main trade sea routes from India via the Strait of Malacca to the Malay Archipelago and north to China and Japan.
Textiles as Shared Links
Because of the fragile, perishable nature of cloth, combined with Malaysia’s hot, humid tropical climate, there are no extant examples of handwoven textiles on the Malay Peninsula before the mid-nineteenth century. However, historical accounts point to a very long tradition of weaving with native vegetable fibres such as pineapple, plantain and palm, and locally grown homespun cotton in the peninsula (and Sabah and Sarawak) as part of a broader textile history in Southeast Asia.
Such accounts, especially those penned by European arrivals, also reveal the continual exchange of cloths, artefacts and other cultural phenomena from outside and within the region. The Portuguese apothecary Tomé Pires, for instance, tells of how some sixty varieties of Indian cloths of differing styles and qualities were available in 1515 in Melaka, once the greatest commercial centre in Southeast Asia but never a significant centre for the origination of arts and crafts. These cloths were traded by Gujarati merchants from northwest India whose ships also carried luxury cloths such as brocades and gold-embroidered velvets obtained from merchants of the Middle East. In the Sejarah Melayu (Malay Annals), which chronicles the rise and fall of the Melaka empire, it is said that the fourth ruler of Melaka, Sultan Mansur Shah (r. 1458–77), being disappointed with the cloths he had ordered from India, sent his envoys back with specific designs that were then created to his satisfaction.
The foreign textiles imported along the ‘water silk route’, together with silk yarns and gold threads from China and India, undeniably inspired and influenced the evolution of uniquely peninsular Malay textiles, in particular silk kain limar (kain means ‘cloth’), based on the sophisticated double ikat technique employed in Indian patola silks, the intricate gold thread-decorated kain songket and, most prestigious of all, the luxurious combination kain limar songket. Checked woven silk introduced by Bugis traders from the Riau Archipelago or the Celebes also enriched the repertoire of Malay handwoven plaid or checked fabrics.
Indian Patola
Of all the imported textiles, the gossamer-like patola cloths from northwest India were to have the greatest influence on textile construction and decoration in the east coast states of the Malay Peninsula and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Unlike in India where these high-status cloths were usually woven in sari dimensions (1 by 5.5. or 6 metres), patola exported to Southeast Asia were mostly in sizes appropriate to local untailored apparel, including sarongs and breast wrappers, shoulder cloths and shawls, head cloths and waist sashes. Although, as in India, their use was largely confined to those of high social position, their design repertoire was to influence not only the patterning produced by the actual process of constructing woven textiles such as kain limar and kain songket on the wooden frame loom, but also the surface decoration of finished cloth such as batik, which, unlike the exclusive woven cloths mentioned above, was made for rulers and commoners alike and was worn by almost all the communities in the region.
The geometrically patterned double-ikat weaves (patola) traded by Gujarati merchants from northwest India from as early as the thirteenth century had a profound influence on the designs of batik sarongs.
The repeat-patterned centrefields on patola, comprising interlocking stylized floral motifs or eight-rayed rosettes set in a modified circle, square or hexagon framed by borders and end panels—the latter often including the ubiquitous triangular bamboo shoot motif (pucuk rebung)—had a profound effect on the design register of woven and printed textiles of Southeast Asia and was undoubtedly patola ’s greatest legacy. In the course of the eighteenth century, block-printed and painted cotton Indonesian imitations of the expensive, prestigious Indian patola imports provided a cheap alternative for customers. Known locally as kain sembagi, the patterns on these cloths show a close relationship to those appearing on Indonesian and, later, Malaysian batik, especially floral rosettes and lattices and triangular end borders.
Traditional Attire
The earliest visual images we have of Malaysia, dating from the beginning of the nineteenth century, are romanticized, sometimes fanciful watercolours and sketches of panoramic views from hills, picturesque waterfalls, elegant mansions, ordered lawns and gardens, perhaps with a few tiny figures, and the occasional thatched Malay village set in a coconut grove. Human interest was minimal. After the arrival of photography in the Malay Peninsula in the early 1860s, Eurocentric images of street scenes, colonial buildings and Europeans predominated, usually for commercial reasons—they were bought by Europeans. The life of the average Malaysian was rarely captured in those days, apart from commercially driven touristic images taken by professional photographers of ‘posed natives in traditional dress’, among them rubber tappers, tin miners, rickshaw pullers, street hawkers and local beauties. This remained so until well into the twentieth century.
The floral rosettes, lattices and triangular end borders on eighteenth-century block-printed and painted cotton Indonesian imitations of India patola, known locally as kain sembagi, were to influence patterns on Indonesian and later Malaysian batik.
The exception was the Malay ruling class (the sultans and rajas and their families and followers) and well-to-do traders and towkays who could afford to engage a photographer or visit a studio, and the British colonial government who desired a photographic record of their periodic conferences with the local rulers. The photographs of the Malay rulers from the 1860s, whether taken with their families, retainers and followers or with British colonial officers, show how traditional Malay dress documented by early foreign travellers such as Ma Huan, Tomé Pires and Duarte Barbosa had survived with few alterations. The nobles are clad in a variety of loose and fitted tunics, loose trousers, long and short sarongs, shoulder cloths and headdresses fashioned from locally handwoven silk kain limar and kain songket and cotton plaids, as well as imported patola. Unlike in Indonesia, batik was never a central element in Malay court dress and so batik clothing is almost always absent in these photographs.
Up until the 1890s when the Sultan of Johor deemed such attire immodest, women would wear the full-length sarong with a separate cloth, called a kemban, tied around their breasts, leaving the shoulders exposed. With the spread of Islam and the influence of Arabic and Indian modes of dress, the sarong came to be worn with a loose knee-length tunic (baju kurung) or a neat-fitting jacket-type tunic, also knee-length (kebaya labuh), made of embroidered voile or organdie or lace yardage, secured down the front with ornamental brooches. For formal wear, the tailored tunics and sarongs of women of noble birth were generally made of handwoven kain songket, with a matching shawl or selendang. Commoner women who could afford it would wear a batik sarong with a baju kurung fashioned from a different and softer fabric.
Up until the 1890s, before it was deemed immodest, Malay women often wore a bodice wrapper (kemban) with their sarongs.
Studio portraits of ‘posed natives in traditional dress’ were common subjects for postcards in the early twentieth century.
Sultan Abdul Samad of Selangor (r. 1857–98) and his entourage in a variety of handwoven cotton and silk tunics and sarongs.
The Enduring Sarong
Azah Aziz, Malaysia’s doyenne of traditional costumes, believes that the sarong is by far the oldest costume in the Malay World and was worn by both men and women on formal and informal occasions
