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510 MELANAU
category of his father. Although each rank was ideally endogamous, marriage
between individuals of different rank were not uncommon, and among Muslim
immigrants this fact led to a very slow increase in their numbers.
In any context the behavior of an individual toward another was largely determined
by whether the two were neighbors or strangers, kinsmen or not, of
equal or unequal rank. In addition, behavior was also regulated by age and sex
and was further constrained by the concept of adat.
Traditional social organization and ideas, in spite of the abandonment of the
longhouse and extensive conversion to Islam, are still central to the organization
of Melanau life. Muslims, pagans and Christians alike still maintain traditional
forms of household, kinship behavior and observance of rank distinctions. Visiting
Muslim teachers sometimes try to correct what they hold to be mistaken
practices and beliefs, especially in the conduct of weddings, when the proper
ordering of society in its correct ranks is prominently on display, and also in
the treatment of illness by shamans. Such visitors are listened to with respect,
but on their departure what they said is usually forgotten.
For at least four centuries the Melanau have been under the influence and, at
one time, nominal jurisdiction of the Muslim sultans of Brunei. Representatives
of the sultans lived at the mouths of the more important sago-producing rivers
to control trade revenues. These representatives and their families were assimilated
by the local population and came to speak Melanau instead of Malay as
their first language. They lived as hereditary elders in longhouse fortresses; and
though the one selected as the sultan's representative at any one time carried
prestige and could sometimes successfully claim to be ruler of the river, he was,
as much as were the elders in the wholly pagan villages upriver, merely primus
inter pares.
The Muslim settlers from Brunei almost completely adopted Melanau values,
especially those concerning rank. They imposed themselves on local society as
a superior rank and regarded the pagan upper ranks as second-class aristocrats.
Even more than religion, it was rank in all sections of society that counted most.
At birth a Melanau acquired not only a place in a village and a circle of kinsmen;
he was also placed in his rank category. Muslims from Brunei brought with
them the titles pengiren, awang and dayang. In many respects these titles marked
them off more significantly than their religion, since the preferred Melanau
marriage, among pagans as much as Muslims, was with a second cousin of any
kind, provided marriage was not across any of the three main rank barriers—
aristocrats, middle ranks and slaves.
The establishment of Singapore as an international market in 1819 introduced
fundamental changes in the trade of the whole region of the Indonesian archipelago
and in particular in the trade of the Melanau sago. Until then, most sago
had been exported as a high starch food in the form of a baked biscuit prepared
in the villages. When European textile industries demanded industrial starch,
the market for sago flour biscuits decreased in favor of sago flour. Malay traders