ABSTRACT
In the past decade there has been a remarkable florescence of high-quality new ethnographies of previously little-studied Indonesian societies. Because of this development, the possibilities for comparative study have correspondingly expanded. As a result we are now able to perceive, with greatly increased clarity, the outline of certain indigenous concepts which recur widely throughout the archipelago, forming variable but recognizable patterns. One logical basis for these comparisons is provided by the historical relationship between Austronesian (AN) languages. From an ultimate homeland in southern China, the original speakers of Proto-Austronesian (PAN) settled in Taiwan from about 4000 BC. From this point of dispersal, Austronesian speakers spread south through the Philippines into the Indonesian archipelago, from about 3000 BC. Extraordinarily able and adventurous seafarers, Austronesian speakers eventually settled in locations as distant as Easter Island and Madagascar, making this the largest language family in the world. Today, Austronesian languages are spoken throughout the islands of Southeast Asia, Micronesia and Polynesia, as well as in pockets of mainland Southeast Asia and New Guinea. As phrased by the editors of the latest volume on Austronesian origins, Austronesian societies ‘are all linked by branching but not sealed lines of common ancestry spanning the past 6000 years or so’ (Bellwood 1995: 4). 1 Distinctively ‘Austronesian’ ideas can now be more fully appreciated as having a special salience in the ways that different groups think about the structure of their societies. The great benefit for us as ethnographers is that it has enabled us to get beyond the received categories that we initially brought with us to the field, and move closer to an analysis that does justice to people’s own indigenous concepts – thus producing, we may hope, a more authentic ethnography. At the same time, some concepts and practices – such as ideas about ‘vitality’ and details of house construction – can be shown to have striking parallels in parts of mainland Southeast Asia, such as Thailand (Terwiel 1978; Turton 1978). Though mainland Southeast Asia has its own complex patterns of language distribution, such parallels provoke us to look across linguistic boundaries – boundaries that are, after all, porous. In fact, some have already argued a linguistic basis for the antiquity of links between the two areas. If we accept Benedict’s reconstruction of an ‘Austro-Thai’ proto-language, ancestral to both the Austronesian and Tai-Kadai language families, then the links between mainland and island peoples must be acknowledged to be of great historical depth (Benedict 1975). Bellwood et al (1995: 98), discussing this hypothesis, conclude:
One has to consider very seriously the possibility that the initial expansions of Austronesian and Tai-Kadai languages (and probably also Austroasiatic) began among Neolithic rice-cultivating communities in China south of the Yangzi. The archaeological record agrees very well and provides a date range for initial developments between 5000 and 4000 BC.
