Folk-lore and the Menangkabau code in the Negri Sembilan
A. Hale, a British District Officer stationed at Tampin in the Negri Sembilan, published this article in 1898 to trace the origins of the state’s customary legal code (Adat Perpatih) through its surviving folk-lore and proverbs. His central argument is that the matrilineal, matrilocal institutions of the Negri Sembilan are not arbitrary survivals but encode a historical process in which Sakai aborigines ceded land to Malay colonists of the Waris (Bidwanda) tribe, producing a legal order in which women hold ancestral property and the husband is effectively a lodger in his wife’s household.
Summary
Hale’s method is to work through a sequence of Malay proverbs (perbilangan), each of which he romanises and translates freely, using them as evidence for successive stages in the formation of the Negri Sembilan’s constitution. The narrative begins with the Sakai claim to jungle resources, moves through the alienation of land to the first Malay settlers who intermarried with Sakai women, and culminates in the establishment of a dual governance system in which a Sultan administers Islamic law while the Penghulus and Lembagas enforce adat. The proverbs function as a kind of oral constitutional record: they define the hierarchy of courts (from the wife’s relations up through the Ibu-bapa, Lembaga, Penghulu, and finally the Raja), the rules of marriage and divorce, the division of property, and the mechanism of blood debt.
A recurring theme is the tension between Islamic law and adat. Hale uses the state of Rembow as a case study of this friction: after the late Sultan of Johor ridiculed their customs around 1880, Rembow adopted Islamic inheritance and debt law, yet retained exogamous marriage restrictions and a monogamy custom attributed to a tribal chief’s vow before migration. Hale also draws on his earlier experience in Perak, where the term “Waris Kinta” signified the residual supremacy of the original settler tribe over immigrant communities, and on the 1891 census data to demonstrate the demographic weight of the matrilineal system.
The article is assisted by Tengku Sayid Abdollah bin Sayid Saban, Assistant Magistrate of Tampin, who helped decode obsolete diction and double meanings in the sayings. Hale acknowledges that his translations are interpretive rather than literal, aiming to convey what the native Malay understood rather than producing a philological rendering.
Key Findings
- The 1891 census showed Rembau had the densest Malay population of any Protected State and was the only state in which native women outnumbered native men; not one per cent of native customary holdings were registered as the property of men (p. 48).
- In Rembow, only three men had more than one wife at the time of writing, despite Islamic permission for polygamy, the restriction being attributed to a vow made by a tribal chief in Menangkabau before migration (p. 45).
- The blood debt (denda) for the death of a Bidwanda was a life penalty; for the death of a member of an immigrant tribe it was a buffalo, 50 gantongs of rice, and “wang dua bhara” (approximately $28.40), the animal and rice being used to provide a reconciliation feast (p. 59).
- The “Undang yang ampat” (four Penghulus) who first administered the Negri Sembilan were descendants of a Malay chief who settled on the Moar river and married Sakai princesses, thereby acquiring jurisdiction over a territory including the present Negri Sembilan, Sungei Ujong, Klang, parts of Pahang, Nanning, Moar, and Jelebu (p. 47).
- The principle of blood debt is governed by the rule that “the son is called to the feast, but the nephew pays the debt” (anak di-panggil makan, anak-buah di sorongkan balas), meaning a man’s nephew inherits his personal estate and titles and is therefore liable for his blood obligations (p. 60).
- Only the Sultan may behead a condemned man with a sword; the Penghulu may only execute with a kris, and must do so so carefully that no blood touches the ground, in accordance with popular tradition (p. 61).
Conclusion
Hale’s definitive takeaway is that the Adat Perpatih is a rational, if archaic, legal system whose matrilineal structure was an adaptive response to the practical difficulty of establishing paternity in a pre-Islamic context, and that its proverbs constitute a functional constitutional code that continues to govern land tenure, marriage, inheritance, and criminal compensation in the Negri Sembilan despite the formal overlay of Islamic law.
Context
- The author was a British District Officer in the colonial civil service; the article reflects an administrative interest in understanding customary law as it affected land disputes and court proceedings under the Protected State system.
- The study draws on oral sources (proverbs, local informants) and the 1891 census, and builds on earlier papers by the Resident, Martin Lister, presented to the Society in 1887 and 1890 on the Sakai-Bidwanda merger and the establishment of the Menangkabau constitution.