ofthe SAME TREE

oats. 10 Another explanation for their wandering lifestyle on the sea is found
in an epic tale of their sacred ancestor, the golden-haired queen, who was
ruler of a prosperous land-based people. In this story she falls in love with a
visiting Muslim Malayu who teaches the Moken about fire and rice. They are
married, and on their wedding night, spent on his father-in-law’s boat, the
groom is entranced by the queen’s youngest sister and sleeps with her. This act
of betrayal so angers the queen that she expels the people from her land and
condemns them to live forever on boats in search of food. 11
The Urak Lawoik and the Moken/Moklen have been very little studied,
and much of the information about them has come from modern ethnographies.
In reconstructing their past, I have relied on an understanding of the
trade patterns in the areas where the Urak Lawoik and the Moken/Moklen
operate and have assumed that they had certain practices in common with
the Orang Laut groups at the southern end of the Straits of Melaka. Based
on settlement patterns reconstructed from oral traditions referring to the
prehistorical period and those observed in more recent times (1989), Pattemore
and Hogan postulate that the Urak Lawoik originated in the south and
then moved north, with the islands of Rawai, Sireh, Peepee, and Sepum their
northernmost limit. The Moken, on the other hand, were originally located
farther north and then moved southward to the Urak Lawoik’s northern limits,
though they rarely ventured beyond Surin and Phra Thong island. 12
Information on the Orang Laut at the other end of the Straits of Melaka
is comparatively richer than those for the sea peoples in the north. This is
because the former played a prominent role historically in the Malayu maritime
kingdoms and are therefore far more visible in the documents. While the
evidence suggests that the Moken and Urak Lawoik were also involved with
some of the northern Malayu polities, there is too little information to be able
to reconstruct a detailed study of their activities. For this reason, this chapter
focuses primarily on the Orang Laut found in the islands and coasts at the
southern entrance of the straits.
The languages spoken by the Orang Laut in the straits area belong to
the Austronesian family, and variations are attributed to a number of factors,
including slow expansion and adaptation to the environment, intergroup
contact, and influences from external civilizations. They, like the Orang Asli
(chapter 7), are said to occupy the “cultural fringes of the Indo-Malaysian
world.” 13 Yet in past centuries both were regarded as important components
of lowland societies, with skills and economic contributions that complemented
those of the Malayu. For this reason, considerable care was given
by the Malayu lords to maintain and strengthen ties with these groups. The
Orang Laut in particular responded with a devotion that often surpassed that
of Malayu subjects themselves.
176 Chapter 6