Temiar

The Temiar

The Temiar are a group of Orang Asli (indigenous peoples) of the Malay Peninsula, historically concentrated in the interior highland valleys of Ulu Kelantan and adjacent areas of Pahang and Perak. Their settlements, known as ladangs (shifting-cultivation sites), are distributed along river systems in the granite and limestone uplands, where they have maintained a semi-sedentary lifestyle combining riverine foraging, horticulture, and the construction of bamboo rafts for transport and fishing. The Temiar are distinguished from other Orang Asli groups by their physical characteristics, their social organisation around large long houses, and their documented contact with Malay and colonial administrative structures from the early twentieth century onwards.

Physical Characteristics and Social Organisation

A.C. Baker, a Malayan Civil Service officer, provided one of the earliest detailed physical descriptions of the Temiar in his 1933 account of a reconnaissance journey through the Sungai Blatop and Sungai Ber valleys. He noted that most of the Temiar carriers in his party were about 5 feet 6 inches in height, with light-coloured skins and reddish tints in their black wavy hair; some individuals had noticeably lighter reddish hair that appeared to have been bleached or dyed, a trait Baker observed was regarded with particular pride by the carriers themselves [1, p. 289]. The women were generally shorter but possessed fine features and a graceful carriage. Baker recorded little visible disease among the groups he encountered, and noted that the Temiars showed an extraordinary desire to sample European medicines, with the immediate efficacy of iodine, ammonia, aspirin, calomel, and quinine causing what he described as “an almost embarrassing desire for medicines all along our route” [1, p. 289].

The Temiar social unit is the ladang, a settlement typically comprising one or more long houses and associated cultivation plots. At the ladang of Penghulu To’ Jagor on the Sungai Ber, Baker recorded a long house holding at least 100 people grouped in family parties around five fireplaces, with no internal partitions; the arrangement, he observed, “seems to have produced a very high sense of honesty and morality” [1, p. 290]. The ladang at Kuala Blatop, under the headship of Penghulu Mengkuda, comprised four long houses and approximately 30 acres of mixed cultivation, mainly tapioca and maize with small plots of sugarcane and tobacco [1, p. 287].

Baker estimated the total Temiar population of the area traversed by his expedition at approximately 3,000 individuals [1, p. 293]. He characterised them as “clearly a superior race which at some time under pressure from other waves of invaders have sought refuge in those rich and inaccessible valleys and have kept them jealously to themselves” [1, p. 293]. His companion, Mr. Blackman, a New Zealander, was struck by the resemblance in character between the Temiars and the Māori, and Baker expressed the hope that the Temiars might develop along similar lines “without losing their good tempered open handed manly form of life” [1, p. 293].

A notable feature of Temiar social geography identified by Baker is the break in tribal organisation marked by the Jeram Gajah rapids on the Sungai Ber. Above the falls, Temiar communities moved freely between ladangs as “one happy family passing from ladang to ladang and holding all things in common”; below the falls, distinct parties kept severely apart with visible watchfulness, if not definite hostility [1, p. 291]. This suggests that the physical barrier of the rapids has historically functioned as a boundary between distinct social groupings within the broader Temiar population.

Subsistence, Material Culture, and Daily Life

The Temiar economy as observed by Baker in 1933 combined horticulture, foraging, and riverine fishing. At the ladang of Penghulu To’ Jagor, cultivation was exceptionally developed: besides the usual Temiar crops of tapioca, maize, and millet, a good deal of hill padi was grown along with vegetables and ever-flowering shrubs [1, p. 290]. Millet was pounded into a fine paste called sekoi [1, p. 289]. Small foraging parties were constantly going out and returning with fruits, especially langsat and rambutan, and fish from the stream [1, p. 289].

Food and labour were shared ungrudgingly within the community. A Temiar individual possessed only a few personal items, highly treasured and carried wherever he went in a small rotan (rattan) basket called an ambang; for the rest, food and labour were communal [1, p. 289]. Baker observed that the Temiars spared their women carefully: a pregnant woman carried nothing beyond her own burden, and other women had only the lightest loads [1, p. 287].

The Temiars travel mainly by river and are very skilled in taking rafts over dangerous rapids, though they are very seldom able to swim, managing at most a few scrambling dog strokes [1, p. 287]. On the Sungai Ber, they had built a large, well-constructed fish trap of the type known as meriang, the principle of which is to drive fish onto a series of sloping platforms that are then heaved above water; species taken included sebarau, klah, kerai, kendrap, and lampan [1, p. 290].

Evening life centred on song and talk. At Penghulu To’ Jagor’s ladang, Baker witnessed a party that lasted until 5 a.m., with singing and dancing continuing all night. The orchestra consisted of a series of bamboos tapped against a log, giving a bass or treble note. A man would sing the first line and hold the last note while the line was repeated by the women, though other songs were sung in unison. The songs varied greatly in character: sometimes a solemn incantation taken seriously by all, sometimes a jolly noisy song with rousing chorus, and at other times a plaintive wailing with “a feeling of the abandonment of death in it” [1, p. 291]. The men’s dancing, with slow exact stamping movements, was not unlike the Malay zapin dance; the women’s dances consisted mainly of a graceful posturing of body and arms, with symbolism relating to life, love, and birth [1, p. 291].

Bamboo Raft Construction

The Temiar bamboo raft represents a distinctive technology of riverine transport. G.W.H. Davison, a zoologist at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, documented the full construction sequence and indigenous terminology for rafts built on the Sungai Nenggiri in Ulu Kelantan, observing six rafts constructed on 8 June 1988 by men from Kampung Blau [2]. The rafts are built from giant bamboo (Gigantochloa scortechinii), rotan lashing, and hardwood poles, with a two-layered hull, a raised seating platform, and a distinctive steering apparatus at each end [2].

Each raft used 32 culms of Gigantochloa scortechinii (minimum diameter 7 cm), arranged in two layers of twelve, plus two side-rails and four platform culms [2]. The six observed rafts measured between 9.8 and 12 metres in length and 1.05 to 1.25 metres in breadth; a 10-metre raft required sixteen men to lift from the water [2]. Load capacity was approximately 450 kg, accommodating two steersmen, four passengers, and baggage, with the waterline just lapping the upper bamboo layer and passengers seated 15 cm above the water [2]. Construction took two men most of a day, though much of this time was spent searching for suitable materials [2].

A notable analytical observation concerns navigation: the raft is steered broader-end first, even though the narrower end is shaped into a more streamlined V. Because the raft drifts with the current, relative water movement is minimal, rendering the oars useless as passive rudders; they function instead as paddles, used in concert at bow and stern to keep the raft parallel to the flow. Davison also noted that the oars can be employed as true sculls, but this is arduous and ineffective owing to the narrow sweep angle [2]. Two distinct oar-blade types were documented: a simpler square blade (approximately 30 cm) made from a slotted split internode, and a more shaped blade (approximately 25 × 40 cm) incorporating multiple pairs of bamboo splints with internodal tissue between them [2].

The service life of a raft was approximately one month, provided it remained in water to prevent drying and splitting; in practice, rafts were used briefly because giant bamboo was scavenged for building at downstream settlements [2]. Davison’s account records the Temiar terminology for each structural component—lapik baliq, lapik matek, tekok, balei, alisok, lauong, singkang, pelanting, jeramoh, dayung, gandar, selar, uling—providing a lexicon for a technology that has no written tradition [2].

Naming Systems

Rodney Needham’s 1964 note examines the naming conventions of the Temiar (referred to in the literature as “Temer”), arguing that their combination of age-order proper names and death-related terms constitutes a system of comparative interest. Needham worked through secondary sources—principally Williams-Hunt (1952) and Slimming (1958)—to establish what was known of Temiar naming practice [3].

The Temiar masculine age-order series comprises nine names: Long, Alang, Ngah, Pandah, Itam, Anjang, Udah, Busu, and Alig; the feminine series comprises seven: Andah, Teh, Uda, Ngah, Anjang, Alig, and Itam, with four names shared between both series [3, p. 122]. Needham demonstrated that at least four of the Temiar names (Long, Alang, Ngah, and probably Pandah, Itam, and Busu) are cognate with or identical to the Malay timang-timangan (lullaby) series recorded by Wilkinson, suggesting the age-order names were adopted from Malay rather than being aboriginal [3, pp. 122–123].

In addition to the proper-name series, Slimming recorded three Temiar death-related status terms applied to women: Abaie (still-born), Amoid (died in infancy), and Chelar (died before adolescence), plus Manang for a woman who has never borne a child [3, p. 123]. The teknonym Litau, assumed by a man to indicate that his first-born child is male, places emphasis on both birth order and sex, and Slimming noted that individuals may change their name two or three times over several years [3, p. 124]. Needham observed that the coexistence of these death-related terms with the age-order proper-name series raises the possibility of a systematic relationship between birth-order and death-order naming that remains undocumented [3].

Research and Documentation

The Temiar have been the subject of sustained scholarly attention in the Society’s journal from the 1930s through the 1980s, with the character and focus of that attention shifting markedly over time. The earliest substantial account, Baker’s 1933 reconnaissance, was framed explicitly as a colonial administrative exercise: the expedition was directed by the Governor of the Federated Malay States to assess a potential east-west access route linking the Cameron Highlands road system to the East Coast Railway, and the ethnographic observations served the practical purpose of evaluating the area for agricultural settlement and transport infrastructure [1, p. 288]. The Temiars were assessed in terms of their capacity for “development” within the colonial economic order, and Baker concluded by recommending that “adequate reserves between Kuala Cherus and the upper ridges of the Ber will be set aside for their use if they stick to their present form of life” [1, p. 293].

Prior to Baker’s journey, several other travellers had visited the area: Mr. Bellamy-Brown had passed from the Telum Valley in Pahang down the Sungai Mering; Mr. Edney-Hayter had descended the Sungai Brok; H. D. Noone, Government Ethnographer of the F.M.S. Museums Department, had spent many weeks visiting the more important Temiar ladangs and composed a vocabulary of the Temiar and other Sakai dialects; Mlle. Cuisinier, a French researcher, had investigated the Sakai tribes in Ulu Kelantan; and Dr. L. W. Evans, Chief Medical Officer of Kelantan, had visited the area around Jeram Gajah and succeeded in persuading many Temiars to be vaccinated [1, p. 288]. Noone’s map, with minor additions, formed the basis of Baker’s route documentation [1, p. 288].

By the 1960s, the focus of scholarship had shifted from administrative reconnaissance to theoretical and comparative analysis. Needham’s 1964 note on Temiar naming conventions drew exclusively on published secondary sources and framed itself as a structured research agenda, identifying precisely what gaps existed and what a government anthropologist or local resident would need to establish [3]. The article contributed to the comparative study of naming systems in small-scale societies of Southeast Asia, extending Needham’s 1959 typology of mourning-terms to a Peninsular Malay context and testing its boundaries against a society with documented Malay cultural influence [3].

The 1989 article by Davison represents a further shift in methodological emphasis: grounded in direct fieldwork observation and informant instruction from residents of Kampung Blau, it provides a detailed technical account of raft construction and indigenous terminology, extending the comparative framework established by Abbott (1907), Evans (1930), and Carey (1976) with a focus on the construction process itself and the internal logic of the design rather than on the raft as a cultural symbol [2]. The practical use of the rafts was already declining at the time of observation, making the documentation an act of recording a material culture practice at risk of loss [2].

MBRAS Sources

• A.C. Baker (1933). An account of a journey from the Cameron Highlands to the east coast railway and of a visit to the Temiar settlements in the valleys of the Sungai Blatop and S. Ber. JMBRAS 11(2): 288–295
• G.W.H. Davison (1989). Manufacture and terminology of Temiar bamboo rafts. JMBRAS 62: 105–106
• R. Needham (1964). Temer names. JMBRAS 37: 121–125

References

1. A.C. Baker (1933). An account of a journey from the Cameron Highlands to the east coast railway and of a visit to the Temiar settlements in the valleys of the Sungai Blatop and S. Ber JMBRAS 11(2): 288–295. Read on JSTOR
2. G.W.H. Davison (1989). Manufacture and terminology of Temiar bamboo rafts JMBRAS 62(1): 105–106. Read on JSTOR
3. R. Needham (1964). Temer names JMBRAS 37(1): 121–125. Read on JSTOR