Mutisalah

The term mutisalah refers to heirloom beads in the Lesser Sunda Islands of Timor, Flores, Sumba and Savu. Mutisalah are also found in the Philippines and Borneo. Mutisalah were originally Indo-Pacific beads of orange and orange-red color. The earliest of these beads came from Southern India and have been dated as early as 200 BC. Their manufacture spread to other centers.

In the 9th-century Buddhist Sailendra dynasty, drawn Indo-Pacific beads, now called mutisalah, were produced by the Sumatran Srivijaya empire These beads were traded into Borneo, Java and to the eastern Indonesian islands until the 13th century. Nieuwenhuis, whose observations date from the turn of the century, reports that the reddish-brown beads, known in the Timor archipelago as mutisalah, and which also occur in South Sumatra, were brought from the Lampong Districts to Timor, where they yielded a high price. Likewise, inhabitants of Kroé in Benkulen travelled from Sumatra to the west coast of Borneo and traversed the island to sell their ancient beads profitably to the Bahau and other tribes. Archeological evidence from 1000 to 1200 AD shows that this type of bead predominated. From the 13th century they are much less common. Chinese-made beads came into use after the defeat of the Srivajaya Kingdom and it is postulated that the Chinese traders took advantage of the scarcity that was a consequence of the changed trade patterns.