A note on ethnic classification in Borneo
Rodney Needham published this short note in 1955 in the Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, intervening in a contemporary debate over the validity of two ethnographic classification terms—‘Kajang’ and ‘Bahau’—used for the peoples of Borneo. His overarching thesis is that both terms are indigenous, long-standing, and empirically useful classificatory labels that should not be dismissed on the basis of incomplete fieldwork or administrative convenience.
Summary
The article responds to criticisms by Tom Harrisson, Government Ethnologist in Sarawak, who had challenged the use of ‘Kajang’ (as proposed by E. R. Leach) and ‘Bahau’ (as proposed by Raymond Kennedy) in Bornean ethnic classification. Needham argues that Harrisson’s objections rest on misreadings of primary sources and an overreliance on the absence of a term in a single census as evidence of its irrelevance. The broader problem Needham identifies is the persistent chaos in Bornean ethnographic nomenclature, where terms like ‘Punan’ and ‘Murut’ have caused decades of confusion, and where administrative and scholarly classifications have often been imposed without adequate reference to indigenous self-designations.
For ‘Kajang’, Needham demonstrates that the term appears in Robert Burns’s 1849 article on the Kayans, where it is recorded as a Kayan appellation applied to a grouping of lowland and riverine tribes distinct from the Kayan and Iban. He corrects Harrisson’s claim that Burns said the term referred only to ‘Malays’, showing that Burns actually wrote ‘Malays and other tribes of the coast’ and listed a specific set of tribes who were collectively so designated. Needham supplements this documentary evidence with his own 1952 fieldwork among Punan Ba on the Kemena river, who spontaneously identified themselves as ‘orang Kajang’ and named the same cluster of tribes Burns had listed over a century earlier. The convergence of independent sources—Burns, Leach, Urquhart, and Needham himself—is presented as strong evidence that the term has objective referential value.
For ‘Bahau’, Needham shows that the term is not a recent or private invention of Kennedy but has a long documentary history in Indonesian Borneo, appearing in Weddik (1849), von Dewall (1855), Nieuwenhuis (1900, 1929), and Lumholtz (1920). He adds his own field observations from the upper Kayan and Baram, where informants from various tribal groups identified themselves as ‘Bahau’ and Kenyah speakers used the term for peoples in that area. The overlap between the ‘Bahau’ grouping and Leach’s ‘Kenyah-Kayan-Kajang’ complex is noted as a point of particular interest warranting further research.
Key Findings
- Burns (1849: 144–145) recorded ‘Kajang’ as a Kayan appellation applied to ‘Malays and other tribes of the coast’, listing Kanawit, Lugat, Tanyong, Tatau, Balinian, Punan, Skapan, Kajaman, Bintulu, and Tilian as the tribes so designated.
- Leach (1950: 50) independently arrived at a similar ‘Kajang’ grouping (Sekapan, Kajaman, Lahanan, Punan Bah, Sipeng, Bemali) without having consulted Burns’s 1849 article, which Needham takes as evidence of the term’s objective referential value.
- Needham’s 1952 fieldwork among Punan Ba on the Kemena river yielded spontaneous self-identification as ‘orang Kajang’, with informants naming Sekapan, Kejaman, Lanan, Punan, Telian, Belengian, and Tatau as Kajang peoples.
- The term ‘Bahau’ appears in Weddik (1849: 136, 147ff.) referring to ‘various tribes’ of the upper Mahakam (usually called ‘Pari’ by outsiders), in von Dewall (1855: 453–4), Nieuwenhuis (1900: i: 31; 1929: 26), and Lumholtz (1920: 210, 432–3), who records an estimated 10,000 Dayaks of various tribes recognised under the general name Bahau in the Upper Mahakam region.
- Kennedy (1945: 7) defined the ‘Bahau group’ as comprising Kayan, Kenyah, Kindjin, Long Glat, Long Wai, Pnihing, Saputan, Segai, Tring, Uma Pagong, and Uma Suling.
- The 1947 Sarawak census (Noakes, 1950) did not record the term ‘Kajang’ once, a fact Harrisson cited as evidence of its irrelevance; Needham counters that census officials were not ethnographers and the absence of a term in a census report is not evidence of its lack of relevance.
Conclusion
Needham’s definitive takeaway is that ‘Kajang’ and ‘Bahau’ are major indigenous classificatory terms of wide and ancient currency in Borneo, and that the tribes they designate form a large cultural section distinct from both north Bornean and south Bornean peoples. He argues that the very simplicity of these three great ethnic divisions (north, middle, south) makes it puzzling that they have not been more clearly distinguished in the literature, and that the usefulness of such terms should not be questioned merely because their precise boundaries await further fieldwork.
Context
- The article draws on a combination of nineteenth-century Dutch and British colonial ethnographic sources (Burns, Weddik, von Dewall, Nieuwenhuis, Lumholtz) and Needham’s own fieldwork in Sarawak (1952) and the upper Baram.
- Historiographically, the note intervenes in a specific 1950s debate between Leach, Kennedy, and Harrisson over Bornean tribal classification, and it anticipates later work on the Kenyah-Kayan-Kajang cultural complex.