Territorial Alignment

Within the domain of territorial alignment, principles of siblingship were accorded far greater centrality than those of descent and clearly provided the dominant idioms underlying both the conceptualization and actual organization of relationships and activities. This is best illustrated by examining various levels of such alignments, proceeding from the most inclusive to the most restricted.

Perhaps the most fundamental territorial distinction ever recognized by Malays in Rembau or other districts of the state was that between their homeland of Negeri Sembilan and all other regions of the Malay Peninsula (DeMoubray 1931, 182–188; cf. Gullick 1958, 135). This distinction symbolized the most basic level of social and cultural variation among Malays anywhere in the Peninsula.

Numerous mythic portrayals of Negeri Sembilan's cultural origins suggest that the relationship between the Malays of Negeri Sembilan and those residing elsewhere in the Peninsula is one of siblingship, inasmuch as the two ancestral figures associated with the genesis of cultural divergence are held to be related as (or like) brothers (see Newbold 1839, 2 : 220–221). It is not clear from any of the accounts with which I am familiar if these two culture heroes, Dato Perpatih Nan Sebatang and Dato Temenggong, were actually full brothers or were instead half-brothers (or, for that matter, classificatory brothers). As their titles indicate, though, the former was responsible for conceptualizing and establishing the framework of adat perpatih institutions, while the latter either founded or simply continued to support that body of tradition known as adat temenggong . Judging from Negeri Sembilan accounts, their divergent opinions concerning the status and rights of women in inheritance and the ideal organization of communities laid the foundations for the earliest cultural distinctions among the Minangkabau. More important, given the Negeri Sembilan perception that most if not all Malays are of Minangkabau ancestry (Newbold 1839, 2 : 215–216), the lack of consensus between these brothers gave rise to the

dominant cultural marker serving throughout history to distinguish Negeri Sembilan Malays from all others. Here, then, the principle of siblingship structures a critically important nexus of relationships embracing mythical culture heroes as well as the origins, history, and contemporary expressions of social and cultural diversity.

Within Negeri Sembilan, moreover, a focus on (classificatory) siblingship rather than on common matrilineal ancestry appears in the reckoning of relationships among the Undang of Rembau and those of the three other regional polities (Sungei Ujong, Jelebu, and Johol), who formed an unprecedented but largely ineffectual politico-military union in the 1770s. Ever since that time, both the four Undang and their respective territories (luak ) have been regarded as related to one another "like brothers"^[15] —all of which is consistent with the fact that each of the leaders then stood, and still remains, more or less identically situated vis-à-vis the titular head of the union (the Yang diPertuan Besar ).^[16]

Interestingly, just as their politico-military pact contributed to the intensification of strife and warfare throughout the area (Newbold 1839, 2 : 87–92, 149–150; Parr and Mackray 1910, 19–23; Wilkinson [1911] 1971, 296–310), so too did many of the military and other altercations of the next century revolve around confrontations, frequently bloody, between the principal chiefs of Rembau, together with their supporters, and those of Sungei Ujong (Newbold 1839, 2 : 89–92, 97, 105, 111–112; CRCANS 1874, 18–20, 232–236; CRCANS 1875, 8–10; CRCANS 1876, 193–222; Gullick 1958, 16–17). Many of these conflagrations thus involved a variant of fratricide. More generally, whether or not the cloaking of all such potentially bellicose relations in idioms of siblingship endowed them with a modicum of cordiality (to say nothing of amity), the fact remains that competition, petty rivalries, and overt antagonisms among titled males and political aspirants defined as brothers is a pervasive theme throughout Negeri Sembilan's precolonial history (Newbold 1839, 2 : 89–92, 97, 105, 111–112; Parr and Mackray 1910, 19–22, 63; Gullick 1958, 16–17; Hooker 1972, 22–23; Khoo 1972; Andaya 1971).

There also exists strong evidence that siblingship figured in the representation of the earliest known political division within the district of Rembau. To appreciate this we need only consider the mythic genesis of this division, as well as why clan leaders in the first of the two regions settled, "Lowland" Rembau, enjoyed certain ritual and political preroga-

tives not extended to their chiefly compatriots in Rembau's "Upland" territory (Hervey 1884, 250–251; Parr and Mackray 1910, 3).

Stated briefly, To Lela Balang and To Laut Dalam founded Rembau's first two villages, which were in the Lowland district (Rembau Baroh) (Parr and Mackray 1910, 3). Affiliated with the Batu Hampar and Payah Kumboh clans respectively, these chiefs were accompanied in their emigration by other clan members and by members (including leaders) of the allied Mungkal and Tiga Nenek clans. Together, but presumably after the Upland area (Rembau Darat) was settled, these four clans forged the earliest formal politico-military pact within Rembau. Known as the (Lowland) League of Four (Yang Empat or Yang Empat Sebelah Baroh ), this federation stood as the most esteemed and powerful political body in all Rembau's precolonial history (Parr and Mackray 1910, 6–7, 42, 43). Indeed, even after 1831, when the council was expanded to include four leaders from Rembau's Upland district and renamed the League of Eight (Yang Delapan ), the chiefs of the original federation continued to exercise many of their earlier privileges and played a pivotal role in Rembau politics and in Rembau's relations with neighboring and other foreign polities (Parr and Mackray 1910, 20, 42, 49).

The colonization of the Upland district may have taken place shortly after Lowland Rembau was opened up by To Lela Balang and To Laut Dalam. Judging from myths presented by Hervey (1884, 253–255) and Parr and Mackray (1910, 8), it was settled in part by To Laut Dalam and other Payah Kumboh clan members, along with persons affiliated with the three clans of Seri Lemak, Batu Balang, and Seri Melenggang. Each clan staked out a specific locale, over which the individual clan leaders claimed jurisdiction. These chiefs then forged a political counterpart to the Lowland League of Four, designating it the Upland League of Four (Yang Empat Sebelah Darat ). This body also assumed a position of centrality in Rembau's precolonial polity, even though its more recent emergence (hence less prestigious "origin point") resulted in its being accorded lower status and fewer ritual and political prerogatives than its predecessor.

There are also scattered mythical references to a tie of patrilateral half-siblingship between To Laut Dalam and the apical ancestor of the Tiga Nenek clan (Parr and Mackray 1910, 77). Hence, of the original four clans to settle within Rembau, three were linked through a particular variant of siblingship, which also emerges as the earliest—and for some time the

sole—genealogical connection between the Lowland League of Four and the Upland League of Four, and between the entire Lowland and Upland divisions in Rembau.

Although these two federations bore some of the trappings of strictly matrilineally constituted alliances, they were actually territorially based defense organizations whose structure and operations were simply couched in idioms of matriliny and siblingship. This situation obtained as well with respect to subsequently formed political alliances, the most recent of which, comprising five different clan chiefs, emerged during the period 1795–1820, operated in Rembau's Lowland district, and took as its name the League of Five (Parr and Mackray 1910, 7).

The origins and conceptualization of the League of Five are quite instructive. As set out in a myth presented by Hervey (1884, 253), a Biduanda woman was "taken to wife" by a man in the Mungkal clan residing in the Tampin territory, but in a grave breach of adat his people failed to provide her kin with the requisite marriage payment. The head of her clan consulted an allied chief representing the clan of Batu Hampar (Petani). These two then summoned their kin and proceeded with them to Tampin to demand the outstanding payment. After an unsuccessful two-week siege, the chiefs called on the leaders and members of three other, unrelated Lowland clans (Anak Aceh, Anak Melaka, and Tanah Datar) to aid them in their quest for justice. In unison the five chiefs and their supporters attacked and defeated Tampin and finally obtained the marriage payment in question, thus terminating the Biduanda-Mungkal hostilities. But these events also provided the foundation for a politico-military pact among the chiefs who had joined forces for the offensive, for on returning from Tampin they vowed to act together "for as long as the sun and moon endure" and to share in whatever advantages and injuries came the way of any one of them. The solemn oath they registered occurred in the context of a ritual feast (kenduri ) and entailed a blood pact in which each chief put a small amount of blood into a common cup and then sipped a drop of the mixture. Not surprisingly, this ritual pact appears identical in overall design to the traditional symbolization of siblingship between clan mates and those formally adopted into the clan (Taylor [1929] 1970, 139–141; Lewis 1962, 138).

Formal political alliance at the clan level apparently presumed no matrilineal ties or genealogical proximity among the constituent descent units.

Nevertheless, while territorial, demographic, and political factors were the effective prime movers in clan federation, the cultural expression of material realities related to such alliances was commonly framed in the imagery of kinship, especially siblingship.

There are various other levels at which the alignment of territories defined by, or simply identified with, discrete and theoretically exclusivistic social units appear both cloaked in and consistently shaped by idioms of siblingship. To illustrate, we may examine the mythically enshrined structure of relationships among settlements associated with Rembau's gentry clans.

Returning to the mythical account of the origins of the Lelahmaharaja and Sediaraja clans (see figure 1), we see that To Laut Dalam (founder of the Lowland village of Padang Lekoh) had four daughters by his marriage with the unnamed Javanese woman said to be the apical ancestress of the Sediaraja clan. By her marriage with Seri Rama, To Laut Dalam's eldest daughter, Siti Hawah, gave birth to a male child who is considered to have been the first member of the Sediaraja clan and to have eventually resettled and established the Lowland village of Kampung Tengah. Likewise, the descendants of Siti Hawah's three sisters opened up three new communities (also in Lowland Rembau), each tracing its origin to a different sister. In brief, the progeny of To Laut Dalam's four daughters succeeded in founding four distinct villages regarded throughout history as the most senior of the Sediaraja settlements.

At the apex of their mythical genealogy, then, these four villages stand connected by virtue of the fact that they were founded by sisters. Note, however, that since none of the four women actually belonged to the Sediaraja clan founded by the son of Siti Hawah, or to any other descent units, it makes little sense in terms of an exclusively matrilineal transmission of clan membership and status that the descendants and settlements associated with Siti Hawah's sisters stand on a par with those of her son. This parity obtains owing to the sibling bond that not only links the four women in question and renders them more or less structurally equivalent but also dictates a de facto mythical extension of Sediaraja status from Siti Hawah's son to the offspring of his mother's sisters.

A similar pattern of territorial expansion and alignment appears in the case of the Lelahmaharaja clan, which, as discussed earlier, traces its origins to the union of To Bungkal and To Lela Balang, the latter being the founder of the Lowland village of Kota. Although none of the four off-

Figure 1.
Mythic Genealogy of Relations Among Founders of Rembau's Gentry Clans and Senior Gentry Settlements
Note: Most of the relationships depicted here can be pieced together from myths presented in Parr and Mackray (1910).
A more complete version, appearing in Abdul Samad Idris (1968, 167–174), serves as the basis for this figure.

spring of these luminary figures are linked in any direct way with the establishment of new settlements, one of the female children, To Lijah, did give birth to two daughters, each known curiously as Tiaman, who appear to have been responsible for the initial occupation of the Lowland areas (later to become villages) of Chengkau and Chembong. In turn, their brother, Dato Uban Puteh Kepala, fathered two daughters, Halimah and Kasiah, who rank as the founders of two additional villages: Tebat in Upland Rembau and Gadong in Lowland Rembau, respectively. During the lifetime of To Lela Balang's great-grandchildren, then, the Lelahmaharaja clan's territorial domain embraced five distinct settlements or senior gentry villages and by that point had also come to include a colony in Upland Rembau.

The structure of genealogical connections among these senior gentry villages is analogous to, though somewhat more complex than, that of the Sediaraja case. Strictly speaking, there are five of these Lelahmaharaja villages, although two of them, Chengkau and Chembong, occupy a single politico-jural status. Thus myths, written sources (e.g., Parr and Mackray 1910, 29), and contemporary elders tend to speak only of Lelahmaharaja's four senior gentry communities, even though they recognize that Chengkau and its apparent offshoot, Chembong, are separate settlements located some distance apart. In any event, the structure of ties among these villages is also patterned on siblingship rather than descent. Here too, then, myths effect an extension of descent unit affiliation from a male clan founder (Seri Rama) to his otherwise unaffiliated sisters. In so doing, the myths emphasize the equivalence of siblings and the connective significance of the siblingship principle. More specifically, they serve to generate a bond of siblingship between Seri Rama's village of Kota and those founded by the descendants of his sisters' daughters, namely, the settlements of Chengkau and Chembong.

The structural relevance of siblingship in village and descent unit alignment is manifest as well in the relationship between these latter three villages and the communities of Tebat and Gadong. Tebat and Gadong were originally connected through bonds of patrilateral siblingship and possibly (though not for certain, since the myth is silent on this point) through common ties of matrifiliation. Interestingly, the founders of these villages, Halimah and Kasiah, share their father's descent group membership. This could indicate an incestuous union on the part of the father, but is more

likely yet another mythical expression of the structural equivalence of siblings (that is, Dato Uban Puteh Kepala and his sisters). In short, the descendants of Halimah, Kasiah, and the two Tiamans do not stand related to one another through an unbroken succession of matrilineal links. Rather, the structural logic connecting these groups and their associated villages derives from the principle of siblingship. I might add here that there is no principle of descent that can accommodate these mythic representations.

The relations of equivalence suggested by the mythic siblingship links among the senior settlements of Rembau's two gentry clans were also realized in the principles governing the devolution of rights to gentry political offices, and were therefore of far greater structural significance than data derived from myth alone might lead one to assume. Moreover, the logic of succession to the title of Undang sheds light on the structure of genealogical relations among the founding settlements of individual commoner clans, for the same principles based on siblingship obtained in the case of commoner titles and territorial alignment.