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      Sulu before Islam

       Table of Contents

      The Genealogy of Sulu is a succinct analysis of the tribes or elements which constituted the bulk of the early inhabitants of the island and is the most reliable record we have of the historical events which antedated Islam.

      The original inhabitants of the island are commonly referred to as Buranŭn or Budanŭn, which means “mountaineers” or “hill people.” This term is occasionally used synonymously with Gimbahanŭn, which means “people of the interior,” and with Manubus in the sense of “savage hill people” or “aborigines.” Some of the old foreign residents of Sulu maintain that they recognize considerable similarity between the Buranŭn and the Dayaks of Borneo, and say that the home utensils and clothes of the Sulus in the earlier days closely resembled those of the Dayaks.

      The capital of the Buranŭn was Maymbung. The earliest known ruler of Maymbung was Raja Sipad the Older, of whom nothing is related except that he was the ancestor of Raja Sipad the Younger. In the days of the latter there appeared Tuan Masha’ika, about whose ancestry there seems to be considerable ambiguity and difference of opinion. According to the Genealogy of Sulu he was supposed to have issued out of a stalk of bamboo, and was held by the people as a prophet. The traditions state that Tuan Masha’ika was the son of Jamiyun Kulisa and Indira Suga, who came to Sulu with Alexander the Great.

      Jamiyun Kulisa and Indira Suga are mythological names1 and in all probability represent male and female gods related to the thunderbolt and the sun, respectively. The former religion of the Sulus was of Hindu origin. It deified the various phenomena of nature and assigned the highest places in its pantheon to Indra, the sky; Agni, the fire; Vayu, the wind; Surya, the sun. The ancient Sulus no doubt had many myths relating to the marriages and heroic deeds of their gods by which natural phenomena were explained, and it is not unlikely that the above story of Jamiyun Kulisa was one of those myths. Taken in this light, the above legend may express the belief of the ancient Sulus that, by the marriage of the gods, Jamiyun Kulisa and Indira, rain fell and life was so imparted to the soil that plants grew.

      The word Masha’ika is so written in the Malay text as to suggest its probable formation from two words Māsha and ika. The Sanskrit word Māsha means “pulse” or “plant.” Ika or eka means “one.” On the other hand māsha-ika may represent the two parts of the Sanskrit māshika which means “five māshas.” It may not therefore be improbable that masha-ika refers to the subordinate deity which assumes the form of a plant or signifies the first man, whom the deity created from a plant. It is not an uncommon feature of Malay legends to ascribe a supernatural origin to the ancestor of the tribe, and Tuan Masha’ika probably represents the admission into the Buranŭn stock of foreign blood and the rise of a chief not descended from Rajah Sipad the Older. The tarsila2 adds that he married the daughter of Raja Sipad the Younger, Iddha,3 and became the forefather of the principal people of Sulu.

      The common belief among the Sulus that Alexander the Great invaded their island is one of many indications which lead one to think that most of their knowledge and traditions came by the way of Malacca or Juhur, and possibly Tuan Masha’ika came from the same direction. It does seem therefore as if the dynasty of Sipad

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