Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Minangkabau people
Summary
Minangkabau people (Urang Minang or Urang Awak; Indonesian or Malay: Orang Minangkabau; Jawi: منڠكبو), also known as Minang, are an Austronesian ethnic group native to the Minangkabau Highlands of West Sumatra, Indonesia. The Minangkabau's West Sumatran homelands was the seat of the Pagaruyung Kingdom, believed by early historians to have been the cradle of the Malay race, and the location of the Padri War (1821 to 1837).
Minangkabau are the ethnic majority in West Sumatra and Negeri Sembilan. Minangkabau are also a recognised minority in other parts of Indonesia as well as Malaysia, Singapore and the Netherlands.
Minangkabau (legend)
There are several possible etymologies for the term Minangkabau (Minangkabau: Minang Jawi script: منڠ). While the word "kabau" undisputedly translates to "water buffalo", the word "minang" is traditionally known as the pinang fruit (areca nut) chewed with sirih (betel) leaves. But there is also a folklore that mention that term Minangkabau came from a popular legend that was derived from a territorial dispute between a people and a prince from a neighbouring region. To avoid a battle, the local people proposed a fight to the death between two water buffalo (kabau) to settle the dispute. The prince agreed and produced the largest, meanest, most aggressive buffalo. The villagers on other hand produced a hungry baby calf with its small horns ground to be as sharp as knives. Seeing the adult buffalo across the field, the calf ran forward, hoping for milk. The big buffalo saw no threat in the baby buffalo and paid no attention to it, looking around for a worthy opponent. But when the baby thrust his head under the big bull's belly, looking for an udder, the sharpened horns punctured and killed the bull giving the villagers their victory (menang, hence minang kabau: "victors of the buffalo" which eventually became Minangkabau). That legend, however, is known to be a mere tale and that the word "minang" is too far from the word "menang" which means 'win'.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.