Melanau

They speak the language of melanau , the West-Austronesian group of the Austronesian family . The language is divided into dialects and dialects. The Indonesian language is spoken in some parts.

Melanau - Sunni Muslims , part of the melanau adheres to traditional beliefs, there are Protestants. In the traditional worldview of melanau, death means that the soul leaves the human body and travels to the world of the dead ^[1] .

Other researchers, in particular Dr. Stefan Morris, argue that death in the understanding of melanau is not associated with leaving the body by an immortal soul, but with the destruction of the bonds between the components of a living human being. These four components are the law (nyawa), emotions (naseng), the physical body (badan, bieh), and the shadow, otherwise called the Double (bedua, medua) ^[2] . In the European scientific tradition, the shadow is often called the soul , based on its fundamental immortality, however, it has little in common with the Christian concept of the soul. According to the religious views of melanau, the universe consists of many worlds inhabited by various creatures and separated by borders that were previously overcome, but now can only be crossed by some spirits or shamans . All the many inhabited worlds are called dunya.

In the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, the territory inhabited by the melanau belonged to the Sultans of Brunei; from the end of the 19th century until 1963 - as part of the English colonial possessions. The cultural influence over the centuries of the Malays, the Islamization of the Melanau led to the loss of ethnic identity, to the assimilation of the Melanau by the Malays.

Manual farming (dry rice, tubers, legumes, fruit trees), sago production; fishing on the coast. The manufacture of traditional glass beads of magical significance, hunting and animal husbandry is also widespread. Most modern melanau works in the commercial production of sago and rubber plantations.

Traditional beliefs included the cult of the spirits of nature, the cult of the supreme deity demiurge Ala-tala (Allah taala); shamanism (shamans, a-bayu, were mostly women). The developed funeral ritual has survived - a burial in coffins in the form of a boat, accompanied by recitative singing of funeral hymns and cockfights.

The division into 5 endogamous social groups (bangsa) is preserved only in etiquette. Modern melanau is dominated by a small family. A related organization is bilateral. The traditional Melanau society consisted of independent villages consisting of two to three long houses inhabited by several hundred people, related by kinship or marriage. Society was built hierarchically, and each community in the house was led by a group of aristocrats. Having come under the control of James Brook in the 19th century, the melanau began to settle in single-family houses of the Malay type, in smaller villages. After World War II, melanau was influenced by the British until Malaysia and Serawak gained independence in 1963 ^[3] .

The main food is boiled rice, saga porridge, boiled saga starch, fruits. Meat (chicken, non-Muslim population - pork) - on holidays.

• Ann L. Appleton Acts of intergration // Borneo Research Cuncil: 127-129
• Ann L. Appleton Acts of intergration // Borneo Research Cuncil: 128-129
• The Oya Melanau, Kuching (Sarawak), by Stephen Morris. Malaysian Historical Society (Sarawak Branch), Hajah Dona Babel, c / o Department of Education, Wisnia Yayasan Sarawak, Kuching, Sarawak: x + 421 pp. 24 × 15 × 2.6, illustr. & maps, paperback, 1991.

• Malaysian languages - article from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (inaccessible link)
• “Peoples and religions of the world” - Melanau
• Ethnologue