The differences of physical form are less than those of language. No one has denied that the Malay configuration is a modification of the Mongolian—at least in some of its varieties.
I say at least in some of its varieties, because within the narrow range of the Malaccan peninsula and the island of Borneo we find no less than three different types. In Polynesia one of these, and in Kelænonesia another becomes exaggerated—so much so, as to suggest the idea of a different origin for the populations.
a. The Malays are referable to the first type. Mahometans in religion, they partake of the civilization of the Arab and Indian, and differ but slightly from the Indo-Chinese nations; the complexion being dark and the hair straight. The Mahometan Malays, however, are no true aborigines. They are not only a new people on the peninsula, but they consider themselves as such; and those occupants which they recognize as older than themselves, they call Orang Binua, or men of the soil. Of these some have a darker complexion and crisper hair than the intruding population:[206] and when we reach a particular section called—
b. The Semang, we find them described as having curly, crisp, matted, and even woolly hair, thick lips, and a black skin. These, like most of the other Orang Binua, are Pagans. Still their language is essentially Malay; and their physical conformation passes into that of the Malays by numerous transitions.
c. Thirdly, we find in Borneo the Dyaks. Many of these are as much fairer than the Malays as the Semang are darker. Their language, however, belongs to the Malay class; whilst their religion and civilization may reasonably be supposed to be that of the Malays previous to the influences of Brahminism from India, Mahometanism from Arabia, and the changes effected in their habits, language, and appearance effected thereby.
It is not too much to say that within the peninsula of Malaya, the Johore Archipelago, and the island of Borneo, each of these types, and every intermediate form as well, is to be found.
Malacca.—The town of Malacca is a town of Mahometan Malays, but I believe that the eastern parts of Wellesley province are on the frontier of the Jokong, Jakon, or Jakun. These are Orang Binua, or aborigines—at least as compared with the true Malays.[207]
In the eighth century—I am drawing an illustration from the history of our own island, and its relations to continental Germany—the Anglo-Saxons of Great Britain, themselves originally Pagan Germans, took an interest in the spiritual welfare of the so-called Old Saxons, a tribe of Westphalia, immediately related to their own continental ancestors, these Old Saxons having retained their primitive Paganism. The mission partly succeeded, and partly failed.
Now, if in addition to this partial success of the Anglo-Saxon mission, there had been a partial Anglo-Saxon colonization as well, and if, side by side with this, fragments of the old unmodified Paganism had survived amongst the fens and forests up to the present time, we should have had, in the relations of England and Germany, precisely what I imagine to have been the case with the Malayan peninsula and the island of Sumatra. Like Germany, the peninsula would have supplied the original stock to the island; but, in the island, that stock would have undergone certain modifications. With these modifications it would—so to say—have been reflected back upon the continent—re-colonizing the old mother-country. Now just what the Old Saxons of Westphalia were to the Anglo-Saxons of the eighth century, are the Jakun to the true Malays. They differ from them in being something other than Mahometan;[208] i.e., in being nearly what the Mahometan Malays were before their conversion.
The Jakun are Malays, minus those points of Malay civilization which are referable to the religion of the Koran.