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526 MINANGKABAU
return, they are treated with great respect. Many of them are traders who have
sought personal fortunes far afield, and some of them have other wives and
families in distant towns where they conduct their businesses.
In the poorer villages of the Batang Kapas area, however, many men (having
previously made their adolescent merantau) remain at home throughout the year.
They contribute more labor to the tasks of subsistence, more often own a small
piece of land in their own right and make most of the day-to-day decisions. A
similar situation is common in the villages of Negri Sembilan. The importance
of male labor and of newly opened (nontraditional) lands in many commercial
agricultural enterprises lessens the relevance of traditions that give only women
property rights to irrigated rice fields.
Many Western scholars, noting that Quranic law seemingly places women at
social and economic disadvantage, have wondered at the zeal and orthodoxy
with which the Minangkabau embrace Islam, but the Minangkabau see no conflict
between their matrilineal customs and the strong patrilineal bias of Islam. The
right to use ancestral property, such as wet rice land or a longhouse, is inherited
through females, but individually earned property, such as a bus or a newly
opened bit of jungle land, may be inherited through males in accordance with
Quranic rules of inheritance (which provide larger portions for male heirs).
Thus, customary law (adat perpateh) and Shariah (adat temenggong) are not
necessarily contradictory. However, disputes do occur regarding inheritance of
property, particularly with regard to disposition of property acquired through the
efforts of a male, which might be claimed by his sisters' children as property
of his matrilineage, by his own children as their father's personal property or
by his widow as common property of their marriage (hak suarang).
The widow's right, hak suarang, to inheritance of common property of her
marriage is not uncommon in urban contexts, where the nuclear family is a more
important and immediate economic unit than the matrilineage. This difference
from usual expectations regarding inheritance in rural areas may also reflect the
higher levels of education and later marriages of urban women, which enhance
their capacity to claim their own personal property.
The similarity of Malay and Minangkabau cultures and the folk wisdom and
folklore of both cultures hint at a not very distant common past. Some of the
"clues" may deal with differences in rules of inheritance. Melayu, the Malay
and Minangkabau term for English "Malay," is the name of one of the major
suku (matriclans) of the Minangkabau. Moreover, one of the origin myths of
the Minangkabau refers to the first Minangkabau persons as twins with names
corresponding to the names of the systems of law and inheritance (adat) of the
Minangkabau (perpateh) and the Malays (temenggong). Finally, in the Malay
peninsula there is a commonly told story that the first settled communities were
the result of marriages between native women and immigrant princes. This same
story openly asserts the rights of natives to the land and might thereby also imply
the special right of women to land. The story also asserts the right of the
immigrant men to rule and might thereby refer to the male-oriented rule of Islam.
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