Article

Bugis

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Bugis

The Bugis are a South Sulawesi people whose diaspora across the Malay Peninsula, the Riau Archipelago, and western Borneo between the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries produced one of the most consequential political migrations in early modern Southeast Asian history. Originating primarily in the kingdom of Luwu’ in south Celebes, Bugis noble families established dynastic rule in Johor, Riau, Pontianak, Mempawah, Sambas, and Matan, while a substantial Bugis population also settled in Brunei and southwest Sumatra [1, pp. 119–121]. By the late eighteenth century, an estimated 40,000 Bugis of “pure and mixed blood, high and low status, male and female” lived along the Riau River alone [1, p. 135]. In the modern period, approximately 500,000 Bugis Malays reside throughout Malaysia, with around 200,000 in the state of Johor [2, p. 80]. The Bugis diaspora was not merely a demographic phenomenon but a political one: the Bugis created a unique form of governance that blended their own institutions with Malay frameworks, anchored in sacred oaths of loyalty and institutionalised through the offices of Raja Muda (vice-regent) and Raja Tua (elder king) based at Riau [1, pp. 128–131].

Origins, Naming, and the Question of Identity

The Bugis refer to themselves in their own language as Wugi or Ugi, and the English form “Bugis” is presumably taken from the Malay [3, p. 139]. The origin of the final “-s” in the Malay form remains unexplained; while a plural account is plausible, the name appears in nineteenth-century British documents as “Bugesse,” which argues against that derivation [3, p. 139]. Ahmad al-Patani, an eighteenth-century Malay scholar from Patani, proposed that the word Bukis (his spelling) was a corruption of Bilkis, the Queen of Sheba, on the grounds that the two words are phonetically similar and that the Bugis genealogy traced its ancestry to her [4, pp. 86–87]. Noorduyn notes that this etymology, while “sensible though mistaken,” was shared by Ronald Braddell, who expressed the same view as a serious possibility without accepting it [4, p. 86].

The Bugis naming system, as reconstructed by Noorduyn from the genealogical material in the Tuhfat al-Nafis, reveals a sophisticated structure. Each adult Bugis man or woman bore a personal name (aseng) or proper name (aseng ri alena), typically a verb form, adjective, or noun preceded by the proclitic La for males or We for females, which are probably abbreviations of lai “male” and wawine “woman” [4, pp. 64–65]. A second name (pattellareng), often a tecnonym derived from a child’s name, was distinguished by the proclitic To (from tau “man, people”) for males and Da (from Old Buginese dala “mother”) for females [4, p. 66]. Persons of noble descent additionally bore a title Daeng, followed by an adjective or intransitive denoting a quality, such as Daeng Mabela “far” or Daeng Matanre “high” [4, pp. 66–67]. Kings and viziers received posthumous names (aseng matena) after death, typically of the form Matinroe ri [place], meaning “the one who passed away in [place]” [4, p. 68].

The Diaspora and Political Settlement

The Bugis diaspora was triggered by the Dutch destruction of the Gowa-Tallo kingdoms in the Makassar War of 1666–1669 and the subsequent political upheaval under Arung Palakka in South Sulawesi [1, p. 120]. The Treaty of Bungaya (1667) formally ended the war but set in motion a continuous exodus; by 1680, more than 9,000 Bugis and Makassar refugees had been forcibly repatriated to South Sulawesi following the VOC-Mataram-Bugis victory at Kakaper [1, pp. 120]. The Bugis, led by lesser nobles, found their way into the less densely populated Malay peninsula, southwest Borneo, and southwest Sumatra, in contrast to the Makassar royal princes who sought asylum in established kingdoms on Java and southeast Sumatra [1, pp. 120–121].

The pivotal moment in the Bugis political settlement came in 1699, when Sultan Mahmud of Johor was assassinated. The five Bugis brothers—Daeng Parani, Daeng Marewa, Daeng Cellak, Daeng Menambun, and Daeng Kamase—aided the Bendahara family in restoring the throne and were rewarded with the island of Riau as their autonomous base, where Opu Daeng Marewa was installed as Raja Muda in 1721 [1, pp. 126–127]. The Bugis-Malay covenant at Riau established a dual sovereignty in which the Yamtuan Besar (Malay) was “like the wife” (passive, receiving sustenance) while the Yamtuan Muda (Bugis) was “the husband” whose decisions governed all matters of state [5, p. 353]. This arrangement was underpinned by the sacred “oaths of loyalty” (sumpah setia), which drew on deep Bugis cultural concepts of siri’ (shame/honour) and family obligation [1, pp. 128–131].

In Borneo, the Bugis established dynastic rule at multiple courts. Daeng Menambun married Princess Kesumba of Matan and was installed as Raja of Mempawah with the title Pangeran Emas Suria Negara, while Daeng Kamase became Pangeran Mangkubumi of Sambas [5, pp. 350]. In southwest Sumatra, the Kapitan Bugis office was first held by Daeng Maruppa, a younger brother of the ruler of Wajo, and became a hereditary position within his family; the English acknowledged it was “almost impossible to carry on our affairs here” without the Bugis [1, pp. 127–128]. The military significance of continued Bugis migration from the homeland is illustrated by the fact that the Bugis kingdom of Bone could routinely assemble a force of 25,000 in 1695, while Johor could field only 6,500 men in battle [1, p. 135].

The Genealogy of Legitimation

The Tuhfat al-Nafis, composed by Raja Haji Ahmad (b. 1773) and his son Raja Ali Haji (c. 1809–c. 1870), contains a forty-generation Bugis genealogy that traces the ancestry of the Raja Muda family back to mythological progenitors [4, p. 63]. Noorduyn’s 1988 analysis, the first systematic Bugis-linguistic treatment of this genealogy, demonstrates that while most of the names are genuine Buginese in form, the genealogy as a whole is a symbolic legitimising construct whose internal contradictions reveal the faded state of Bugis historical knowledge at the time of its composition [4, p. 64].

The genealogy opens with Sitti Mallangke’, a queen of Luwu’, whom the authors connect to the Queen of Sheba (Bilkis) and the prophet Sulaiman (Solomon) [4, p. 73], [5, p. 340]. The next six names—Datu Palinge’, Patoto’, Batara Guru, Batara Lattu’, Sawerigading, and La Galigo—are taken from the La Galigo epic, though with errors: Patoto’, the Lord of Heaven and Creator in the epic, is placed as a descendant of Datu Palinge’ rather than as her consort [4, pp. 73–74]. The figure of Sulaiman and Bilkis at the head of the genealogy serves a specific symbolic function: by establishing an Islamic pedigree from the very beginning, it neutralises the negative implication of the statement at the genealogy’s end that La Maddusila, representing the last generation, was the first Bugis king to embrace Islam [4, pp. 84–85]. Ahmad al-Patani dates this conversion to 800 A.H. (1397/8 A.D.), a figure Noorduyn judges “more than two centuries too early,” since the first Sultan of Luwu’ embraced Islam around 1604–1605 [4, pp. 82].

The number forty itself carries symbolic weight. As the highest of the well-known symbolic figures, it stands for numerousness and completeness [4, p. 84]. The Pontianak version of the genealogy, recorded by Ahmad al-Patani, contains exactly forty names, while the Tuhfat version has 38–39 [4, pp. 83–84]. The Tuhfat itself repeatedly invokes the “Forty Bugis” (Bugis empat puluh), referring to the group of Bugis noblemen and their companions who first migrated from South Sulawesi to the west [4, p. 84].

The title “Opu,” used for the father of the five Bugis brothers, was a high noble title employed exclusively in Luwu’, confirming the family’s claimed origin in that kingdom [4, p. 83]. VOC records confirm that Daeng Parani, Daeng Marewa, and Daeng Cellak were brothers or half-brothers; Daeng Marewa died in 1728 and Daeng Cellak in 1745 [4, pp. 64]. However, none of these early Bugis emigrants has been traced in local Bugis sources in South Sulawesi, meaning there is no direct external evidence available for checking the contents of the genealogy [4, p. 64].

Military Conflict and Colonial Entanglement

The Bugis presence in the Malay world was marked by sustained military conflict. The Silsilah Melayu dan Bugis records repeated wars between the Bugis-Malay alliance at Riau and Raja Kechil of Siak, who violated a sworn oath in a mosque and was defeated at Lingga (A.H. 1139), at Pulau Bayan (A.H. 1148), and finally through his son Raja Aalam (A.H. 1150) [5, pp. 362–381]. The Bugis code of honour enumerated five rules: not to pursue a fugitive enemy unless necessary for decisive victory; not to refuse a man asking pardon; not to grudge the fallen; not to hold a weak enemy in contempt; and not to kill an ambassador [5, p. 364].

The most dramatic military confrontation involving the Bugis was the 1783–84 siege of Malacca by Raja Haji, the Bugis Yang-di-Pertuan Muda of Riau. The siege lasted from the Selangor landings at Batang Tiga on 14 January 1784 to the decisive Dutch assault on 18 June 1784 [6, pp. 188–205]. In the final action, the Dutch captured twenty-four enemy vessels and a substantial arsenal including 29 rantakas, 4 iron cannon, 4 brass swivel guns, and over 700 rounds of shot [6, p. 205]. Raja Haji was killed in the assault; his body was positively identified by a Malay named Intjeh Mangsoer and a Bugis prisoner named Akier, based on a scar on his thigh from a previous engagement at Linggi, his short teeth, and a black circular mark on his body, and was buried at the foot of St. Paul’s Hill on 24 June [6, pp. 206–208]. The Dutch subsequently buried him with royal honours before his son removed him to Riau [7, p. 292].

The colonial encounter produced formal legal instruments that constrained Bugis political power. A 1784 treaty between the Dutch and the Yam Tuan Muda contained 26 sections, one of which prohibited Bugis from holding state office in Riau [7, p. 293]. In Brunei, the Bugis community was “execrated as unmitigated villains” in the Sha’er Awang Semaun between 1810 and 1840, a period of intense hostility that complicates the dating of a Bugis inscription found in the Udok-Udok cemetery near Bandar Seri Begawan [8, p. 111].

Modern Identity and Memory

In the post-colonial state of Malaysia, the Bugis community exists within the homogenised category of “Malay” that the state endorses, yet remains conscious of its Bugis roots [2, p. 79]. Ethnographic fieldwork in a Bugis kampong (village) in Pontian, Johor, conducted by Nur Aisyah Kotarumalos between July 2015 and July 2016, reveals that the act of selective remembering and forgetting is central to identity construction [2, p. 81]. Noble Bugis preserve detailed genealogical and migration narratives transmitted orally across generations, while non-nobles exhibit what Carsten terms “genealogical amnesia” regarding their own family histories but remain attached to the communal story of the five brothers and to contemporary community ties [2, p. 79]. The distinction between noble and non-noble status was found to be the primary axis along which narratives of belonging were produced and articulated: of 60 informants interviewed, 12 identified as being of noble origin [2, p. 81].

The 1911 census recorded 3,779 Bugis immigrants at Kukup; by 1921 this had nearly doubled to 5,500 [2, pp. 80–81]. The first Bugis settlement at Kukup was opened after Syed Mohammed bin Ahmed Alsagoff received a land concession from Sultan Abu Bakar of Johor in the 1880s [2, pp. 80–81]. Contemporary state narratives have further shaped Bugis memory: the 2015 Kembara Mahkota (annual royal tour) in Johor featured a theatrical performance depicting the five Bugis nobles as local heroes, while a 2017 Singapore exhibition, “Siri na Pesse: Navigating Bugis Identities,” similarly glorified them as warriors against Dutch colonialism [2, p. 86]. However, Wellen (2014) documents that in 1716 Daeng Marewah sought Dutch support against Raja Kechil—a request the Dutch refused—complicating the anti-colonial hero narrative that dominates Bugis folk memory [2, p. 86].

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on the Bugis spans nearly a century and reveals shifting priorities from source recovery through philological analysis to ethnographic investigation. The earliest substantial contribution is W.E. Maxwell’s 1890 article on Raja Haji, which presented and cross-referenced four primary sources relating to the 1783–84 siege of Malacca, including a previously unpublished Malay ballad from the Logan Collection and the first English-language translation of both the Dutch siege diary and the relevant sections of the Tuhfat al-Nafis [6, pp. 173–224]. Maxwell’s work was fundamentally an exercise in source criticism and archival recovery, made possible by his positional advantage as Resident of Selangor [6, p. 173].

Overbeck’s 1926 publication of the Silsilah Melayu dan Bugis marked the first systematic presentation of the Bugis genealogical tradition in English [5, pp. 339–381]. Overbeck initially found the transcription of Bugis names “a hopeless undertaking” and had to rely on an anonymous Bugis informant obtained through the Director of the Institute for Native Languages at Weltevreden [4, p. 70]. His work, while pioneering, left many names unexplained and several transcriptions incorrect.

The 1932 Winstedt edition of the Tuhfat al-Nafis provided the definitive text of the chronicle, relying on two manuscript copies: one from the Royal Asiatic Society (Maxwell MS) and another from the Johore royal family [7, p. 285]. This edition became the standard reference for subsequent scholarship on Bugis-Malay political history.

A significant methodological shift occurred with Timothy J. Moy’s 1975 article, which moved the comparative analysis of the Tuhfat away from its Bugis-Riau political history toward its Melaka-period summaries, demonstrating that even in its summarised sections the text reveals a distinct political philosophy from the Sejarah Melayu [9, pp. 64–78]. Moy argued that the Tuhfat presents a “real” political world grounded in personal loyalty and pragmatic governance, in marked contrast to the Sejarah Melayu’s ideological and didactic framework [9, p. 64].

Andaya’s 1972 article on Raja Kechil and the 1718 Minangkabau conquest of Johor established a source-critical method for early Malay historiography by systematically cross-referencing Malay court chronicles with contemporary European diplomatic and military records [10, pp. 51–75]. His 1995 article on the Bugis-Makassar diaspora represented a further advance, deploying Bugis cultural concepts—siri’, ma’sedi siri’, asseajingeng, and the Tomarilaleng offices—to explain diaspora governance, moving beyond purely political or economic explanations [1, pp. 130–135].

Noorduyn’s 1988 article on the Bugis genealogy of the Raja Muda family constituted the first comprehensive Bugis-linguistic treatment of the genealogical material, superseding the earlier partial efforts of Overbeck and Andi Zainal Abidin, and providing the corrected transcriptions on which Virginia Matheson’s 1982 romanised text edition of the Tuhfat was based [4, pp. 69–70]. His 1993 article on the Bugis inscription in Brunei contributed to the small body of published Bugis epigraphy; he explicitly noted that no other Bugis inscriptions on stone were known to exist [8, p. 105].

The most recent contribution, Kotarumalos’s 2019 ethnographic study, represents a decisive shift from historical-philological to social-anthropological methodology, examining how narratives of the past contribute to the ethnic identity of Bugis Malays in the modern state of Johor [2, pp. 79–98]. The article positions Bugis identity not as a rejection of Malayness but as a diversification of it, showing how individuals construct an “alternative Malayness” that goes beyond official narratives without generating resentment toward the state’s racial classification [2, p. 79]. Together, these works trace an arc from the recovery and translation of primary sources, through philological and comparative-historical analysis, to the study of living identity and memory.

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. L.Y. Andaya (1995). The Bugis-Makassar diaspora JMBRAS 68(1): 119–138.
  2. Nur Aisyah Kotarumalos (2019). Ethnic belonging among Bugis Malays in Johor, Malaysia: grounding the present in the past JMBRAS 92(2): 79–98. Read on JSTOR
  3. R. Jones and P.H. Kratoska (2016). The word Bugis JMBRAS 89(2): 139.
  4. Noorduyn. J (1988). The Bugis genealogy of the Raja Muda family of Riau-Johor JMBRAS 61(2): 63–92.
  5. ‘Ali bin Raja Haji Ahmad Raja Haji and W. Linehan (1926). Silsilah Melayu dan Bugis dan Sakalian Raja-raja-nya. . Overbeck JMBRAS 4(3): 339–381. Read on JSTOR
  6. W.E. Maxwell (1890). Raja Haji JSBRAS 22: 173–224. Read on JSTOR
  7. ‘Ali bin Raja Haji Ahmad Raja Haji and R.O. Winstedt (1932). A Malay history of Riau and Johore (Tuhfat-al-Nafis) JMBRAS 10(2): 1–320. Read on JSTOR
  8. Noorduyn. J and H.E. Wilson (1993). The Bugis inscription in the Udo-Udok cemetery in Brunei JMBRAS 66(2): 103–112.
  9. T.J. Moy (1975). The “Sejarah Melayu” tradition of power and political structure: an assessment of relevant sections of the “Tuhfat-al-Nafis” JMBRAS 48(2): 64–78. Read on JSTOR
  10. L.Y. Andaya (1972). Raja Kechil and the Minangkabau conquest of Johor in 1718 JMBRAS 45(2): 51–75.