Article

Bajau

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Bajau

Geographic Distribution & Settlement Patterns

The Bajau are a Muslim people who constitute a well-established element of the population of British North Borneo, with their principal settlements concentrated along the west coast in the Tempasuk (Kota Belud) and Tuaran Districts, extending southward to Papar and, more sparsely, northward to Marudu Bay [1, p. 48]. The term Bajau itself is not a self-designation but the name applied to them by the Brunei Malays; the people call themselves Samah, a term also used by their neighbours, the Dusun [1, p. 48]. The Suluk apply the cognate form Samal to all the sea-roving groups and, it is reported, to the settled Bajau of North Borneo as well [1, p. 55].

The settled Bajau are round-headed of Malayan but much-mixed type, and are described as lax Muslims, though a fair number now make the pilgrimage to Mecca [1, p. 48]. They are evidently settlers from elsewhere, probably from the southern Philippines, who pushed back the older long-headed and pagan Dusun inhabitants from the coastal belt [1, p. 48]. Evans, who first encountered the Bajau in 1910 and had always supposed them to have been in the country for at least two centuries, was astonished to learn from two informants that only seven generations, including the informants themselves, separated the present population from the legendary arrival in Borneo [1, p. 49].

In the Kota Belud District the Bajau are in close contact with the Illanun, another Malayan group of invaders, also Muslim but speaking a different language, who are of known origin from Mindanao and are more recent arrivals than the Bajau [1, p. 49]. There is no religious bar between the two groups, and Bajau and Illanun frequently intermarry [1, p. 49]. A settlement of Illanun also exists at Tungku on the east coast of North Borneo [1, p. 49].

Origins, Oral Tradition & Ancestral Regalia

The Bajau themselves state that their origin is from Johore, give their ancestral leaders high-sounding titles, and connect them with the royal houses of Brunei and Sulu, claiming that they, directly or indirectly, gave dynasties to both countries [1, p. 49]. Evans judged this claim “certainly ridiculous” in so far as Brunei was concerned and “probably equally so” regarding Sulu, while acknowledging that there was no particular reason why the Bajau sea-gypsies should not have visited the Malay Peninsula, made settlements there, or even come from there originally [1, p. 49]. His own belief, supported by the available evidence, was that the settled Bajau were originally a group of sea-gypsies who settled in North Borneo [1, p. 49].

A Dusun folk-tale, narrated by the late Native Chief Gimbad and preserved in Evans’s manuscript (which was destroyed by the Japanese during the occupation), depicts the Bajau as arriving in boats and so unaccustomed to agriculture that they took tapioca roots from a Dusun clearing, not knowing their use, and employed them as supports for their cooking-pots; it was only when the roots became charred and gave off an agreeable smell that the Bajau discovered they were good to eat [1, p. 49]. Though told against the Bajau, the story correctly indicates their primitive way of life at the time of first landing [1, p. 49].

The most detailed account of the Bajau departure from Johore and arrival in Borneo was collected by Evans from Ali Basah of Labuan [1, pp. 50–52]. Three brothers and one sister, the latter named Dayang Bulan, set out from the Johore kuala (river mouth) in seven ajong (boats), carrying a breech-loading cannon named Bujang Paling and two small gongs, Tampurong and Si Giong [1, p. 50]. Dayang Bulan disembarked at an island she named Tindakan Dayang (now Batu Mandi) to bathe after her menses, and later at a rock she named Mandi Darah [1, p. 51]. The party reached what is now Kudat, where they built a hut; a man from Brunei, the jeragan (master) of the ajong, saw a sheet of thatch floating in the water bearing rice husks and a woman’s hair, made for the river-mouth, and met the newcomers [1, p. 51]. He asked for Dayang Bulan’s hand in marriage from her brother Dato Amid Bahar; after the marriage, Dato Amid Bahar sailed away for Sulu, and the Brunei pengiran (person of royal descent) sailed away with his wife, it being said that the Brunei rajas are descended from him [1, p. 51]. Dato Amiril Mukminin, left alone, moved to Kuala Tomburulan and settled there [1, p. 52].

The two independent pedigrees obtained by Evans, from Ali Basah and from Dallah, agree absolutely on the direct line of descent: Amiril Mukminin, Tunggal, Awang, Ugih, Husin, Tari [1, pp. 52–53]. Dato Tari, holder of the hereditary rank of Dato and a direct descendant, could not trace his descent farther back than his grandfather, but this short pedigree is borne out by the other two informants [1, p. 49].

The ancestral cannon Bujang Paling is a bronze or brass breech-loading swivel-gun approximately five feet in length, of Malayan manufacture, with cast foliate patterns on the breech wings and a corona of long isosceles triangles nearer the muzzle [1, pp. 53–54]. It stood vertically on a block of wood, muzzle downwards, with a carved wooden plug entering its mouth, and was lashed to a house-post in a sort of hall-of-audience at Labuan village [1, pp. 53–54]. The barrel was enveloped in yellow cloth, symbol of royalty [1, p. 54]. A second, more common bronze or brass cannon without a wrapping was similarly tied to an opposite post [1, p. 54].

Material Culture, Economic Livelihoods & Social Customs

By the 1970s the Bajau of Kota Belud had become the dominant rice-farming and horse-riding community in the foothills of Mount Kinabalu, a dramatic reversal from their mid-nineteenth-century status as coastal fishermen and salt pedlars recorded by Spenser St. John in 1862 [2, p. 4]. Harrisson attributes this transformation to the disruption of traditional warring patterns by British colonial administration [2, p. 4]. Headly, writing in 1951, describes both the Illanun and the Bajau as primarily peasant farmers whose main wealth lies in buffaloes, though some Illanun also fish [3, p. 159]. The broader cultural milieu includes weaving, wood carving, horsemanship, and pantun poetry, with a history that shifted from piracy to cattle-lifting [3, p. 159].

Marriage among the Bajau and Illanun is governed by a stratified dowry system. Illanun society divides into two main classes—Dato (two subclasses) and Pitu (three subclasses)—each with a fixed dowry (berian) originally denominated in the weight of brass cannon but now converted to cash [3, pp. 159–160]. The Dato are said to descend from the original Mindanao leaders, while mixed Illanun-Bajau descent lowers a person’s class and corresponding dowry value [3, p. 160]. In practice the rigid classification is frequently modified by the social standing of the lower-class party, and many Bajau can trace some Illanun blood in their pedigrees [3, p. 160].

Associated customs include Pelit, a reciprocal payment obligation between relatives of the marrying parties that varies by class and is payable whether the child is male or female; Peramaian-Peramaian, a small collection from the groom’s guests distributed to the bride’s household helpers, rarely exceeding ten dollars in total; and Benga (or Getasrirai), a sum of five to ten dollars handed by the groom’s father to the Master of Ceremonies, who divides it among himself, the lecturer, and supporting elders [3, p. 160]. Marriages are parent-arranged but the children may object; elopement is handled through a respected intermediary who negotiates between the fathers [3, p. 160]. The berian balance functions as a deterrent against hasty divorce [3, p. 160]. The groom’s side must supply oxen (sapi) for the wedding breakfast: seven head for all Pitu grades and ten head for all Dato grades, with a sapi valued at four dollars for this purpose against a current market price of seventy dollars per head [3, p. 160]. The article closes with a description of the Berunsai, a communal line-dance performed in the open-plan houses [3, p. 160].

The Sea-Roving Groups & Maritime Context

Evans, drawing on the testimony of Durahman, a Bajau from Mengkabong in Tuaran District who had travelled widely in the southern Philippines, identifies several sea-roving groups with linguistic and ethnic connections to the settled Bajau [1, p. 54]. The Samah-Samah, also called Samar Lambuh, are near relatives of the settled Bajau but live as sea-gypsies in boats, frequenting Si Butuk Island as a base; their language is similar to that of the settled Bajau and easily understood by them, though their dialect is said to be “rougher” [1, p. 54]. The Samar Laiyum are found on Musar Island near Kudat but remain sea-rovers, and another Bajau informant claims they are of the same stock as the North Bornean settled Bajau [1, p. 54]. The Ubian, commonly referred to as Banadan but unwilling to acknowledge the name, constitute the roving and semi-settled sea-gypsies of the west coast of North Borneo; their language is only slightly understandable to the settled Bajau, and they were formerly classed as Bolonginik in old records of piracy on the Bornean coast, remaining inclined to piracy when met far from their Tawi-Tawi stronghold [1, p. 54]. The Banadan proper are found at Limau-Limauan near Kudat, where they have settled, though the village now has many Sulu and other inhabitants; their language is the same as that of the Ubian [1, p. 55].

Beyer, in his Population of the Philippine Islands (1916), estimated the Samal population at 78,700 and described them as “a Malay blend composed of practically every racial type to be found in South Eastern Asia and Oceania,” found on most of the smaller islands throughout the Sulu Archipelago and a considerable portion of the coast along both sides of the Zamboanga peninsula, as well as in Borneo, Celebes and adjacent islands [1, p. 55]. Beyer noted that they were “the chief of the former Malay pirates” and ascribed their mixed physical characteristics to the women of different tribes whom they captured [1, p. 55]. He also recorded the traditional claim of origin from Johore, though he did not state whence he obtained the story [1, p. 55]. A letter from Governor Frank W. Carpenter of the Department of Mindanao and Sulu, dated 14 March 1914, stated that “Samals and Bajaos are not the same people,” a distinction Evans rejects on the ground that Bajao is simply the Malay exonym for the self-designation Samah or Samal [1, p. 55].

Harrisson identifies the peak period of indigenous maritime trade in the region as approximately 1000–1400 A.D., when Bajau and related boatmen served as intermediaries carrying jungle and sea produce—rattans, camphor, rhino-horn, hornbill ivory, bezoars—to northern mainland markets [2, p. 7].

Research and Documentation

The earliest European encounter with populations identified by variants of the Bajau name is recorded in Daniel Beeckman’s 1718 account of a Dutch trading voyage to the southwest coast of Borneo, in which the upriver inhabitants of the Barito region are called “Byajo” or “Biajo” and described as pagan, warlike, and engaged in the production of gold dust, diamonds, rattans, and bezoars for coastal trade [2, pp. 1–2]. Crucially, Beeckman also records that these same men appeared at sea in large prows, launching a poisoned-arrow attack on a Dutch longboat, demonstrating that the upriver people were not confined to the interior but actively participated in maritime activity [2, p. 2]. Harrisson compiles a table of term variants across areas and centuries: Byajo, Biajo, Beaju, Beadje, Viadje (seventeenth to eighteenth centuries, Kalimantan); Badjoo (eighteenth century, Sabah and Sulu); Baju (mid-nineteenth century, Sabah); Bajou (late nineteenth century); Bajau (twentieth century); and Baijini (traditional, Australia) [2, p. 5].

Annandale and Robinson’s 1901–2 fieldwork at Trang, southern Thailand, documented two Orang Laut Kappir cemeteries—one in a limestone cave with hollowed-log coffins containing gold ornaments and imitation palm-wood swords, the other in a rock shelter with pottery and Chinese porcelain—proving the group’s terrestrial burial practices and prior agricultural settlement [2, pp. 2–3]. The group claimed descent from pre-Islamic populations displaced from Langkawi and maintained rice and coconut cultivation on small islands [2, pp. 2–3].

The most recent significant contribution is Harrisson’s reading of a Bajau Laut oral narrative, “Pitun Depah,” published by Clifford Sather in 1975 in the Brunei Museum Journal [2, pp. 9–10]. In this tale, a culture hero of extraordinary strength consumes vast quantities of rice as an infant, survives multiple attempts on his life by his fishing-dependent father, and ultimately demonstrates full mastery of rice cultivation before setting out on an inland journey through seven valleys [2, pp. 9–10]. Sather expressed puzzlement at the agricultural content of a story told by a people who do not cultivate rice; Harrisson argues that the narrative preserves a memory of an earlier period when Bajau ancestors were competent rice farmers, and that the story encodes a symbolic assertion of the superiority of agricultural life over purely maritime subsistence [2, p. 10]. The Bajau Laut of Semporna, who do not cultivate rice, nonetheless celebrate an annual new-rice-harvest festival, a ritual anomaly Harrisson interprets as a vestige of earlier agricultural practice [2, p. 10].

Evans’s 1952 note remains the most detailed single ethnographic account of the settled Bajau of the west coast, drawing on oral testimony collected in the field and cross-referencing Beyer’s 1916 census data and official correspondence from the United States colonial administration in Mindanao and Sulu [1, pp. 48–55]. His earlier manuscripts, including the full text of the Gimbad folk-tale, were destroyed by the Japanese during the occupation [1, p. 49]. Harrisson’s 1976 article is historiographical rather than field-based: he re-reads existing sources through a long-term structural lens, arguing against the “thesis approach” of individual anthropologists who study one group in one locality, and calling for comparative, diachronic research that treats populations in “the dimension of time as well as space” [2, p. 10].

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. I.H.N. Evans (1952). Notes on the Bajaus and other coastal tribes of North Borneo JMBRAS 25(1): 48–55.
  2. Tom Harrisson (1976). Ngaju-Bajau: significant early term usages in Southeast Asia (especially Malaysia JMBRAS 49(1): 1–14.
  3. D. Headly (1951). Some Illanun and Bajau marriage customs in the Kota Belud district, North Borneo JMBRAS 24(3): 159–160.