The Melanau an Ethnographic Overview.
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THE SARAWAK MUSEUM JOURNAL |
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Title :
The Melanau an Ethnographic Overview. |
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Author :
Stephen Morris |
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Abstract:
The name Melanau, spelt in different ways, has been used for people living on the coast of northern Borneo, southwest of Brunei, for a long time past. On a map published in Italy in 1595 the word Malano is written along the coast roughly where the rivers Oya, Mukah, and Balingian run. The inhabitants of that area, however, say that they have never c^led themselves Melanau and that it is a Malay word from Brunei. Why, “they asked me on more than one occasion over many years,” do the Brunei people call us Melanau; Who are these Melanau people?” They called themselves a-likou, meaning the inhabitants of a river or of a section of it. A-likou Uya’ implies all the inhabitants of the River Oya, whereas a-likou Medong refers to the people of that village. They had no general term for all those whom they recognized as speaking the same or a closely related language and whose customs resembled their own, people whom visitors from Brunei called Melanau. That name is also said to occur in the Philippines, and it has been suggested that it may be a variation of the word Mindanao, meaning coastal dweller in contrast with names such as Dayak or Murut for hill peopleor those living inland. Exactly whom the name Melanau refers to has never been quite certain. A Christian missionary, visiting Brunei in 1837, was told that the Sultan’s subjects belonged to twenty-one different groups, among whom were the Kayan, the Tatow, the Kanawit, the Siting, the Bakatan, the Dali, the Kajaman, the Narun, and the Milanow, most of whom at some time have been listed as Melanau.
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| DOI: XXXX |
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How to cite:
Morris, S. (1989). The Melanau an Ethnographic Overview. The Sarawak Museum Journal, XL (61): 181-188 |
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References
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