Who this rajah was, and what constituted the sultan's fence, will require some explanation. The thrust of Aban Jau's boast seems plain enough, however; it is an assertion of independence, the flat refusal of a small-scale society of the sort that used to be called primitive to be drawn into a repressive world order. It is an instance of the struggle that Pierre Clastres has characterized as Society against the State.'
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Peter Metcalf (1992) studied this question.