ofthe SAME TREE

kabau came to settle. Within the forests in the peneplain zone, where the lands
between the rivers were particularly large, lived the Petalangan (between the
Siak, Kampar, and Indragiri Rivers), the Talang Mamak (along the Indragiri
River in Bukit 30 National Park), and the Orang Batin and Orang Rimba
(between the Batang Hari and the Musi). As collectors of forest products for
former Malayu kingdoms, they filled a complementary economic niche that
helped them to maintain a distinctive lifestyle and ethnic identity. 20
Among the most well-known of the Suku Terasing is a group referred to
in ethnographic literature and in public discourse as “Kubu,” an exonym that
members of the group themselves reject. One suggestion is that it is a Malayu
term used for the forest people who had contact with the Malayu polities in
southeastern Sumatra over the centuries. The term itself, so the Sumatran
Malayu claim, is the same word as “fortification” because of the resistance
of the “Kubu” to becoming Malayu (masuk Malayu). Early last century van
Dongen collected tales of the origins of the Kubu and claimed that the word
derived from “ngubu,” meaning “forest.” 21 Whatever the derivation of the
word, “Kubu” is often associated in many people’s minds with “primitive,”
“dirty,” “stupid,” etc., and is therefore rejected by the group. 22 Instead, the term
Orang Batin, “people of the batin” [title of Suku Terasing leaders], is used by
the former “tame Kubu,” and Orang Rimba, or “people of the forest,” for those
formerly known in the literature as “wild Kubu.”
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, a distinction was made
between the Kubu based on differing subsistence patterns, language, beliefs,
and boundary mechanisms to distinguish the group from the Malayu. 23 Early
characterizations used the measure of the Malayu to distinguish between the
“tame” and the “wild” Kubu. Such characterizations were based on a belief in
a linear progression from the “primitive” nomadic forest hunting-gathering
lifestyle to the more “civilized” sedentary agricultural existence. In reality,
however, only the “tame Kubu,” enjoyed both worlds because of their ability
to move easily between these two different ways of life. They interacted
frequently with the Malayu and could move into the Malayu world with little
difficulty by acquiring the outward signs of ethnicity defined by language,
dress, and diet. Those who intended to stay longer among the Malayu could
also quietly absorb and apply Malayu customary laws and practices (adat).
Upon returning to the forest, they could then revert to their own ways. 24
Early studies have tended to focus on the tame Kubu, who are regarded as
the oldest communities in Jambi. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
the Batin Duabelas (the Twelve Batin), the most accessible groups along the
Batang Hari, were subject to corvée labor. Their varied tasks included preparing
for a royal wedding, outfitting a ship to carry envoys to the Dutch in Batavia,
providing timber and rattan to build defenses, and serving when summoned
The Orang Asli/Suku Terasing and the Malayu 205