Rawa and Rinchi: a further note
C.W. Watson, a scholar of Kerinci history, published this short note in 1982 in response to A.G. Milner’s 1978 article on the Rawa of nineteenth-century Malaya. Working from his own field research among the Kerinci people of central Sumatra, Watson challenges the prevailing identification of the orang Rinchi as followers of the Padri leader Tuanku nan Renceh, arguing instead that “Rinchi” is a corruption of “Kerinci” and that the Rawa who migrated to the Peninsula were in fact descendants of a mixed Kerinci-indigenous community established at the source of the Rekan river.
Summary
Watson’s note addresses a persistent confusion in nineteenth-century sources over the identity and origins of the people called Rawa (and its dialect variants Rao, Rawang) who appear in records of local disputes and migrations in the Malay Peninsula. Milner had accepted the suggestion of present-day scholars that orang Rinchi referred to followers of Tuanku nan Renceh, and had treated the terms orang Rawa and orang Rinchi as synonymous from the early nineteenth century onward. Watson finds this identification unlikely on linguistic grounds, noting that Malay idiomatic usage would not naturally produce such a construction to mean “followers.” He revives Crawfurd’s earlier derivation of “Rinchi” as an abbreviation of “Korinchi,” the mountain region to the southern borders of Minangkabau, and supports this with Bickmore’s independent observation that the Padri reformers originated from that area.
The core of Watson’s argument rests on a convergence of characteristics. The three features Milner attributes to the Rawa/Rinchi—religious zealotry, gold-mining, and possession of an indigenous phonetic script—match precisely what is documented for the Kerinci. Crucially, Watson identifies that the most populous area within Kerinci is itself called Rawang, and that its inhabitants are locally known as orang Rawa. This provides a direct etymological link: the name “Rawa” in the Peninsula most likely derives from Rawang in Kerinci rather than from the generic Malay word for swamp-land.
Watson then ventures a more speculative hypothesis to explain how Kerinci people came to be associated with the Rawa region in the northern Mandailing-Minangkabau borderland. Drawing on evidence of Kerinci trading networks that stretched from Aceh to Patani, and on a 1878 newspaper report (cited by Castles) placing Kerinci traders in south Tapanuli, he proposes that Kerinci pilgrims and traders passing through the upper Rekan area as early as the eighteenth century established settlements there, made converts among the local population, and gave the place the name “Rawa” after their home village of Rawang. The nineteenth-century Rawa who migrated to the Peninsula would then be descendants of this mixed community.
Key Findings
- Crawfurd (1856:369) derives “Rinchi” as an abbreviation of “Korinchi” and notes that the Padri reform “first sprang up” in that region (p. 82).
- Valentijn (1726:9) records that Kerinci gold had the reputation of being the best in Sumatra, explaining why Kerinci migrants pursued gold-mining in the Peninsula (p. 83).
- McNair (1878:132) describes the Kerinci in Perak as “a purer race of Mahomedans” who “dress always in white garments” and hold aloof from ordinary Malays (p. 83).
- Castles (1972:28) quotes the Soerabajaasch Handelsblad of 1878 reporting Kerinci traders in south Tapanuli whose “general manner and pleasant bearing were winning converts” (p. 84).
- Marsden (1811:311) observes that the inhabitants of the Rao country wore the same “peculiarity of dress” as the Korinchi people, which Watson interprets as evidence that the Rao people were Kerinci settlers (p. 85).
- Barnes (1818:11) mentions Rawang in his account of Kerinci, and (1818:21) describes the Kerinci as entrepreneurs in east-west coast trade; van Langen (1888:442) records Kerinci settlements as far north as Aceh (pp. 83–84).
Conclusion
Watson concludes that there is a strong case for a historical connection between the Rawa and the Kerinci, with the Rawa of the Peninsula being descendants of a mixed community of Kerinci settlers and indigenous peoples established at the source of the Rekan. He acknowledges that the evidence is largely circumstantial and calls for further research into Sumatra-Peninsula migrations between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, urging that the skills of historians and anthropologists be combined to resolve questions of this kind.
Context
- Watson draws on his own fieldwork among the Kerinci people of central Sumatra, supplemented by nineteenth-century European travel accounts (Barnes, Bickmore, Crawfurd, McNair, Marsden, Valentijn) and more recent scholarship (Tugby 1977, Radcliffe 1969, Castles 1972).
- The article’s historiographical contribution lies in challenging Milner’s (1978) identification of orang Rinchi with Padri followers and proposing instead a direct etymological and demographic link between the Rawa and the Kerinci, a connection that had been obscured by the polysemy of the term “Rawa” across Sumatra and the Peninsula.