Malay people
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- This article is about Malay as a definition that includes the predominant people of Indonesia, Malaysia, Timor, and the Philippines. For other uses, see Malay.
Malays (Dutch, Maleiërs, ultimately from Malay: Melayu) are a diverse group of Austronesian peoples inhabiting the Malay archipelago and Malay peninsula in Southeast Asia.
They constitute the dominant ethnic group in Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, the Philippines, the Pattani region of Thailand and East Timor, which together with Singapore make up what is called the Malay archipelago. Outside this area, Malay people inhabit Palau, Guam and the Northern Marianas, most of Madagascar, and the Cham areas of Cambodia, Vietnam, and Hainan Island (the remnants of the Champa kingdom which covered central and southern Vietnam).
In Singapore, Malays comprise a minority, as much of its current population is composed of recent Chinese and South Asian immigrants and their descendants. Also, while not considered a part of the Malay archipelago, the southernmost part of Thailand — the Pattani region — is also primarily inhabited by Malays who are the indigenous group of what is called southern Thailand. These are the descendants of migrations from the neighbouring Malay archipelago which later founded the Pattani kingdom, which replaces the Langkasuka kingdom. Pattani came into the Thai sphere of influence through the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909 whereby Pattani was retained by Thailand, then Siam, and the British retained control of Kelantan, Terengganu, Kedah and Perlis.
Malays are linguistically related to the Polynesian and Micronesian groups of the mid-Pacific, as members of the Austronesian family of languages. Evidence also suggests that Polynesians and Micronesians may be descended - at least in part - from seafaring ancestors that originated in and around the Malay racial stock stronghold along with Melanesians. Malay peoples have black hair and their skin color ranges from light tan to dark brown complexions.
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[edit] History
There are usually two school of thoughts at the origins of the Malay people.
The first one is that the Austronesian-speaking ancestors of the Malays came from mainland Asia, settled around southern Vietnam, Indochina, the Malay peninsula and sailed towards the Malay archipelago until reaching the Philippines.
The other is that Austronesian-speakers from southern China sailed towards Taiwan. From there, they reached the northern Philippine island of Luzon and eventually spread southwards to the rest of the island group and reached Indonesia and the Malaysia with some outliers reaching sothern Vietnam and Indochina.
However there is another emerging school of thought that says that the Malays originated from Sumatra and then expanded outwards including into the peninsula which today bears their name. The main foundation of this school of thought lies in the fact that the oldest Malay settlements have been discovered in Sumatra and not in the Malay peninsula. This suggests an upward - south to north - migratory route. This opinion thus contends that if the Malays had came from the north - whether from the way of Indochina or Luzon - then the oldest Malay historical relics would be found in these places.
[edit] Origin of the word Malay
According to the History of Jambi, the word Melayu originated from a river with name Melayu River near to Batang Hari River of today's Muara Jambi, Jambi province of Sumatra, Indonesia. The founder of Malacca, Parameswara was a prince of Palembang which was once owned by a nation called "Malayu" back in the 7th century. Yi Jing (635-713) clearly recorded in his journal book a nation of name 'Ma-La-Yu' existed. According to archaeological research of Jambi, large numbers of ancient artifacts and ancient architectures of Melayu have been found with photo evidence.
The word "Malay" was adopted into English via the Dutch word "Malayo", itself from Portuguese "Malaio", which originates from the Malay word "Melayu". According to one popular theory, the word Melayu means "migrating" or "fleeing", which might refer to the high mobility of these people across the region.
In his 1775 doctoral dissertation titled De generi humani varietate nativa (On the Natural Varieties of Mankind), anthropologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach outlined four main human races by skin color, namely Caucasian (white), Ethiopian (black), American (red), and Mongolian (yellow).
By 1795, Blumenbach added another race called Malay which he considered to be a subcategory of both the Ethiopian and Mongoloid races. The Malay race were those of a "brown color, from olive and a clear mahogany to the darkest clove or chestnut brown." Blumenbach expanded the term "Malay" to include the inhabitants of the Marianas, the Philippines, the Malukus, Sundas, as well as Pacific Islands such as Tahitians. He considered a Tahitian skull he had received to be the missing link; showing the transition between the "primary" race, the Caucasians, and the "degenerate" race, the Negroids.
Since Blumenbach, many anthropologists have rejected his theory of five races, citing the enormous complexity of classifying races.
The term is used as a form of ethnic self-identification. It is both generic and specific.
For example, in the Philippines, many Filipinos consider the term "Malay" to refer to the indigenous population of the country as well as the population of neighboring countries like Indonesia and Malaysia. This misconception is due in part to American anthropologists H. Otley Beyer who proposed that the Filipinos were actually Malays who migrated from Malaysia and Indonesia. This idea was in turn propagated by Filipino historians and is still taught in schools. However, the prevalent consensus among contemporary anthropologists, archaeologists, and linguists actually proposes the reverse; namely that the Malays of Malaysia and Indonesia originally migrated south from the Philippines during the prehistoric period. Among these are scholars in the field of Austronesian studies such as Peter Bellwood, Robert Blust, Malcolm Ross, Andrew Pawley, and Lawrence Reid.
[edit] Malay domain
Generically, the name "Malay" is used to describe all the numerous related groups inhabiting the Malay Archipelago, and which are not of older aboriginal stock. These include the Aceh, Minangkabaus, Bataks and Mandailings who live in Sumatra ; Java and Sunda in Java ; Banjars, Ibans, Kadazans and Melanaus in Borneo ; Bugis and Torajas in Sulawesi ; the various dominant ethnic groups in the Philippines such as the Tagalogs, Ilocanos and Igorot of Luzon island, the Bisaya of the central Philippines, the Maguindanao, Tausug and Bajau of Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago ; and the people of East Timor (again, excluding those of older Papuan stock).
Specifically, this name is also proper to the subgroup which is native to the eastern part of Sumatra but migrated to the Malay Peninsula and the Riau Archipelago over the past thousand years or so. Sometimes, but very rarely, this subgroup is called "Riau Malays" to distinguish it as a specific group.
The term Melayu (Malay Person in Malay Language), in the Federal Constitution of Malaysia, refers to a person who practices Islam and Malay Cultures, speaks Malay Language, and whose ancestors are Malays.
Other groups classified as Malays which live outside what is called the Malay archipelago include the Cham who live in Cambodia and Vietnam and the Utsuls who live on the island of Hainan. Descendants of the Malays could be found today in Sri Lanka, South Africa (the "Cape Malays"), Australia and Madagascar. In the latter, they are known as the Merina and constitute one of the dominant ethnic groups in that country.
Situated in the north-eastern coast of South America, the small Caribbean nation of Surinam also harbours a large Malay population, descendants of fairly recent ethnic Javanese immigrant workers.
[edit] Ethnic group vs. cultural sphere
The term Malay can refer to the ethnic group who live in the Malay peninsula (which include the southernmost part of Thailand call Patani and Satun) and east Sumatra as well as the cultural sphere that encompass a large part of the archipelago. The Malay ethnic group is the majority in Malaysia and Brunei and a sizable minority in Singapore and Indonesia. This people speak various dialects of Malay language. The peninsular dialect is the standard speech among Malays in Malaysia and Singapore. Meanwhile, the Riau dialect of eastern Sumatra is adopted as a national tongue, Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia), for the whole Indonesian population. The ethnic Malay are predominantly Muslim in Brunei, Singapore, southern Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, while those of the Philippines and East Timor are mostly Christian. In Malaysia , the vast majority of the population is made up of ethnic Malays while the minorities consist of southern Chinese (e.g. Hokkien and Cantonese), southern Indians (mainly Tamils and Malayalis) as well as Eurasians.
Malay cultural influences filtered out throughout the archipelago, such as the monarchical state, religion (Hinduism/Buddhism in the first millennium AD, Islam in the second millennium), and the Malay language. The influential Srivijaya kingdom had unified the various ethnic groups in southeast Asia into a convergent cultural sphere for almost a millennium. It was during that time that vast borrowing of Sanskrit words and concepts facilitated the advanced linguistic development of Malay as a language. Malay was the regional lingua franca, and Malay-based creole languages existed in most trading ports in Indonesia.
In a broader sense, the term Malay also includes most ethnic groups in the Philippines and Indonesia west of Papua. It is best understood as a cultural, not racial grouping. For example, people of the Maluku and Nusa Tenggara islands up to Timor have darker skin but are more readily described as Malays than the Dayaks of inner Borneo.
[edit] Culture
[edit] Languages
The languages spoken by Malays are classified as members of the Malayo-Polynesian family of languages, which is a one of the many branches belonging to the Austronesian language family. This large family of languages includes all the native languages spoken by Malays across the Malay Archipelago, including Javanese, Bahasa Indonesia/Bahasa Melayu, Tagalog and all the other native languages of the Philippines, Tetum (East Timorese), and the Malagasy language of Madagascar.
Far-flung members of this large family of languages, on the Polynesian branch, are the languages spoken by Polynesians; such as Samoan, Hawaiian, Rapanui and Maori in New Zealand.
The Malay language borrows certain words from other languages, in the same way English borrows words from Latin for example.
Indonesian Malay, or the official language of Indonesia, borrows a lot from English even though there are perfectly Malay words for them. For example, the word'cancer' is rendered as 'kanker' even though the Malay word for it is 'barah'. Other examples include 'cost - kos - harga', 'contradiction - kontradiksi - pencanggahan' and 'criminal - kriminal - penjenayah'.
Filipino, the national language of the Philippines is distantly related to the Malay language spoken in Malaysia and Indonesia and is based on Tagalog.
Due to the geographic nature of the Malay Archipelago, several hundred other languages and various dialects are spoken on different islands.
[edit] Religion
In terms of religion, most Malays had converted from Hinduism, Buddhism and animism to Islam in the early 15th century; influenced by Arab, Chinese and Indian Muslim seafarers during the Islamic Golden Age. Today, Muslims form the dominant religious group among Malays of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei. Their conversion to Islam from Hinduism and Theravada Buddhism began in the 1400s, largely influenced by the decision of the royal court of Malacca. Most Malays in Thailand, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Surinam — being descendants of those who had already been Islamised in Malaysia, Indonesia, etc — are also Muslims.
Golden images of Garuda, the phoenix who is the mount of Vishnu have been found in the Philippine island of Palawan. A 4 lb., 1 foot-high, gold Hindu-Malayan cult figure of a goddess, now resting in the Field Museum, was discovered in the Philippine island of Mindanao, in 1917. However Islam forbids images and idols, which indicates clearly that this idol existed in Mindanao before the arrival of Islam. Many Malays in Mindanao were also Muslim, but are recounted to have been the 23rd and last group in the waves of migration, to have arrived in the Philippines from the south.
In the Philippines, as a result of Spanish colonization spanning just over three centuries, Islam is not predominant, and most contemporary Filipinos (regardless of which Malay sub-group they belong to) are Christians, primarily Roman Catholics. However, a significant number of Filipinos in the southern island of Mindanao and the Sulu chain - that had resisted Spanish colonial encroachment, and still continue struggle against assimilation and Christianization - are to this day Muslim.
Like most Malays of the Philippines, those of East Timor are also Christian, though this time as a result of Portuguese colonial rule. These two countries represent the only Christian-majority nations in Far East Asia.
Hinduism is the dominant religion in the island of Bali. Smaller groups scattered throughout the entire Malay archipelago, who managed to avoid first the spread of Islam then the rise of Christianity through European colonization, practice animism. Buddhism is also present.
[edit] Arts and music
[edit] Architecture
Malay architecture varies by region but a few characteristics are common across the archipelago and the peninsula.
A common feature usually includes stilts, the use of wood and other indigenous materials, ornate wood carvings and in some cases, highly angular and sloping roofs.
Malaysian and Indonesian architecture usually uses wooden roof tiles, and are more heavily influenced by both India and Islam.
Philippine architecture is usually characterized by use of lighter materials than those in the eastern Malayan Archipelago. Use of fibrous instead of woody roofing predominates and lighter materials for walls are also common.
[edit] See also
- Nusantara
- Bumiputra
- Hinduism in Southeast Asia
- Islam in Malaysia
- Malay Archipelago
- Maphilindo
- Austronesian people
- Ketuanan Melayu, racialist belief that the Malay people are the "tuan" (masters) of Malaysia or Malaya
[edit] External links
| Ethnic groups in Thailand |
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fr:Malais (ethnie) id:Melayu ms:Melayu ja:マレー人 nn:malayar pl:Malajowie sh:Malajci fi:Malaijit tl:Malayo zh:马来族
