Introduction

Identification

This book is a short general introduction to the Senoi Semai, a people who live in or near the hills and mountains of central Malaya. The world sən'oi means "person." Ethnologists use it to refer to those Malayan aborigines who do some farming and who speak a Senoi language. The Senoi languages belong to the great Austro-Asiatic language family, which also includes Cambodian, the Mon language of Burma, and the languages spoken by some Vietnamese hill people. But Senoi and the closely related Semang languages differ in many ways from the other Austro-Asiatic languages, which linguists usually group together as MonKhmer. This fact seems to indicate that the Senoi and Semang have been isolated for a long time from other Austro-Asiatic speaking people. Now the Senoi and Semang are completely surrounded by people who speak languages that seem unrelated to Austro-Asiatic.

The word Semai refers to the aggregate of people who speak dialects of the Semai language. This term is of uncertain origin. Many Semai refer to themselves by other words, like sən'oi hii' ("our people"), mai darat or mai səra' (both terms meaning "they of the hinterlands"). Sometimes in self-deprecation a Semai will use the insulting Malay word "Sakai" when talking about how backward his people are in comparison with the other peoples of the Malayan peninsula. "Sakai" means something like "bestial aborigine" or "slave." On the lips of a non-Semai the term is offensive.

The Semai in any particular area take their group name from that area. For example, there are mai chənan ("they of the mountains"), mai kuui teio ("they at the heads of the waters," that is, up-river people) and mai barəh ("they of the lowlands," that is, people living near the Malay and Chinese towns that are found only in the lowlands).

Historical Sketch

The Semai seem to know little about their own history beyond the fact that they were the original inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula. Some Semai say that the Senoi peoples originated at a place called Sakai Jadi (Malay for "Become Senoi") in what is now the western part of Semai-land. Since then, the Semai say, they have always been where they are today. The obscurity of this history is distressing, because many people who have tried to reconstruct the prehistory of Malaya and of southeast Asia as a whole feel that understanding how the Senoi came to be where they are is a crucial problem.

Ethnologists have traditionally divided the Malayan aborigines into three major categories (see map p.ii); the nomadic hunters and gatherers collectively called Semang (including the Kensiu, Jahai, Lanoh, Mendriq, Temoq, Bateq, Kintaq, Pangan, Semaq, Semang, and Semoq Beri); the agricultural Senoi (Semai, Temiar, Jah Hut, Siwang, Mah Meri, and Semelai); and the "Aboriginal Malays" (Belandas, Temuan, Jakun, and Kanaq).

The Semang and Senoi are supposed to represent remnants of once much more widespread populations that have elsewhere been swamped by an immigration of more powerful peoples. As already noted, the Senoi-Semang languages are not related to those of the technologically more developed peoples of Malaya but rather to languages spoken by peoples scattered through Burma and Indochina. Physical anthropologists say that among the Senoi there are traces of a "racial type" whose closest affinities are found among the aborigines of Ceylon and Australia. At any rate, anthropologists have always been intrigued by the possibility that studying the Semang and Senoi might give us some knowledge of how people lived in Malaya and perhaps throughout Southeast Asia before the arrival of the now dominant peoples.

The nonaboriginal people with whom the Malayan aborigines have the most contact are the Malays. Although nothing is known of the initial contacts between the two peoples, the aborigines were eventually forced to give up their lands and to retreat into the hills in the face of Malay technological superiority. Conceivably a series of defeats at the hands of the Malays led the aborigines to adopt a policy of fleeing rather than fighting, and this policy may in turn have encouraged the development of the emphasis on nonviolence that characterizes present-day aboriginal society.¹ The conversion of the Malays to Islam, beginning some time in the fourteenth century A.D., may have exacerbated the relations between Malays and aborigines. To an ordinary Malay of that period, aborigines probably seemed to be not merely cultural inferiors but despicable pagans to boot, "Sakai" good for nothing but slaves. Malay slave raids on Semai settlements did not completely cease until the beginning of the twentieth century.

Although relations between Malays and aborigines are peaceful nowadays, the general Semai attitude towards Malays remains very ambivalent. On the one hand, people are very suspicious of Malay intentions towards them. On the other hand, they admire the superior technology and "wisdom" of the Malays. A Semai usually talks about Malays as if a Malay were the exact opposite of a Semai, a sort of ultimate "other" against which he can assess and measure his own people. Even when talking about how Semai live and act, people constantly contrast themselves with the Malays, for example, "We don't know anything about religion; Malays are always talking about religion."

During the early 1950s there was a Communist uprising in Malaya. As the only people occupying the hills where the guerrillas took refuge, the aborigines willy nilly held a position of tactical importance to both sides. The British, then colonial rulers of Malaya, first tried to relocate the aborigines in camps outside the rain forest. The death rate in these camps was so high that some Semai still regard their relocation as the first step in a campaign to exterminate the aborigines. Later on, the British settled the aborigines around strategically located "Jungle Forts" from which their activities could be supervised. Their stay in the world outside the rain forest reinforced Semai opinions about the viciousness of non-Semai. It also gave people from the more isolated areas their first chance to acquire such non-Semai valuables as wrist watches and pretty woven cloth. This period also saw the formation of a Malayan Department of Aborigines charged with looking after the welfare of the aborigines, a task which today it is performing ably.

The "west Semai" mentioned in this book are much more in contact with the Malays than are the people I call the "east Semai." By constantly comparing these two groups I have tried to give some idea of the changes the history sketched above has effected in Semai society. Although the west Semai strongly resist being swallowed up in Malay society, they have nevertheless become in some ways very much like Malays. Similarly, a large element of the east Semai population seems to consist of Semang who have settled down without altogether giving up their traditional ways of living and thinking. This pattern of change within Semai society may be representative of a general pattern of change throughout Malaya. It seems possible that the three categories of Malayan aborigines are not watertight; that the Semang have for a long time been settling down and becoming Senoi, and that many of the so-called "Aboriginal Malays" are not Malays unconverted to Islam but Senoi who have become "Malayized" to the point of no longer speaking Senoi. Whether or not there is such a general pattern of change, the contrast between east and west Semai should throw some light on the changes occurring in Semai society.

Other factors increase the differences between the east and west Semai. Each Semai settlement is politically autonomous, free to go pretty much its own way. Furthermore, there is little communication between groups of Semai who are distant from each other. Indeed, to talk just about east and west Semai is an oversimplification. According to the census there are Semai in the Cameron Highlands, in north central Semai-land, whose life is shaped by their work on tea plantations. The southeastern Semai seem to have adopted the political system of their "aboriginal Malay" neighbors. In the northwest there are Moslem Semai, people say, and so on.

These differences pose a serious question. Is it legitimate to write a book called "The Semai" about a people as heterogeneous as this, who do not form a "tribe" in any meaningful sense of the word? Anthropologists first became aware of this sort of problem toward the end of the nineteenth century, but a satisfactory solution remains elusive. The question of just what "ethnic groups" people belong to is especially pressing in Southeast Asia, and the Malayan case is a relatively easy one.

In this book I have tried to solve this problem of "ethnic group identification" or at least to evade it by treating the Semai as a "people" in the sense in which political scientists traditionally have used the word. First, the Semai all live in a definable geographic area. Second, they share a tradition of having been dispossessed and persecuted by non-Semai. Partially as a result, both east and west Semai tend to define their own ways of life as being not only different from but also opposite to non-Semai ways of life. Third, they have a common language which is unintelligible to non-Semai. Finally, they share a common attitude towards a great many things, most notably violence. As a result of these shared factors, they can communicate better, and over a wider range of topics, with each other than they can with non-Semai.

Scope of This Report: Fieldwork

Most of the statements in this book rest on fieldwork done by my wife and myself in 1962-1963. The research was supported by a Foreign Area Training Fellowship from the Ford Foundation and a subsidiary grant from the American Museum of Natural History. We lived in two settlements, one in the northeast part of the State of Pahang and one near the town of Kampar in the State of Perak. Because of their distrust of the non-Semai world, people asked that we not pinpoint the location of these settlements. The approximate location of the first, which has now disbanded, was 4½°N 102°E. The second is at about 4°N and 101°E. My impression is that the first settlement is fairly representative of the Semai living in the northeast part of Semai-land. Similarly, the second seems representative of the westernmost Semai, that is, those living in the Perak lowlands and foothills. The Department of Aborigines kindly let us look at several censuses of Semai-land as a whole. Remarks in this book about the size and stability of settlements and households are drawn from the census of the two areas that the two settlements we lived in seem to represent.

We spent about seven months actually living in each settlement, in addition to a total of about four months spent in hospitals recovering from various diseases acquired in the field. Statements in this book about the "east Semai" rest mainly on data collected in the first settlement and in one across the river which we often visited. The combined population of these two settlements was about one hundred at any given time. Assertions about the "west Semai" are based on data from the second settlement, which included about two hundred people, and on data from two other settlements to which we made extended visits. We talked with a good many more people than these population figures indicate, however, because people were constantly moving in and out of the settlements and because a great many people came from other settlements to see what we were like.

People in general and the Semai in particular tend to act differently in the presence of strangers from the way they usually act. To minimize the effects of our presence we tried to become as Semai-like as possible. We lived in a Semai house, dressed like Semai and joined in various economic and religious activities. Anthropologists call this technique "participant observation." At first, because we are both city people and unathletic, we had trouble doing the simplest things - gathering firewood and water, squatting for long periods, helping clear fields, and so on. Moreover, since the Semai language was unwritten, we had to learn it on the spot in the first settlement. We learned it faster than one learns languages in school, not only because we needed it for our research but also because even anthropologists get lonely when the only way to talk to people is in a language (Malay in this case) that no one involved speaks very well. After about two months we were able to chat fairly freely about ordinary things like gossip, food, and the weather. About the same time my wife's cooking finally came up to Semai standards, and we were both delighted when people praised the taste of a python head she had fried.

Nevertheless, our attempts to become inconspicuous were not altogether successful in the eastern settlement. From the Semai viewpoint we were huge, fantastically rich, and oddly colored. Moreover, since we depended on monthly shipments of food, we could not share our food with the east Semai as totally as they shared theirs with us, for fear of funning out. As a result, most of the people never did trust us implicitly, although we did make several friends. For all the affection we gave and received, most of the time it was as if a thin glass wall separated us from the people. For all their mistrust, however, the east Semai never took advantage of us without our acquiescence. On the several occasions when we had to retire from their settlement for hospitalization (once for two months), we left our supplies unguarded in our unlockable house. Although everyone keenly desired the goods we left behind, we never found anything missing on our return.

In the west Semai settlement we spoke nothing but Semai from the outset. Moreover, the west Semai were more familiar with the sight of Europeans, whereas the east Semai had never seen a white woman before. Finally, we could buy most of our food at a local Chinese market, as some of the Semai themselves did, so that we never seemed to be hoarding a huge surplus. The upshot was that our relations with the west Semai were in general more trusting and warm than our relations with the east Semai - there was no "glass wall."

One result of trying to live like Semai was that we gradually found ourselves developing what we took to be Semai attitudes toward a great many things. For example, I remember vividly the unpleasant shock of seeing a photograph of myself with the Semai. Between the time the film had been sent down river to be developed and the time it was sent back, I had, apparently without realizing it, come to think of myself as looking like our neighbors. My wife and I still sometimes respond like Semai in American situations, and we are often seized with homesickness for our Semai friends and their country. Once in a while we still dream in the Semai language.

Our "Semai-ization" is not, however, solely the product of participant observation. P. D. R. Williams-Hunt and H. D. Noone, the only men to do intensive fieldwork with Senoi peoples before us, both took Senoi wives and settled down to live as Senoi. The Semai way of life is remarkably seductive for Euro-Americans. Part of its attractiveness is due to its stress on nonviolence. One reason for reading about the Semai is that, although their technology is so simple that there is no metalwork, weaving, tanning, or pottery, nevertheless they seem to have worked out ways of handling human voilence witch technologically more "advanced" people might envy.

Aims of This Study

No one can begin to tell the whole story of an alien people. In a book of this length it would be silly even to try. For example, there is no section on "religion" in the following pages. The topic is omitted for three reasons. First, Semai religion includes Malay, Semang, Christian, and Bahai elements, the disentagnling of which would require a separate book. Second, partly because of this complexity, no one was able to give us an over-all view of this religion, although everyone knew disjointed "facts." There is a good deal of confusion and disagreement even about these "facts." For instance, most but not all Semai accept the idea that the universe has seven "layers." People cheerfully gave us the names of these layers, but no one could repeat the names in the same order twice. Several times, moreover, people lost count of how many names they had given us and went on to give us eight or nine. Finally, except for a few west Semai mystics, the Semai tend to be unconcerned and skeptical about religious dogma. For example, people describing life after death almost always concluded by saying something like, "That's just a story of the old days. I don't believe it." Instead of dealing with this sort of topic, I have tried to concentrate on those aspects of Semai life which I found especially interesting and which seem to be of special concern to the Semai themselves.

There is one problem all anthropologists face in trying to write about the people with whom they have lived. That is the slipperiness of trying to translate concepts basic to a non-Euro-American way of life into words comprehensible to Euro-Americans. Different peoples cut up their universe in different ways, use different criteria in making choices. There are few words in any language that have precise equivalents in other languages. Take for example a simple pronoun like English "we." There are four Semai words for "we": jar, "we-two-but-not you"; har, "you-and-me, also sometimes used in the sense of "you-my-good-friend"; jii', "all-of-us-but-not-you"; and hii', "you and us." Translating "you" into Semai would be even more difficult, because the word used depends on the relationship between the people doing the talking. When more complicated concepts are involved, precise translation becomes almost impossible. The closest one can come to an English word like "gratitude," for example, is səlniil (roughly, "embarrassment"). This does not mean, of course, that Semai never feel grateful. It means that they categorize their feeling differently. The same difficulty holds for translating complex Semai concepts into English. (It is obviously foolish to think that, because the Semai have a relatively simple technology, they have "simple" thoughts.) For instance, translating nyani' as "evil spirit" is convenient, even though nyani' are not very spiritual, nor evil in a moral sense. In such cases I have put the translation into quotation marks to stress that the meaning of the English words merely approximates the meaning of the Semai ones. Where an adequate translation would take up too much space, I have used Semai words that I have already defined. Most of these can be found in the glossary at the back of this book.

A note of caution: Writing a book, especially a short general book like this one, an anthropologist must make generalizations and abstractions. Abstractions are extremely useful in coming to grips with an alien culture. Often, for example, using Boolean algebra can clarify an otherwise obscure and alien conceptual scheme. Nevertheless, an anthropologist usually feels that the people themselves have slipped out of his net of generalizations. His friends, the people he lived with for months, have become a featureless mass. The Semai do not all look alike, think alike, act alike, talk alike. Treestump is a clown, Daylight an intellectual, Uproar a schemer, Arecanut a profoundly dissatisfied man. Our adopted father is a deeply thoughtful man, a skillful debater, and a powerful personality. Sterile Mother, perhaps because of her personal tragedy, is the kindest person I have ever met. The thing to remember in reading any ethnography is that the book is about human beings, individuals, who are trying to get along with the cultural means at their disposal, in a world that almost always makes getting along difficult.

¹. P. M. Gardner offers an intriguing theory of "Semai-type" societies in "Symmetric respect and memorate knowledge: The structure and ecology of individualist culture," _Southwestern Jounal of Anthropology _22 (1966): 389-415; but he seems to feel his description relevant only to nonagriculturalists. ↩