ofthe SAME TREE

successor can one suggest that the inhabitants may have adopted the prestigious
identity of their polity and hence were called orang Malayu, or “the
people of (the polity) Malayu.” Initially, therefore, Malayu identity was most
likely polity-based, and the characteristics of this identity were derived from
the nature of the polity itself. Increasingly, however, the term “Malayu” was
no longer used exclusively to identify subjects of a polity but to distinguish
specific cultural practices and the language associated with the populations of
the Musi and Batang Hari river basins. Nevertheless, the emergence in history
of a group that can be identified as “Malayu” should not be regarded as fixing
this ethnicity forever in time. The story of the Malayu is an ancient one, but it
is not a story of the “ancient Malayu.”
60 Chapter 2
Development of Malayu Culture in Southeast Sumatra
Only limited numbers of inscriptions, scattered references in Chinese dynastic
records, a few travelers’ accounts from the Middle East, India, and China,
some archaeological finds, and a few linguistic studies are available to reconstruct
aspects of the Malayu culture that evolved in southeast Sumatra in the
first 1500 years CE. From such divergent approaches but complementary evidence
emerges a clearer picture of the society. Studying stone inscriptions
reveals attitudes toward governance and the political and social organization
of the polity, Chinese and Arabic documents contain material on international
exchange of goods and ideas, archaeology provides information on the
material and religious culture, and linguistics demonstrates how the Malayu
language evolved to become the medium of communication and a basis for
group identity.
Linguists believe that the Malayic languages arose in western Borneo,
based on their geographic spread in the interior, their variations that are not
due to contact-induced change, and their sometimes conservative character. 48
According to Robert Blust, the Malayu language was emerging by the beginning
of the first century CE. 49 It was sufficiently developed by the late seventh
century to be used as the language of the Sriwijayan inscriptions. While
Malayu may have been an official language, there is an intriguing theory that
the undeciphered opening sentences in the Kota Kapur and Karang Berahi
inscriptions belong to another local language related to Malayu. 50 Blust and
Benjamin share the view that in the Malay Peninsula too there is evidence of
a pre-Malayic Austronesian language beneath a Malayic continuum. 51 What
this suggests is that there were other languages spoken by communities that
formed part of the Sriwijaya polity, and that Malayu may have been the lingua
franca, or at least the language of government.