Punan Madai or Punan Mandai

Map showing locations of Nanga Raun, in Upper Mandai River and the actual Dabai River in Punan ethnohistory

Long ago during the rule of Saghe’ (Sagek) the Punan in the Tatau River was raided by Magindanau pirate (lanon). The attack sent the people scattered away. Those who could make it to the shelter at the Buan hill (abode hill) were safe. But in the chaos, they lost several girls including the granddaughter of Saghe’. They presumably have been taken away by the pirates. For safety, the entire communities were told by Saghe’ to temporarily shelter further upriver; some sheltered between the Davai and Ava River, others further up the Anap at Muput, Takan – so they were beyond the reach of raiding pirates.

The oral history of Punan in Kakus

There has never been a Punan Bah group found in Kapuas basin and certainly not in the Mandai River. And as everything related to the term “Punan”, there is always an element of speculation involved - after all there are still very little known about these people. In 1976, Ida Nicolaisen suggested a linked between the Punan Bah and the Dayak Pangin Orung Daán in the Upper Kapuas River. This theory is grounded on a sketchy evidence -  stories told by Punan Bah villagers and an unnamed Indonesian immigrant at Pandan. 

The stories appear related to an actual historical event, a pirate raid in Tatau basin during the reign of Punan paramount chief Saghe' circa in the seventeenth century. A published version of these stories could be found in the Sarawak Gazette 1877 and 1878. In a bizarre twist, this pirate raid story evolved to become the story of “Abah” and “Punan Madai” – a Punan Bah group supposedly found in the Upper Mandai River (see Nicolaisen 1976, 75-81). Nicolaisen articulated [quoted verbatim henceforth for clarity], 

That the Punan Bah were affected by the general insurrection in the coastal areas is beyond doubt. They learned what was going on, and still tell stories of the Lanun. The Lanun or Illanun of Mindanao were among the foremost of the pirates…. One may still hear some Punan Bah claim that they are more afraid of the Lanun than anything else. How deeply the general insurrection affected inland groups like the Punan Bah is hard to tell. It is a possibility that the situation in the 17th century was such that it actually the Punan Bah leave the lower regions of the Bah River to take refuge at the upper. The myth of Bua who at one time found but fighting people at the Lower Bah River, could be a reflection of these events (Nicolaisen 1976:77).

Nicolaisen then added, 

While the Punan Bah lived at the upper reaches of the Bah River they were according to their own traditions, at one time plagued by internal fights, fight that made some of them flee and take up residence as far away as the Baram, Mahakkam, and the Kapuas rivers. Contact was not upheld between these groups and those who remained in the Rajang area… (Nicolaisen 1976: 77).

The group according to Nicolaisen, migrated to the Mandai basin circa in the early nineteenth century by the Baleh River (Nicolaisen 1976:80). Leading the migration was a man, an aristocrat named Abah  who was the son of Payou. After settling in the Madai River, they called themselves as “Punan Madai”. Nicolaisen’s informant  at Pandan told her they were the only group in the Upper Madai River,  

In 1930ies, when the informant left the area, the Punan Bah were the only group living at the Upper Madai River. They called themselves after the River, i.e. the Punan Madai, but at times they used the label Punan Pangin. The individual longhouses, lovo [lovuk], had names after tributaries of the Madai River. All in all there were the following seven settlements: Lovo Raun, Lovo Tanjung, Lovu Aroang, Lovo Kanavang, Lovo Sarai, Lovo Ubiang, and Lovo Labangan (Nicolaisen 1976:78).

Nicolaisen speculated the Punan Bah group may have been the people identified by J.J.K Enthoven as “Pangin Dajak” once settled at “Nangah Raoen” [Nanga Raun - see map]. 

It is this fourth and last group that is of interest to us in this connection. The Pangin Dajak, Enthoven tells, live in two settlements, one at Nangah Raoen which in fact consists of two longhouses with 39 and 18 doors, respectively, and another at Toekoeng Aoe (Goeroeng Berowang), a longhouse with 15 doors. Enthoven’s account, however, does not allow us to establish a relationship between this ethnic group and the Punan Bah. Interestingly the word Pangin is used by the Punan Bah in Sarawak as a ritual term for the Rajang. When the Punan Bah in Kalimantan use the term as proper name, they may thus denote themselves by their river of origin, the Rajang. If this is the case, then the term Pangin cannot, as Enthoven thought, be taken as evidence of the affiliation of this group with ethnic in the Melawi (Nicolaisen 1976:79).

Later, Enthoven’s account was found accurate, the Pangin Dajak (Pangin Dayak) indeed culturally related to the people of Melawi River (Wadley 2000; King 2012; 1985; 1982). Meanwhile. The word ‘pangin’ in Punan refers to asam embang, scientifically as Mangifera pajang, whereas the term ‘Punan pangin’ actually is a pejorative and does not refer to the Rejang River specifically. 

Notwithstanding, the Punan Mandai tale later evolved; some had fervently asserted the Semukung (Uheng or Hangai) was a formerly nomadic Punan Bah (Bernard Sellato 1994; 2002; Soriente 2015). And more recently Nicolaisen’s story has been taken as evidence that Punan Bah was origin in the Kapuas basin (see for example Kato et al. 2014; 2020). 

An attempt to get Nicolaisen clarification on the story recently illuminated interesting facts. She admitted had not diligently verified the veracity of the story by visiting the Mandai River and confessed to have little knowledge of the history of the Punan in Tatau and Kemena basins . 

Nicolaisen also apparently unaware that “Aba” (Abah) in the oral history actually refers to “rivers” and that “Madai” was known as “Dabai” – both are tributaries of Kakus River not the mighty Kapuas River in West Kalimantan. She had been led to believe the Punan in Tatau and Kakus were recent migrants only settled in these areas only “four or five generations ago” (Nicolaisen 1977), when in fact, they are “autochthonous groups” (Margaret Tillotson 1994). 

Sadly, this innocuous story had been argued in the Malaysia High Court as evidence that Punan Bah were immigrants in the Rejang. Medik Kojan, a retired school teacher, avid Punan historian who represented the Punan Ba villagers protested. He argued Nicolaisen reconstruction had a fair amount of inaccuracy, distortion and misrepresentation of Punan ethnohistory. Medik certainly knew better because he had first hand knowledge of what transpired during the early days of Nicolaisen field works among the Punan in the mid-1970s.