SOUTH INDIAN CULTURE CONTACTS IN NUSANTARA
JOSEPH
MINATTUR, Ph. D. (
LL.
D. (Nimeguen), D. C. L. (F. I. E. D. C.,
Institute
of Advanced Legal Studies,
It
is common knowledge that
One
may start with an institution in which most scholars in the field of South-east
Asian social studies appear to have evinced some interest. Matriliny
in Minangkabau in
Descent
by the female line may be regarded as one of the characteristics of Austro-asiatic civilization. 2 It is found among the
Khasis of Assam, an Austro-asiatic community. 3
The Garos of
The
proximity of Melayu to Minangkabau
may be a more relevant factor in indicating the relationship between Malabar matriliny and the Minangkabau institution. It appears that the name Melayu was derived from
Their
influence on the institution, however, is easily recognizable. The people of Minangkabau and Negri Sembilan refer to a number of features of their matrilineal
system by Indian words, some of which are the very words used by the people of
Kerala to denote their own institutions. For instance, Minangkabau
bako denoting patrilineal
relationship is heard in Negri Sembilan
as baka and in Kerala as vaka. Harlo-pusako of
Minangkabau and haria
pesaka of Negri Sembilan have in them saka,
Sanskrit saakha, meaning branch,
used in relation to the branch of a matrilineal family group in all the three
areas under consideration. The same saka appears
in Minangkabau in the phrase kata
saka or kata pesaka in the sense of sayings. Some names denoting
certain institutions and territorial units in Minangkabau
and Negri Sembilan appear
to be exact translations either into the local language or Sanskrit of
Dravidian names used in Kerala. For instance, one comes across the strange
expression ebu bapa,
which means father-mother, and which appears to be a translation or,
adaptation of Malayalam ammaavan, meaning
“he-mother,” Negri 6 is
given a specialised meaning in Minangkabau
and Negri Sembilan and
stands for Malayalam naadu. 7
In Kerala one is familiar with such phrases as naadum
nagariyum, literally country and town, but used
indiscriminately in the sense of territorial units.
The
word peeru is of special interest. It
means name in Kerala and may include the name of the family by which a person
is identified as the member of that family in the same way as a surname in the
west helps to identify a person. Parui (womb)
in Minangkabau and perut
8 in Negri Sembilan
stand for the matrilineal clan to which one belongs.
The
expression orang semenda
used in Negri Sembilan
may be a derivative from Malayalam sambandhakaaran,
the expression used in relation to a man who has entered into a marriage
relationship in the Kerala matrilineal society. Samhandham
is from Sanskrit and means bond or tie and hence marriage. Kaaran, formed of two Dravidian suffixes,
indicates a person who belongs to or possesses what is connoted by the
preceding part of the word. Hence sambandhakaara
is one who is bound or wedded. Applying the usual rules of Malay
grammar, one would have kaaran samhandha.
It is not unlikely that instead of accepting kaaran samhandha, the
Malay adopted a semi-articulated k at the end of sambandha
and assumed that aran was the
substantive. Later k may have been dropped and aran
altered into orang. It may be
observed that the g in orang is seldom
distinctly heard. Wilkinson commenting on the word orang
in his dictionary writes: “It is also used in national, descriptive
or tribal names like ‘man’ in Englishman.”9
Kaaran in Malayalam serves the same
purpose.
The
most commonly used word to denote a woman in the Indonesian and Malay languages
is perempuan, which appears to be a Dravidian
derivative, from the Dravidian Penpirannavar,
meaning one who is born a woman as distinguished from anpirannavan,
one born as a man. If one applied the usual rules of Malay or Indonesian
grammar to the Dravidian compound penpirannavar
and also dropped the last two syllables in the compound, it would
not be hard to come by perempuan.
If
it is assumed that matriliny was indigenous to Minangkabau, it is probable that this local institution was
influenced by South Indian settlers who were familiar with a similar
system and who, when in Minangkabau took wives from
there and adopted certain local customs, were interested in creating a
synthesis of the local institution with their own. Even if no conscious attempt
at synthesis was made either by the settler or by the local community or
by both, the Minangkabau and the Kerala institutions
appear to have acquired and retained many points of similarity which may not be
due to chance coincidence. The fact that the same words are
used in both the countries to connote some of the characteristics of this
social structure points to a relationship that cannot be dismissed as purely
accidental. It is not likely that old indigenous institutions would be
fascinated by foreign names at first sight. To adopt a foreign name for an
institution, the institution must have been introduced by foreigners, or thoroughly
sublect to their influence or at least so often
mentioned by the local people when speaking to the foreigners that the former
found it easy to refer to it by its foreign name. When one knows from one’s
understanding of South-east Asian history that South Indians settled in Sumatra
and the Malay Peninsula and that some sections of the South Indians followed matriliny and some of the features of the matrilineal
institutions in Sumatra and Negri Sembilan
are called by names of Indian origin, it is difficult to rule out South Indian
influence on these institutions. 10
The
social position and freedom enjoyed by women in Minangkabau
may be attributed to the matrilineal system. In other parts of Nusantara also women have much greater freedom than is
accorded to their Muslim sisters in Arab countries. Even in Malabar
where they do not observe purdah, Muslim
women do not enjoy as much social freedom as in Nusantara.
In Malabar, the Muslim woman wears a head cover which
may conceal a multitude of attractive facial features. In Nusantara
and Malaysia the Muslim woman’s selendang, a
filmy scarf adjusted over head and shoulders, does not appear to be assumed for
any concealment. It may be that while the restriction’s on women’s freedom which
appear to have been part of the Islamic tradition were in part accepted by the Mapillas of Kerala, these failed
to permeate the Nusantara society when they came
secondhand to these islands through the Mapillas.
11 The Dravidiam tradition of freedom for women
seemed to have prevailed over the Islamic, in exactly the same way as matriliny, a non-Islamic institution continued to in spite
of the onslaughts made on it by the newly-accepted religion. It may be remarked
that the Mapillas most of were originally converts
from Hinduism, did not consider it un-Islamic to cherish their matrilineal
system.
One
may in passing refer to a hair style which is not on in Nusantara.
The hair style and its name appear to have been adopted from South India. An
Indonesian woman may choose to put her hair up in a bun and she calls the
coiffure konde, the name by which her
South Indian sister refers to an identical hair style.
There
are a few aspects of religion in Nusantara which
appear to suggest unmistakable South Indian characteristics. It is not easy to
discover who introduced Hinduism and Buddhism into Nusantara.
But one wonders why Agastya who had his abode on the
mountain Kunjara in South India and who is not
regarded as so important as Siva or Vishnu should have been chosen for worship
in South-east Asia and particularly in Java. Whether Batara
Guru represents Agastya or not, the popularity of the
cult of Agastya is reminiscent of the place assigned
to him in South India.
One
may also refer to a few words used in relation to religion in Nusantara. In Sundanese santri is a term applied to a pious person
who observes all the requirements of Islam.12 In Malayalam tantri is
used in the sense of hereditary priest and particularly in the sense of temple
administrator. 13 Though the word appears to have been derived from tantra, it is of interest to note that it
does not seem to have been used in the above sense anywhere else in India. When
a modern Sundanese half-jokingly refers to a pious
man as a santri, what is probably
suggested is that the man appears to be as pious as a priest is expected to be.
This may point to the meaning the word may have had in Sundanese
in olden days. Lebbai, a name familiar to people in Nusantara and the Malay Peninsula, is heard as lebba in Tamil and Malayalam. Lebba in these two languages stands for a
Muslim colonist on the southern coast of the Tamilnad.
14 It may also mean a Muslim weaver.
One
need not emphasise the importance wayang,
shadow play, has attained in Nusantara. The word
may be a corruption of paavacchaaya, puppet
shadow. In Malabar an identical entertainment is
known by the name paavakoottu. In the
Kerala entertainment, puppets made of leather or light pieces of wood
representing figures of heroes and heroines from the Raamaayana
are manipulated to the accompaniment of vocal music, drums and cymbals.
15 As early as the twelfth century A. D., shadow play with leather
figures existed in South India and Ceylon.16 If people from Malabar settled down in Nusantara
it is probable that they brought with them the entertainment they were familiar
within their homeland and introduced it in the country of their settlement. The
more sophisticated or the highly cultivated among the settlers may have
preferred to call the entertainment paavacchaaya
rather than paavakoottu,
thus avoiding the obvious lightheartedness suggested in the
use of the word koottu. They may have
also avoided the name chaayaanaatakam, even
if the name was known to them, because there was no play-acting involved in wayang.
A
passing reference only is intended to be made to literature as pointing to
South Indian influence. It strikes one as very significant that at the
commencement of his manuscript the scribe of the Land MS refers to Raamaayana as “the tale of Maharaja Ravana of the ten heads and twenty hands, a ruler
exceedingly great on whom Allah Most High bestowed four kingdoms.” One would
expect Raamaayana to be referred to as
the tale of Sri Rama rather than that of Sri Ravana.
A plausible reason for this departure is that either the scribe or the author
of this version of the Raamaayana was
inclined to regard Ravana, the king of the Dravidas, as a great ruler and warrior of the ethnic and
cultural group to which he himself belonged. One recollects in this connection
that a few years ago an Izhava author in Kerala wrote
a long poem called Raavanaayana extolling
the virtues and greatness of Sri Ravana.
One may also call
attention to a piece of historical writing. The Portuguese historian Joao de Barros in Da Asia mentions
one Falatehan from Pasai.
Dr. Hoesein Djajadiningrat
speculates that the name Falatehan originated from
the Arabic word Fathan which is used in
Lava as a personal name.17 It is unlikely that Fathan
takes on two additional syllables and gets changed to Falatehan.
If one may indulge in speculation, it is not improbable that Falatehan was a convert who retained his former Hindu name Baladevan. His pilgrimage to Mecca, his enthusiasm to
propagate Islam and the honour bestowed on him by the
king of Demak who offered one of his sisters in
marriage to him may all be viewed as keeping with the position and inclinations
of a prominent convert. If Falatehan and Tagaril were one and the same person, it is probable that Tagaril was his family name. He was probably known before
his conversion as Tagaril Baladevan.
Tagaril may have been a corruption of Tarakil or Tara il,
a not uncommon family name in Malabar. It may
also be noted that certain place names in Java have a Dravidian ring about
them. Parambanan, for instance, reminds
one of Malayalam, parampu (compound), a
common ending in family names with an il added
(parampil) to convey the sense of ‘living at.’
Occasionally the ending will appear as an (parampan,
of the compound), Panataran in Java
suggests to one a family name like panattara
(the piece of earth on which pana, a
palmyra palm, stands), Panatarayan
could be the person who occupied the land around or adjacent to the panattara. The name which denoted the person
may have been later used to indicate the whole area he occupied or over which
he held sway. Tara means the foundation or site of a house. It may be used to
mean a village, a parish or a small district.18 It is also of some
interest to note that the capital of the Javanese King Purnavarman
was called Taruma, and the name Tarumapura
occurs in a south Indian inscription. 19
The
early inscriptions discovered in South-east Asia are all written in a script
identical with the Grantha character used by about
the fifth century on the coromandel coast. 20
Mahendravarman’s stone inscription kept in Bangkok
Museum and Purnavarman’s Tugu
stone inscription, Jambu rock inscription and Ciarutan rock inscription are all in Pallava
Grantha characters. Whenever a date appears in the
early records of Nusantara it is the Saka era that is used. It is known that while the Vikrama era was generally employed in the north it was in
the southern regions of India that Saka era acquired
popular acceptance. 20
The
references to Kunjarakunjadesa in the Changal inscription serves to indicate the association
between Nusantara and the Dekhan.
Kunjarakunjadesa is generally
identified with the Kunjaradari of Varahamihira’s Brihatsamhita
and is believed to be near Tirunalveli in South
India.
In
the Kawi inscription of King Balitung,
discovered at Kedoe the name of the king deserves
attention. The name appears to suggest some association with South India. Bali
or Mahabali is the legendary king of the Dravidas, who ruled over Kerala in the golden days of old.
Lord Vishnu had to assume an avatar to discomfit him. Tung
undoubtedly stands for tunga. A
king of Dravidian origin or associations may have elected to adopt the ancient
glorious ruler’s name.
Vaprakesvara
in the Kutei inscription of East
Borneo suggests the name Kutei itself. Kottai in Tamil means a fortress and vapraka also means a fortress. Vaprakesvara probably referred to the capital
city which was the most important fortified area where the sacrificial post was
erected. 21
While
the reference in a Sumatran inscription to a guild of South Indian merchants, Ainnurruvar (the Five Hundred)22 may point to
the prominence and influence of the community in the area, the recognition of
an area as Seema, commemorated in
various inscriptions may remind one of seema,
a word used in Malayalam to convey the sense of separate territory. The seema ceremony appeared to have attributed to
the territory concerned a certain degree of autonomy, if not sovereignty.
If
the end of the last line in No.4 of the rock inscription found by springs of Sungei Tekarek in Batu Pahat is read as baudha udakhasstapitah,
as Dr. Chhabra suggests, it is probable
that udakha, which may be a misspelling for udaka, refers to udakadaanam
which in Malayalam means, among other things, gift of water to travellers.23
The name of the river near which the inscription was found also deserves
notice. Tekarek is not very dissimilar in sound to tekkaar, especially if one considers that the
final k is seldom distinctly heard in the Malay and Indonesian tongues. Tekkaar in Dravidian speech would mean
southern river.
It
may not be in bad taste to end this paper with a lingering look at certain
tasty dishes. Many dishes in Nusantara have a
Dravidian flavour about them; The Indonesian achar may not taste exactly like its South
Indian Counterpart, but one can easily recognize the name and
may recollect that achar does not taste
the same in different parts of South India. Kachang
bendi and merungai
24 may be seen as side dishes. Their names and their
taste remind one of their Dravidian associations. Not only ketumbar,25
but also coconut milk goes into the preparation of some of the dishes, a
practice which the Indonesian and the Malay share with their kinsmen in
the Dekhan. Kelappa,26 the
name for coconut in Nusantara and the Malay
Peninsula, may remind one, by the sound of the word, not only of kerappal, coconut milk, but also of the land
lying between the range of mountains called Malaya and the Arabian Sea, where
the palms wing their heads in breezy symphony.
1 The
bau and bu
endings in place names like Rembau, Lelebu may have once been bhaaga;
Rem (Rama?) bhaaga,
Lela (Lala) bhaaga.
Lembaga originally appears to have meant
territorial division. Bahagian in Indonesian and Malay vocabulary
indicates that the Sanskrit bhaaga
was not an unfamiliar word in the region. It is uncommon in some Dravidian
languages to form compounds from Sanskrit and Dravidian words: For instance, in
Malayalam one comes across a compound like manalaranyam
where Malayalam manal (sand) is
combined with Sanskrit aranya (forest)
to mean a desert (literally a wilderness of sand ).
2
George Coedes, Les Etats
hindouises d’Indochine et d’Indonesie, P. 25 et. sec.
3 See
L. Minattur, “The Khasis”, The Modern Review, Calcutta,
May 1955
4 Malayalam
usually denotes the language of Kerala, but with the addition of naadu and the resultant dropping of the final
m in the first word, (i.e., Malayaalanaadu,
but more often, Malanaadu, the land
of hills) it may stand for the State of Kerala.
5 See
L. Minattur, “Malaya–What’s in the Name?” Revue du Sudest Asiatique,
Brussels, 1965, No.3.
6 Nagara
in Sanskrit means a city. In Malay negri
would usually connote a country or settlement. Negri
Sembilan appears to denote nine settlements.
7 Naadu
is usually used in the sense of principality or province but
sometimes used to specify a district; also used to connote the country as
opposed to town.
8 Peer
in Malayalam means giving birth.
9 Wilkinson,
A Malay-English Dictionary, p. 821. Kaar
in Kaaran may have been originally
adapted from Sanskrit kaaran, though
its use in certain contexts does not appear to support this view; see for
instance Vellakaaran, white-man.
10 See
for more details, J. Minattur, “Indian Influence on
Malay Customary Law”, Journal of Indian History, XIII, iii (l964) p. 783
11 R.
L. Wilkinson says that the purely Muhammadan elements
in the religious beliefs of the Malays were “mainly introduced from South
India” (Malay Beliefs, London and London, 1906, p.2) If this view be
correct, there is no reason to assume that the introduction of these religious
beliefs was confined to the Malay Peninsula. As he writes about Malay beliefs,
he emphasizes the introduction of such beliefs among the Malays.
12 A.
W. Palmer, “The Sundanese Village”, in G. W. Skinner
(Ed.) Local, Ethic and National Loyalties in Village of Indonesia, p. 50
13 H.
Gundert, A Malaya/am-English Dictionary, Second
Edition, 1962, p. 418
14 Ibid.
p. 807
15 See
S. V. Viswanatba in Indian Historical Quarterly, Vol.
X, p. 144
16 R.
C. Majumdar, Ancient Indian Colonies in the
Far East, Vol. II, Part II (Calcutta 1938,) p. 59
17 Hoesein Djajadiningrat, “Local Traditions and the Study of
Indonesian history”, in Soedjatmoko and others
(Editors), An Introduction to Indonesian Historiography, p. 79
18 H.
Gundert, A Malayalam-English Dictionary, p.
424
See for other
Dravidian names found in Indonesian history, J. Minattur,
“Gaja Mada’s Palapa,” Revue du Sud-est Asiatique, 1966, No.2.
20 See
B. Ch. Chhabra, Expansion of Indo-Aryan Culture, p.
72 et. sec.
21 See
L. Minattur, “King Kundungga
of the East Borneo Inscriptions”, Journal of South-East Asian History, Vol.
5, No. 2, p. 181.
22 V.
R. Ayyar, “Further Light on Chola-Sailendra
Relations from Tamil Inscriptions’, in B. C. Law Volume, Part II,
p. 421.
23 Udakam
also means obsequies; it may connote a freehold property,
too.
24 See
J. Minattur, “Dravidian Words in the Malay Language”,
The Phoenix, University of Singapore, 1964. p. 36.
25 The
name approximates to kottumhari in Tulu.
26 Keelappa
may have been derived from kerappaal.
See Keelan which appears to be an
abbreviation of Keralan, man from Kerala.