MALAYAN PEOPLES. An ethnic term, diversely employed by various authorities. Some, who reject the claims of the Malayan or brown race to rank as a separate division of mankind, on the ground that its Asian or Mongolian affini ties are both too recent and too apparent, recog nize a 'Malayie stock,' composed of a western or Malayan and an eastern or Polynesian group. (See MALAvo-PoLvNEstAN.) By this theory the ancient Malays, presumed to be yellowish-brown in complexion, small-statured and short-skulled, are connected with the Indo-Chinese peoples of continental Asia. Others. who also decline to see in the Malayan race one of the primal human stocks, consider the Malay type distinctly Mon goloid. An 'Oceanic Mongol group' is postulated which includes all the peoples of Malaysia and the islands of the Pacific who are not Negritos, Papuans, or Indonesians (q.v.). The population of Malaysia may be divided into four great ethnic groups, Malays, Indonesians, Negritos, and Papuans, while the archipelagoes of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific were peopled by three dis tinct races of Malayan linguistic affinities. The Indonesians and :Malays do not differ greatly from each other, and the former have been re garded by some as proto-Malays. Certain writers, in view of the fact that dolichocephalic head forms occur quite commonly among the existing peoples of the East Indies, restrict the term Indonesian to the dolichocephalic variety of man found in this region. They would apply the term Malay or proto-Malay only to the braehycephalic non-Negrito. non- Papuan. and non-Melanesian variety. According to this theory, before the dispersion over this arca of the Orang Malayu, or Malays proper, most of the islands of the Malay Archipelago were inhabited by tribes represent ing various degrees of intermixture of these two races, while, neglecting migrations from the Asiatic continent, the last thousand years have witnessed nothing more than similar mixtures in varying degrees. The reasons for separating the so-called Indonesians from the Malayan or Malayo-Polynesian stock are not, however, con vincing, and there is considerable justification for following the suggestion of the linguistic unity of the Malayo-Polynesian peoples and recog nizing a somatic kinship of all the aborigines of Malaysia, together with the Malays of the Malay Peninsula and the Malays of Madagascar and the natives of Oceanica, except the Negritos, Papuan Melanesians, and kindred peoples. Besides their
use in this broad sense the terms Malay and Malayan are also employed to designate in par ticular the 'Malays proper' of the Malay Penin sula. the Menangkaban region of Sumatra. and certain other parts of some of the larger islands, and their representatives scattered in small num bers practically all over the archipelago. There is also probably a considerable Malayan or proto Mayalan element in certain regions of the coast of Farther India, the Chinese littoral, and South ern Japan. There may also. be a large Malayan element in Japan and even in Korea, due to immigration in the wake of the Kuro-Siwo cur rent from the East Indies, by way of the Philip pines, Formosa, and Loo-choo. Some writers go so far as to attribute the difference between the Chinese and the Japanese largely to the fact of this Malay cross in the latter.
The _Malayan peoples present all varieties of savagery, barbarism, and civilization, from the nude tribes of the interior of some of the isl ands to the more or less cultivated Malays of the coast, the Javanese, and the civilized peoples of the Philippines. The migration which led to the settlement of the Malays in Mad agascar, called Malagasy or Hovas, took place apparently before the spread of Hindu influence in the East Indies. to which was in great meas- • ure due the religious and political stimulus that created so many kingdoms in Sumatra, Java, , with the adjacent smaller islands, and Borneo. and touched even the Philippine islands on one hand and New Guinea on the other. There have evidently been several waves of proto-Malay and Malay influence in this area. One of the most notable is that which bore the creed of Islam as far as the Moros of the southern Philippine Islands, and raised it upon the ruins of both the Hindu and the Buddhistic faiths in Sumatra and Java. The influence of India in Sumatra seems to have been less than in Java, where exit the remains of the great temple of Bore Budn• and other evidences of Indo-Malay culture. In the little island of Bali a form of Hinduism sur vives to this day. In parts of Sumatra, Borneo, and Formosa very primitive types of Malayao life and culture are still to be found.