andaya, 'orang asli and melayu relations
TRANSCRIPT
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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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47ANTROPOLOGI INDONESIA 67, 2002
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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48ANTROPOLOGI INDONESIA 67, 2002
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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49ANTROPOLOGI INDONESIA 67, 2002
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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50ANTROPOLOGI INDONESIA 67, 2002
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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51ANTROPOLOGI INDONESIA 67, 2002
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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52ANTROPOLOGI INDONESIA 67, 2002
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
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53ANTROPOLOGI INDONESIA 67, 2002
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
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54ANTROPOLOGI INDONESIA 67, 2002
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
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55ANTROPOLOGI INDONESIA 67, 2002
(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).
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56ANTROPOLOGI INDONESIA 67, 2002
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.
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57ANTROPOLOGI INDONESIA 67, 2002
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.
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58ANTROPOLOGI INDONESIA 67, 2002
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.
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59ANTROPOLOGI INDONESIA 67, 2002
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.
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60ANTROPOLOGI INDONESIA 67, 2002
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
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61ANTROPOLOGI INDONESIA 67, 2002
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).
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62ANTROPOLOGI INDONESIA 67, 2002
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-
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63ANTROPOLOGI INDONESIA 67, 2002
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.
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64ANTROPOLOGI INDONESIA 67, 2002
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.
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65ANTROPOLOGI INDONESIA 67, 2002
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