The Bernam slab-graves
R.J. Wilkinson, a British colonial administrator and former District Officer of the Dindings, published this article in 1939 to challenge the prevailing “Greater India” interpretation of Malayan prehistory. Arguing from comparative evidence in South Sumatra and local ethnography, he contended that the Bernam slab-graves were the product of an indigenous megalithic civilisation predating the Christian era, not the work of Indian traders.
Summary
Wilkinson’s article begins by responding to F.W. Douglas’s suggestion that the slab-graves at Slim in the Bernam river valley indicated Indian presence in Ptolemy’s time. Wilkinson dismisses this on the simple ground that Hindus and Buddhists practised cremation and did not build slab-graves or deposit beads in them. He then pivots to the Sumatran evidence: slab-graves of the same type, containing beads, broken pottery, and occasionally iron or bronze tools, have been found across Sumatra and Java, sometimes far from the coast and therefore unlikely to be the work of passing traders. The finest example was found at Pagar Alam in the Pasumah country, associated with a megalithic culture featuring carved stone reliefs of beardless men riding elephants, driving buffaloes, and beating kettledrums resembling the bronze “Moulie” drum in the Tongking Museum. Wilkinson draws on the work of Dutch scholars—Kern, Brandes, Callenfels, and van der Hoop—to establish that this civilisation predated Indian contact and possessed organised government, irrigation, sugarcane cultivation, and astronomical knowledge.
The dating argument rests on Han dynasty artefacts. Callenfels had noted a small bronze drum of the type depicted on the Pasumah monuments found at Sukabumi in Java, comparable to drums buried in Han-dynasty tombs in Tongking. Wilkinson reports that two bronze tools of Han type and many pieces of Han pottery have since been found in Southern Sumatra, including one piece dated to the fourth year of the Han Emperor Yuan-ti (B.C. 45), making it the oldest dated relic in Indonesia. A full-sized bronze drum of the Pasumah type was found on the Danau Gadang tea-estate by Korinchi lake, along with beads, broken pottery, and bronze artefacts similar to those in slab-graves. Wilkinson also considers the social identity of the grave-inhabitants, comparing the Bernam finds with de Morgan’s slab-graves on the Caspian coast (which contained multiple skeletons, weapons with men, and trinkets with women, suggesting ritual sacrifice of a chief’s womenfolk) and with Senoi burial customs, before concluding that the graves likely belonged to persons of distinction such as priests or rulers.
The article’s final section turns to geography and maritime trade. Wilkinson reconstructs the ancient Perak River delta, arguing that the river once had two mouths—the northern near Bruas and the southern near Changkat Mantri—placing the slab-grave sites at the “Southern Gate” to the Perak valley. He traces the southward migration of the river mouth through siltation from the Sunting Baloh hills, supported by old maps (Mercator 1569, Visscher 1617), Malay tradition, and personal testimony from Captain Berkeley. He further argues that the coasting trade was conducted by local Malay vessels managed by pawang (shipmasters), and that the larger ocean-going junks of the Han period would have found shelter at the mouths of the Jambi and Palembang rivers, giving rise to the later emporia of Melayu and Sri Vijaya.
Key Findings
- A Han dynasty pottery shard dated to the fourth year of Emperor Yuan-ti (B.C. 45), found on the border between Jambi and the Korinchi country, is the oldest dated relic in Indonesia (p. 135).
- Approximately 180 exhibits in the Batavia Museum derive from the Danau Gadang tea-estate near Korinchi lake, where a full-sized bronze drum of the Pasumah relief type, beads, broken pottery, and bronze artefacts were all recovered from a single spot (p. 135).
- Five bronze drums of the Pasumah type have been found in Sumbawa, two more in the Lampong country, and one at Danau Gadang, confirming the wide geographic spread of the megalithic culture (p. 135).
- The Perak River once discharged through two mouths: a northern one near Bruas (recorded on Mercator’s 1569 map and Visscher’s 1617 map) and a southern one near Changkat Mantri, which placed the Bernam slab-grave sites directly on the coast as the “Southern Gate” to the Perak valley (pp. 141–143).
- Coastal land in the district is rising at a rate of 4 to 6 inches per 25 years, meaning the slab-grave sites were considerably closer to the sea in antiquity than they are today (p. 142).
- Kedah Peak, Bukit Mertajam, and Bukit Jugra were all islands in the prehistoric period, and the shipbuilder at Bukit Mertajam erected a Buddhist inscription in A.D. 400 (p. 142).
Conclusion
Wilkinson’s definitive takeaway is that the “Greater India” thesis has led British scholars to underestimate the depth and sophistication of indigenous civilisation in the Malay Peninsula. The slab-graves, the megalithic monuments at Pengkalam Kempas, and the avenues of menhirs at Malacca cannot be explained by Indian settlers or “wild tribesmen”; they demand recognition of a local civilisation of considerable antiquity. He calls on British researchers to emulate the Dutch in studying this indigenous past through all available methods—archaeology, linguistics, folklore, and physical geography—rather than relying exclusively on the fragmentary Indian literary and epigraphic record.
Context
- Wilkinson wrote as a serving colonial administrator (C.M.G., formerly D.O. of the Dindings and previously in the Sierra Leone Protectorate), and his argument is framed partly as a correction to what he sees as an English scholarly bias toward Indian influence at the expense of Indo-Chinese and indigenous explanations.
- The article draws on the Raffles Museum Bulletin (Callenfels, December 1937), van der Hoop’s monograph on megalithic monuments in South Sumatra, de Morgan’s L’humanité préhistorique, and Winstedt’s History of the Malay Peninsula, but its primary evidential base is comparative field observation and local oral testimony rather than a single archival collection.