A. Cense Sanggalea, an old word for "Chinese" in South Celebes In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 111 (1955), no: 1, Leiden, 107-108 This PDF-file was downloaded from http://www.kitlv-journals.nl Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 08:27:25AM via free access KORTE MEDEDELINGEN SANGGALEA, an old word for "Chinese" in South Celebes. Under the word tambako (tobacco) in B. F. Matthes' Macassar-Dutch and Bugis- Dutch dictionaries mention is made of an especial kind of this luxury called tambako sanggalea (Mac.) and itjo' sanggalea (Bug.) which Matthes translates with „Chinese tobacco". The Bugis name I found also in a manuscript, belonging to a bundie of papers in the Library of the Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde at the Hague, which seem to have formed part of the collections of A. Ligtvoet, a Civil Service Officer, who died in 1879. On pag. 5 of this manuscript (registered K) is recorded the story of a prince of Bone, who was killed by his father King La Patau' Matinroë ri Nagaulëng (1696-1714), because he was suspected of having been addicted to the use of opium or itjo' sanggalea. Obviously by this name the same kind of imported tobacco is meant as the one which was still in great favour in our days with the population of the Mandar coast, where it was called tjina. The word sanggalea occurs further in Ligtvoet's edition of the Macassar diary of the Kings of Goa and Tallo' in Bijdragen Kon. Inst. Ser. IV, Vol. 4 (1880) where under the year 1724 is noted on p. 67: 1724. 24 Agusutu 5 Dolo Ha'dji, allo kammisC. Namate Kapitang Sanggalea. 16 Nowembere', 29 Sappara', allo kammisi. Nanampa nitarawang Kapitang Sanggalea. Ligtvoet's Dutch translation on p. 202 runs in English version: 1724, August 24, the 5th of Dhu '1-Hidjdja, Thursday: the Captain of the Chinese (in Macassar) dies; November 16, the 29th of Safar, Thursday: finally to-day the Captain of the Chinese is buried. And in a Bugis manuscript in the collection of the Bataviaasch Genootschap at Dja- karta, No Vt. 138 — copy of a Bone Ms dating from the 18th century —, on p. 31 particulars are given about several foreign weights, among which also a sanggalea one. During the years of my residence in Macassar from 1930-1941 I never heard the Chinese spoken of as Sanggalea; this group of inhabitants was always called by the name, by which they are generally known in Indonesia: Tjina. While the word Sanggalea, as far as I know, does not occur in other languages of Indonesia, in literature dealing with the Philippines a denomihation for Chinese is found, which possibly is related to the Mac.-Bug. word, viz. "Sangley". One only needs to have a look in Blair and Robertson's monumental work "The Philippine Islands" (see the passages referred to in the index s.v.v. "Sangley" and "Chinese") or to skim the paragraphs on the Philippines in Purcell's book "The Chinese in Southenst Asia (Oxford Un. Pr. 1951) to see that Sangley is the special word by which the Chinese are named in those regions since the 16th century already. On p. 585 Purcell quotes Laufer's opinion about the meaning of Sangley, which. we find in his article "The relations of the Chinese to the Philippine Islands" in Smithsonian Misc. Coll. (1907) Vol. 50 Part. 2, p. 268, where we read "The Chinese were called by the Spaniards Sangleyes, derived from a word of the Amoy dialect, "seng-li", trade. Each Chinese had to pay a head-tax "tribute", not to a Spanish official, but to his "capitan", who was a kind of mayor over the parian, called capi- tan de sangleyes, or alcalde mayor, and enjoyed a high authority among his country- men... Sangley means only "trader, merchant", not "class of merchants", as Schott makes out in a note to Jagor's Reisen in den Philippinen (p. 272), nor "itinerant dealers", as Blumentritt (Chinesen auf den Philippinen, p. 18) explains after Bar- rantes." — In a note on the same page Purcell adds a reference to Professor Boxer's article in JRAS Pts 1 & 2 (1950) "A late Sixteenth Century Manila Ms" where (p. 43) Leaf 204 of that manuscript is described as portraying a £Èg d> Sangley couple, Fukienese traders "constantly coming" to Luzon. Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 08:27:25AM via free access 108 MEDEDELINGEN. That the word has been incorporated in the vocabularies of several Philippine languages is evident from the book of E. Arsenio Manuel "Chinese elements in the Tagalog language" (Manila 1948), in which the author not only discusses derivations from Chinese words in Tagalog, but also tries to demonstrate, — not very convincingly however — a possible Chinese origin of several Austronesian roots. We learn from his list that Sanglay is found in Tagalog as well as in Igorot. Manuel trans- lates the word with "Chinese, Chinaman, Chinese half-breed, or Chinese mestizo" and adds that in Batangas the word has also the connotation, "ill-bred or stupid person". A ka-ang derivation, kasanglaydn, means "place, where many Chinese reside". In Ifugao, where a change of initial s into h is regular, the word hanglay is found. According to Manuel the original Chinese fonn is shaing (merchant) - lay (traveller); he also quotes Fr. Francisco Pinol y Andreu, Diccionario China-Espanol del dialecto de Amoy, Chiang-chiu, Chodn-chiu, Formosa, etc. (Hongkong 1937), wheré are given the words sieng-li, commerce, traffic, business: sieng-li lang, mer- chant, trafficquer, tradesman, and the Mandarin Chinese shang1-jen, merchant. Recommending the question of the original meaning of the Chinese word to the attention of the Sinologues we should consider a moment the supposed identity of Sanglay and Sanggalea. Here are some difficulties. As Mac.-Bug. representative of Sanglay one should aspect to find *Sangalè or with assimilation of ng and 1 *Sallè (as is the case with Mac. balie, Bug. belle, Zingiber Cassumunar Roxb, besides Malay bangle or bunglai). One can however point to an instance of the occurring, one besides the other, of forms with (long) nasal and with prenasalized media in the first unstressed syllable of a polysyllabic word, viz. the name, by which the Angel of Death (Ar. mal'ak al maut) is known in Macassar country: Mangngalakalamau' and Manggalakalamau'. Change of g and ng is also not unknown in Mac. f.i. in the word for "eight": sagantudju (from *siagang tudju, litt. "with seven"; cf. the Bugis word for "eight", occurring besides the usual arua: lê'bi pitu, litt. "more than seven"), besides sangantudju. Change of media and prenasalized media, also occurs: danggang "trade" besides Malay dagang. For the final a I do not know an explanation; perhaps Sinologues could teil, if there is a local variant of sanglay which, adopted in South Celebes, might result in a Mac-Bug. fonn with a. Should it be allowed to take the relation between the Philippine and South Celebes names for granted, then we might take this as an indication that most of the Chinese, who lived in Celebes in the 18th century (and perhaps earlier) originated from the same province of China, where the majority of the Philippine-Chinese did come from, viz. Fukien. There might be also a possibility that the Chinese who settled in Celebes came there after having stayed for some time in the Philippines. Early mention of Chinese has not yet been found in Mac.-Bug. literature. The first communication on Chinese in Macassar I know is to be found in the still unedited manuscript (copies are in the archives at DJakarta and the Hague) of the memoir composed by the Dutch commander, admiral Cornelis Speelman, for his successor (1668) of which a typewritten copy, thoroughly collated by Prof. Dr W. Ph. Cool- haas and Dr H. J. de Graaf, is at my disposal. Speelman mentions several Chinese by name and says about their community "they will undoubtedly be the most useful inhabitants, now and in the future, because this people has managed to procure always vegetables and similar refreshments, even in the worst circumstances". That the relations with China, either direct or indirect, date from much earlier times is witnessed by numeroüs finds of Chinese pottery in the Mac.-Bug. country. According to E. W. van Orsoy de Flines in his "Gids voor de keramische ver- zameling van het Kon. Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen" (Guide for the ceramic collection of the R. Batav. Society), Batavia (Djakarta) 1949, there have been found in South Celebes specimens of Chinese pottery from a period a9 early as the Han-dynasty 206 a. C. to 220 p. C. A. A. CENSE. Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 08:27:25AM via free access.