At any rate we have Mahometan culture as the result of Mahometan influence, the propagators having been Arabs.
The civilization of the Jokong, and of tribes still wilder, like those of Korinchi country, and other mountaineer districts both of the Peninsula and Sumatra, is the primitive civilization—such as it is—of the unmodified Malays. Without saying, that it is nowhere tinctured by Mahometan elements, it is still an indigenous, and an inferior culture. Hence, even without reckoning the Samangs as Malay, we have two types of moral character, and two types of social development—the Jokong type, or the type of the unmodified Malay, and the proper Malay type of the Mahometans of Malacca, Menangkabaw and Atchin.
But these two types are not the only ones. Savage as are the Battas, and nearly as they approach in this respect to the unmodified Malays, they exhibit signs of a second influence. Notwithstanding their imperfect Mahometanism, the influence alluded to is not Arabic. The same influence appears in the Rejang and Lampong Sumatrans as well. I allude to their alphabets. These are Indian in origin.
For Sumatra, then, and Malacca, we have in different degrees of development—
1st. The original Malay civilization, if so it can be called.
2nd. The same as modified by Indian influences.
3rd. The same as modified by Arabic influences, engrafted, in some cases, perhaps, on the original Malay rudeness; but more frequently upon an Indian modification of it.
This order is chronological; i.e. the primitive stage was (of course) earlier than the Indian, and the Indian earlier than the Arabic.
Another principle of arrangement is the relation which the three developments bear to each other. In Malacca and Sumatra the Indian development is the most insignificant, the Mahometan the most important.