MALAYS (ant,e) (Mal. /ajo, Javan. arang mcelayu, traveling men, emigrants), a branch of the Mongoloid race which gives name to a large linguistic family, the Malayo-Polynesian. Stretching from Easter island to Madagascar, and from NeW Zealand to the Northern Sandwich islands, it covers about 13,000 by 5,000 miles. From the island of Hainan as a center, a curve may be described which will fall inside Borneo and cut across the Malay peninsula. If another circle be roughly drawn from Saigon as a center, includ ing Formosa, the Philippines, Celebes, cutting Sandalwood island, and taking in the Sunda groups, including Java and Sumatra. the half-moon so formed shows the country of the true Malay race, and thence the allied dialects spread out like a fan toward Hawaii and New Zealand. This eastern area is cut across by the Papuans, or Austra lians and Melanesians, from Nevt-ZeaIand to the Ladrones, and from New Guinea to the eastern Fijis. To the west of the Malay archipelago, southern Ceylon, the Maladirs, and the Seychelles show the probable line of settlement toward Madagascar. It seems at present undetermined how much or how little Malay blood be present in the brown islanders, Polynesians. Wallace, probably best informed of all, considers the Papuans and Polynesians as one in race. Peschel thinks the Australians Papuans of a debased type, and the Sandwich islanders half-blood Malays. Certainly the men of the Ladrones are half-breeds, and there is a distinct mixture of races all along the curve of contact, so that brown men, as in Papua, are mixed with true Papuans, and black Fijis speak a Polynesian dialect. The whole subject can be rightly understood only by a study of the very curious distribution of the fauna, and of the complicated ocean currents. Wal lace, in separating these races, thus describes the Malay by contrast: " The Malay is of short stature, brown-skinned, straight.haired, beardless, and smooth-bodied. The Papuan is taller, black-skinned, frizzly-haired, bearded, and hairy-bodied. The former is broad-faced, has a small nose and fiat eyebrows; the latter is long-faced, has a large and prominent nose, and projecting eyebrows. The Malay is bashful, cold, undemon
strative, and quiet; the Papuan is bold, impetuous, excitable, and noisy. The former is grave and seldom laughs; the latter is joyous and laughter-loving; the one conceals the emotions, the other displays them. It would seem that the Malays are a nation of emigrants, who have penetrated as far south-east as New Guinea, yet there seem no traces of an indigenous population. The small and barbarous black race, said to occur at various points within the Malay limit, niay easily be explained as etiolated and roving Papuans, like the Australians, while the Alfuros and other supposed differing tribes are probably only brown types of half-breeds. The black races of India differ both in language and physique, notably in the hair. There are indications that the original home of the Mongoloid races, which stretch from Styria to east Greenland and from cape Horn to north Norway, may have been in some of the large islands of the Sunda group. The few Malay traditions locate a former seat of power at Menang Kaibo in Sumatra. How far Brahmanism penetrated, if at all, is doubtful, but Buddhism was introduced probably about the 5th c., and, about the end of the 13th, Islam. Nearly at that time they settled in the Malay peninsula, and started a strong government in Malac ca, which was finally broken up by the Portuguese in the 16th century. To some 82,000,000 the relative religious proportions are now about as: Evangelical Christians, 7; Rornan Catholics, 88; Mohammedans, 800; Buddhists, 60; Pagans, 45. Their lan guage is the lingua franca of east A.sia, and they penetrate everywhere as traders and pirates. Travelers differ as to their character, sonic representing them as gentle and polite, others as treacherous and quarrelsome; both views may not be far from the truth, the ruling races in the settlements being lazy and enervated, while many of the wild tribes are so uncivilized as to have been taken for different races. The Battaks are still partly cannibals.