Rigel Kent

. . . it starts with confused Malay traditions of the great empires of Byzantine and China, of Sri Rama and Hanuman and Lankapuri लङ्कापुरी from the Ramayana . . . as a Muslim, the author drags in the Prophet Solomon, king of the animal world and so lord of the Garuda . . . Richard Winstedt (1938) The Kedah Annals, JMBRAS 16(2), p. 31 Before Bangkok’s full consolidation of the south, Ligor was the primus inter pares among the southern mueang. It had long served as the southern gate of the Siamese world, a tributary overlord to the smaller Malay states, Trang, Patthalung, Salang, Krabi, Patani, Kelantan, Terengganu, Kedah, etc. These Malay planets tended to orbit around Ligor, which functioned as the regional mandala-center mediating between Bangkok and the Malay world. This Ligor-centered arrangement was, however, semi-feudal and decentralized, giving the Buddhist state enormous leverage. ...

Laws operate apart from the purposes of the men who write them and the Malay Reservations Enactment, with all its weaknesses and imperfections, has been and continues to be a major force in determining patterns of land ownership, flows of capital, and access to capital as well as the character of the population in rural Malaysia. Paul H. Kratoska Ends that we cannot foresee: Malay Reservations in British Malaya I once bumped 1 into Anthony Milner at the History Department, University of Malaya. During our brief conversation, he kept circling back to a single, deceptively simple question: ‘What is a Malay?' For someone who has spent much of his career studying Malay identity, this was telling. It revealed the unspoken truth, that it is technically impossible to quantify a complex ethnic and cultural essence using mere words, let alone statutes. Before the rubber economy boom, there was little n...

Kami Dayak, kami bukan Melayu. Dayak dan Melayu adalah dari ras Austronesia. Tidak perlu memelayukan bangsa-bangsa yang bukan Melayu ok. Comment by a viewer named @borneandayak6725 on the clip titled: Asal Usul Melayu, Induknya Di Benua Sunda When naturalists point to maps of the ancient Sunda Peninsula and proclaim, “That’s the Malay world!” Their claim is totally understandable, since Malay was once the business language of maritime trade, used by merchants who came to the region in search of cloves, nutmeg, and sandalwood. In that sense, the term Malay world was, and remains, primarily a linguistic label for the region. Some scholars, however, take a more imaginative approach. Rather than engaging closely with the evidence, they spend years developing speculative ideas, sometimes for as long as seven years, based on the assumption that everyone in the region is somehow “genetically Malay,” a ...

There was a small, secluded resort on a tropical island known as Andalusian Shoals. Its brochures promised nothing unusual: calm seas, pale beaches, and air so clean you could hear your own thoughts hum. Yet, visitors who stayed there often left with the same strange impression, that something wasn’t quite right about how the rooms were assigned. At Andalusian Shoals, one did not simply book a seaside room. You could try, of course. You could click the Ocean View 海側の部屋 Mountain View 山側の部屋 option online and pay the premium. But when you arrived, dragging your suitcase through the jasmine-scented lobby, the receptionist would look first not at your name, not at your reservation, but at your luggage. Hansa-Thalo heritage of Green: Mix phthalocyanine blue and arylide yellow, and you’ll get a green so smug it practically radiates self-satisfaction. Green, of cours...