ofthe SAME TREE

Interaction between the Malayu and the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing
becomes much clearer in the first millennium and a half CE. Strong international
demand for forest products encouraged the coastal Malayu polities to
enlist the services of the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing, whose specialized knowledge
was needed to locate the various varieties of rattan, the resin-bearing
trees, and the aromatic gaharuwood. The collection of gaharuwood was particularly
difficult because not all trees contained the fragrant diseased core
that was used for perfumes and incense, 77 and determining which tree contained
the aromatic core required special skills. The Orang Asli/Suku Terasing
practice of roaming within a fixed territory enabled them to acquire an intimate
knowledge of what the forest contained. As groups revisited sites, years
of practical experience passed down by oral tales helped to preserve community
secrets in collecting elusive but profitable forest products. 78 In addition,
the Orang Asli living on the Malay Peninsula and in the Isthmus of Kra region
acted as guides and porters in periods when traders preferred to use the principal
transpeninsular or transisthmian routes linking the Bay of Bengal with
the Gulf of Siam.
The economic relationship between the Malayu and the Orang Asli/Suku
Terasing was formalized through the appointment of either Malayu representatives
or the heads of the various Orang Asli suku as the intermediary between
the two communities. The Malayu ruler dispensed titles and gifts in return for
the forest products collected and presented as tribute. Such titles and gestures
of royal munificence were received with great pride and reverence, not only for
their practical value and prestige, but also because they contained the potent
spiritual powers of the Malayu ruler. When the Dutch replaced the Malayu
rulers as overlords in Sumatra, the Suku Terasing requested titles and other
paraphernalia of office for reasons that went beyond simply demonstrations of
status. Any object associated with the ruler was believed to contain supernatural
powers. To force his interior subjects to comply with his wishes, the sultan
of Palembang in 1644 sent envoys armed only with his letter and seal. 79
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing
groups began to adapt to a changed economic situation. They became
employed in extracting tin and gold, performing casual labor, producing food
for mining communities, and working in pepper plantations and Malayu rice
fields. The economic and social intercourse that occurred at the perimeters
of these communities occasionally led to intermarriage and mixed offspring
who served as intermediaries. There was less hindrance to, and even encouragement
of, unions between members of the two communities for a variety
of reasons, including economic and spiritual. This easy relationship is evident
in both the Malayu and Orang Asli oral and written traditions from an earlier
period.
216 Chapter 7