The oldest known Malay ethnoscience: A case study in Malay ethnobotany based on a 7th century Talang Tuwo inscription and Malay proverbs / Shaharir Mohamad Zain

The importance of ethnosciene in establishing a heritage of science for an ethnic group or a nation is discussed in the context of knowledge transfer and indigenisation of knowledge in Malaysia. Highlighting the heritage of science for an ethnic group or a nation is just a part of developing material and content in the indigenisation of knowledge. This article discusses a small but important aspect of the issues in the ethnosciences particularly the Malay ethnobotany during the ancient Malay civilization before Islam came into the Malay World. A brief history of the Malay civilization is reviewed so as to give a proper perspective of this study in the context of the present Malays. It is shown that based on the Malay inscription in an ancient Malay Kingdom, The Kingdom of Campa, Vietnam which is dated 4th century A.D the Malays were linguistically rich even in ancient times. Based on an inscription dated 606 Syaka (or 684 A.D) at the Talang Tuwo , Palembang, Sumatera, it is found that the Malays at that time were already highly civilized and had put great importance on their environment. The inscription describes a botanical garden known as Srisetra which contained various species of plants which include wuluh (= buluh), haur (=aur), pattum and ityewamadi. The latter two plant species were not known until today. It is believed that this is the oldest Malay inscription which describes a botanical garden. Malay scholars, especially Malaysians, are challenged to find the present scientific name for the four bamboo species above and also to prove or otherwise the difference between bamboo and semambu. We conducted an exhaustive study of the Malay ethnobotany in the Malay proverbs based on Abdullah and Ainon (1993), and two authoritative Malaysian-Indonesian Malay dictionaries, namely Kamus Dewan<br /> (1994) and Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia (1995). It is found that the Malay proverbs contains about 120 species of plants, and at least twelve of the species have yet to be identified scientifically. These are amra, ara, buluh, beluluk, kejai, kerakap, malakama, piama, ruyung, semambu, talang and tolas. Furthermore many of the species of our, betik, buluh, cendawan, cili, damar, delima, kacang, keladi, kelapa, nyiur, pandan, rumput, tebu and ubi are also yet to be identified scientifically.