Dynamics of the frontier world in insular Southeast Asia: an overview. (Abstracts).

Kato, Tsuyoshi. 1997, Dynamics of the frontier world in insular Southeast Asia: an overview. Tonan Ajia Kenkyu, 34(4): 611-621.

The project "Dynamics of the Frontier World in Insular Southeast Asia" was a three-year project carried out principally by researchers from the Center for Southeast Asian Studies in Kyoto, with backup from other Japanese universities and Southeast Asian academic institutions. In this introductory chapter, the author details the plan of the project which was divided into two sections. There is a joint research section in three major riverine systems of Indonesian Kalimantan to examine how rural and urban frontiers have developed and how they have interacted within the geographical unit. There is also an individual research section carried out by the participants in their own selected localities. As he himself does not have an article in this collection, he also devotes some space to his own research on the Minangkabau in two migrant villages: one in Riau and the other in Negri Sembilan. He also recounts an interesting experience: the discovery of a Minangkabau village, Kudangan, on the border between Central a nd West Kalimantan, in kabupaten Kotawaringin Barat, Central Kalimantan, until recently a very isolated area. The villagers claim to be the descendants of a Minangkabau culture hero: Datuk Perpatih, who had come from Pagarruyung when most of Kalimantan was "still under the sea". The genealogy in fact goes back 22 or 23 generations. Descent is traced patrilineally, not matrilineally, and rather than being Muslim, most of the village, formerly Kaharingan, are now Christian. Their language is similar to Minangkabau or Malay. There are other detached pieces of information which, put together, add up to enough to stimulate speculation about an ancient Minangkabau population movement in the frontier world of Insular Southeast Asia (Rosemary Robson-McKillop).