Races and Peoples: Lectures on the Science of Ethnography

by Daniel G. Brinton

The stock is divided at present into two groups, the western or Malayan peoples, and the eastern or Polynesian peoples. There has been some discussion about the original identity of these, but we may consider it now proved by both physical, linguistic and traditional evidence.[161] The original home of the parent stem has also excited some controversy, but this too may be taken as settled. There is no reasonable doubt but that the Malays came from the southeastern regions of Asia, from the peninsula of Farther India, and thence spread south, east and west over the whole of the island world. Their first occupation of Sumatra and Java has been estimated to have occurred not later than 1000 B. C., and probably was a thousand years earlier, or about the time that the Aryans entered Northern India.

The relationship of the Malayic with the other Asian stocks has not yet been made out. Physically they stand near to the Sinitic peoples of small stature and roundish heads of southeastern Asia.[162] The oldest form of their language, however, was not monosyllabic and tonic, but was dissyllabic. Structurally, it was largely of the “isolating” type, the relations of the members of the proposition being expressed by loose words, as is still the case in some of the Polynesian dialects. This is scarcely recognizable in the developed Malayan and Tagala idioms where there is a richly varied structure by suffixes, prefixes and infixes; but the building up of these grammatical resources can be traced back from the simple original tongue, or Ursprache, I have mentioned.[163] We cannot be far wrong, therefore, in associating in some remote past the ancestral Malays, with their isolating, dissyllabic speech, yellowish-brown complexion, short skulls and small stature, with the Indo-Chinese group of the Sinitic branch of the Asian race.

1. The Western or Malayan Group.

The purest type of the true Malays is seen in Malacca, Sumatra and Java. They are of medium or slightly under size, the complexion from olive to brown. The hair is black, straight and lank, and the beard is scanty. The eyes are black, often slightly oblique, the nose straight and rather prominent, the mouth large, and the chin well developed. The skull is short (brachycephalic), and the muscular force less than the European average.

This type is found among the Malayans of Malacca and Sumatra, the Javanese, the Madurese and Tagalas. It has changed slightly by foreign intermixture among the Battaks of Sumatra, the Dayaks of Borneo, the Alfures and the Bugis. But the supposition that these are so remote that they cannot properly be classed with the Malays is an exaggeration of some recent ethnographers, and is not approved by the best authorities.[164] The chief differences are that the Battak type is larger and stronger than the average Malay, the skull is more oval, the hair finer in texture and lighter in color.

In character the Malays are energetic, quick of perception, genial in demeanor, but unscrupulous, cruel and revengeful. Veracity is unknown, and the love of gain is far stronger than any other passion or affection. This thirst for gold made the Malay the daring navigator he early became. As merchant, pirate or explorer, and generally as all three in one, he pushed his crafts far and wide over the tropical seas through twelve thousand miles of extent.

On the extreme west he reached and colonized Madagascar. The Hovas there, undoubtedly of Malay blood, number about 800,000 in a population of five and a half millions, the remainder being Negroids of various degrees of fusion. In spite of this disproportion, the Hovas are the recognized masters of the island. Their language stands in closest relation to that of the Battaks of Sumatra. In physical appearance they have a striking likeness to the Polynesians, so close, indeed, that the one may readily be mistaken for the other.[165]

On the great islands near the Malaccan peninsula there are tribes in different stages of culture. Those on the highest plane are the Javanese, whose ancient language, the Kavi, is preserved in their sacred books. The Battaks of Northern Sumatra are an agricultural people, who have not accepted Islam, and belong to the old stock of the Asian immigrants. They are still to some extent cannibals, a convict condemned to death being eaten by the community. The Dayaks of Borneo are not less truculent, being cannibals and famous “head hunters”—that is, their highest trophy of war and proof of manhood is to bring home the head of a slain enemy. Some of them are agriculturists, others sea robbers. Their dwellings are of the communal character, and their religion an idolatry, the figures of the gods being carved in wood.

The Macassars of the Celebes and the Tagalas of the Philippines are Malays of milder habits, and possess commercial importance and literary culture. In these islanders there is a mixed class called Alfures, who have attracted some attention as differing from the prevalent type, but they are of no ethnographic importance.

The Malays probably established various colonies in Southern India. The natives at Travancore and the Sinhalese of Ceylon bear a strongly Malayan aspect. But the latter speak a dialect largely Aryac, and the Veddahs in the interior of the island have a much lower cephalic index than the Malay (about 72), and their language is derived about one-half from Aryac and the rest from Dravidian (Tamil) sources.[166]