Tilang Kamerau

[Mytribalworld]

Originally Posted by Royston

At home and bored while recuperating from some form of " plague"
Reading through past posts and trying to match up some of my collection with some of yours. I.E " playing the name game "

Have re-read Banks article on Hoplology of Sarawak.

Due to the (dubious ?) miracle that is Facebook I recently made contact with an ex workmate who is now married and living in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah.
His wife, her friends and some of his workmates ( guys from Sabah, Sarawak and Brunei ) have been trying to find a meaning for " Tilang Kamerau" for me.

Too much success so far, there appears to be too many variants within the different languages and dialects of Borneo. None of them can agree with each other even to the extent of Sabah Ibans saying it is Sarawak Iban and vice versa.

Does anyone here know exactly which dialect the words are ?
Or even know the meaning.
Regards
Roy

Hi Roy,

As far as I know the only source who ever mentioned the name ' Tilang Kemarau ' was Schelford who described a sword of Batang Lupar origin which he donated to the Pitt Rivers museum. ( Heppell, two curators a classification of Borneo swords and some swords in the Sarawak museum collection) Banks followed the description of Schelford so if I understand correctly the whole naming of swords of the Tilang Kemarau type started with this one and only case. Maybe that was correctly described but its a quite narrow base.....


I just found and old Malay-Dutch translation for the word " Kamarau" what simply means " fraai"or "helder" Transl to English " fine" or " bright".
That seems to me a quite more plausible translation than " dry season" or is the word kamerau referring to the brightness of the sky when it means dry season ?

source translation : Tijdschrift voor Neerland's Indië jrg 9, 1847 (1e deel) [volgno 2]

regards,

Arjan

[A. G. Maisey]

Thanks for that additional information Arjan.

In respect of "kamerau", this is a very common word in Malay, Indonesian, and Javanese. True, the vowels are inconsistent, but this is a characteristic of these languages, especially Javanese, which is linguistically classified as a non-standardised language. It would surprise me if "kemarau" in variant spellings was not found in a multitude of languages and dialects throughout SE Asia.

Common usage of the word is "musim kemarau" = "dry season".

[Mytribalworld]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

Thanks for that additional information Arjan.

In respect of "kamerau", this is a very common word in Malay, Indonesian, and Javanese. True, the vowels are inconsistent, but this is a characteristic of these languages, especially Javanese, which is linguistically classified as a non-standardised language. It would surprise me if "kemarau" in variant spellings was not found in a multitude of languages and dialects throughout SE Asia.

Common usage of the word is "musim kemarau" = "dry season".

so if I understand correctly nowadays its always a two word combination with the word "musim " ( season) ?

regards,

Arjan..

[A. G. Maisey]

No Arjan, not always, but it is the usage that you hear most, simply because the year is split in two:- dry season and wet season. The word does have other applications, but the opportunity for those applications is very much less than reference to half of each year.

[Mytribalworld]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

No Arjan, not always, but it is the usage that you hear most, simply because the year is split in two:- dry season and wet season. The word does have other applications, but the opportunity for those applications is very much less than reference to half of each year.

Ok, so due to that most used combi I think its the modern Bahassa for dry season while the old Malay style is " bright /nice season"

[A. G. Maisey]

I know of three usages for the word "kemarau".

1) to be without money, to be broke; in my experience this is not a common usage

2) dry, when talking about something that was wet, but is now dry, such as the bottom of a boat when it was previously covered with water

3) dry, when applied to the weather, commonly a season, when it becomes "musim kemarau", but it can also be applied to a dry spell occurring at a time other than the dry season.

I have never once encountered its use to refer to "bright" weather, in fact, the dry season in SE Asia is very, very far from being "nice". The coming of the monsoon is something that is welcomed, not its disappearance.

It is true that the way in which a word is understood can change, but for the word "kemarau" to have been understood as "bright" seems to me to be improbable. Still, anything is possible.

One further note on this matter.

The standard reference for Classical Malay, ie, the Malay used in the old literary works, is Wilkinson's Malay-English Dictionary.

Wilkinson lists "kemarau" as:- "a drought, a period of continuous absence of rain", his reference is the Hikayat Abdullah

[Mytribalworld]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

I know of three usages for the word "kemarau".

1) to be without money, to be broke; in my experience this is not a common usage

2) dry, when talking about something that was wet, but is now dry, such as the bottom of a boat when it was previously covered with water

3) dry, when applied to the weather, commonly a season, when it becomes "musim kemarau", but it can also be applied to a dry spell occurring at a time other than the dry season.

I have never once encountered its use to refer to "bright" weather, in fact, the dry season in SE Asia is very, very far from being "nice". The coming of the monsoon is something that is welcomed, not its disappearance.

It is true that the way in which a word is understood can change, but for the word "kemarau" to have been understood as "bright" seems to me to be improbable. Still, anything is possible.

One further note on this matter.

The standard reference for Classical Malay, ie, the Malay used in the old literary works, is Wilkinson's Malay-English Dictionary.

Wilkinson lists "kemarau" as:- "a drought, a period of continuous absence of rain", his reference is the Hikayat Abdullah

yep, I understand that only Malay- English translations are taken serious
anyway, below the Malay- Dutch translation ( . its from 1847 , the Wilkinson is from 60 years later, I don't know if that could make a difference.....