Jelebu customary songs and sayings; with a preface and notes, R.O. Winstedt
A. Caldecott, a district officer in Jelebu, collected this corpus of Minangkabau customary songs (tēromba) and sayings (pēbilangan adat) in the state of Jelebu, Negri Sembilan, and R. O. Winstedt—then a senior colonial administrator and the leading British authority on Malay custom—supplied the preface, translations, and scholarly notes. Published in 1918 in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, the article’s overarching thesis, advanced in Winstedt’s preface, is that despite superficial variations among the four Negri Sembilan states, there exists at bottom only one adat Minangkabau, and that the people’s own sayings and songs constitute the most reliable evidence for its principles—evidence that European scholars had systematically overlooked in favour of interested parties’ interpretations in local courts (pp. 3–6).
Summary
Winstedt’s preface is as much a methodological statement as an introduction. He argues that the comparative method—drawing on Willinck’s Het Rechtsleven bij de Minangkabausche Maleiers (1909) and the Dutch Adat-rechtbundel series—has corrected textual errors in earlier British publications on Negri Sembilan, including the influential “Rembau” paper by Parr and Mackray. A central example is the correction of bērsaorangan to the Minangkabau form pērsuarangan (common property acquired by joint labour), and the explanation of the line yang bērsēsap, yang bērjērami which had puzzled earlier editors (p. 3). More substantively, Winstedt challenges the “Rembau” paper’s claim that a bachelor’s irresponsible debts fall on his mother’s family under adat tanggong-menanggong. Citing Willinck’s account of Minangkabau practice, he demonstrates that family liability attaches only to debts ex delicto (torts) when the individual cannot pay, and to contractual debts only when properly contracted by the family head with the consent of its members—not to a man’s private gambling losses or rubber speculations (pp. 4–6). He notes that a Rembau court had in fact rejected such an interpretation in a later case, calling it “ludicrous and opposed to principles of equity” (p. 5).
The body of the article presents three tēromba—songs of origin that narrate the mythic descent of the Minangkabau from Pagar Ruyong, the establishment of the two branches of custom (the sea-law of Dato’ Temenggong and the land-law of Dato’ Merpatch), and the settlement of the twelve tribes in the Negri Sembilan region. These are followed by an extensive set of pēbilangan adat—customary sayings organised thematically to cover the political hierarchy, the law of entail (pēsaka), marriage and its dissolution, criminal law and jurisdiction, and the allocation of communal and private property. Winstedt renders each Malay stanza into a loose English verse translation, preserving the parallel structure and imagery of the original while making the legal content accessible to a British readership.
The sayings reveal a sophisticated legal system in which adat is explicitly distinguished from shara’ (Muhammadan law): custom “hinges on” religious law, but its function is to “suppress the wrong and bring the good to pass,” whereas religious law “commands righteousness and bids men eschew evil” (p. 27). Customary law accepts circumstantial evidence where religious law requires witnesses, and the article specifies twelve circumstances constituting proof of theft (p. 27). The jurisdictional hierarchy is mapped with precision: the raja’s court handles the most serious offences (leser-majeste, homicide, robbery with violence), the chief’s court handles mid-level matters, and the tribal headman’s court handles minor disputes (p. 29).
Key Findings
- The tēromba identify Pagar Ruyong as the origin point of Minangkabau custom, with the custom extending “as far as the fruit-trees marked by the raja” and “up to the kingdom of Pagar Ruyong” (p. 17); the two branches of adat are attributed to Dato’ Temenggong (sea) and Dato’ Merpatch (land) (p. 16).
- The raja’s jurisdiction is quantified in a set of traditional measures: “sixty-six cents, seven taels, one paha, one kendi, one candareen, the contents of a tiny mortar, as much as a joint of giant bamboo can hold, as much as will fill the sleeve of a coat” (p. 31).
- Twelve circumstances constitute conclusive circumstantial evidence of theft, including being chased and found panting, being found with stolen goods, being found wounded, and having transplanted evidence with a false account (p. 27).
- The penalty for homicide is the substitution of a person from the murderer’s tribe to the tribe of the dead man (bunoh beri balas); the penalty for wounding is smart-money (chinchang pampas) (p. 31).
- Property on divorce is divided by a fixed formula: earnings go to the earner, what the husband brought goes back to him, partnership property is split, joint-labour property (pērsuarangan) is equally divided, and the man’s person is restored to his own tribe (nyawa darah pulang ka-pada waris) (p. 39).
- The election of officers follows a strict ascending chain: a family elects or dismisses its elder by common consent; elders with the support of enfranchised tribal members elect or dismiss a tribal headman; headmen elect or dismiss a chief; chiefs with the support of headmen elect or dismiss the king (pp. 35–37).
Conclusion
Winstedt’s definitive takeaway is that the adat of Negri Sembilan is not a patchwork of four distinct state customs but a single, coherent Minangkabau system conserved through centuries and detectable in the people’s own sayings. The value of this collection lies in providing, for the first time, a substantial body of the people’s own voice—songs and maxims rather than the “disjecta membra” recorded by earlier scholars—against which the distortions introduced by interested parties in local courts can be measured (p. 6).
Context
- Caldecott served as a district officer in Jelebu and had previously published a history of the state (Papers on Malay Subjects, second series, No. 1, 1912); Winstedt was a senior colonial administrator in the Federated Malay States and the pre-eminent British scholar of Malay custom at the time.
- The article draws on the Dutch Adat-rechtbundel series and Willinck’s 1909 monograph on Minangkabau legal life, representing one of the earliest sustained attempts by a British colonial scholar to use Dutch-Indies comparative materials to correct the British record on Negri Sembilan custom.