Orang Asli
Orang Asli ( Malay orang: "man"; asli: "original" or "original", so something like "native") is a collective term used in Malaysia since 1966 for various indigenous peoples in the interior of the Malay Peninsula .
They consist of several ethnic groups:
- the Semang or Negritos , who mostly live as hunters and gatherers ,
- the Senoi , who grow rice and millet in the highlands , and
- the Jakun (or aboriginal Malays ) who farm in the lowlands and trade as forest collectors.
The Semang, like the Negritos of the Philippines and the Andamanians , are counted among the Negritos, while the Malays, mostly to be found in Malaysia, are Deutero-Malays , who migrated from Southeast Asia .
The Orang Asli are granted Bumiputra status by the Malaysian government together with the Malays and the indigenous peoples of East Malaysia ( Borneo ) , a legal status that grants the indigenous peoples social advantages over the immigrant Chinese and Indians in multi-ethnic Malaysia.
In Malaysia, Orang Asli replaces the older, derogatory term Sakai ("slave") for the indigenous population of the Malay Peninsula. The small group of Semang, who lives in southern Thailand is of Thais occasionally also Orang Asli called.
The languages of the Orang Asli are assigned to the Austro-Asian languages . The Orang Asli mostly withdrew from the migrants to the higher hill and mountain regions of the peninsula, often living semi-nomadic and in primitive conditions. In Taman Negara (National Park), the 4,340 square kilometer area in the middle of the Malay Peninsula, which has existed since 1938, they are allowed to continue their traditional life.
Religions
Their traditional ethnic religions are still widespread among all Orang Asli. They are imparted by medicine men (called Pawang, Saatih, Kemantan) who call the spirits for help and perform ecstatic ceremonies and shamanic initiation rites. Especially with the Sakai and Jakun (shamans = Hala and Poyang ) one can speak of shamanism , a little less with the Semang (Halaa) . The rites differ considerably in the details, but follow a common basic pattern: incense, dance, music and drumming are standard rituals. Summoning of auxiliary spirits and soul travel are common, as is dream interpretation. Shamans have high status even in death. Central here, as with the Indonesian rainforest peoples, is the evocation of the tiger spirit, which makes the shamans - but also every person who makes an effort - possessed (lupa) .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Shuichi Nagata: Subgroup “names” of the Sakai (Thailand) and the Semang (Malaysia): a literature survey. In: Anthropological Science , Vol. 114, 2006, pp. 45-57.
- ↑ Richard B. Lee and Richard Daly (Eds.): The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers . 4th edition. Cambridge University Press, New York 2010 (first printed in 1999), ISBN 978-0-521-60919-7 . P. 31.
- ↑ Senoi on nativeplanet.org NGO for the preservation of indigenous cultures, Shoreline (WA, USA), status 2006, requested on March 25, 2015.
- ↑ Geoffrey Benjamin, Cynthia Chou (Ed.): Tribal Communities in the Malay World: Historical, Cultural, and Social Perspectives. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002, pp. 140, 216, 374, 382.
- ^ Hyun-key Kim Hogarth: Volume 14 of Korean Studies Series - Jipmoondang Publishing Company. 1999, p. 43.
- ↑ Terry Miller, Sean Williams (Eds.): The Garland Handbook of Southeast Asian Music. Routledge, 2011, p. 320.
- ↑ Eliade: Shamanism, p. 331.
literature
- Iskandar Carey: Orang Asli: The Aboriginal Tribes of Peninsular Malaysia . Oxford University Press, London 1976, ISBN 0-19-580270-5
- Roy Davies Linville Jumper: Orang Asli Now: The Orang Asli in the Malaysian Political World. University Press of America, Lanham (Maryland) 1999
