Bugis
Encyclopedia
The Bugis are the most numerous of the three major linguistic and ethnic groups of South Sulawesi
, the southwestern province of Sulawesi
, Indonesia's third largest island. Although many Bugis live in the large port cities of Makassar
and Parepare, the majority are farmers who grow wet rice on the lowland plains to the north and west of the town of Maros
. The name Bugis is an exonym which represents an older form of the name; (To) Ugi is the endonym.
The Bugis speak a distinct regional language in addition to Indonesian
, called Basa Ugi, Bugis or Buginese
. In reality, there are a several dialects, some of which are sufficiently different from others to be considered separate languages. Bugis belongs to the South Sulawesi language group; other members include Makasar, Toraja, Mandar and Enrekang, each being a series of dialects.
and Lake Sidenreng in the Walennae Depression in the southwest peninsula of Sulawesi. It was here that the ancestors of the present-day Bugis settled, probably in the mid- to late second millennium BC. The area is rich in fish and wildlife and the annual fluctuation of Lake Tempe (a reservoir lake for the Bila
and Walennae rivers) allows speculative planting of wet rice, while the hills can be farmed by swidden or shifting cultivation
, wet rice, gathering and hunting. Around AD 1200 the availability of prestigious imported goods including Chinese and Southeast Asian ceramics and Gujerati print-block textiles, coupled with newly discovered sources of iron ore in Luwu
stimulated an agrarian revolution which expanded from the great lakes region into the lowland plains to the east, south and west of the Walennae depression. This led over the next 400 years to the development of the major kingdoms of South Sulawesi, and the social transformation of chiefly societies into hierarchical proto-states.
. The Bugis played an important role in defeating Jambi and had a huge influence in Sultanate of Johor. Apart from the Malays, another influential faction in Johor at that time was the Minangkabau. Both the Bugis and the Minangkabau realized how the death of Sultan Mahmud II had provided them with the chance to exert power in Johor. Under the leadership of Daeng Parani
, the descendants of two families settled on the Linggi and Selangor rivers and became the power behind the Johor throne, with the creation of the office of the Yang Dipertuan Muda (Yam Tuan Muda), or Bugis underking.
, and the Bugis built elegant, ocean-going schooners in which they plied the trade routes. Intrepid and doughty, they travelled as far east as the Aru Islands
, off New Guinea
, where they traded in the skins of birds of paradise and medicinal masoya bark, and to northern Australia, where they exchanged shells, birds'-nests and mother-of-pearl for knives and salt with Aboriginal
tribes. The products of the forest and sea that they brought back were avidly sought after in the markets and entrepots of Asia, where the Bugis bartered for opium
, silk
, cotton
, firearms and gunpowder
.
The Bugis sailors left their mark and culture on an area of the northern Australian coast which stretches over two thousand kilometers from the Kimberley to the Gulf of Carpentaria
. Throughout these parts of northern Australia, there is much evidence of a significant Bugis presence. There are the remains of Bugis buildings on islands, Bugis words have become part of the Aboriginal languages and Bugis men and their craft feature in the indigenous art of the people of Arnhem Land
.
Each year, the Bugis sailors would sail down on the northwestern monsoon
in their wooden pinisi
. They would stay in Australian waters for several months to trade and take trepang (or dried sea cucumber
) before returning to Makassar on the dry season off shore winds. These trading voyages continued until 1907.
As Thomas Forrest
wrote in A Voyage from Calcutta to the Mergui Archipelago, "The Bugis are a high-spirited people: they will not bear ill-usage...They are fond of adventures, emigration, and capable of undertaking the most dangerous enterprises."
s or fishermen. Women help with the agricultural cycle and work in the homes. Some women still weave the silk sarong
s worn on festive occasions by men and women.
Most Bugis live in stilted houses, sometimes three meters (9 ft) or more off the ground, with plank walls and floors. During growing seasons some family members may reside in little huts dispersed among the fields.
Many of the marriages are still arranged by parents and ideally take place between cousins. A newlywed couple often lives with the wife's family for the first few years of their marriage. Divorce is a fairly common occurrence, particularly when the married couple are still in their teens.
The Bugis' diet consists mainly of rice, maize, fish, chicken, vegetables, fruit and coffee. On festive occasions, goat is served as a special dish. Visual and performing arts, such as dance and recitations of epic poetry have largely been replaced by modern entertainments such as karaoke
.
The Bugis recognize five separate genders. These include makkunrai, calabai, calalai, oroané, and bissu
.
, Dato Ri Bandang, Dato Ri Tiro, and Dato Ri Patimang spread Islam in South Sulawesi. The Bugis converted from indigenous animistic practices and beliefs to Islam
. A few west coast rulers converted to Christianity in the mid-16th century, but failure by the Portuguese at Malacca
to provide priests meant that this did not last. By 1611, all the Makasar and Bugis kingdoms had converted to Islam, though pockets of animists among the Bugis To Lotang at Amparita and the Makasar Konja in Bulukumba persist to this day. Practices originating in the pre-Islamic period also survive, such as ancestor veneration and spirit possession, though these practices are less inclined to be performed by the current generation, as most are now educated in Islam.
South Sulawesi
South Sulawesi is a province of Indonesia, located on the western southern peninsula of Sulawesi Island. The province is bordered by Central Sulawesi province to the north, South East Sulawesi province to the east and West Sulawesi province to the west...
, the southwestern province of Sulawesi
Sulawesi
Sulawesi is one of the four larger Sunda Islands of Indonesia and is situated between Borneo and the Maluku Islands. In Indonesia, only Sumatra, Borneo, and Papua are larger in territory, and only Java and Sumatra have larger Indonesian populations.- Etymology :The Portuguese were the first to...
, Indonesia's third largest island. Although many Bugis live in the large port cities of Makassar
Makassar
Makassar, is the provincial capital of South Sulawesi, Indonesia, and the largest city on Sulawesi Island. From 1971 to 1999, the city was named Ujung Pandang, after a precolonial fort in the city, and the two names are often used interchangeably...
and Parepare, the majority are farmers who grow wet rice on the lowland plains to the north and west of the town of Maros
Maros
Maros is a town in the South Sulawesi province of Indonesia; it is the capital of the Maros Regency. Nearby is a prehistoric cave that has been submitted to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative list.- References :...
. The name Bugis is an exonym which represents an older form of the name; (To) Ugi is the endonym.
The Bugis speak a distinct regional language in addition to Indonesian
Indonesian language
Indonesian is the official language of Indonesia. Indonesian is a normative form of the Riau Islands dialect of Malay, an Austronesian language which has been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for centuries....
, called Basa Ugi, Bugis or Buginese
Buginese language
Buginese is the language spoken by about four million people mainly in the southern part of Sulawesi, Indonesia.-History:The word Buginese derives from the word Bahasa Bugis in Malay. In Buginese, it is called while the Bugis people are called...
. In reality, there are a several dialects, some of which are sufficiently different from others to be considered separate languages. Bugis belongs to the South Sulawesi language group; other members include Makasar, Toraja, Mandar and Enrekang, each being a series of dialects.
Homeland
The homeland of the Bugis is the area around Lake TempeLake Tempe
Lake Tempe is a lake in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. It is located at ....
and Lake Sidenreng in the Walennae Depression in the southwest peninsula of Sulawesi. It was here that the ancestors of the present-day Bugis settled, probably in the mid- to late second millennium BC. The area is rich in fish and wildlife and the annual fluctuation of Lake Tempe (a reservoir lake for the Bila
Bila River (Indonesia)
Bila River is a river in northern Sumatra, Indonesia.It is a tributary of the Barumun River....
and Walennae rivers) allows speculative planting of wet rice, while the hills can be farmed by swidden or shifting cultivation
Shifting cultivation
Shifting cultivation is an agricultural system in which plots of land are cultivated temporarily, then abandoned. This system often involves clearing of a piece of land followed by several years of wood harvesting or farming, until the soil loses fertility...
, wet rice, gathering and hunting. Around AD 1200 the availability of prestigious imported goods including Chinese and Southeast Asian ceramics and Gujerati print-block textiles, coupled with newly discovered sources of iron ore in Luwu
Luwu
The Kingdom of Luwu is the oldest kingdom in South Sulawesi. In 1889, the Dutch Governor of Makassar placed Luwu’s heyday between the tenth and fourteenth centuries AD, but offered no evidence. The La Galigo, an epic poem in an archaic form of the Bugis language, is the likely source of Braam...
stimulated an agrarian revolution which expanded from the great lakes region into the lowland plains to the east, south and west of the Walennae depression. This led over the next 400 years to the development of the major kingdoms of South Sulawesi, and the social transformation of chiefly societies into hierarchical proto-states.
In Malay peninsular and Sumatra
The conclusion in 1669 of a protracted civil war led to a diaspora of Bugis and their entry into the politics of peninsular Malaysia and SumatraSumatra
Sumatra is an island in western Indonesia, westernmost of the Sunda Islands. It is the largest island entirely in Indonesia , and the sixth largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 with a population of 50,365,538...
. The Bugis played an important role in defeating Jambi and had a huge influence in Sultanate of Johor. Apart from the Malays, another influential faction in Johor at that time was the Minangkabau. Both the Bugis and the Minangkabau realized how the death of Sultan Mahmud II had provided them with the chance to exert power in Johor. Under the leadership of Daeng Parani
Daeng Parani
Daeng Parani was one of the five Bugis brothers from Makassar, Sulawesi who established political dominance over the royal houses of Peninsular Malaysia...
, the descendants of two families settled on the Linggi and Selangor rivers and became the power behind the Johor throne, with the creation of the office of the Yang Dipertuan Muda (Yam Tuan Muda), or Bugis underking.
In northern Australia
Long before European colonialists extended their influence into these waters, the Makasar, the BajauBajau
The Bajau or Bajaw , also spelled Bajao, Badjau, Badjaw, or Badjao, are an indigenous ethnic group of Maritime Southeast Asia...
, and the Bugis built elegant, ocean-going schooners in which they plied the trade routes. Intrepid and doughty, they travelled as far east as the Aru Islands
Aru Islands
The Aru Islands are a group of about ninety-five low-lying islands in the Maluku province of eastern Indonesia. They also form a regency of Indonesia.-Geography:...
, off New Guinea
New Guinea
New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...
, where they traded in the skins of birds of paradise and medicinal masoya bark, and to northern Australia, where they exchanged shells, birds'-nests and mother-of-pearl for knives and salt with Aboriginal
Indigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....
tribes. The products of the forest and sea that they brought back were avidly sought after in the markets and entrepots of Asia, where the Bugis bartered for opium
Opium
Opium is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy . Opium contains up to 12% morphine, an alkaloid, which is frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade. The latex also includes codeine and non-narcotic alkaloids such as papaverine, thebaine and noscapine...
, silk
Silk
Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The best-known type of silk is obtained from the cocoons of the larvae of the mulberry silkworm Bombyx mori reared in captivity...
, cotton
Cotton
Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. The botanical purpose of cotton fiber is to aid in seed dispersal....
, firearms and gunpowder
Gunpowder
Gunpowder, also known since in the late 19th century as black powder, was the first chemical explosive and the only one known until the mid 1800s. It is a mixture of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate - with the sulfur and charcoal acting as fuels, while the saltpeter works as an oxidizer...
.
The Bugis sailors left their mark and culture on an area of the northern Australian coast which stretches over two thousand kilometers from the Kimberley to the Gulf of Carpentaria
Gulf of Carpentaria
The Gulf of Carpentaria is a large, shallow sea enclosed on three sides by northern Australia and bounded on the north by the Arafura Sea...
. Throughout these parts of northern Australia, there is much evidence of a significant Bugis presence. There are the remains of Bugis buildings on islands, Bugis words have become part of the Aboriginal languages and Bugis men and their craft feature in the indigenous art of the people of Arnhem Land
Arnhem Land
The Arnhem Land Region is one of the five regions of the Northern Territory of Australia. It is located in the north-eastern corner of the territory and is around 500 km from the territory capital Darwin. The region has an area of 97,000 km² which also covers the area of Kakadu National...
.
Each year, the Bugis sailors would sail down on the northwestern monsoon
Monsoon
Monsoon is traditionally defined as a seasonal reversing wind accompanied by corresponding changes in precipitation, but is now used to describe seasonal changes in atmospheric circulation and precipitation associated with the asymmetric heating of land and sea...
in their wooden pinisi
Pinisi
The Pinisi is a traditional Indonesian two masted sailing ship. It was mainly built by the Konjo tribe, a sub-ethnic group of Bugis-Makassar mostly residents at the Bulukumba regency of South Sulawesi but was and currently used widely by the Buginese and Makassarese mostly for transportation and...
. They would stay in Australian waters for several months to trade and take trepang (or dried sea cucumber
Sea cucumber (food)
Sea cucumbers are marine animals of the class Holothuroidea used in fresh or dried form in various cuisines.The creature and the food product is commonly known as bêche-de-mer in French, trepang in Indonesian, namako in Japanese and in the Philippines it is called balatan...
) before returning to Makassar on the dry season off shore winds. These trading voyages continued until 1907.
As Thomas Forrest
Thomas Forrest (navigator)
Thomas Forrest was an English navigator who worked for the British East India Company.-Life:He appears to have served for some time in the Royal Navy, and to have been a midshipman in 1745. Passages in his own writings show that he was employed in Indian waters from 1753 almost continuously...
wrote in A Voyage from Calcutta to the Mergui Archipelago, "The Bugis are a high-spirited people: they will not bear ill-usage...They are fond of adventures, emigration, and capable of undertaking the most dangerous enterprises."
Lifestyle
Most present-day Bugis now earn their living as rice farmers, traderMerchant
A merchant is a businessperson who trades in commodities that were produced by others, in order to earn a profit.Merchants can be one of two types:# A wholesale merchant operates in the chain between producer and retail merchant...
s or fishermen. Women help with the agricultural cycle and work in the homes. Some women still weave the silk sarong
Sarong
A sarong or sarung is a large tube or length of fabric, often wrapped around the waist and worn as a kilt by men and as a skirt by women throughout much of South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, the Horn of Africa, and on many Pacific islands. The fabric most often has woven plaid or...
s worn on festive occasions by men and women.
Most Bugis live in stilted houses, sometimes three meters (9 ft) or more off the ground, with plank walls and floors. During growing seasons some family members may reside in little huts dispersed among the fields.
Many of the marriages are still arranged by parents and ideally take place between cousins. A newlywed couple often lives with the wife's family for the first few years of their marriage. Divorce is a fairly common occurrence, particularly when the married couple are still in their teens.
The Bugis' diet consists mainly of rice, maize, fish, chicken, vegetables, fruit and coffee. On festive occasions, goat is served as a special dish. Visual and performing arts, such as dance and recitations of epic poetry have largely been replaced by modern entertainments such as karaoke
Karaoke
is a form of interactive entertainment or video game in which amateur singers sing along with recorded music using a microphone and public address system. The music is typically a well-known pop song minus the lead vocal. Lyrics are usually displayed on a video screen, along with a moving symbol,...
.
The Bugis recognize five separate genders. These include makkunrai, calabai, calalai, oroané, and bissu
Bissu
The Bugis people of Indonesia divide their society into five separate genders. Two are analogous to male and female, and the remaining three are not easily comparable to Western ideas of gender.-Bissu:...
.
Religion
In the early 17th century, the Minangkabau ulemaUlema
Ulama , also spelt ulema, refers to the educated class of Muslim legal scholars engaged in the several fields of Islamic studies. They are best known as the arbiters of shari‘a law...
, Dato Ri Bandang, Dato Ri Tiro, and Dato Ri Patimang spread Islam in South Sulawesi. The Bugis converted from indigenous animistic practices and beliefs to Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
. A few west coast rulers converted to Christianity in the mid-16th century, but failure by the Portuguese at Malacca
Malacca
Malacca , dubbed The Historic State or Negeri Bersejarah among locals) is the third smallest Malaysian state, after Perlis and Penang. It is located in the southern region of the Malay Peninsula, on the Straits of Malacca. It borders Negeri Sembilan to the north and the state of Johor to the south...
to provide priests meant that this did not last. By 1611, all the Makasar and Bugis kingdoms had converted to Islam, though pockets of animists among the Bugis To Lotang at Amparita and the Makasar Konja in Bulukumba persist to this day. Practices originating in the pre-Islamic period also survive, such as ancestor veneration and spirit possession, though these practices are less inclined to be performed by the current generation, as most are now educated in Islam.
Sea exploration
The seafaring Bugis of southern Sulawesi traded throughout the Indonesian archipelago. The Makasar, Bajau, and Bugis often set up permanent settlements, either through conquest or diplomacy, and marrying into local societies. Most Bugis have traditionally been rice farmers.See also
- Bugis of SabahBugis of SabahThe Bugis people are one of the ethnic groups of Sabah, Malaysia. The population is mainly concentrated on the east coast of Sabah, especially the districts within the Tawau Division...
- Bugis in Singapore
- Demographics of IndonesiaDemographics of IndonesiaThe population of Indonesia according to the 2010 national census is 237.6 million, with 58% living on the island of Java, the world's most populous island....
- Demographics of MalaysiaDemographics of MalaysiaThe demographics of Malaysia are represented by the multiple ethnic groups that exist in this country. Malaysia's population, , is estimated to be 28,250,500, which makes it the 44th most populated country in the world. Of these, 5.72 million Malaysians live in East Malaysia and...