Banjar

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A local community association in Bali that organizes village ceremonies, labor, and social life ; an ethnic group of Malay-speaking people based in South Kalimantan, Indonesia
2. The traditional neighborhood council unit found across Balinese villages that manages rituals and mutual aid ; a Malay-speaking people inhabiting the southern part of Borneo in Indonesia
3. A customary Balinese community group that coordinates village rites and communal work ; the Malay-speaking population of the South Kalimantan region on the island of Borneo

Etymology: In the Indian subcontinent, "banjar" describes land that lies uncultivated, fallow, or barren, and the term reached English through colonial-era writing about South Asia. Its roots are in Persian and Hindustani usage, where it sat alongside words for wasteland and unplowed ground. English speakers mostly met it in administrative and agricultural reports, where it named plots that had gone out of use. Across the sea, a related form took on a different life. In Malay and Indonesian, "banjar" came to mean a settlement or a local community, and it survives in place names such as Banjarmasin, the city on Borneo named after the Banjar people and their sultanate. The link between a waste field in India and a settled community in Borneo is not clearly documented, and etymologists have not settled how the two uses are connected. The shared sound is the most certain thing about them.