ofthe SAME TREE

greatest “legitimate” right to govern. Legitimacy was determined by genealogy,
and therefore families were compelled to undertake the writing and
recopying 108 of texts to advance their case with the Europeans. 109 The Shellabear
recension was written in the Bugis-Malayu court of Riau, as were two
of the major Malayu texts of the nineteenth century: the Salasilah Malayu dan
Bugis and the Tuhfat al-Nafis. At the same time the Minangkabau-Malayu of
Siak also entered the fray with their version of events that is known today as
the Hikayat Siak. 110 Under these circumstances, the newly written or re-edited
Malayu “histories” stressed descent and illustrious origin (asal) in recounting
the genealogy of their royal patrons.
While the position of a ruler with superior descent was a necessary part
of the Malayu polity, of even greater importance was the alliance of kinship
networks which constituted the polity itself. Such networks were facilitated
by the practice of tracing a line through both the males and females, making
it almost inevitable that there would be an overlap of kin at the “edges.” As
in the mandala polity model, the “edges” are the site of contestation between
families. There is a Malay saying that captures both the sense of an expanding
kinship network as well as the potential for conflict at the margins: Bagai
kabung (nau) dalam belukar melepaskan pucuk masing-masing (Like sugar
palms in secondary forest, each putting out shoots), which naturally touch
each other and may set up friction. 111 To minimize such conflicts, there may
be a tendency to “re-center” the peripheral members or third cousins by marrying
them. In a random search of “pupu” (grade, degree of relationship) in
some fifty-seven Malay texts compiled in the Australian National University’s
Malay Concordance Project, relationships are listed only as far as tiga pupu
(third cousins). 112 Third cousins seems to be the most common limit of ego’s
immediate “family,” and therefore it becomes imperative to marry third cousins
to prevent their leaving the family and becoming outsiders. But each individual
within such core family units would have his or her own network of
kin, contributing to the proliferation of kinship networks.
The emphasis on the alliance principle in marriage among the Malayu
before the nineteenth century helped to extend the family. Because of the
importance of the family network, other means were employed besides marriage
to expand membership. One of the most common ways was through
fictive genealogy in order to insert a powerful historical figure as an ancestor.
Such a fictive ancestor not only fulfilled the useful function as the bearer
of culture, but also enabled ambitious families to legitimize their claims to
a share of the political or economic resources controlled by that particular
ancestor’s direct kin group. 113
Another means of expanding the kinship group was through lactation,
or “mother’s milk.” In the Raffles 18 Sejarah Melayu, a newborn child of the
Emergence of Malayu 73