The dynastic myth of Negri Sembilan (Malaya)

• Published in: Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde land- en volkenkunde, 1975-01, Vol.131 (2), p.277-308
• Main Author: Josselin de Jong, P.E
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 18th century; 19th century; Clans; Cultural history; Dutch language; Kings; Legends; Monarchy; Myths; Politics; Princes; Treaties; Viceroys; Villages
• ISSN: 0006-2294; 2213-4379; 0006-2294
• DOI: 10.1163/22134379-90002670

[...]a treaty of October 1669 (Corpus Diplomaticum II: 426) mentions a "daijen Maleeuwa", and in 1947 the prime minister of the state of East Indonesia was Nadjamuddin Daeng Malewa (Levij 1948: 431); so the name Malwa is apparently also not uncommon in South Celebes itself. 5 The Daghregister was a day-book kept at the Dutch East India Company's central office in Batavia for registering in-coming letters from the Company's utstations and summarizing their contents. [...]when I recorded two Rembau traditions in 1954, one of these (D, below) made the province anti, the other (E, below) pro Malwar. 290 P. E. DE JOSSELIN DE JONG Tradition D. As we saw in section II sub E (p. 280), while the present author was in Rembau in 1954 he made a point of eliciting the responses of various local people, in informal private conversations and in more formal sessions, to the traditions which classify Rembau as anti-Malwar. [...]the traditionalist adat party gained the day.18 From their point of view it would be fair to say that the Rembau clan chieftains had beaten off an attack on the matrilineal institutions of Negri Sembilan as a whole. [...]the most ambitious but also probably the most enlightening approach would be to undertake a systematic study of political (dynastie and kingship) myths in the Indonesian or western Indonesian culture area.