All over the Malayan area the languages of this family show a more or less close kinship with the standard Malay of Menangkabau, which is in many respects the least complicated dialect of the group. The relations of some of the For mosan and Bornean dialects to the :Malayan stock are not yet very clear. Some authorities would attribute the affinity of the Polynesian languages with the Malayan to a late spread of Malayan peoples and not to an original separa tion from a common Malayo-Polynesian source, hut the latter view is to be preferred on present evidence. None of the Polynesians proper (ex cept the civilized peoples) possess written alpha bets, but among the Malayan peoples a variety of them occur. The Malays proper, like the Philippine Moros, use Arabo-Persian alphabets that came with Islam. the civilized peo ples of the Philippines, as the Tagals and Visay ans, the alphabets in use since the thirteenth century seem to be of Indian origin, and the same statement holds regarding those of certain peoples of Celebes. The .Javanese and several of the Sumatran peoples have alphabets of Hindu or Arabic origin. The literary culture of the Malayan peoples is in some sections quite ad vanced, particularly in Java, where the sacred books are preserved in the Kavi (q.v.) or ancient Javanese language. In Java, too, the puppet-show and the primitive drama are at home. The Macassars of Celebes have also de veloped their literary instinct to a considerable extent. The literature of the civilized tribes of the Philippines is quite large, several thousand books and pamphlets having been printed in the native dialects. The Malay proper has become a sort of lingua franca for the whole Malay Archipelago, and has a literature of its own.
Among the Malayans agriculture varies from the rudest tillage of the savage tribes to the highly developed system of the Battas. It is characteristic of the uneven temperament of the Malayan stock that anthropophagy in a curious form (the eating of criminals) lingered so long among a people otherwise so far above the aver age as the Battas. Head-hunting, once common among the wilder tribes in large regions of the archipelago, is dying out, even in Borneo and Formosa. Widespread among Malayan peoples is the custom of betel-chewing, the use of the sumpitan, or blow-gun, and of the kris, or dagger. Pile dwellings (see LANE DWELLINGS) often occur even on dry land. Of interest to the sociolo gist are the customs of tekuonymy, elan-exogamy, patriarchy, and the co-existenee of family and individual property. The utilization of iron by the Malayan peoples is one of the marked fea tures of their native culture.
The Malayan peoples have shown considerable genius in the direction of art and literature, and have produced a number of great men. Some of the native rajas and sultans of Sumatra and Java have been men of mueh ability. The Tagals, Visa yans, Ilocans, and other peoples of the Philippines have produced men of letters and science like Rizal, painters like Luna, statesmen like Mabini, popular leaders like Aguinaldo, and lawyers like Arellano, who would take high rank among any race or people. The Malayans, moreover, are not a decadent or a disappearing race, as the large increases in the population of .Java and the Philippines show. Their character has generally been rated rather low by Occidental observers, but the deceit, untrustworthiness, unevenness, treachery, and other bad qualities attributed to them have been mueh exaggerated and the depth of feeling, honor, and moral and intellectual pos sibilities correspondingly underestimated.
As to the origin of the Malays, some authori ties suppose that they have come from the south eastern part of Asia through the Malay Penin sula, whence they spread over the Indo-Pacific world. Aceording to this theory their first occu pation of Sumatra and Java dates from between one and two thousand years before the Christian Era, and the expansion of the Malays could not have been much later than the Aryan conquest of India. Others consider the Malays proper to he of comparatively recent origin, and attribute the diffusion of the Malayo-Polynesian speech to , a period long before the dispersion of the Sumatran peoples, who gave their name to the Eastern Archipelago. The hest view is that the Malayan stock is either a modified form of a great human race native to this area, or is of continental origin and of Mongoloid affinities, developed in certain directions in its insular habitat. The discovery in 1891 by Dubois of the remains of the Pithecanthropus erectus at Trinil in Java (a so-called 'missing link') adds to the interesting problems of the Malayan area. The Malayan stock is of very great value to the ethnologist by reason of the numerous and manifold cultures that have influenced it, as Hindu, Chinese, Arab,Portuguese, Dutch, Span ish, English, American, Japanese, from which have resulted important social, religious, politi cal, and linguistic complications. In the north ern part of the archipelago intermixture with a primitive Negrito element. Aetas (q.v.) of Luzon, has occurred to some extent, while in the east Papuan-Melanesian elements are discernible. Spanish relations with Mexico have caused even some American Indian blood to mingle with that of the natives of part of Mindanao. The Ma layans have made their influence felt from Mada gascar to Easter Island, and from Japan and llawaii to New Zealand. Consult: Marsden, History of Sumatra (London, 1811) ; Raffles, History of Java. (London, ISIT) ; Crawford, Ilistory of the Indian Archipelago (Edinburgh, 1820) ; Brumund and Von Hoevell, des ostindischen Archipcls (Berlin, 1865) ; Wal lace, ifaiay Archipelago (1895); Bastian, In doncsicn (Berlin, 1884-94) : Groenvelt, Notes on the Malay Archipelago and Malacca, Compiled front Chinese Sources (Batavia, 1S76) : Meyer, Bilderschriften des ostindischen Archipels and dcr Siidsee (Leipzig. 1831) : id.. Altcrthiimer des ostindischen Archipels (Dresden, 1884) Rosen bet..., Der malayische Archipel (Leipzig, 1878) ; Forbes, A Naturalist's Wanderings in the East ern Archipelago (London, ISTS) Stratz, nark" pologische Studien aus Insulindie (Amsterdam, 13901 ; Steven, Materialien Zur Kenntniss der leaden Stamme auf der Halbinsel Malakka (Ber lin, 1892) ; Martin, Reim, in den Molukken (Ley den, 189-0 : Van der Lith and Span, Encyclomr die van Nederlandsche-Indie (Gravenhage,189(i) ; Hagen, Anthropologischer Atlas ostasiatischer Volker (Wiesbaden, 189S) ; Skeat. Malay Magic (London, 1900) ; id., Fables and Folk-Talcs from. an Eastern Forest (Cambridge, 1901). See JAYA, paragraph Ethnology; PHILIPPINE ISL ANDS; POLYNESIANS; SUMATRA.