I was recently reading an article by historian Nicolas Weber entitled “Malays in the Indochinese Peninsula: Adventurers, Warlords and Ministers” [Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 94.1 (2021): 1-24], where I came an extremely fascinating passage about a connection between the Cham world and the world of “Jawa” on the Malay Peninsula.
I will quote that passage momentarily, but I have to say first that when it comes to this issue of “Jawa” on the Malay Peninsula, every scholar that I know of has faced the same problem of not understanding what that actually refers to.
For over a century, scholars have argued that a place mentioned in Tang and Song era Chinese sources called “Shepo” 闍婆 (which would have been pronounced in the past something like “Sha-ba,” and which everyone agrees was an effort to produce a name like Java/Jawa/Jaba) was an earlier name for island Java, which we find referred to in Yuan and Ming sources as “Zhuawa.”
As such, pretty much everyone has believed that there was only one “Java” in Southeast Asia, island Java (I recently came across something that Geoff Wade wrote maybe 20 years ago – can’t find it now though – where he acknowledged that you can’t get all of the references to “Java” in Chinese sources to indicate island Java, but he didn’t offer a reason why – that’s one of the few instances where I have found someone noting this fact).
Meanwhile, scholars who work on the mainland, have found historical and cultural references to people called “Jawa/Java” that clearly were not references to people from island Java, but instead, were indicating people from the Malay world on the Malay Peninsula.
This is an issue which people have not been able to resolve. However, there IS a resolution to this issue. As I’ve been pointing out for years, there is extremely convincing evidence that the place called Shepo in Tang and Song era sources was on the Malay Peninsula, and that it was not the same place as the Zhuawa that was recorded later (and premodern Chinese scholars pointed this out too).
Weber tries to resolve this by equating versions of the term “Jawa” that people use today with the Malay diaspora, and states:
The Malay diaspora was composed of a variety of peoples coming from various parts of the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian Archipelago. This prodigious diversity of peoples and geographical spaces was encapsulated in the term ‘Jawa’, used by the Cam, and ‘Đồ Bà’ and‘Trả Oa’, by the Vietnamese.
The term ‘Đồ Bà’—although conveying the same meaning as the Chinese term ‘Shepo’—is specifically Vietnamese. It designated a vast geographical space that included Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula and Java. Regardless of their place of origin, these peoples maintained a distinct and clear cultural and linguistic identity: they all spoke Malay language, dressed and acted in Malay style and practiced Malay culture. (2)
These statements can be found in the writings of other scholars as well. This is pretty much, as far as I can tell, the accepted view of scholars who work on mainland Southeast Asia, or have examined this issue. What they share is that they rely heavily on the current understanding of the term Jawa to try to understand the past. However, what people do not realize is that there is a specific historical meaning to the term Java, that of a polity on the Malay Peninsula in the centuries around 1,000 AD, that we can use as a reference for understanding later mentions of things “Jawa” such as the fascinating example that Weber presents in this article.
Before we do that, on a side note, I should point out that the first character in the Chinese term Shepo 闍婆 has two readings, “she” and “du.” Modern Vietnamese have transcribed this term from texts in classical Chinese as “Đồ Bà,” following the second reading. However, there is no historical justification for doing so. It should be rendered in Vietnamese as Xà Bà, which is close to the vernacular term that you find used in Vietnam, Chà Và.
Let’s now looking at this fascinating passage:
Cam religious traditions and literature also give evidence of the extensive religious and cultural exchanges between the Cam and the Malays. For example, the rija (or raja) ceremony celebrates the coming of three ‘Jawa’ princes, Putra Jinyang, Putra Jawa and Lasama to Campā’s southernmost principality, Pāṇḍuraṅga.
The two princes and Lasama are said to come from ‘Kalatan’, which refers to the Malay state of Kelantan in the north of the Malay Peninsula. The names are not actual names of Malay royalty but symbols of what they represent: Putra Jinyang translates as ‘Prince of the jin and the spirits’, Putra Jawa as ‘Prince of Jawa’, and Lasama as ‘Admiral’ (from the Malay laksamana).
The rija ceremony involves the display of a small wooden boat that symbolizes their journey by sea from ‘Jawa’ to Campā. This ceremony also requires the chanting or recitation of a set of manuscripts called ulang jawa haok, literally ‘lexicons of the Malays [on] boats’, which oldest versions are believed to date back the 16th century.
Malay influence in religious matters in Campā has been so steady that the term ‘Jawa’ became equated with Islam: in Cam, ilimo jawa, literally ‘the Malay science’, refers to the Islamic religion, and the expression tamâ jawa, literally ‘to enter [the religion of the] Malays’, refers to the conversion to Islam. (3)
Weber here is discussing issues from a later period than what I have been looking at over the past few years, but look at the clear connection between “Jawa” and the Malay Peninsula. . . 😊
That said, there is something a bit awkward here. Look at this passage: “Malay influence in religious matters in Campā has been so steady that the term ‘Jawa’ became equated with Islam: in Cam, ilimo jawa, literally ‘the Malay science’, refers to the Islamic religion, and the expression tamâ jawa, literally ‘to enter [the religion of the] Malays’, refers to the conversion to Islam.”
Weber says that “Jawa” became equated with Islam, but then in the following examples, he translates “Jawa” as “Malay” not “Islam.”
This is the problem that scholars have faced. They see this information about “Jawa” which is clearly connected to the Malay Peninsula, but they don’t really know what it is, or where it came from, and so what do you do with it? Do you leave it as “Jawa”? If so, won’t that then imply island Java when it is in fact referring to Malays/the Malay Peninsula? Do you translate it as “Malay”? If so, then how can you do that when the term is also, according to most scholars today, supposed to include island Java as well?
This, however, is easy to resolve when we realize that there was a polity on the Malay Peninsula that was called (or referred to by foreigners as) “Jawa/Java/Jaba.”
If I were to re-write this passaged based on what I now know, I would put it this way.
Cam religious traditions and literature also give evidence of the extensive religious and cultural exchanges between the Cam and the Malays. For example, the rija (or raja) ceremony celebrates the coming of three ‘Jawa’ princes, Putra Jinyang, Putra Jawa and Lasama to Campā’s southernmost principality, Pāṇḍuraṅga.
The two princes and Lasama are said to come from ‘Kalatan’, which refers to the Malay state of Kelantan in the north of the Malay Peninsula, an area that had once been part of a polity called Jawa. The names are not actual names of Malay royalty, because the kingdom of Jawa no longer existed, but symbols of what they represent: Putra Jinyang translates as ‘Prince of the jin and the spirits’, Putra Jawa as ‘Prince of Jawa’, and Lasama as ‘Admiral’ (from the Malay laksamana).
The rija ceremony involves the display of a small wooden boat that symbolizes their journey by sea from Jawa to Campā. This ceremony also requires the chanting or recitation of a set of manuscripts called ulang jawa haok, literally ‘lexicons of the Jawa people [on] boats’, which oldest versions are believed to date back the 16th century.
Cam interactions with the Malay world of Jawa are so long-standing that even Islam came to be associated with Jawa: in Cam, ilimo jawa, literally ‘the Jawa science’, refers to the Islamic religion, and the expression tamâ jawa, literally ‘to enter [the religion of] Jawa, refers to the conversion to Islam.
It’s all “Jawa” and it’s all in reference to the Malay Peninsula, because that is where for centuries there was a “Jawa.”
Further, as I have already pointed out, there was a strong connection between that area and the world of the Cham. It therefore doesn’t surprise me at all to learn of this rija ceremony. However, it is WONDERFUL to find this reference!!
Howdy,
Then the new problem emerges, Malay, the definition and the origin still discussed in general, and specifically, whatever we define urang Melayu, do we know they were in Shepo? Believe there were, but were they Malay?
The term Malay is such a difficult term I found, especially when discussing the old Shepo region.
On the one side of the border, the state of malaysia desperate to grab everything every word every notion that involve “Malay” and on the other, the state of thailand refusal to use terms as benign as “Malay” peninsula.
Discussion of Jawa or Malay free from shackles of “national” histories is extremely welcome.
Oh, boy. . . yes, that’ getting into territory that I definitely do not have answers for. In the History of the Song, we get some “Shepo words,” but they are mainly terms that were shared in Old Malay and Old Javanese. So, that’s not very helpful.
Meanwhile, I’d be really curious to know what the relationship between Old Malay and Old Cham was. Cham were clearly moving through this area. How were they communicating?
The Malay that is spoken in Kelantan and Pattani is supposed to be very unique, but I haven’t read anything that goes deep into that.
So, my hunch is that it definitely a “contact zone,” but I would love to know about that in more detail.
Howdy,
Don’t know very much about bahaso melayu kp, had a look at the wiki entry. Some bits are similar to bahaso Minangkabau. Eg basuh ccuci/ [basuh cːuci] ‘to wash clean’’. In bahaso minang, padang dialect, it’s basuah, as in basuah piriang, wash dishes, and basuah baju, wash clothes.
The other bits remind me of payakumbuah dialect of bahaso(which is often pronounced like baso) Minangkabau?, wiki has puasa as an example. In Melayu kp, it is (pɔsɔ). Rang minang would say it like puaso, but ever so close to poso.
Apo seems to be used in both kp and minang instead of apa.
I’m no linguist and these are just casual observations. Fortunately i know a few native melayu kp speakers. Will ask a few questions.
After all, W.Marsden and the others thought of them as the cradle of “Malay” people, I would not be surprised if there’s some connection. It’s getting endlessly interesting.
I asked a rural Cambodian once out of curiosity, “do many Chams live in his village since we can see those mosques?” He said “none. They are all Javanese.” I asked “how do you know?”, he said “Chams are fishermen, and Javaneses are farmers. The Muslims here are farmers.” I regretted never asking the Javaneses/Chams directly what they called themselves. As I read more, English-speaking academics and sources stated the Khmers and Thais mistaken the “Malays-speakers” as “Javanese-speakers”.
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This post reminds me, how much did their identities and languages differed between “Malays” and “Javaneses” anyway? What do they called themselves? Prior to 1950s, most Khmer Kroms, would not called themselves Khmer Kroms, they would used just called themselves Khmer, so did the Khmer Surins before 1910s. It is only when the border was drawn, that’s the label become more used. When did the Austronesian-speakers started differentiated between Malays and Javaneses? Why did Malay was called the Langua franca, when Javanese were more spoken in the island? Any rabbit hole I could get to?
Howdy,
Jawa/java is believed to have derived from the sanskrit Yavadvipa, the land of millet. It has long considered to mean it referred to the island of java, but could mean anywhere.
Millet, Setaria italica, is “Jawawut” in bahasa jawa, simply “jawa” in bahasa Palembang, “jawa ikur” in bahasa Batak, “jaba ure” in bahasa Toba, “jaba” in bahaso Madura, “jawa semi” in Bali etc.
Interestingly, Minang word is “sakuih”, which relates to “sekoi” used in bahasa malaysia.
Might humble millet offer some answer in the “Chinese wordgame”?
Howdy, one more random thing about Jawa/java etc. “Jawi” the word believed to be derived from an Arabic word meaning the inhabitants of the Peninsula. Jawi scripts were common in the peninsula, Sumatera and Java. Minang people used them, but bahaso Minang has another “jawi”, as in pacu jawi. In the region of tanah data, they race cows in the muddy puddy.
Anyway, rang minang call the cow “jawi”. Clueless how they got that. PThe comparison with “sapi” (cow in bahasa indo and malaysia ) show that j=s, w=p. I am no linguist, but “Jawa”= Sapa, shepo is possible? Maybe.
This is a little bit difficult to explain, but I’ll see if I can do it without making the issue more confusing.
“Shepo” is the modern Mandarin pronunciation, so that is not something we can work with to try to understand the past. That said, the way those two characters were pronounced in the past is also probably not totally important either. Let me explain why that is the case.
Chinese Buddhists devised ways to transliterate Sanskrit using Chinese characters. In that “system,” what is now pronounced “shepo” 闍婆 was used to transliterate the sounds “java” or “jva,” etc.
1500 years ago, when Chinese Buddhist were developing this way of transcribing Sanskrit, what is now pronounced “shepo” could have sounded something like “dzia-ba.”
But given that 1) these two characters appear together in Buddhist texts where they are transliterating the Sanskrit sounds “java” or “jva” and 2) the Malay Peninsula was an area where early Chinese Buddhists visited, it’s most likely the case that this term was chosen by a Buddhist or someone familiar with Buddhist texts not because of the spoken sound “dzia-ba” of those two characters, but because of they represent the sound “java” (as can be seen in Buddhist texts).
That said, “dzia-ba” and “java” are still very close. But the choice of those two characters, I would argue/guess, was because someone was trying to indicate “java,” and that’s what “shepo” did in Buddhist texts.
As for the deep origins of Java, thanks for that information! Ultimately, I have no idea what to do with early terms like Javadvipa. Was a term like that coined because there was a lot of millet somewhere? Or did locals use a term that sounded something like “java,” and people from South Asia then created “Javadvipa” from that? I have never tried to figure that out, but I have the hunch that there probably isn’t a convincing way to figure it out.
Why do both the Chamic speakers and Javanese have such a high percentage of Austroæsiatic ancestry despite speaking austronesian? Liam do you think was there a language shift happened in these cases? Were the austronesians the only ones can build boats and cross the ocean in ancient time, or austrøasiatics could do it too? Dr. Liam, what’s your opinion on the Nicobarese tribes in the middle of ocean, they must have crossed the sea by themselves at some point in the distant past, right? Iirc Rao & Sidwell introduced the Munda maritime hypothesis arguing that the proto-Munda Austroasiatic migrants went to india not by land but ACROSS the Bay of Bengal.
Thank you for these comments!!
I don’t know anything about these topics, so I thank you for mentioning them, as this has led me to start reading about them. As a non-linguist, I don’t think that I’ll be able to offer any insights, but what I am discovering from my re-interpretation of the Chinese source is that the middle of the Malay Peninsula was a very important and very active site for the trans-peninsular movement of people and goods. It’s clear to me that Cham were very active in this area, and many scholars point out that Cham and Acehnese (at the northern tip of Sumatra, where traders from India/the Middle East congregated) are related. So, I’m interested in learning more about that.
“Were the austronesians the only ones can build boats and cross the ocean in ancient time, or austrøasiatics could do it too?” – That’s a good question. In the first millennium AD, it looks like Austronesians were “on the move,” if we follow some of the linguistic arguments about Cham/Proto Malays moving away from Borneo, etc. But, yes, you have Austroasiatic speakers on the Malay Peninsula. How did they get there? Boats or land migration?
This is all earlier than the things I’ve been looking at, but I will start reading and thinking about this, so again, thank you for bringing it up!!
“Were the austronesians the only ones can build boats and cross the ocean in ancient time, or austrøasiatics could do it too?” They definitely did, at least since the medieval era. In 17th century, the Spanish in Manila heavily praised the shipbuiliding capability of the Cambodian over the Filipinos. I think the Austronesians may have a longer and prouder history on sea travels, but the Chineses, Indians and Arabs managed to develop sea travel to rival them. There was no reason to think the Austroasiatic can’t do the same. Before the 400s, the Indians, Khmers, and Chineses likely relied on the Austronesians for sea trade and journeys. But they would be able to learn. The Chineses, iirc, were only able to be known for sea trades during the late Song era, while during the Tang and earlier, their sea records were abysmal.
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There were also the story of the dragon “Seri Gumum” (sound like Khmer Srei Kromum: Female Maiden) and “Seri Kemboja” in the Malay folklore of Lake Chini in Pahang, where there were supposedly an urban legend of a Khmer sunken city. And there is a legend of the magical duels between the crocodile “Seri Pahang” and “Seri Kemboja” in Pahang. I found all this in Wikipedia, and to me, while may not be historically accurate, it could be an oral tale, a collective memory of past relationship with sea battles. It may be inspired by of a wrestle for control over the tran-peninsular trade route, as hypothesized by your research.
Thanks for the comments! The folklore references are very interesting! With regards to the Spanish praising Cambodian ships, I think we have to investigate before we equate “Cambodian” with “Khmer” in such contexts.
I haven’t read Groslier’s book (Angkor Et Le Cambodge Au Xvi Siecle D’apres Les Sources Portugaises Et Espagnoles), but 1) I’ll look it and 2) I have read studies about that later period, and the one thing we see is that there were a lot of Chams, Malays and Japanese who were active in Cambodia.
So, who was building and sailing “Cambodian” ships in such a context? That’s what we need to figure out.
I don’t have the book in front of me. While it is true that 17th century, Cambodia has a population of Malays, Chams and Japaneses, I think the Spanish would have called those ships built by Malay, Cham, Japanese or Chinese, if it is their ship since they would have more interactions with these four ethnicities more than the “Khmer” or “Cambodians”. There are still Khmer people who made their living by the sea in this century, so it would not out of place where they have far more of the coastline. Their oral literature and folk stories are full of sea voyages and they was also active participants of the Maritime trade work especially during this period.
@r Dr. Sidwell and previously dr. Gerard Diffloth reconstructed Proto-Austroasiatic *skɔːj for foxtail millet
@Le Minh Khai thank for the explanation 🙏. Rao & Sidwell (2019) articulated that the Neolithic Sankarjand culture (2,000-1,000 BCE) in the coast of Orissa as the birthplace of proto-Munda culture. According so, japonica rice Austroasiatic agriculturalists-mostly make migrants-arrived at Orissa and mixed with local AASI inhabitants. They also said to have mixed japonica rice with Indian wild rice, giving rise to indica rice. Whence the proto-Munda tribe actually originated from is still not consensual. Sidwell mentioned that proto-Munda pronouns are very close to Bahnaric, and proto-Munda numerals are more closer to Mang-Pakanic in southern china, but not with the nearest Austroasiatic branch (Khasi). If scholars agree that there was an Austroasiatic maritime network in Trans-Bengal region in the second millennium BCE existed before Austronesian and Dravidian-Indian ones.
Some scholars believe Bengali was influenced by Munda, causing Bengali to lose gender, ergative, but gained classifiers. (apparently it also happened with Oriya/Maithili/Nepali, but not Hindi, Marathi, and Punjabi)
Thank you for pointing out the Rao & Sidwell article. It’s very interesting! Let me post the conclusion here first, and then I’ll add a comment.
“The Maritime Munda Hypothesis suggests that the Munda languages originate with a small population of Southeast Asian Austroasiatic speakers interacting with a South Asian population in the Mahanadi Delta in the Eastern Coastal Plains around 2000–1500 BCE.
The pre-Munda speakers reached the Mahanadi Delta via a maritime route around the Bay of Bengal and brought rice agriculture and their language with them. The interaction with the local population created an Austroasiatic language with a substantially altered phonology and lexicon.
The resulting proto-Munda language and culture dispersed from the coastal plains along the major rivers into the Eastern Ghats, the Chota Nagpur Plateau and from there as far west as the Satpura Hills.
The proposal of a maritime dispersal for the movement of Munda from Southeast Asia to South Asia might seem radical, but the case of Nicobarese, an Austroasiatic group that is located on an island chain in the Indian Ocean, suggests that this is not without parallel. It is unambiguous that the Nicobarese reflect an Austroasiatic speaking community that arrived on the islands by ocean-going craft, although so long ago there is no direct evidence that might suggest a timeframe.
It is also striking to note that a sub-grouping relationship between Nicobarese and the Aslian branch has
been proposed (Diffloth 2005, 2011, Sidwell 2014). Dunn et al. (2013) have located the Aslian homeland in
the center of the Malay Peninsula, during the Neolithic around 4 kya, and Bulbeck (2004) proposed an
Aslian homeland on the west coast at a similar latitude to the proposal of Dunn et al. (2013).
It may be that the locations of Nicobarese and Aslian are explained by a similar, or even the same coastal migration event. The Nicobar Islands and Malay Peninsula are characterized by proximity to the strategic route through the Ten Degree Channel, passing the Nicobar archipelago, and the Straits of Malacca. And in the light of genetic analysis suggesting a particularly close relation by descent between Munda and Aslian groups (Tätte et al. 2018), it may be that the locations of three geographically peripheral Austroasiatic branches are explained by a common ancient maritime adventure.
For dating the arrival of the pre-Munda on the east coast of India, the time ranges of the three disciplines broadly match, although more detail is needed. The synthesis of the date ranges from linguistics, archaeology, and genetics point to around 3500 years ago (approximately 1500 BCE) as the best estimation for proto-Munda. This suggests an interesting dynamic in Mainland Southeast Asian just after the Neolithic transition and poses tantalizing questions about the location and affiliation of pre-Munda at that time.”
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Our discussion started with the question of whether Austroasiatic speakers also made boats and moved around. It doesn’t look like the information in this article supports that idea. Rao & Sidwell state that “It may be that the locations of Nicobarese and Aslian are explained by a similar, or even the same coastal migration event” and that “it may be that the locations of three geographically peripheral Austroasiatic branches are explained by a common ancient maritime adventure.”
If the spread of an Austroasiatic language to the east coast of what is now India was the result of a people who were maritime experts, I think we should expect to see a continuation of maritime activity, and that, I would think, would have led to clear linguistic connections between Austroasiatic languages like Munda, Nicobarese and Aslian. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case. It looks more like these people got to places and then stayed there.
How did they get to these places? Did they create sea-faring ships? Or did they migrate along the coast and create rafts to cross rivers (and in the process, perhaps get drifted by winds and currents to places)?
Either way, it’s still amazing that “a small population of Southeast Asian Austroasiatic speakers” made it all the way to the eastern coast of India!! But this doesn’t seem to be in the same category to me as say Polynesians sailing out into the Pacific. It looks more like there was a limited original event, as impressive as that event probably was (and an event that would make a great movie!!!).