Orang Rimba

The Orang Rimba, meaning people of the forest and also called Anak Dalam, are mobile animist forest dwellers of Jambi and South Sumatra. Their oral traditions trace them to the Maalau Sesat who fled into the Bukit Duabelas forests, or to refugees from the Minangkabau lands of Pagaruyung; their language is an upstream Malay isolect of the Malayo-Polynesian family.

In 1337 they lived in shifting camps called tubo under elected leaders titled tumenggung, moving between swidden fields and foraging for wild yams, game, fish, honey, rattan and resins, which they bartered at riverine Malay markets. Their egalitarian society stood apart from the increasingly Islamic sultanates along the great rivers.

Neighboring Malays distinguished settled, farming Kubu groups from deeper-forest bands who avoided outside contact, a divide between the Orang Batin Sembilan and the Orang Rimba proper.