Moken, Aslian and the Malay World: ancient connections

Geoffrey Benjamin
Linguistics and Multilingual Studies
Nanyang Technological University
ben_geo@ethnographica.sg

To appear in
Maxime Boutry & Jacques Ivanoff (eds)
Cultural Continuity Within the Austronesian People of the Sea
As an issue of SOUJORN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia

Abstract
Moklenic (Moken plus Moklen) is now thought to constitute a top-level division within
the Malayo-Polynesian subfamily of Austronesian. Its ancestral language must therefore
have been established in the region by 3500 years ago, at least 1000 years before the arrival
there of the Malayo-Chamic languages. Consequently, ancestral Moken is likely to have
been spoken more widely in the past than its current narrow distribution along the west
coast of southern Myanmar and Thailand. The presence of lexical loans in Moken from
other languages – Chamic (along with Acehnese), Malay, Austroasiatic (including Aslian,
Mon, Khmer and Nicobarese), as well as Thai and Burmese – indicates that its speakers
have long interacted with other regional populations, possibly on both sides of the Isthmus.
In turn, Moken has left lexical traces in several other Southeast Asian languages, indicating
that its speakers played a bigger role in the region around 2000 years ago than they have
done in more recent times.

In this chapter I outline the relevance of linguistic data for several current research topics that relate to
the history of the Mokens:1 (1) maritime trade around the Indian Ocean from the first millennium BCE;
(2) the ancient trans-Isthmian routeways between the South China and Andaman seas; (3) the
emergence of early urbanised polities on both Isthmian coasts; (4) evidence that Aslian languages were
previously spoken further north than currently; and (5) interaction between Moken and the hypothesised
Austroasiatic language matrix that gave rise to the Nicobarese, Aslian and Munda branches.
The ideas presented here derive from a longer study, now nearing completion. Two chapters in that
volume (Benjamin, forthcoming) are devoted to the linguistic issues, with special attention to the long-
term interactions between the Austronesian and Austroasiatic language families in what eventually
became the Malay World. It turned out, however, that the investigation could not be restricted just to
Malay (within Austronesian) or Aslian (within Austroasiatic), as the story involved yet wider
connections. In particular, it emerged that even the distantly related Moken/Moklen subgroup of
Austronesian was part of the story.

The linguistic matrix of Moklenic

Recent studies, especially the confirmatory one by Alexander Smith (2017), have shown that the
Moklenic languages, represented today solely by Moken (Mawken) and Moklen, constitute a top-level

1. I am grateful to Michael Larish, Bérénice Bellina, Pierre-Yves Manguin and Paul Sidwell, who kindly suggested some
corrections, additions and cautions to an earlier draft of this chapter. They are not responsible for any faults that remain.

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subgroup within Malayo-Polynesian (see Figure 1).2 Ancestral Moklenic must therefore have been
among the earliest Austronesian arrivals into the region, at least 1000 years before the Malayo-Chamic
languages are thought to have reached the Mainland from their Bornean homeland.3 Table 1 presents
one part of the evidence for the diagnostic historical distinctiveness of Moklenic, represented here by
Moken; see also Adelaar (2005: 20). (The rest of this chapter deals primarily with Moken, with a few
passing comments on Moklen.)
The terminology is not yet fully settled. However, given (1) the genealogical closeness of Moklen
and Moken and (2) the substantial time-depth of their separation from the rest of Malayo-Polynesian,
there must previously have existed several other Moklenic languages that have since disappeared. The
status of reconstructed ancestral ‘Proto-Moklenic’ is therefore not clear.4

Figure 1 The western sphere of the Malayo-Polynesian

Source: Wikipedia Commons, after Smith (2017). Redrawn by Lee Li Kheng.

2. ‘Malayo-Polynesian’ refers to all of the Austronesian languages outside of the ‘Formosan’ branch spoken on Taiwan (but
possibly also including the island’s East Formosan languages; see Chen et al., 2022). For historically informed linguistic
studies of Moken and Moklen, see Larish (1999, 2005) and Pittayaporn (2005; this volume).
3. For this view of Malayo-Chamic’s origins, see Adelaar (2004) and Blust (2006). Blust (2006: 78) separates Malayo-
Chamic from Moken-Moklen thus: ‘although Moken-Moklen also appears to have reached mainland Southeast Asia from
Borneo after the initial settlement of Sumatra by Austronesian speakers some centuries earlier, it was not part of the
Malayo-Chamic migration, as the historical phonology of the two groups diverges widely’. Or, as White (1922: 160) put
it, Malay and Moken are ‘forty-second cousins’ rather than ‘sister languages’.
4. Larish’s ‘Proto-Moklen-Moken’ (PMM), referred to frequently below, is less ambiguous, as it consists of reconstructions
based solely on the two current languages.

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 Table 1 Reflexes of Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *-j- , *q- and *-d- in Moken and Malay
(Smith, 2017: 459)
Proto-Malayo-Polynesian Moken Malay
*pajay ‘field rice’ pay padi
*-j-
*ijuŋ ‘nose’ yoŋ idung
*qudaŋ ‘shrimp’ kodaŋ hudaŋ
*q-, *-d-
*qudip ‘life; alive’ kodip hidup

In Smith’s ‘Western Indonesian’ subgroup of Malayo-Polynesian, *j and *d regularly merge as d

(as in the Malay column of Table 1). Indeed, this was one of Adelaar’s criteria (1992: 2) for establishing
the Malayic subgrouping to which Malay itself belongs. But in Moklenic, these proto-phonemes did not
merge, leading Smith (2017: 460) to argue, along with other evidence, that this is an ancient feature and
not a recent development, as is still sometimes suggested. (The historical significance of the *q > k shift
is discussed later.) The linguistic ancestor of Moken must therefore have been already present in the
region when Western Indonesian languages (in Smith’s terminology) arrived on the scene, perhaps
around 3500 years ago. In other words, it is likely that ancestral Moken was formerly spoken more
widely – including on both sides of the Peninsula – than indicated by its current narrow distribution
along the Isthmian west coast of southern Myanmar and Thailand.
Second, lexical evidence shows that Moken has been in contact linguistically with a variety of other
languages, including Chamic (along with Acehnese), Malay (Pittayaporn, this volume), Austroasiatic
(including Aslian, Mon, Khmer, Nicobarese, and possibly pre-Munda), as well as with Thai and
Burmese. Among these languages, ancestral (pre-)Aslian in particular, moving down from the Mainland
via the Isthmus, would already have been present in the Peninsula by around 4000 years ago, as shown
in Figure 2.

Figure 2 Phylogenetic tree of Aslian, with proposed time-depths (Dunn, Kruspe & Burenhult, 2013)
The blue bars show the 95% confidence intervals of the node dates, and the numbers on the branches show the
probability that the following nodes are correctly judged.

Third, as shown in the next section, Moken in turn has left lexical traces in several other Southeast
Asian languages, indicating that Moken-speakers formerly played a bigger role in the region than they
have done in more recent times. Among the authors who have noted these connections are Lewis (1960:

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38–40), Larish (1999; 2005: 514; 2006), Mahdi (2009, 2017) and Hoogervorst (2012, 2013). In their
view, the Austroasiatic and other linguistic contacts of both Moken and Moklen show that they or their
ancestral varieties were formerly spoken more widely than their present distribution along the west
coast. Sidwell (2013: 4) has summarised this circumstance as follows:

The Moken are a small, scattered group of just a few thousand speakers who may represent the
remnants of previously more widespread occupation of the Kra isthmus and Malay peninsula,
before the area became a much-prized and occasionally contested overland section of the coastal
India–China trade route. The thesis by Larish (1999), which includes a reconstruction of proto-
Moken, sketches out various structural changes, including innovations in the reflexes of PMP *q,
diphthongs, and stress patterns, which demonstrate that proto-Moken must have been somewhat
older than Malayo-Aceh-Cham, and therefore likely to reflect the oldest mainland Austronesian
group for which evidence survives.

The dating of this presumed presence currently remains unsettled; but see my comments below
relating to recent archaeological and linguistic findings that have a bearing on the issue.

Moken as an ancient lexical source

Employing historical-phonology analysis, Mahdi (2009) has demonstrated that ancestral pre-Moken,
probably in the early first millennium CE, supplied distinctive lexical items, including crop names and
boat-linked vocabulary (Table 2), to a wider range of languages than the Moken-speakers are currently
in contact with.5 These included Mon, Batak, Malay, Javanese, Chinese and Arabic, spoken by traders
passing through the region. Some nautical terms (‘boat/ship’, ‘sail’, ‘paddle’) in particular seem to have
reached parts of South and Southeast Asia through Moken. Of these kabaŋ ‘houseboat, ship’, from
Proto-Austronesian *qabaŋ, is the most notable (Hoogervorst 2013: 210). In the cognates of this word
in all other Austronesian languages the Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *q has become glottal stop or zero:
ˀawaŋ etc. (Blust & Trussel, item #27544), or eventually h-, as in Old Malay (pu)-hawaŋ ‘ship-(master)’
(Mahdi, 1999: 166). The initial k- of kabang when it appears in other languages is therefore indicative
of a Moken source, which Larish reconstructed as Proto-Moken-Moklen (PMM) *kabaːŋ.6

Table 2 Moken loans in other languages

Khmer kbal, Old Mon kɓaŋ
‘ship, boat’
Nicobarese pɔwah, pawwə,
pajjuə, ‘a paddle’
Burmese laṅ:yañ, Palaung laŋ
jan, Shan lān:yā:n ‘sail’
PMM *kabaːŋ ‘boat’ (Larish, 1999: 616)
Moken pewa, pewaˀ ‘oar, paddle’ (Larish, 1999: 882)
PAN *layaR, Moken layan ‘sail’. The change *R > n is restricted to Moklenic,
which must therefore have been the ultimate source into these languages
(Hoogervorst, 2020: 170–171).

5. According to Mahdi (2009: 76–78, 80) ‘the dispersal of alternative variants of the place name Yava[dvīpa] (in Sumatra)
between China and Greece suggests ancestors of the Moken as carriers. These and other circumstances, suggest that
equatorial populations from ISEA [Island Southeast Asia] had been active in the Bay of Bengal since well before 1000
BCE till perhaps 500 CE.’
6. Note that kabang is not of Khmer origin, as some sources (Lewis, 1960: 2, for example) have suggested. Khmer itself must
have borrowed the word ultimately from Moken, as also did Old Mon as kɓaŋ ‘ship, boat’ (Shorto, 2006: item 633).

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 Karo Batak jaba ‘foxtail PAN *zawa ‘millet’. The shift -w- > -b- is restricted to Moklenic, which shows that
millet’, Toba Batak jaba-ure these crops were initially transported to the region by Moken speakers (Mahdi,
‘sorghum’ 2017: 360).7

Tables 2 and 3 display some of the linguistic evidence, the latter with special reference to the Thai-
Malay Peninsula. I am still working on this material, taking a conservative approach by giving
preference to narrowly distributed items and to reconstructed proto-forms where available. As proxies
for Aslian more generally, I have employed mostly Temiar words in Table 3, because that is the Aslian
language I am most familiar with. Temiar itself was almost certainly never spoken on the coast, but
some of its cognate languages were – which makes it likely that Aslian- and Moken-speakers could
indeed have met up in the past along the coast, as well as further inland (as noted later).8
The evidence presented in Tables 2 and 3 supports the claim that the ancestral Moken-speakers
formerly ranged over a broader expanse of coastal waters (as well as inland) than they have done in
recent centuries, and that their role in the history of Southeast Asia was more involved than generally
recognised.9 Both Mahdi (2009: 79) and Hoogervorst (2012: 255), for example, have suggested that
Moken-speakers were among the nomadic and sometimes ‘piratical’ groups who infiltrated the ancient
trading networks along the coast of the Andaman Sea and beyond in the last millennium BCE. As Mahdi
(2009: 80–81) remarks, ‘in the early first millennium CE, Sea People communities speaking an early
form of Moken could have played an active role, not through political influence, but as source of
manpower for Malay shipping.’10
Another possible reason for this lexical exchange was suggested by Larish (1999: 432): ‘When land-
based peoples such as Mon-Khmers and Thais reached the sea, they probably had terminological gaps
in ocean-related domains. Since Austronesian knowledge was notable in this area, Austronesian
languages are an obvious source of borrowing.’ This implies that ancestral Moklenic was also spoken
on the Peninsular east coast, along the Gulf of Thailand. According to Larish (1999: 453–476; 2006:
24–31), this is evidenced by the striking lexical and phonological convergences they share with the
Northern Aslian languages of Kelantan, Terengganu and Pahang, as well as by Moken oral history of a
former presence on the Peninsular east coast, in or around present-day Nakhon Si Thammarat.

Table 3 Some possible Moken loans in Aslian and beyond

PMM = Proto-Moken-Moklen (Larish 1999)
PAN = Proto-Austronesian, PWMP = Proto-Western-Malayo-Polynesian (Blust & Trussel)

Temiar ceeˀ ‘I’ (emphatic) PMM *ciː/*cay, Moken chi/choi ‘I, me, my’ (Lewis, 1960: 55). This
appears to be unique to Moken and Temiar, and Sanenyö (Nicobar) cə ‘I’.

Temiar kalɔɔn ‘pity, sorrowful’ PMM *kəlŏːn (=*kələon) ‘hunger, to be hungry; empty’; the underlying
meaning is perhaps ‘bereft’.

Temiar kabat (< *kaban), Northern Aslian Moken aban [ˀaban?] ‘company, flock’ (Lewis, 1960: 46); Malay kawan
kabɛn ‘kinspeople, friendship group’ ‘friend, companion, flock’.

7. Despite Blust’s reconstruction of these ‘millet’ words as descending from Proto-Austronesian, Mahdi regards them as
ultimately Indic in origin.
8. Larish (1999: 24, 402, 409, 499) raises the possibility of ancient bilingualism between Proto-Moken-Moklen and Mon-
Khmer languages, specifically mentioning (on p. 499) Aslian, Nicobarese, Mon and Nyah Kur.
9. For a summary account of the importance of Sea Nomads in the emergence of centralised polities in the Malay World and
on the Thai-Malay Peninsula, see Bellina, Favereau & Dussubieux (2019: 104–106).
10. This does not mean that early Moken speakers were the sole ‘sea people’ present in the region at the time. On the other
hand, any narrowly Malay(ic) presence – as distinct from other Austronesian varieties – so far north around the Peninsula
is unlikely to have become significant until several centuries later.

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 Temiar kapɔ̃ɔ̃ˀ ‘cheek’
Temiar mnaay ‘[junior] sibling-in-law’ ~
mnəəy ‘[female or cross-sex] sibling-in-law’
PMM *kɯbŏːŋ/*tɯbŏːŋ ‘cheek’. Larish (1999: 332), suggests this may
be a Mon-Khmer loanword. Blagden (1906: C81) notes possible Moken,
Nicobarese and Northern Aslian cognates; Lewis (1960: 95) under tebong
notes Tembi (= Temiar) kapong as related.
Moken biai ‘elder sister’s husband’ (Lewis, 1960: 50). Temiar mnaay
would derive from *bnaay <*baay by n-infixation and regular
retrogressive nasal assimilation.11

Temiar sobəəy ‘to curry (vegetables)’ PMM *chɔbaːy/*sɔbaːy ‘curry, side dish served with rice’; possibly
cognate with Malay sambal ‘spicy paste’.

Temiar sŋeˀ ‘silent’ Moken chəŋɛh, səŋeh ‘to be silent’ (Larish, 1999: 906); but he provides no
PMM reconstruction.

Temiar skɛˀ ‘pandanus’ PMM *ch/sakɛ[:]ˀ ‘general label for pandanus’; Moklen sɯkɛːˀ, chakɛːˀ.
This is not in Shorto (2006), and seemingly occurs only in
Moken/Moklen and Aslian. But Lewis (1960: 54) cites Karo Batak tjiké
[cike?] ‘rush used for weaving’, perhaps also a Moken loan.

Temiar sabat ‘disease caused by eating tabooed PWMP *sawan ‘convulsion, to have convulsion’, with no saban forms
food’ cited. Following Mahdi (2009), *sawan would become saban in Moken,
and therefore sabat (< *saban) if borrowed into Temiar. (In Malay, the
cognate is sawan ‘convulsions’.)

Temiar tiw ‘river’, Semai teew ‘water’ PMM *tɯˀaw ‘sea, ocean’, Moken (Lewis, 1960: 95) teau ‘sea, open
expanse of water in an archipelago’. This is not in Shorto or Blust &
Trussel, and therefore probably not Austroasiatic.

Temiar and Northern Aslian bcɔk ‘mouse deer’ PMM *bicɔːŋ ‘mouse deer (Tragulus javanicus)’ (Larish, 1999: 688); this
does not appear in Shorto (2006) or Blust & Trussell.

Northern Aslian mɔn ‘good’ PMM *ˀamŏ:n ‘good’. Larish (1999: 1157) regards Moken mŏ:n as ‘a
lexical innovation of uncertain provenance’.

Temiar tawaag, Northern Aslian tawak, tawaŋ Pre-PMM *k/tawaŋ, *k/tɨwɨŋ (Larish, 1999: 595–596). Only the Aslian
‘butterfly’ words are similar to the Moklenic forms.

Northern Aslian putɛw ‘spirit-medium, shaman’ PMM *pɔthaw ‘old people, elderly, used to call headman’. Also in Old
Cham, puteav ‘king’; Lewis (1960: 93) adds Thai phɔtau ‘elder’, Achinese
poteu ‘prince, lord’.

Southern Aslian (Mah Meri) kinglak, hĕlök, PMM *kəlak ‘man, male; husband’. The Aslian sources are Skeat (1897:
kĕlök ‘husband’ 7) and Blagden (1906: M21, as ‘Besisi’), who also notes Selung (=
Moken) kallak, k’lak ‘husband’. The words do not appear in Kruspe’s
(2010) dictionary, and (if authentic) may have disappeared.

Malay Jelai ‘name of the upstream part of the PMM *jɯlay/*jɔlay ‘mountain, hill’, which Larish (1999: 355) regards as
Pahang River’ ‘a lexical innovation of uncertain provenance’. The immediate source of
the Malay river name was therefore probably Central Aslian (Semai). (In
Malay jelai means ‘millet’, an unlikely source meaning.)

Jakun (Malayic) jôkôt, jokût ‘pig’ Blagden PMM *jukut ‘meat, flesh (of land animals)’ (Larish, 1999: 845). But cf.
(1906: P80), jŏ́ kŭt ‘pig (that goes in herds)’ Malay (in Wilkinson only) jukut ‘vegetable condiment (Borneo)’, ikan
Sircom (1912: 33) jukut ‘all kinds of fish to eat’.

Jakun (Malayic) kabo ‘tired’, kebok ‘feeble, PMM *kəbǒːk ‘lazy’ (Larish, 1999: 819). Not in Blust & Trussell or
slow’, kebo-kebo ‘slow’ Blagden (1906: T147) Shorto (2006), nor in Malay.

11. For Temiar mnəəy, see also Shorto (2006: item 1494) *məy, *məəy ‘mother’s sister’, with claimed Austroasiatic cognates
in Palaungic, Bahnaric and Central Aslian (including Temiar mnəəy).

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Isthmian archaeology and Moken
In recent centuries, there has been no record of Moken- or Moklen-speakers on the east coast (Larish
1999: 463), nor do any Aslian-speakers continue to live so far north in the Isthmus. The reconstruction
just proposed may therefore seem far-fetched. However, as Briggs (1951: 23–24), Wheatley (1961:
xxv–xxvii), Larish (1999: 438–445) and others have shown, a series of portage-based trade-routes
formerly traversed the narrow Isthmian section of the Peninsula (routes 1 to 5 in Figure 3). These led
from the Gulf of Thailand to the opposing Andaman Sea coast, inhabited today by the land-dwelling
Moklens in Thailand and their marine-orientated Moken neighbours in both Thailand and Myanmar.
Ongoing research by the Thai-French Archaeological Mission has uncovered evidence of several more
such routes across the narrowest section of the Isthmus (Bellina et al., 2018), in the general area
indicated on Figure 3 by the inserted label L (for Langsuan).

Figure 3 Trans-Isthmian east-west routeways (modified from Wheatley 1961: xxvi)

(1) Three Pagodas and Three Cedis routes (Tavoy–Dvaravati)
(2) Tenasserim River route (Mergui–Wang Duan)
(3) Kra Isthmus route (Mergui–Aw Gyi–Maliwan–Khao Sam Kaeo)
(L) [Added:] Langsuan River (Ranong–Khao Sek) and neighbouring routes
(4) Takuapa–Chaiya (Tambralingga) River route
(5) Trang–Satingphra River route

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 The most thoroughly excavated of these sites is the partially walled coastal site at Khao Sam Kaeo,
near Chumphon, situated at the eastern terminus of route (3). Dating from 400 BCE to 100 CE (Bellina
2017a), the site is interpreted by its investigators as a key sign of early urbanism (Bellina (ed.) 2017),
associated with rice, millet and mung-bean cultivation (Castillo 2018: 15) and the specialised local
manufacture of ornaments, images and pottery. Imported precious stones, glass beads, metal (iron,
bronze and gold) objects and pottery were also found; some of the pottery indicates Sa-Huỳnh–Kalanay
influences (see below). This indicates that Khao Sam Kaeo was involved in local and far-flung trade
networks (Bellina 2017a, 2017b; Bellina, Favereau & Dussubieux 2019; Bellina et al., 2022;
Dussubieux & Bellina 2017). Several other river-mouth sites in the immediate region are currently
under investigation. Of these, Khao Sek, situated further south at the eastern terminus of the Langsuan
River Route (marked L on Figure 3), has also provided ceramic evidence of local manufacture and
involvement in a trade network dating to the 4th to 3rd century BCE. Favereau (2018) interprets Khao
Sek as having had fewer foreign contacts than the more complex Khao Sam Kaeo, and as politically
subsidiary to it within an emerging Isthmian regional array. ‘This suggests that Khao Sam Kaeo may
have acted as an “international” market place attracting long distance networks and hosting foreign
artisans. Khao Sek, not or seldom frequented by foreign populations, may have been a minor site in
terms of trade and influence capacity’ (Favereau, 2018: 47). Sites on the facing west coast, such as Aw
Gyi and Maliwan in southern Myanmar, are also beginning to yield matching evidence of trade-linked
habitation contemporary with these east-coast finds.
There is thus strong archaeological evidence for the long-suspected trans-Isthmian trade links
between the Bay of Bengal and the Gulf of Thailand, and ultimately beyond, associated with increasing
social complexity. Two features directly relevant to the main topic of this chapter have emerged from
these and related discoveries. Materials uncovered at Isthmian river-mouth sites (Bellina et al., 2018;
Bellina, Favereau & Dussubieux, 2019) suggest the early presence of sea nomads; these would most
likely have included the ancestral Moken-Moklen-speakers, as well speakers of other Moklenic
languages since disappeared. More broadly, associated prehistoric connections between Mainland sites
and the islands, especially the Philippines, are known to have occurred (Favereau & Bellina, 2016). The
best authenticated of these is the Sa-Huỳnh–Kalanay linkage between central coastal Vietnam and
Masbate island in the central Philippines, as indicated by their shared artefactual culture of pottery,
ornaments and iron objects, which have now also been found in the Isthmian sites just discussed. This
trade across the South China Sea, already present by 500 BCE and extending into archaeological sites
in northeast Borneo, Taiwan and southern Thailand, overlapped temporally with the Isthmian sites, and
must have been in the hands of Austronesian-speaking maritime populations.12 At Sa-Huỳnh and the
surrounding region, the most likely linguistic candidate is Chamic, which would have arrived on that
part of the Mainland from Borneo around 300 BCE (Blust, 2006: 76). As discussed later – and despite
the genealogical closeness of the Chamic and Malayic languages – Malay itself is unlikely to have
entered the scene until much later.

Moken and trans-Peninsular trade

What has this to do with the Mokens and their ancestors? By 300 BCE, ancestral Moklenic speakers (as
proposed below) would already have been present on the western side of the Gulf of Thailand, including
the eastern Isthmian coast. They may also have been present on the opposing Andaman coast,

12. At that period, the aboriginal languages of the Philippines, Taiwan and Borneo would have become solidly Austronesian,
as they still are.

8
presumably by sailing around the Peninsula from Borneo and/or Sumatra.13 But, on the evidence just
presented, Moklenic-speakers would also have been involved in the overland portage activities between
the two coasts. Clearly, this has a bearing on the provenance of the suspected Aslian loans listed in Table
3. As Larish (1999: 499) notes, further comparative lexical investigation should be undertaken

to confirm that a mutual dependence existed between speakers of PMM [Proto-Moken-Moklen]

and early Peninsular Mon-Khmer [Aslian] speakers. These groups exploited different domains,
yet were probably drawn to interact through barter or trade. If in fact the PMM or Pre-MM
participated in trans-Peninsular trade, they would have frequently interacted with interior
peoples.

Further evidence for this view is provided by Blevins (2021). Her survey shows that the sound shift
from Proto-Austronesian *q to k- has occurred in only ‘a handful’ of Austronesian languages, and that
such cases are associated with early Austronesian settlements in areas where non-Austronesian
languages were already established. Blevins herself (2021: 16–17) explains the relevance of this finding
to Moken/Moklen in particular:

Overall, the distribution of *q > k in Austronesian languages aligns with the distribution of these
non-Austronesian areas. One case where it superficially does not [emphasis added] is that of
Moken/Moklen. Historically, speakers were nomadic, traveling by boat through the Mergui
Archipelago and surrounding coastal areas. However, they claim that their ancestors came from
the East Coast of the Malay Peninsula, which would mean an overland route through Aslian-
speaking territory. This migration corresponds with Larish’s (1999, 2006) findings of significant
Mon-Khmer influence in Moken–Moklen, and especially the lexical affinities between Moken–
Moklen and Aslian languages (Larish, 2006: 25–26).

Blevins’s assessment lends support to the view expressed earlier that Aslian languages were indeed
formerly spoken in the narrow part of the Isthmus and that there was interaction there with
Moken/Moklen-speakers passing between the two coasts. Moreover, this finding may also relate to the
‘Moklen problem’: if the Moklen and Moken languages are so closely related, have the Moklens always
been land-dwellers? The simplest solution is to assume that the ancestral Moken/Moklen-speakers
originally reached the west coast overland via the trans-Isthmian routes, and that some of them then
became secondarily sea-orientated Mokens. But this would not fit well with the evidence presented
above that the Mokens were widely involved in the maritime trade passing around the Indian Ocean.
Alternatively, the ancestral Moklen-speakers could initially have retained their east-coast homeland,
while the ancestral Moken-speakers went around the Peninsula by sea, having already adopted ‘sea
nomad’ culture. Later, from the fifth century CE, as the land-based trade routes across the Isthmus began
yielding to the southerly maritime route through the Straits, the ancestral Moken/Moklen-speakers
could have met up on the west coast, some by sea and some by land. Any left-behind members on the
east coast would eventually have assimilated into the local population, which at that time is most likely
to have been Mon- and Khmer-speaking, possibly with some Chamic-speakers also present. Either of
these hypotheses – the sea-route or the land-route – is compatible with Larish’s view (1993: 1316) that

13. As possible evidence for pre-Moken having passed around the Peninsula, consider Anderbeck’s (2012: 274) tentative
comment: ‘The discussion in Mahdi (2009) regarding the possible trade role of pre-Moken speakers in the Malacca Straits,
as well as the shared and relatively rare change PMP *q > k (Thurgood 1999: 58–59) would indicate Moken as a possible
substrate language of Duano.’ Duano, also known as Desin Dolaq and (in Malaysia) Orang Kuala, is a Malayic language
spoken on the west coast of Johor in Malaysia and across the Strait in places along Sumatra’s east coast (Kähler, 1946/1949;
Benjamin, 2009: 317–318).

9
the earlier Mokens/Moklens were situated ‘right on the connecting line between Champa and India’ and
involved in the east-west traffic between them.14
However, this would conflict with the demonstrably close degree of linguistic relationship between
present-day Moken and Moklen, despite their having ‘differentiated to the point where it becomes easier
for their respective speakers to employ a third language, such as Thai, in face-to-face interactions rather
than attempting the use of the sister language’ (Larish, 2005: 514). Nevertheless, their close degree of
relatedness would support Larish’s suggestion (1999: 476) that Moken and Moklen separated at some
time between 1300 and 1700 CE.15 Significantly, this relatively recent date of separation would
correspond to the period (as discussed in Benjamin, 1987: 122–124, 1997: 105–112) when the Malay
and Thai languages were replacing Mon and Khmer in the Isthmus, along with associated religious
shifts from Mahayana Buddhism to Islam or Theravada Buddhism.16 If Larish’s dating can be sustained,
it must be assumed that all of these developments were connected, including his suggestion (Larish,
1999: 462) that, ‘as the Malays, Thai, and Burmese converged on the regions where they lived, the
Proto-Moken/Moklen-speakers shifted between sedentarism and sea nomadism as a strategy for
avoiding inter-ethnic conflict and the threat of forced labour.’17 (This is recent enough for ethnicity, in
the modern sense of the term, to have begun emerging.)
Larish (1999: 458–463) therefore favours the view that the early Moken/Moklen ‘homeland’
involved both sides of the Isthmus, as well as the formerly Aslian- (and Mon-?)speaking terrain between
them. He argues that interaction between Moken and Moklen with Chamic (including Acehnese) and
Austroasiatic must have been intense enough to produce the Mainland-type phonological changes that
he sees as stemming from adapting to the typically iambic (sesquisyllabic) Austroasiatic word-final
stress pattern.18 On the other hand, it is now recognised that (in addition to Aslian) other Austroasiatic
varieties, including both Mon and Khmer, were already present in the Isthmus and around the coast of
the Gulf of Thailand. Any typological convergences between these languages could well have resulted
from the ‘prolonged and intimate relations’ of the kind suggested by Blagden (1906: 438). Such
linguistic contacts would most likely date to some 2500–1500 years ago when, as already noted, trade
between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea was opening up via what later became the Malay
World.

14. As Pittayporn (this volume) notes, writers have variously placed the Moklenic homeland: (1) to the north (in today’s
Myanmar) with a subsequent southward movement; (2) along the Gulf of Thailand with a subsequent move westwards to
the other side of the Isthmus; (3) in the Riau-Lingga archipelago and (4) northern Sumatra, with in both cases a subsequent
move northward. In this chapter, I have provided reasons to suggest that ancestral Moken(ic)-speakers were formerly to
be found in all four of these locations, ranging much more widely than at present. These seeming differences of ‘homeland’
opinion may therefore be more apparent than real – and consistent with all or most of the views just presented.
15. Larish (1999: 319) notes that, since Moken and Moklen have a number of Mon-Khmer loans in common, the initial contact
with Mon-Khmer must have occurred before the breakup of Proto-Moken/Moklen. This finding could aid in ascertaining
the time-depth of these inter-language contacts, including with Aslian.
16. The interaction of Moken with Thai is not in doubt. But Pittayaporn (this volume) has shown that Moken and Moklen have
also interacted intimately with Malay. The heterogeneity of the linguistic evidence indicates that this took place not as a
single process, but at different times and by a variety of routes. Moreover, it must have involved places where neither
Moken nor Malay are currently spoken. (Today, the closest such place is Phuket, where the southernmost Moken-speakers
interact with the northernmost speakers of the Malayic dialect Urak Lawoi’.) At least some of this contact would, according
to Pittayaporn, have involved a ‘high level of bilingualism among the speakers … with a relatively high level of proficiency
in the Malay language’.
17. This is an interesting parallel with Leach’s (1954) explanation of the oscillatory character of Kachin society as resulting
from their situation along the highland trade-route between China and India. White (1922: 57–58), however, dates the
Mokens’ shift from land-dwelling to more permanent boat-dwelling to as recently as the 1840s, saying (similarly to Larish)
that they did so to facilitate escape from Burmese and Malay slave-raiding.
18. Pittayaporn (2005) has argued that language-internal factors were at least as important as contact in explaining these
phonological changes – a view that he restates in this volume, while adding Moken-Malay bilingualism as a factor.

10
An ancient Isthmian Sprachbund?
On the basis of Blust’s date of around 2300 years ago for the spread of Chamic to the Mainland,19 Grant
& Sidwell (2005: xv–xvi) suggested that Proto-Moklenic must have been in place by 3000 years ago.
They regarded the shared typological features just mentioned as resulting from a Sprachbund ‘formed
for a time that linked Moken/Moklen, Acehnese and Chamic sometime after the separation of Malayic
from Malayo-Chamic but before the Thai and Burmese intrusions into the Moken/Moklen speaking
area.’ Any such Sprachbund would have emerged during the same period as some of the key splits were
taking place further south in the Aslian languages (see Figure 2) – initially between Southern Aslian
and the rest some time before 3000 years ago, and later between the Central and Northern branches
approximately 2500 years ago.
As already noted, these developments took place in parallel to the emerging presence in the region
of Chamic languages, which would account for the appearance of Chamic items in the linguistic mix.
See, for example, the ‘spirit-medium, shaman’ item in Table 2. The word puteav ‘king’ does not appear
in Malay, or indeed in any other Austronesian language besides Moklenic, but it turns up in some
Northern Aslian languages as putɛw ‘spirit-medium, shaman’. Aslian putɛw may therefore be a loan
from Chamic or Moken. Larish (1999: 876) reconstructs Proto-Moken/Moklen *pɔthaw ‘old people,
elderly, used to call headman’ (see Table 3). According to Marrison (1975: 53) this survives into Modern
Cham as patau ‘king’.20
This raises questions of chronology. Moken’s distinctive features as discussed by Pittayaporn appear
to have emerged within the last half-millennium, in phase with the separation of Moklen and Moken
into distinct languages. This is much later – by up to two millennia – than the time-depths of the
Isthmian archaeological linguistic findings presented earlier or of the hypothesised wider range of the
ancestral Moken language. It is unlikely therefore that Malay could have played a close part in those
earlier developments. Pittayaporn (this volume) shows that ‘most words with aspirated onsets in
contemporary Moklen and Moken dialects are relatively recent loanwords from Southern Thai
(Pittayaporn 2005) … most likely to have been imported after the 15th century’. However, he also
shows that, paradoxically, it was contact with Malay that predisposed Moklen and Moken to develop
that aspiration – by an admittedly complex series of phonetic adaptations.
If the views just presented are correct, the Peninsula would have been influenced by Chamic and
Moken from the north and by both Malay and pre-Malay Austronesian from the south. Chamic, already
intermixed with Austroasiatic elements (as has long been known), would have moved down the
Peninsular east coast and eventually into northern Sumatra, where it became Acehnese.21 At much the
same time, Malay would have been moving into the Peninsula from the south and interacting with the
already present Aslian branch of Austroasiatic and any other Austronesian languages that might also

19. Blust, without making a definitive statement, appears to have changed his mind slightly over the years regarding the
movement of Malay-Chamic out of Borneo. Initially, he proposed (Blust 1994: 46–47, and briefly re-stated at 2006: 74)
that Malayo-Chamic diversified after reaching the Mainland, with Malay separating out southwards along the coast. Later,
however, Blust (2006: 76) appeared more accepting of the view – implicit in Adelaar’s analysis of Malayic – that pre-
Malayic and pre-Chamic moved in different directions out of Borneo – respectively, westwards to Sumatra and northwards
to the Mainland. I currently take the latter view.
20. Marrison (1975: 53) unconvincingly derived Cham patau from Austronesian pu ‘lord’ and tau ‘person’, as in Tagalog tao
‘man’. The latter word doesn’t otherwise occur in Chamic, according to Grant (2005: 52).
21. There is lexical evidence (Benjamin, forthcoming) that in doing so, there was interaction between Aslian- and Chamic-
speakers. Links between the Chams and the Peninsular east coast were never completely lost. For example, the royal
families of Patani and Kelantan were – and some still are – related to Cham rulers who were eventually overthrown by the
Vietnamese (Abdullah 1987: 205–207). The use of Cepa, the Kelantan-Malay version of Champa, in place-names, clothing
styles and a rice type, is a continuing remnant of the linkage (Wong 2013: 159–164, Thurgood 2021: 673).

11
have been present.22 Thus emerged what I call the ‘Austric Marchland’ – a linguistic borderland between
the two ‘Austro’ language families – with Moken/Moklen situated right on one of the borders between
them and in contact with all of them. It is possible that interaction between Aslian and Moklenic could
also have taken place further south. Given the ancient involvement of Moken-speakers in Indian-Ocean
trade networks, as discussed earlier, this cannot be excluded. And, as already remarked (footnote 13),
phonological evidence exists for a Moklenic substratum in the Malayic language Duano, still spoken
on both sides of the Melaka Strait.
Adding to the significance of the Isthmus in yet earlier times (2000–1500 BCE) is the Munda
Maritime Hypothesis of Rau & Sidwell (2019: 45–48), according to which the Isthmus and its
neighbouring regions would have been involved in the spread, not only of Aslian, but also of Munda
and Nicobarese, with the latter two Austroasiatic divisions reaching their current locations by sea, as
part of the emerging Indian Ocean trading network.23
That concludes what I have to say here on this complicated topic. However, I hope the proposals
just presented are enough to suggest that there is room for much more work on this set of questions.

22. As stated here, these ‘movements’ relate to languages, and not necessarily – or even at all – to movements of ‘peoples’.
By ignoring the widespread presence of in situ language-shift, the literature on Southeast Asia has too long been bedevilled
by appeal to ‘migrations’ alone as the mechanism of language change.
23. On Nicobarese, Sidwell (2006) remarks, ‘According to Parkin (1991: 37) “The Car Nicobarese have a tradition of having
fled a violent rebellion in Tenasserim”. This places their ancestors on the Isthmus of Kra or even in the Mon State (then
Dvaravati or Funan?) and suggests an affinity with Mon. We don’t know when this migration took place, but the low
diversity among Nicobarese languages indicates it may have occurred early in the first Millennium.’

12
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