Inas: a study of local history
Diane Lewis’s 1960 study reconstructs the political history of Inas, a small district in Negri Sembilan, from oral tradition to demonstrate that it was the ancient state of Jelai—one of the original nine luak of the Negri Sembilan confederacy—and that its present-day political marginalization resulted primarily from the Penghulu Omar’s refusal to cooperate with the British at the close of the nineteenth century. Drawing on fieldwork conducted between May 1957 and May 1958, Lewis challenges the prevailing scholarly consensus that had located Jelai in Pahang and assumed the aborigines had been driven to the hills by Minangkabau colonists.
Summary
The article addresses a long-standing gap in Negri Sembilan historiography: the political status of Inas, which had been variously claimed by Johol as a subordinate village, by Seri Menanti as a tanah mengandung district, or dismissed as too insignificant to warrant attention. Lewis argues that all three positions are wrong. Through a systematic presentation of traditional tales collected from five Inas informants (four elderly customary chiefs and one schoolteacher of penghulu descent) supplemented by two outside informants from Johol and Seri Menanti, she traces the district’s development from the founding settlement of Lantai Kulit by orang darat (aboriginal Malays) under Batin Maha Menggalang, through the introduction of Islam and the creation of the penghulu office, to the arrival of Raja Melewar from Minangkabau and the establishment of Seri Menanti, and finally to the British period.
The central argument is that Inas (ancient Jelai) was an independent luak of considerable territorial extent—encompassing what is now Johol, Inas, Gunong Pasir, Terachi, Seri Menanti, Ulu Muar and Jempol—whose authority was progressively eroded by two external events: the coming of the Minangkabau raja, who pre-empted control over the northern territories, and the British colonial reorganization, which stripped the Penghulu of the title undang and reduced his pension to a fraction of that received by the chiefs of the four recognized independent states. Lewis shows that the British period also triggered internal structural changes: the Buapak Enam organization broke down, three of the six Biduanda sub-groups emerged as independent suku with their own lembaga, and the batin withdrew from ceremonial life in Inas entirely.
A second major argument concerns the nature of aboriginal-Minangkabau contact in the interior states. Lewis contends that the standard generalization—that Minangkabau colonists “filled up the country and drove the aborigines to the mountains”—is contradicted by the Inas evidence. The orang darat maintained a formalized political relationship with the Muslim Biduanda through the batin’s hereditary right to install the penghulu, a relationship that persisted in Johol to the present day and in Inas until the British period. The Minangkabau, who arrived late and in small numbers, accommodated their suku system to the pre-existing indigenous structure rather than displacing it.
Key Findings
- The 1901 census recorded 700 aborigines in Kuala Pilah district (encompassing Inas and Johol), compared with 157 in Seremban and 125 in Jelebu; by 1951 the Kuala Pilah figure remained approximately 700, while Rembau had only 54 (pp. 70–71).
- The Penghulu Inas’s seal of authority, inscribed Datok Johan Pahlawan Lela Perkasa Waulat Kuala Dio, is dated 1218 Hijri (c. AD 1803), whereas the Johol chap dates to no earlier than AD 1874, supporting the claim that Inas received recognition from Johore before Johol (pp. 77, 92).
- At the time of British contact, the Penghulu Inas received a pension of approximately $14 per month; by the time of writing this had risen to $39.60, while the Undang Johol was believed to receive as much as $2,000 per month (p. 84).
- The Inas population comprised approximately 350 nuclear family dwellings on roughly 1,170 acres of household and rice land (p. 69).
- Martin Lister was appointed the first British Resident of the combined states of Negri Sembilan in 1895; the Penghulu Omar refused to meet him or sign a treaty, and Inas was represented at the negotiation by Johol (pp. 82–83).
- The four Orang Tiang Balai (pillars of the council hall) in post-British Inas were the lembaga of suku Seri Melenggang, suku Tiga Nenek, suku Biduanda Sungai Ujong and suku Biduanda Buah Petai, with two additional lembaga serving as Orang Besar dalam Balai (p. 85).
Conclusion
Lewis’s definitive takeaway is that the interior states of Negri Sembilan—specifically Inas and Johol—represent a counter-example to the dominant narrative of aboriginal displacement by Minangkabau colonists. The aborigines there maintained political prominence, formal institutional roles, and demographic presence well into the British period, and the waris ruling group was an indigenous formation that predated Sumatran immigration rather than a product of intermarriage or a fabricated claim to aboriginal descent. The article thus calls for a careful reappraisal of standard generalizations about Negri Sembilan’s early history in light of evidence from the smaller, less-studied districts.
Context
- The study is based on original fieldwork in Inas (May 1957–May 1958) funded by a Ford Foundation Foreign Area Training Fellowship, with the paper written under a Ford Fellowship at the South-east Asia Programme of Cornell University (p. 90).
- Historiographically, the article intervenes in a debate spanning Newbold (1839) through Josselin de Jong (1951), correcting the misidentification of ancient Jelai with a Pahang district and demonstrating that local oral tradition, systematically collected, can resolve questions that written sources had left ambiguous.