Cultural Sustainability

Culture needs to be sustained for survival of the civilization concerned. However the definition of a culture must first be well defined. Therefore we study the definition of culture in English and its corresponding words in Malay, budaya, etymologically as well as based on its practice in Malayonesia before 18th century, with an objective to formulate the meaning of culture better than presently understood. We argue that elements of culture which is most important and need to be sustained is language dan knowledge, particularly for Malayonesia is bahasa Melayu (Malay language) and Malayonesian knowledge in which we define the later element appropriately. Accordingly, a history of rise and fall of a language and knowledge in every big civilization including Malayonesian civilization become a new field of study which we have started to embark on it here, for a purpose of finding important indices of sustainability of a culture.