Statistical analysis of the data clarifies the nature and transmission of élite Makassar titles during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The results strikingly resemble those obtained by Palmier (1969) for traditional Java and Gullick (1958) for the western Malaysian states. But the closest parallel comes from the system documented by Rössler (1987) and Röttger-Rössler (1989) for the Kasepekang Konjo. Moreover our sparser data sets, such as those pertaining to Polombangkeng and Lekokboding, invoke the Konjo model, even if the available details are inadequate for rigorous comparisons.

The key institutions were the bilateral descent groups composed of descendants of the inaugurators of hereditary titles. The most powerful of these were associated with a royal title closely guarded by a patrilineal core. Royal polygyny at the centre generated a bank of potential princes who ensured uninterrupted patrilineal passage of the title. Ipso facto it also generated unsuccessful candidates who, along with their patrilineal descendants, maintained a recognized place within the bilateral descent group if they achieved a karaengship. The more powerful the patrilineal royalty, the larger its following of attached noble patrilines. In short, securing the patrilineal succession stimulated political expansion, to such a degree that the power of any monarch was closely related to his number of wives.

Royal polygyny also generated a bank of princesses who tended to marry other royal lines and entrench the royalty’s genealogical distinctiveness. Yet because these daughters’ status was systematically downgraded, they could also marry nobles either attached to some royal patriline or descended from local status lineages. This did not create any dangers for the royal patriline as long as it kept its position of power. The offspring from these marriages were simply not admitted into the royal core.

If the system excluded by patrilineal descent towards the centre, it also included by bilateral descent towards the peripheries. Men from a higher status lineage could attach themselves to a wife from a lower status lineage, and the offspring could then belong to the wife’s group. (Hence the indigenous view which derives the nobility from the marriage between commoners and descendants of the Tomanurung.) This privilege allowed the powerful lineages to dump their superfluous proportion of well-born men towards the margins. The men then held exalted positions within their group (witness Daeng Bunding in Kasepekang) which enjoyed greater prestige because of its attachment towards the centre. The privilege also allowed a powerful royal patriline to absorb territorial titles previously belonging to autonomous patrilines. The powerful royal retained his membership within his natal group while his wife, as the princess from the weaker line, transmitted the right of office to her husband through marriage, or to their sons through bilateral descent. (Note that the Konjo did not permit men this right of affiliation or membership within two cores [Rössler 1987:65], but the Gowa royalty did not observe this nicety during their territorial expansion.)

In a very practical sense the king was the husband of his realm (cf. Jordaan and de Josselin de Jong 1985). The legitimacy of his control derived from his marriages, or those of his direct ancestors, to princesses within the cores of the subjugated domains. So during 1500-1593 the Gowa royalty attracted status wives from those areas which Gowa came to rule. The territorial ambitions of the Gowa royalty, and its ability to draw status wives, were then contained until the mid-seventeenth century when Gowa legitimately absorbed Sanrabone. With the loss of Gowa’s subjugated lands after 1667, Gowa now became “wife” to the two powerful royal lineages in Makassar, Bone-Soppeng and Tallok.

Makassar remained as South Sulawesi’s effective capital after the eclipse of the Gowa patriline. The most prestigious title, the rulership of Gowa, was absorbed by Tallok as the most powerful Makassar line. Sirajuddin’s ascendancy, which bequeathed a disputed succession until his direct descendants finally monopolized the Gowa rulership late in the nineteenth century (see Patunru 1983:76-99), is not conventionally registered as a dynastic change (e.g. Patunru 1983). In the sense that the disputed succession involved closely related Makassar lineages, and that Tallok’s origins are ultimately one with Gowa’s (Figure 1), there was indeed no dynastic change. Thus the principle of bilateral membership not only allowed the legitimate passage of authority between peer patrilines, it also tended to ensure continuity of social organization by resisting unrelated factions. Analysis along these lines may help to explain why western Indonesian (and Southeast Asian) political history suggests a multiplicity of “dynasties” centred in comparatively few heartlands and often showing strong cross-dynasty continuity.