Early Asian Contacts with Australia Peter M. Worsley Past and Present, No. 7. (Apr., 1955), pp. 1-11.

Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-2746%28195504%290%3A7%3C1%3AEACWA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B Past and Present is currently published by Oxford University Press.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/oup.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.

The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

http://www.jstor.org Mon Mar 17 12:11:52 2008

Early Asian Contacts with Australia

MUCH 1NTFKF.ST H k S BECY ZROC'STI, RECENTlY BY THE SC'GGESTIOY

put forward by I'rofessor C. 1'. Fitrgerald that there nlay have been contact betueen Australia .lnd China long before even the earliest of European vojagers touched upon the coastline of Australia1. T h c e ~ i d e n c eadduced by Professor Fitrgerald is a jade image of the god Shou Lao discoveretl in D a m i n in 18'79, four feet underground, wedged in the roots of a ban\an tree, a tree which is not indigenous to Australia. Professor Fit~gerald is not rash enough to state that the finding of a Chinese object necessarily indicates that the object xcas taken to Australia by Chinese, nor that the dating of the period of manufacture of the image as fourteenth century necessarily implies that it a r r i ~ e d in Australia at that time. TVhat he does suggest is that the object had been lying at Daruin for a \cry considerable period of time, long before White contact with Australia. When he goes on to remark, however, that "thc Australian continent . . . apparently remained just as unknomn or . . . neglected . . . bv Asiatics as Europeans" and that the Malays "lacked the I igorous incentkes and the ad\ anced organization which impelled and enabled the peoples of .icestern Europe to sail the distant seas" he is ignoring a eat deal of material on early Asian contacts with Australia, a n x incidentally, a possible clue to the manner in xihich the Shou Lao image might have fou~ld its way to Australia. T h e records of early voyagers to Australia contain frequent references to the activities of Malay voyagers to Australia, particularly hlacassarese and Buginese ftons the hfacassar region of the southern Celebes. These people mere great voyagers and trader$, and used to make annual \isits to the coast of lustralia, being blol+n dox\n on the north-west ~rtollsoonal xtind, and being brought back again with the south-east tr'ide winds. T h e .lustralian coast from D a m i n ~uest\vards was known to the Zlacassarese as Kai Dja\\ai, and the coast eastward5 a5 far 6 s the Gulf of Carpentaria as Marege or hlarega. I n addition to the written recordr dealing mith this trade, much adtlitional n~aterialis a ~ a i l a b l efrom the field of anthropology4. id. The aborigines of Arnhenl Land and adjoining region5 ha1 e 1 i ~ recollections of the \lacassare5e ~ h i c h 'Ire of Lgrcat balue i n rup plenlenting the con\ en tional :+I itten ?our(pi of lsislo~ In eastern Arriliem Land, nlolcoler. the aborigilie5 artbquite categorical in their statements that the Macassarese were preceded bv

PAST AND PRESENT

another people they term the Baijini. These people were definitely different from the later Macassarese, though like the Macassarese, they came for the purpose of collecting trepang ( t ~ , che-demer), a sea-slug which abounds in the shallow waters off the Arnhem Land coast. When dried, the trepang is used as a delicacy in soup, particularly in China, and reached the great Chinese market via such entrepdts as Timor Laut, Koepang, Macassar, etc. Even as late as the beginning of the 1989-43 "a1 the trade in trepang for Canton still flourished in northern Australia. T h e Baijini had an advanced technolog) : they possessed handlooms, were agriculturalists, and built huts during their stays in Australias. One of the more interesting comments made about the Baijini is a reference to their light-coloured skins. Whilst it is possible that these people may have been Chinese, the trade in trepang was usually carried out by non-Chinese, the Chinese middlemen coming into the picture at Koepang and other such markets. Fitzgerald suggests that any Chinese voyages would most likely have been scientific and exploratory expeditions rather than trading expeditions. T h e Baijini, then, may have been another Indonesian people, and not necessarily Chinese. T h e written historical records of Macassarese and Bugineye enterprise go back to 17686. Other eighteenth-century writers mentioned the existence of this profitable trade in brief notes', but the first detailed account came from the pen of Flinders in his now-famous description of his meeting with the Indonesiails in Australian waters, at what is to-day named Malay Road. in north-eastern Arnhem Land, in 18038. T h e fleet which Flinders encountered was commanded h) Pobassoo, and belonged to the Rajah of Boni. Pobassoo toltl Flinders that the voyages to Australia onlv commenced some twenty years beforehand ( i t . about 1783), a statement which was endorsed later by the Dutch Governor at Koepang. Reliable, however, as this date may seem, it is contradicted by the existence of Dalrymple's work. Moreover, the evidence from aboriginal sources suggests that the Macassarese voyages had been taking place over a much longer period of time, and before the Macassarese there were the Baijini. Unfortunately, such archaeo!ogical field-work as has been done in Arnhem Land has thrown no liqht on these problems. Later writers such as Icing, Stokes, McGillivray and others who wrote about the presence of Indonesians in northern Australia give us no clue as to the probable date of inception of these voyages. T h e north-west wind brought the Macassarese to northern Australia about November; they departed again around March. Since they thus spent almost half the year in Australia, and since

F4RI Y 4SIAN COWACTS WITH 4ITSTR4114

the fleet encountered by Flinders numbered some sixty vessels with crews of 20-25 in each vessel, the trepang expeditions can hardly have failed to make a considerable impact on the life of the Australian aborigines, o n their economy and their social organization, a5 well as on their ideas and beliefs. For the Macassarese did not merely establish contact with the aborigines; they em loyed them. T h e work which the aborigines performed ranged Ron1 diving for trepang, smoking and curing the sea-slug, to fishing, building smoke-houses for curing, cutting firewood ant1 digging wells. T h e Arnhem Land aborigines thus became accustomed to economic activities other than their traditional direct appropriation of hunting and collecting long before any other Australia aboriginal group, though, paradoxicall> enough, this region was one of the last t o be integrated into the White economy. Moreover, it must be emphasized that they took part in this work as wage-labourers, a facet of the aboriginal-Macassarese relationships which is generally glossed over, for we are commonly told that the aborigines received "gifts" or "exchanged" the trepang they procured for food, cloth, gin. tobacco, knives and various other cornmodities: in fact. these colnmodities represent w aqes paid in kind. T h e relationship o f he aborigines to the Malax4 was a patriarchal one, as evidenced in the aboriginal extension of kinship terms to the hfacassarese. T h e Rfacassarese themselves also employed this idiom, as the reminiscences of one Macassarese man interviewed in the Celebe? indicate. H e remarked that his father was "like" a brother to i Rangkala, the headman (hoofd) of Daeng Lompo (i.e. Dalimbo, Groote Eylandc)."~ aboriginal standards the visitors were prodigiousl~rich and, at times, liberal with their wealth. The) gave largr present?, particularly to the senior and influential aborigines. and left large quantities of food behind on their departure. In addition, considerable trade took place between the aborigines and the Malays, superficially 5imilar in that it inas turtle-shell, firh. volved the exchange of such natural l>rodr~ctq trepang, pearls and similar coln~nodities collected 13) the aborigines, for food, cloth and similar goods. 111 thiq relationship. the aborigines stood in the position of independent producers. and were selling these comnlodities. not their labour-power. Such products were accumulated even during the absence of the Macassarese, and stored u p until their return the following year.1 Again, the distinction betrzeen these different econornic activities is further obsc~lretf b~ [ h e aboriginal interpretation of these actix ities in terms of theis own categories: they speak of

PAST AND PRESENT

the payment of wages in kind i n terms of their own sharing between members of a co-operative enterprise. T h e introduction of new commoditie~in considerable volume into the aboriginal economy does not appear to have radicall, affected their economic organization. T h e most important of the more durable commodities were tools: metal knives, axes and spear-heads, which partly displaced stone artefacts, and the dugout canoe, which partly displaced the bark canoe. I n neither case did the new artefacts entirely replace the traditional ones, partly because they were not necessarily superior to the old tools for all purposes. T h e bark canoe, for example, light and easily-made, was more portable for inland use, as compared with the heavier sea-going dugout; and whilst the metal axe was a great advance o n the stone axe for wood-work, the old stone knives were quite adequate for many purposes. T h e effect of the new tools was to increase the efficiency of hunting and collecting -the range of exploitative activities, trading and social contact was greatly increased by the possession of the dugout canoebut no radical change in the economy took place. I n the coastal regions of Arnhem Land and the islands off the coast, moreover, the natural richness of the environment in animal and vegetable species useful to the aborigine made the improvements in hunting effected by the new tools less significant, for there were not the same difficulties in obtaining food that faced the aborigines of the less fertile regions." It would appear likely, however, that the introduction of new commodities by the Macassarese, and the considerable volume of such commodities, played a large part in stimulating inter-tribal trade generally in this northern region, as Thomson has pointed out at some length.'Z T h e extent t o which production was increased for the specific purpose of selling shell and other cornmodities to the Macassarese is now impossible to ascertaiil, but although such products as pearls, pearl-shell and turtle-shell might be produced as mere by-products of ordinary hunting activities without entailing much extra effort on the part of the aborigines, specific production for the market also took place, a type of economic activity only slightly in evidence before the advent of the Macassarese. Before that time, the principal stimulus to trade arose from local deficiencies, a typical example being the import of stone suitable for ueapons to Groote Eylarldt from the mainland; many of the objects traded howeler. were of a less directly ultilitarian nature, since in rnost essentials each aboriginal tribe was self-sufficient. This aspect of aboriginal .IT exchange has misled some ~ r i t e r s into speaking of i~ 'ceremonial', 'non.economic', etc,

EARLY ASIAN CONTAC7rS WITH AUSTRALIA

Apart from these important economic effects of Macassarese contact, there were other consequences of their visits to Australia. T h e world-view of the aborigines was greatly widened, not merely by direct contact with the M-alay sailors, but also by first-hand experience of Indonesia itself, since many aborigines took employment in the vessels of the visitors, and thus visited the Celebes, the Aru Islands, Timor, Timor Laut and other parts of Indonesia for quite lengthy periods. During these voyages, moreover, they extended their knowledge of other aboriginal tribes along the coast of Arnhem Land, and thus increased their awareness of their common aboriginal identity vis-Fvis the Malay strangers. T h e Macassarese irnpact is further mirrored in changes in the religious life of the iborigines and in their art. I n The latter sphere, one of the most important effects of contact with the Macassarese was the development of carving in the round, an artform unknown elsewhere in Australia except in that part of the Cape York Peninsula under the influence of the culture of the Torres Straits Islands. Representations of the human form are commonl) found, 5ome of purely secular significance, as in the case of the interesting carving depicting a Japanese ship's engineer who visited Arhhem Land in the nineteen-thirties, others being used in religious ceremonies and as grave-posts.13 Carvings and \+axfigures of animals and other natural species used in totemic ceremonies are also found in this part of Australia and no other. T h e mourning ceremonies, the magical practices and the important religious ceremonies depicting the movements of ancestral beings such as the Djanggawul, Gunabibi and allied ceremonies are all shot through with Macassarese influences, for example, the representation of Macassarese anchors and the deck of a prahu in the mourning ceremonies of north-eastern Arnhenl Land. Much of our knowledge of the details of Macassarese contact and almost all our knowledge of the Baijini comes from the song-cycles associated with the important religious ceremonies. On Groote Eylandt, the totemic system has been modified by the introduction of the Ship totem (mzdjunga, cf. the djoeng of Indonesia), of dehnite Macassarese origin, as the validating myth bears witness, and of the north-west and south-east wind totems. These are the two winds which brought the Macassarese and took them away again each year, and the symbols used by the aboriginal artists to represent these winds clearly derive from the shape of the sails of a Malay prahu in different winds.14 In 1907, the Conimonwealth Government ended the trepang trade with Macassar after a lengthy period of harassing the Malays with customs demands, as a logical consequence of the White Australia policy; contact between aborigine and Malay

was thus sharply broken off. Today, therefore, the most obvious signs of Macassarese influence are a few 1r~donesiaii-type articles of material culture, such as the lolig reed-pipe wit11 metal bowl, the ren~ainsof Macassarese camp-sites with tamarind trees and old trepang-boilers, the dugout canoes, and so on. T h e less iriaterial effects of the contact, however, are still iniportant, i.e. the effects rriarlifest ill art, in social orgaliization, in religio11, and,.as we shall see, in the wa? in whicl-1.the aborigines evaluaie tlie past. I 1 1 spite of this prolonged cu~ltact-over at least 1 2 5 years, and probably for niuch longer--arid in spite of the introduction to Xust.ralia of wage-labour, atid of the strong stilllulus to increased production arid increased trade which the Macassarese contact provided, the effects oil the indigenous ecorioniy of the aborigirles \,$Thy was this so ? were, and are, n~iriirr~al. We have already noted that the new tools did not entirely replace the old; neither did they lead to the supersessioil of hunting and collecting, nor to any great advance in the division of labour. Although there are accounts of the existence of' a8z.i. culture on the lnainlal~doS Xrllhei~iLalid, this work is said tu thenlselves and riot the aborigines. have been done by the U a i j i ~ ~ i The knowledge oi' ~-l~etal-~vcrrking, pot-ntaking,'balncl siniilar crafts was not acquired by the aborigil~es, who were content to acquire goods hosn the Macassarese; only towards the end of the Macassarese period, possibly owing to diminishing supplies, did the natives of Groote Eylandt, for example, begin to makc the. dugout canoe themselves. -Finally, for at least half the year the aborigines carried on their accustomed hunting activities, so that the effect of the Macassarese contact was to some extent conlpartmentalized; even when the Macassarese arrived, not all the men would take emloynlent, whilst the women and children, especially on Groote Eylandt, were carefully segregated from the Malays. Hunting a11d collecting, theli, 1.eniaiued the basic pattern of life for the rtbbrigines. In spite of the stin~ulusto inter-tribal trade, the colume of goods iritroducecl I>) the Macassarese remailled lixnited, so that inter-tribal trade retained its sporadic and limited character. l ' h i s is tirirrorecl ill aboriginal concepts of value, Although the aborigines are quite capable of distinguishing that the ;irnouiit of labour expended and the type of skill required in making a canoe are greater than in iliaking a fishspear, and in fact generally snake sudi estimates, nevertheless the) do 11ot in ptzlctice carr? out exclial~geor1 the basis of a regular series of equivalents, ill which x commodity A can be reckoned as cquivalellt to \. colnmodit) B, r commodity C, and so

I'AKLY ASIAN CONTACTS WITH AUSTRALIA

or!, Even less have they established any particular commodity as a common standard in terms of which other commodities m ~ g h t bc reckoned, and which might be used as a common medium of trade. 'There is no clear evidence that definite and regular equivalents existed even in inter-tribal trade, such as occurred when stone was imported to Groote Eylandt from the mainland. I t has been suggested that this is largely a function of a n economy in which trade and exchange is minimal, irregular, and in which the division of labour is but slightly developed. Even inter-tribal trade varied in volume, in the number of individuals participating, and in the regularity of its occurrence. It was also often a by-product of occasions when social contact was established for other purposes, when advantage was taken of the meeting t o indulge in trade. Nevertheless, it is quite conceivable that even such small-scale and irregular trade as this could lead to the establishment of definite equivalents, and even of recognised media of payment. T h e sinlplistic interpretation of this situation in terms of the "prirnacy" of ceremonial or ritual consideratons over the "econon~ic" ignores the politkul function of much of this ceremonial.16 It would seern that the real reason for the nonexistence of' more advanced methods of estimating value must t ~ csought not solely in the limited importance of trade as a wctor of tlie iota1 economy, but rather in the wider social relarions existing ill a society where poor material equipment and LL low Level of technical development restricts production, and inhibits the differentiation of society. T h e aborigines arrived in Australia with a limited technical equipment, and develop~neritwas greatly hampered by the hostile environment of a country where, even today, settlenlent is principally restricted to a narrow strip round part of the coastline. Under such conditions, society remained essentially small-scale, and relations with one's fellowmen were direct and unmediated. One's social contacts are with close relatives in these tribal groups which rarely excectled 500 and averaged around 250 individuals. Kinship, heref fore, retilaills the dominant idiom in which relations of rlraiiy different kil~tfsmay be expressed. Even today, then, an aborigine has only to ask a relative for something which he needed and which was not being used, and the relative would find it difficult to refuse him, since a bond of close kinship could always be invoked. If the asker was able to give a quid pro quo, he might d o so; if not, he could not be ex ected to give what he had not got, and might delay giving anyt ing in return until a later dace or indeed might never do so. Since everybody in such J society is closely related, there is no chance of accumulating wealth when one's relatives cannot rightly be refused if they are

PAST AND P R E S E ~

in need. I11 addition, there is little that one can do with a surplus of perishable curlsumption goods (storage techniques being limited) except distribute it, thus initiating a series of reciprocal exchanges. T h e writer also found that in exchanges, a fixed price was not insisted upon. An important close relative would not be expected to hand over anything in return f o ~ goods given him; he would at least hand over less than one who could only claim more distant relationship.17 I t will be seen, therefore, that there is little chance of lriore advanced methods of estimating value being used in actual exchange in such a society, where kinship always comes into play:. the importance of kinship and the limited extent of the division of labour (other than the very important sex-divisiori o f labour), and therefore of more developed exchange, are all aspects of the same basic situation-the low level of productive forces. There is one remaining aspect of the Macassarese impact that still remains important today-the attitude of the present-day aborigines towards the Macassarese era. If one listens to aboriginal accounts, one gains the impression that the Macassarese era was a Golden Age, a time when food was given away in vast quantities, when the aborigines had only to ask their Macassarese 'brothers' in order 60 be given unlimited tobacco, cloth, knives, etc. Moreover, they say, we were treated with equality; we ate at the same table, ate the same food, used the same dishes. T h e contrast is plainly between the generosity and democracy of the Macassarese and the parsimony and colour bar of the Whites. How far is this picture of aborigineMacassarese relations correct, and how far is it a n idealization of the past ? I n his discussions with Pobassoo, Flinders was warned to beware of the aborigines, and was told of numerous clashes, in o ~ i e of which Pobassoo himself had been wounded. T h e earliest firsthand account, then, bears witness to the existence of bad relations between Macassarese and aborigines. Flinders himself was involved in clashes with the natives of this region at Morgan island in the Gulf of Carpentaria and also near Point Alexander.18 He was surprised at this hostility, a circumstance not previously noted in the Wellesley Islands to the east, where he commented on the 'timidity' of the 'Indians'. T h e hostile reception in the western Gulf region, which, he remarked, was "so contrary t o all I have known or heard of their countrymen", he attributed correctly to the effects of contact with 'Asiatics', some signs of whose presence he had observed at Bentinck Island, the Pellews and on the mainland opposite Groote Eylandt.

EARLY ASIAN CONTACTS WlTH AUSTRALIA

Such hostility towards foreigners, then, was not characteristic of the aborigines in general. Later literary sources amply confirm this estiniate of the bad state of aborigine-Malay relations in the Gulf region, however. Searcy,l' writing of the 'eighties of the last century, records case after case of arrrled conflict between aborigines and Malays, with ambushes, revenge-expeditions and violent retaliatio~iyear after year. Tindale20 writes of Groote Eylandt : "The Malays whenever possible obtained possession of native wo111en and took them away on their homewards journeys. T h e Ingura [correctly WaniNdiljaugwa, the tribe inhabiting Grootc and neighbouring islands, P.M.W.] native thus learnt that women should never be seen. T h e island natives being comparatively few, were frightened by the Malays, who robbed them, enticed thern with drink, and beat them when they would not work. Their attitude towards the Malays was one of hate; sometimes they tried to kill them, and stories of ambushes and attacks are told in the camps" (p. 131). Earlier Stokesz1 noted that in 1837-43, every other Malay on the coast of Arnheni Land was under arms whilst the others worked. Yet today this period is represented as a Golden Age by tlle aborigines. I t is plain that the memory of the real nature of aborigine-Macassarese relations has grown dim and become obscured by the much more pressing problem or' present-day relations with the Whites. In a situation of segregation and colourbar, the aborigines have idealized the past, holding it up as a measure of the unfortunate situation into which they have fallen. Their evaluation of the Makassarese era is thus determined by their existing social relations and not by the preservation of objective record, and the 'memory' of this era serves as a n expression of and stirrlulus to anti-White feeling today. We may conclude, then, that whilst the existence oi Chinese Australian contacts in the pre-White era cannot be regarded as definitely established, the known contact between Indonesians and Australian aborigines has beer] much more sustained and intense. I n spite of contact during more than a century (and probably for much longer), and in spite of the employment oi aborigines by Malays and increased trade in this northern Australian region, the Malay contact led to no radical change in aboriginal society. T h e hunting-and-collecting economy was not greatly undermined, and it is therefore principally in the existence of certain features of technology and of certain religious and artistic manifestations that Malay influence was still dis-

10

PAST AND PRESENI

~ e ~ l ~ ion b lGroote e at the arrival of the Whites. Toda), aboriginal descriptiorls of the Makassa~eseera are beliefs coloured by the c.onte~ii~>c)~fij social situation rather than objective ~ecords of: the ['a".

NOTES
I C . P. Fit~gerald, "A Chineae Discovery ot Australia .i" in .;(zc~ttalra W r l t e ~ ,ed. T . Inglib Moore, Cheshire, Melbourne, 1 c ~ j ~ 2 G. E. P. Collins in East Motrsoon, Scribner's Sons, New York, 1937, notc2 that 7-8000 prahus cleared the port of hlacassar per year (p. 147). 3 cf. H. J . Heeren, "Indonesische cultuurinvloede~~ in Australie", ltldonesib, 'l'he Hague, lyjn, 6th year, pp. 149-15y. 4 Much of the evidetlce or1 Makassarese-aboriginal relatiolia gi\erl in ~ J l i h article was obtained by llle writer duriug field-work OII Groote Eylaildt, Sortllern Territory, tluring rytjz-3, under the auspices of he Australia~~ National University. 5 cf. K. M. Berndt, D j ~ ~ i ~ g g c ~ r u Clleshire, ul, hlelbourtle, 1y3r, passiru. Alexander Dalrymple, ".4 .I,lart for t,xtet~ding t h e conrf~rerceof Iltr~ h i t r g d o ~ ra%d ~ up t h e E a ~ t ltldia C o r r ~ k ~ ~ t r y I.ondon, ", 1768, quoted in A. .S. (:euse, "hlakassaars-Boegi~lerc.prariu~arLu p Noord-Australie". U i j d r u g c ~l ~ o/ tle T a a l - , L a n d - e n l'olkenkr~rrdc, Vol. 108, 's-Gravenhage, 1952, p ~ .n48-nti:. , 7 e.g. I'hos. Forrest, ''A F.'oyage frorn Calclrtta t o t h e Mergui Arc a~pelago", 1-undorl, 1792; E'. PCror~and 1.. Freycinet, I'oyugc tle dt.'cortvertes d u x T e r r a .-fustrales, Vol. 11, pp. 245-259, Paris, 1816. 8 Capt. Matlhew Flinders, A Voyage l o Terrcr :lustralis, Vol. 11, pp. 1 . 2 8 ~ zgy, L o n d o ~ ~ 1814. , 9 Heeren, op. cit., p. ?ti+ 7'lic name '.i Bangkafa" does uot resemble auy uf the contemporar) . . nanles of Groote Eylandt native, and 111ust be a cot.ruption. 10 cf. A. Searcy, In Australiat~ Trofircs, London, 1909, p. yz and 8,s l l o o d and l.'ield, London, 19l r , p. 239. 'IOllb, bee I 1 0 1 1 the richness of the bush in Arnhe~n 1,arld. coasral reb' \V. E. Harney, N o r t h of ry", A u s ~ r a l i a Publishing ~i Co., Sydney ( I I . ~ . )p. , 176 of Ar1111t.m Lat~d". and R. L. Specht, "An Introtluction to the Etl~rlobota~i) Iiccords of t h e ..lrrrlzenz L a n d Exfieditzon (it1 press). 12 D. F. 'Il~ornson, Econornic Strr~cture and t h e Cerei~zoniul Exciratrge ~ y ~ l e tiri r ~..ittzheir~ Lnncl, Melbourne University Press, hlelbourrie, 1949. 13 cl. A. 1'. Elkill, C:.H. and R. hl. Ber~idt, A r t irr Atnhcrrr Lurrd, Cheallllc : . D. McCarthy, .411slraliat~ .lburigiirul D e ~ o r a t i v eA r t . ,l.lelboui.ne, ~ y g l ;1 Australia11 Museult~,Sydnev, 3rd edn., 19;~; C . P. Mountford, Z<ecords of tfre A n r l l o ~ r Land Expcditiotl (in press); Sir Baldwin S ~ ~ e n c eT r ,h a K i ~ t i v e Tribes of t h e north err^ 'I'erritory of .I ~islrulicr.,London, 1914, pasin]. 14 cf. E'. (J. G. Rose, "Malay Influence ill c\boriginal Tote~uis~n", Marl, No. 142, London, 1947. 15 Remains of potsherds in considerable quantities have been found at a site i11 eastern Arnhero Land, but it is clear that it was the Malays, and tiot the aborigines, who used L o rnake pot5 tllerc; cf. R. M. and C. H. Berlidt. ..Discovery of Poltclx i ~ i North-eaatet11 -4r1111eru Lalld". Jortrrrc~l o f tlre lggu, Vol. LXXVlI, No. 11, pp. 193-8, Royal . ~ I r ~ t t r r u ~ o l o g ~Irrstitutc, cal

E'.hKl.'t 4 S l A X C O R " l A C I 5 WITH AUSlKA1.1.3

11

16 Emphasized by R. P. Fortune, writing of the exchange of 'valuables' in the well-known kula ring of tlie Western Pacific described by Malinowski: "l'he exchange of the ornaments, useless in itself, makes strongly for peaceful relationships between potentially hostile i~iternationals", Sorcerers of Ijobu, Routledge, London, 1932, p. 210. For the Australia11 aborigines. sec \V. E. H. Stanner's reniarks on 'marbok interl~ationalisni', "Ceremonial Ecol~omics of the Mulluk-Mulluk", Ocealliu, Sydney, Vol. IV, 1933-4, p. 156I

17 'I'lie introduction of definite paylrlelits !nay be seen ill crrtai~ipayriiel~ts to specialisw, especially for big tasks, arid 'colnpensation' to the ownel. ot' ;I canoe for the use of the veasel; cf. D. F. l'honisoll, op. cit., pp. 55-60 and "'l'lie Dugong Hunters of Cape York", Jottrnul of tlir Royal rintl~ropolugical Institute, Vol. LXIV, pp. 217-235. 18 Flinders, op. cit., p. 213. 19 A. Searcy, op. cit., igog and 191% p a s h i . 20 N. B. Tiii&alr, "Natives of Groote Lylandt and ot the West Coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria", Records of tile South .~lzcstraliu~~ ;Clusez~ir~, Vol. 111, Nos. 1 and r , Adelaide, lye;/ti. I,. Stokes, Discoveria in ,.fr~at~.c~lia rtc. tltcring the l'oyagc of tl.ltl..\.

. -i!,.

http://www.jstor.org

LINKED CITATIONS
- Page 1 of 1 -

You have printed the following article: Early Asian Contacts with Australia Peter M. Worsley Past and Present, No. 7. (Apr., 1955), pp. 1-11.
Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-2746%28195504%290%3A7%3C1%3AEACWA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B

This article references the following linked citations. If you are trying to access articles from an off-campus location, you may be required to first logon via your library web site to access JSTOR. Please visit your library's website or contact a librarian to learn about options for remote access to JSTOR.

Notes
14

142. Malay Influence on Aboriginal Totemism in Northern Australia. Frederick Rose Man, Vol. 47. (Oct., 1947), p. 129.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0025-1496%28194710%291%3A47%3C129%3A1MIOAT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-V

NOTE: The reference numbering from the original has been maintained in this citation list.