there is a strong constellation of clues, converging from several disciplines, that make the connection extremely plausible
I love when things begin this way.
A few months ago, someone kindly commented on one of my posts that only non-aristocratic women use masoanjy, according to what his mother had always said. He added that in the Comoros as well, the same type of powder is used by common women. It caught my attention, but—just like with the koba story—it took time for the dots to connect.
Today, while finalizing a post about rice and our ancestors from far back in the East, it finally came together. I stumbled upon a beautiful photograph of a Banjar woman working in the paddy fields.
And everything clicked at once.
Across South Kalimantan and coastal Sulawesi, communities such as the Banjar, Ma’anyan, and Bajo Mola have long developed a way of life centered on rice cultivation, boat-building, and maritime mobility. Linguistic, genetic, and historical studies show that these groups—particularly speakers of the Greater Barito languages—form the closest Southeast Asian connection to early Malagasy populations. Their material culture, domestic practices, and women’s embodied knowledge were part of what migrated westward across the Indian Ocean. The use of rice-based cooling powders, widespread among Banjar and Bajo women, belongs to this shared Austronesian heritage that travelled not through royal archives or state structures but through everyday life.
In both Borneo and Sulawesi, traditional cosmetic powders such as bedak pupur, bedak dingin, or bedak beras are made from soaked and ground rice mixed with pandan leaf extract, turmeric or curcuma zedoaria, galangal, jasmine leaves, or coconut water. These powders are used for sun protection, cooling, and ritual purification—particularly during work in rice fields or at sea. Crucially, they do not include sandalwood, which is a hallmark of Javanese and Malay court cosmetics (pupur cendana) but absent from the rural Banjar and Bajo tradition. This distinction matters: the cosmetic practices that align with Malagasy masoanjy reflect a non-elite Borneo/Sulawesi rural layer, not the perfumed, aristocratic traditions of Java and the Malay courts.
Among the Bajo Mola https://telusuri.id/bedak-pupur-bajo-mola/, https://web.archive.org/web/20200926121014/https://www.mymindanao.com/2019/07/burak-and-beautiful-women-of-tawi-tawi.html, Banjar, and Ma’anyan, rice-based facial powders are primarily associated with women engaged in everyday labour—farming, fishing, diving, seaweed gathering—and with village-level rituals and beauty standards. They are not linked to aristocratic identity. The same pattern appears in Madagascar, where masoanjy is used by Merina, Betsileo, Tanala, and eastern women during agricultural work, rituals, and communal gatherings, while noble families historically relied on oils, perfumes, and imported powders. The Comoros show a similar distinction, with clay- or rice-based powders used by commoners rather than elites. In each society, these cosmetics are embedded in the lives of working women, not in courtly spheres.
The parallels between masoanjy and Southeast Asian rice-based powders were never systematically studied, not because the evidence is subtle, but because cosmetics practiced by rural women rarely attracted scholarly attention compared with language, genetics, or politics. Yet this tradition remains very much alive: Malagasy women still apply masoanjy during fieldwork and ceremonies; Banjar and Bajo women continue to use bedak pupur for cooling and sun protection; and similar practices persist across the Comoros. These simple, rice-based masks carry a deep Austronesian memory—one preserved not in texts or monuments but in the everyday gestures of women whose knowledge quietly outlived the kingdoms and migrations that first carried it across the Indian Ocean.
References (Consolidated List)
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