Rejang

Rejang is the Austronesian language of the Rejang people of south-western Sumatra, spoken on the Barisan slopes of Bengkulu in five dialects from the highlands down to the Pesisir coast. Linguists link it with the Bidayuh languages of Borneo and place it within the Greater North Borneo group, fitting the Rejang tradition that their ancestors crossed the Karimata Strait from Sarawak and followed the Musi and Rawas rivers into the interior.

The language long had no standardized writing. The Brahmic Rejang alphabet, also called Kaganga and kin to the Batak and Lontara scripts, served chiefly for formal High Malay and for ritual texts, medical incantations and poetry, with the earliest surviving examples dating from the mid-1700s.