I'm from West Sumatera, a province in Indonesia. West Sumatera has some ethnics, but the most dominant is Minangkabau. Have you heard about Minangkabau? What do you know about it?
I'll try to explain about MInangkabau based on what I've got from many discourse class.
WHAT is Minangkabau? It should be the first and the most imporant thing to be questioned in order to understand it comprehensively.
Definiting Minangkabau still brings different opinions to a number of expert even Minangkabau's people. Some of them say that Minangkabau terminology came from a folklore or legend story. The story told that once upon a time there is a competition of kabau (buffalo) in the land that now called West Sumatera.
The competition happened between a rich man from Java Island and local people. This moment occured because of a fighting to owning that land. Obviously, that is a gambling. However, the local people had to serve the rich man at the challenge. Thus, local people arranged some strategies to be win.
They got information that rich man would use a big buffalo at the match. The local people surprised because they didn't own a setara buffalo. Fortunately, they agreed each other that the match would be held after a certain weeks. The spare time was used by the local people to search an effective strategy.
They decided conscripting a young buffalo. It was too small for the rich man's buffalo. However, the tiny buffalo was modified by some certain methods to be strong at the match. There were iron horns on its head. The baby buffalo was also forbidden drinking milk from its mother for a week.
Well, the rich man's buffalo was female. The match was begun, a big buffalo versus a tiny-baby buffalo. They were not waiting for a long time to see how tiny buffalo attacked the big one's stomach. The tiny looked for the big's breast. Automatically, the iron horns stabbed and frazzled the big's stomach.
The local people won and it resulted a name of 'Minangkabau'. Some people argued that 'win' in Bahasa Indonesia is menang, so Minangkabau's society called menang as minang. So that, the buffalo won was translated into minang-kabau. Yet, some others said that minang term came from the iron horn at the tiny's head. That is the meaning of Minang. There are two opinions in a story.
Another story says that Minangkabau term came from Minanga Tamwa, the capital city of a kingdom. It is Malayu Tua, a kingdom which had ever existed in Sumatera Island in the 7th century. Nevertheless, many people also asserted that the opinion is unsure. It is still like a assumption and needs some additional and deeply research.
There are many things that can be informed about Minangkabau, but in this discourse I just explain about the 'Minangkabau' word. Please subscribe this blog and wait for the next writing. I think that's it, thank you for reading.
