Introduction 1

Perpatih institution is a complete social system which is used in traditional Malay society up till this day. Perpatih social system consists of several sub-system which includes political, economic, religious, social, legal, cultural and family ties. These sub-systems function is to establish and stabilize the community on becoming a safe, peaceful, friendly, cooperation, helpful and progressive community.

Perpatih everyday practice includes economic, political, family and property is based on two aspects of 'codes of ethics'. First ethic is the concept of consensus agreement that is democratically patterned and the second one is the concept of reciprocal aids, cooperation and group efforts. Perpatih custom is also famous as matrilineal system, where the descendants of a person is determined by the mother. Basically, this traditional custom is considered the best because it covers almost every aspect in life. In Perpatih, women's priorities are more towards inheriting the inheritance and as the descendants of the bloodline. To Perpatih custom, since women are the one who gave birth and brought up the children, then the children will carry their mothers' blood.

In terms of wealth, the reason why it is fully inherited by women is to prevent the womens' welfare from being neglected if their husbands divorce them. However the matrimonial property is equally distributed between husband and wife, according to the Islamic law. Perpatih custom controls can be regarded as a social system which is very liberal and comprehensive.

This unique custom is conducted almost entirely in the various aspects of community life in the determination of the administration, distribution of political power, distribution and inheritance matters, marriage preparation and marriage in principle. As a rule of life based on common interests work together and democracy, this tradition has always maintained the integrity and credibility.

However, the notion of outsiders on this custom is still negative. This custom practices was feared. The custom incur their phobias. They keep on saying, if one married to a Negeri Sembilan girl, the marriage would ended in divorce. Does it really happened so? And why?

But it is unfair to judge a culture by the surface only. Here, based on the authors' experiences during their research about the Perpatih custom as an ethnographer, hopefully the society's negative perception about this custom more or less will decrease.