R. Barnes The Majapahit dependency Galiyao In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 138 (1982), no: 4, Leiden, 407-412 This PDF-file was downloaded from http://www.kitlv-journals.nl Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 01:40:37PM via free access R. H. BARNES THE MAJAPAHIT DEPENDENCY GALIYAO The Nagara-Kërtagama contains a list of dependencies of Majapahit, including a series of islands in eastern Indonesia, among them Galiyao, Sumba, Solot and Timur (Pigeaud 1962, IV:34). In a recent article van Fraassen (1976) has attempted to identify Galiyao with Kalao between Saleier and Flores. I shall try on the contrary to bring Galiyao back to the Solor Archipelago. It speaks in favor of van Fraassen's choice that the name Galiyao appears in a sequence of locations around Sulawesi, but as Pigeaud notes, the list has no order, six remote islands being mentioned for example between Solor and Timor. Kalao does indeed look more like Galiyao than do the designations of any of the other islands or districts which have been suggested from time to time, and the strength of van Fraassen's position lies in this similarity. •There are a number of early sources for Galiyao. In a bopk first published in 1563, Galvao (1944:85, 170) describes the first Portu- guese expedition to the Moluccas as sailing in 1511 from Java past Bali, Lombok, Sumbawa, Solor, Galao and Malua (Alor). Pigafetta's account and chart of the "Victoria's" voyage into the Ombai Strait in January 1522 refer likewise to Galiau between Zolot and Mallua. Galian appears between Sulawesi and Buru'on the world map by Ortelius of 1564. Mercator's world map of 1569 places Galiam, Noceuamor and Zolot incorrectly in the Flores Sea to the north of Alor (Vatter 1932, table 7). His later map of the Far East joins Pantar and Lembata into one island named Louballo (Mercator 1636). Linschoten's map of Asia shows Guliam between Solor and Alor, but like other sources of the time does not distinguish Lembata from Pantar (Lin- schoten 1579-1592). The early map makers copied one another, and all those showing Galiyao derive one way or another evidently from Pigafetta. Dr. R. H. BARNES, a social anthropologist lecturing at the University of Oxford, from which university he also holds a doctorate, is the author of Kédang: A Study of the Collective Thought of an Eastern Indonesian People, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974. Dr. Barnes may be contacted at the Institute of Social Anthropology, 51 Banbury Rd., Oxford, England. Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 01:40:37PM via free access 408 R. H. Barnes In a letter from Appolonius Schotte after his capture of the Solor fort in 1613 (Tiele and Heeres 1886, 1:19), Schotte mentions that the natives of Gallejau, like those of other locations, had come under the Dutch as a result of the Dutch taking the fort and that all had been in truce with the Portuguese when the Dutch had first appeared. Tiele remarks that he cannot determine whether Galiyao means Lomblen (Kawela). Galvao's Portuguese editor Visconde de Lagoa also identifies Galao with Lembata (known to him as Lomblen). In a letter of lst May 1614, A. van de Velde mentions Galiou as a place near Solor (Tiele and Heeres 1886:89). I agree with van Fraassen that Galiyao is not Lomblen. Kawela, a district in the southwest of Lembata, has never appeared significantly in history, and its name is phonetically unlike Galiyao. In 1733 Lucas de Santa Catharina (p. 793) described three islands a short distance from the island of Levoleba (i.e., Lembata) named Levotolo, Queidao and Galiao, contiguous with each other and separated by small straits. Their population were gentiles (that is, pagans) and Moors (Moslems), but there were no Christians. Never- theless, they maintained commercial ties with Larantuka. Santa Catharina derived his account of the islands almost word for word from a manuscript of 1624-1625 (see Fundagao ... 1956:487-488). Although the document contains a strange mixture of fact and confusion, it gives evidence about several features of local life for which there are no other sources until the nineteenth or even the twentieth centuries. Levotolo is Ilé Api, northeast of Lewoleba on Lembata. "Queidao" represents the first historical mention of Kédang, at the east end of Lembata. Following this sequence, Galiao would be the next location farther east. Beyond these three islands, four leagues (12 miles) distant, lies the island of Malua.1 Le Roux (1929), in a publication not cited by van Fraassen, has made the best effort to locate Galiyao. It is his opinion that Galiyao is the same as Kayan on Pantar. On 8th January, 1522, the "Victoria" sailed (according to Francisco Albo's diary) between two islands called la Maluco and Alicura, which Le Roux — quite correctly in my opinion — interprets as the two coastal trading villages Maloku on Pantar and Kalikur (in Kédang language Aliur) in Kédang on Lembata. Pigafetta mentions Galiyao among the islands they passed on that day and his map shows three large islands called Zolot, Galiau and Mallua. It has repeatedly been confirmed that Malua is a region of Alor (van Lynden 1851:329; Le Roux 1929:11; Vatter 1932:25; Bouman 1943: 484); so there can be no doubt on that score. However, there are two large islands (Lembata and Pantar), not just one, between Solor and Alor. Le Roux's explanation is that the two Tidorese pilots who were guiding the "Victoria" through the archipelago took their bearings across the sea on the isolated and prominent volcano Komba north Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 01:40:37PM via free access The Majapahii Dependency Galiyao 409 of Lembata as they sailed from the direction of Buru. They then took their vessel through the Alor Strait between Lembata and Pantar and sailed along the south coasts of Pantar and Alor seeking protection from the strong storms which are always present at this time of year. Approaching the Alor Strait from the northeast, the crew of the "Victoria" would not have seen Solor,. which would have been com- pletely obscured by Lembata. Doubtless "Zolot" was for the Tidorese pilots a term which could be usied for the general area to the west of Kalikur. In Le Roux's interpretation, Pigafetta's Zolot is actually Lembata and his Galiau is Pantar. Le Roux has travelled through this area himself, as have I, and his interpretation is based on reliable practical experience. It may be said in passing that the. form "Solot" in the Nagara- Kërtagama and the equivalent in Pigafetta is more accurate than the version "Solor" later adopted by the Europeans and now fixed in common usage. The name of this island comes through an h/s shift from holot, as in Lamaholot (place of the people). If one looks at Pigafetta's map, which Le Roux reproduces (adjacent p. 10), one can see that the relationships between "Zolot", "Galiau" and "Mallua" correspond to those of Lembata, Pantar and Alor, pro- vided that one knows them only through an approach from the north- east and that the top of the chart is to the west, the right side to the north. Le Roux makes just these assumptions in his reconstructed map (facing p. 56). Pantar, likè "Galiau", is as Le Roux notes the only island surrounded by smaller .islands, and he satisfactorily identifies the latter with Pulau Komba, Lapan-Batang, Pulau Rusa, and Tere- weng. He leaves only one small dot of land near "Zolot" unexplained, and that might well be Pulau Suangi at the western tip of Lembata. It is interesting that Lembata is the only island recognizable from its shape on Diego Ribeiro's map of 1529 (Le Roux, facing p. 59), al- though again the island has been rotated so that the west end has been drawn to the north, the east to the south. I have never heard any mention of Galiyao by speakers of the Kédang or Lamaholot languages or by Europeans resident in the islands; and I am fairly sure that it is not applied to Lembata. I am less certain though that Le Roux is correct in holding that Galiyao (or Galian, if we assume a scribe's error) is a version of Kayan or Kayian, a village in west Pantar. The fac't that Schotte also referred to Galiyao would suggest that that pronunciation was the correct one. But for whatever reason, Galiyao appears to have been a name for Pantar, and the early map makers, not knowing that there were two islands in the area, did not bother to distinguish this Galiyao from Lembata. Leitao (1948:66), working from Portuguese sources, includes it in a list of various designations for Pantar: Galiao, Putar, Alao, Galécio and Pondai. Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 01:40:37PM via free access 410 R. H. Barnes Van Fraassen suggests that we may learn more from native sources. Indeed there is local confirmation of Javanese trade on Pantar. Ac- cording to the Nagara-Kërtagama, an expedition set out from Java in 1357 to subdue Dompo, Sumbawa. This force sailed further to the east, where it conquered many localities, including Larantuka, Flores (Brandes 1897:128, Le Roux 1929:47). Kayan, Maloku, Blangmerang and Bernusa are a series of settlements on the north coast of Pantar which speak a language akin to that used on Solor. The population is mostly of foreign origin, made up of a mixture of trading peoples from Ternate, Ujung Pandang, Buton and the nearby Solor or Lamaholot area.