diverse as the

people of Palembang and Jambi, the Mi-nangkabau, the Batak, the Acehnese, the Me-

layu on the east-coast, and the numerous

Orang Asli and Orang Laut groups along the

east coast of Sumatra. Archaeological evidence

indicates that all of these groups would have

been subject to the culture developed in

Srivijaya (Schnitger 1937). When Melaka be-

came the most powerful Melayu center in the

Straits, it continued the tradition of Srivijaya

in extending Melayu culture to areas on the

Peninsula and to courts involved in the

Melaka trade network. Melayu culture was

available to many groups on both sides of the

Straits of Melaka, thus facilitating the adop-

tion of Melayu ethnicity.

Melayu religion, Islam, then became the

only major hurdle for those wishing to claim tobe Melayu. It was a requirement that did im-

pose considerable hardships on those who

maintained strong beliefs in local deities and

spirits and were particularly fond of the taste

of pork. For some, too, the pig was associated

with community solidarity at special ga-

therings of the group. All this had to be fore-

sworn if one became Melayu. Yet even this

restriction proved less of an obstacle than ex-

pected, and references abound of cases of

conversions leading to a change in ethnicity.

Although many of the Orang Asli on the Pe-

ninsula did not have the same cultural heri-

tage as those on Sumatra, their long contact

with the Melayu gave them an intimate know-

ledge of their language and their customs. A

cultural practice among the Orang Asli further

facilitated adoption of Melayu ethnicity. Indi-

viduals generally joined a band dominated bytheir maternal or paternal relatives, but they

often also simply attached themselves to a new

group for personal reasons. One could thus

be born into one group, but in the course of

ones life come to join and become a part of

other groups. Edo (1997) cites an example of

one Orang Asli man in the past who wanted to

work in a territory inhabited by another Orang

15 50In seventeenth century Aceh, Nuruddin al-Raniriwrote the Sirat al-Mustakim (The Straight Path) inMalay. But a certainMuhammad Arsyad al-Banjariof Banjar decided to compose a companion book calledthe Sabil al-Huhtadin in order to clarify the manyAcehnese words and expressions found in it (Liauw

1992/1993:50).


17/23


Asli band. He therefore moved into the village

of the latter group, married one of its women,

and thus became part of that community (Edo

1997:20). The mutual intelligibility of the lan-

guages spoken by some of the Semang and

their shared lifestyle facilitated movements of

individuals between bands (Endicott 1997:36).

Those Orang Asli communities who had fre-

quent intercourse with the Melayu could in

time decide to masukMelayu, or become a

Melayu, by following the clear prescriptions

identified with that ethnicity. But for the

Orang Asli and for the Melayu, the defining

boundary separating the two was lifestyle.

An Orang Asli who came to lead a sedentaryexistence as an agriculturalist and fulfilled the

other requirements of language, culture, and

religion, could become accepted as a Melayu.

Such shifts in ethnic identity often occurred

on the fringes of two worlds: the jungle of the

Orang Asli and the agricultural lands of the

Melayu.

In the past the Malays used to designate

the Semang by exonyms reflecting the types

of ecological zones in which they lived. The

Semang Paya were those of the plains and

lands bordering the marshes; the Semang Bukit

were found in the hilly areas, the Semang Bakau

frequented the coasts and the mangrove fo-

rests; and.the Semang Bila were those who

had abandoned their Orang Asli style of life

and had frequent intercourse with the Malays

(Anderson 1965:xxxviii). It would have been

the Semang Bila, the most acculturated toMelayu civilization, who would have made the

transition to Melayu much quicker than the

others. Dentan has also observed a similar pat-

tern of naming among the Semai, the largest

group among the Senoi. Unlike the case of the

Negrito (Semang), however, the terms used are

not imposed from the outside but are Semai

endonyms. For example, there are the mai

chenan (they of the mountains), mai kuui teio

(they at the heads of the waters, i.e. upriver

people), and the mai bareh (they of the low-

lands, i.e. people living near the Malay and

Chinese towns found in the lowlands) (Dentan

1968:1). Because of the location of the mai

bareh, they would have found it easier to shift

ethnicities than those of the mai kuui teio li-

ving in the mountainous areas . Of the three

major categories of Orang Asli, it was the

Orang Melayu Asli who were closest to the

Melayu in language and lifestyle and there-

fore best positioned to change ethnicities. In

his History of the Peninsular Malays (1923),

Wilkinson cites the example of the Besisi(Orang Melayu Asli) in Selangor and Negri

Sembilan living in Malay houses and imitating

the Melayu way of life. Except for language,

they were indistinguishable from their Melayu

neighbors and were becoming more like them

through intermarriage and conversion to Is-

lam (Wilkinson 1971:1819).

The reverse process of Melayu becoming

Orang Asli is mentioned by Annandale wri-

ting in the beginning of the twentieth century.

Referring to the area around Kuala Lumpur, he

states that it is not unknown for the Melayu to

go to the jungle and become members of the

Sakai (Orang Asli) group (Annandale 1903:51).

Dunn believes that Aboriginal Malay groups

in the southern half of the Peninsula are in fact

descendants of earlier Malayo-Polynesian

speakers (hence among the first wave of

Austronesian-speakers on the Peninsula some-time in the first millenium B.C). By the time the

Melayu immigrants from Sumatra arrived in the

Peninsula in the late fourteenth century, these

early Malayo-Polynesian speakers would have

adopted the lifestyle of the dominant Orang

Asli communities. The closeness of their lan-

guage and cultures with those of the Melayu

may reflect a much older common cultural heri-


18/23


tage and may not be due simply to greater in-

tercourse between these two communities.

There are fewer examples of the process

of Melayu becoming Orang Asli because of

the steadily deteriorating status of the latter

vis vis the Melayu since the establishment

of British colonial rule in the late nineteenth

century. Collection of forest products conti-

nued to be important in international trade and

even became intensified with the establishment

of the settlement of Singapore by the British

in 1819. As the primary collectors the Orang

Asli were deemed indispensable to this trade

and thus regarded with some respect. Never-

theless, even by this time the trade in forestgoods was a minor part of a larger export

economy involving tin, plantation crops, and

in the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen-

turies rubber and later oil palm. The decline in

the demand for forest products left only occa-

sional wage labor in the mining and plantation

sectors open for Orang Asli employment.

Melayu attitudes toward the Orang Asli thus

shifted from one of respect and even awe in

earlier centuries to one of contempt for their

nomadic lifestyle, superstitious beliefs, and

now their menial occupations. There was less

reason for a Melayu to become an Orang Asli,

but an overwhelming incentive for the latter to

become Melayu because of economic and po-

litical rewards and an enhanced status in Ma-

laysian society.

Summary and conclusionMelayu-Orang Asli relations can be traced

back to about 1000 B.C when the ancestors of

the two group first encountered each other on

the Peninsula. This initial encounter favored

the Orang Asli who had settled the land some

500 to 1000 years previously and were numeri-

cally the larger of the two. The Austronesian-

speakers who remained were limited to the

coasts because the interior was already popu-

lated by the Orang Asli. From the early

Austronesian-speakers in the south developed

some of the early Orang Melayu Asli. In the

center and the north developed the Negrito

and the Senoi populations who evolved from

Hoabinhian and Southern Mongoloid ances-

tors and became Austroasiatic-speakers.

Archaeological evidence indicates that

both coasts in the northern part of the Penin-

sula and the Isthmian area in present day

southern Thailand were sites of major civiliza-

tions in the first millenium and a half AD. They

flourished primarily through international trade

that flowed between one coast to the otherthrough a series of river routes connected by

short land passages. One of the major attrac-

tions of these ports to foreign merchants was

the resins, aromatic woods, and rattans which

were found in the northern forests in the Pe-

ninsula or across the Straits in Sumatra. This

network of collectors, distributors, and buy-

ers spanning the northern region of the Straits

of Melaka operated as a unit, allowing for the

separate development of the northern from the

southern regions of the Peninsula and

Sumatra.16 One of the principal beneficiaries

of this northern international trading network

was the Orang Asli populations of the Semang

and the Senoi. Specialized knowledge was

needed to locate the resin bearing trees and

the aromatic woods and rattans. Because of

the nature of rainforests in which a plot of land

would contain numerous different speciesrather than just one stand of a specific tree,

knowledge of the forest was required to locate

the desired product. Moreover, the ability to

determine which particular tree contained the

resins required another type of specialist skills.

The Orang Asli practice of roaming within a

16 I develop this argument in greater detail in Andaya(2000a), History of Trade.


19/23


fixed territory enabled them to acquire an inti-

mate knowledge of what the forest contained.

Years of practical experience passed down by

oral tales as groups revisited sites also helped

to maintain within the group the secrets of de-

tecting the elusive but profitable forest pro-

ducts.17 Furthermore, the principal trans-pe-

ninsular or trans-Isthmian routes went through

Orang Asli lands. The latters role as guides

and porters made them an indispensable part

of the international trade network in these early

centuries.

Change to the position of the Orang Asli

communities in the north and center of the

Peninsula shifted gradually after the founda-tion of Melaka in the fifteenth century. More

of the trade went through the Straits and south-

ward, and though the northern land routes

were still being used into the seventeenth cen-

tury they were now truly secondary routes.

At approximately the same period between the

fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries, tin and

pepper came to replace forest products as the

primary exchange items of the region in inter-

national trade. The mining of tin and the grow-

ing of pepper came to be dominated more by

other groups, including the Melayu and the

Chinese, thus relegating forest products to a

minor role. The decline in the use of the land

routes in the north, combined with lower de-

mand for forest goods, eroded the economic

and the social position of the Orang Asli. The

final blow came with the establishment of Bri-

tish colonial control in the late nineteenth cen-tury, when the jungles began to be cleared in

order to create rubber estates and oil palm plan-

tations. Not only was the habitat and hence

the nomadic jungle lifestyle of the Orang Asli

threatened, but their economic participation

in the international economy severely curtailed.

Thus began the rapid decline of the economic

and social status of the Orang Asli in the mo-

dernizing economy of Malaysia.

The radical change in the economic posi-

tion of the Orang Asli had a major impact on

Melayu-Orang Asli relations. Whereas in the

past one could speak of the movements of in-

dividuals from one group to the next, in later

centuries there were far fewer documented

cases of Melayu becoming Orang Asli than

the reverse process. This shift in attitude is

also reflected in the traditions of the OrangAsli themselves collected toward the end of

the twentieth century. Even the tales of the

origins of Orang Asli groups either state or

imply the dominance of the Melayu. Other sto-

ries try to justify physical difference and the

lack of writing by referring to deeds or mis-

deeds of their ancestors. Traditional trickster

tales are employed to demonstrate superiority

over the Melayu, but they nevertheless imply

that power actually lay with the Melayu, much

in the way that the Sejarah Melayu uses such

stories to demonstrate unconvincingly Melayu

superiority over China orMajapahit. The si-

tuation had deteriorated to such an extent for

the Orang Asli that the Melayu became con-

vinced that salvation for the Orang Asli lay

in becoming Melayu through the adoption of

Islam and a sedentary agricultural way of life.

Although this effort toward assimilationcontinues in Malaysia today, the outcry raised

in international circles against the perceived

genocide of indigenous peoples around the

world has brought some respite for the Orang

Asli. Buoyed by other indigenous groups, a

strong international lobby, and the United

Nations, the Orang Asli have begun to orga-

nize and to make a case for their preservation

17 Lye (1997:150,196) explains the practice amongthe Batek, one of the Negrito groups, who return toold sites where they have travelled, hunted, collected.At such sites they remember and narrate continuitiesand changes and reproduce this knowledge to theyounger generation.


20/23


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