speaking languages distinct from Malay. The Bornean Malays may, perhaps, be as
numerous as the Malays of the Peninsula and its islands, and thus, without including
settlers scattered over the other parts of the Archipelago, the whole Malay population
may be estimated at about a million and a half. In this number, however, is no
doubt included many not of the original Malay stock, but who, adopting their
language, manners, and religion, came in process of time not to be distinguishable.
The Malay nation may be divided naturally into three classes—the civilised Malays,
or those who possess a written language, and have made a decent progress in the
usefiil arts; the gipsy-like fishermen, called “ the sea-people,” and the rude half
savages, who, for the most part, live precariously on the produce of the forests. The
civilised Malays consist of the inhabitants of the eastern side of Sumatra, of much of
the interior of that island, and of those of the sea-boards. of Borneo and the Malay
Peninsula. The sea-gipsies are to be found sojourning from Sumatra to the Moluccas,
but are most numerous among the narrow seas of the many islands lying between
Sumatra and the peninsula towards the eastern end of the strait that divides them.
The only habitations of this people are their boats, and they live exclusively by the
produce of the sea or by the robberies they commit on it. The most usual name
by which they are known is orang-laut, literally, “men of the sea,” but they are also
sometimes called rayat-laut, or “ sea-subjects,” the Arabic word for subject being
here used to express their dependence on the princes of the civilised Malays. Another
name for them is Sika, and a very frequent one Bajau, which seems to be only the
Javanese word, bajo, a robber, with a Malay termination. The rude wandering class,
speaking the Malay language, is found in the interior of the Malay Peninsula, in
Sumatra, and in the islands lying between them, but in no other part of the
Archipelago. In Sumatra they are known under the names of Lubu and Kubu, or
orang-utan, men of the woods, wild men or savages. The most general name for
them is orang-bdnua, that is, “ men of the soil,” or Aborigines, but in some parts
they are called sakai, which means followers or dependents. These are all of them
names given by the civilised Malays, for among themselves the many tribes into
which they are divided are known only by the names of the localities which they
frequent, as Udai, Jakun, Sabimba, B&sisi, &c.
These three classes of Malays existed near three centuries and a half ago, when
the Portuguese first arrived in the waters of the Archipelago, just as they do at the
present day. That people describes them as having existed also for two centuries
and a half before that event, as without doubt they did in times far earlier. Thus
De Barros describes the first class of Malays as men “ living by trade, and the most
cultivated of these parts : ” the second as a “ vile people,” whose “ dwelling was more
on the sea than the land,” and who “ lived by fishing and robbing,” and the third as
« half savages ” (quasi meios salvages), while the Malay language was common to all
The question of the parent country of a people so widely spread over the Archipelago,
which has exercised solarge an influence over the other population of the same
region’ and of whose tongue clear and unquestionable traces are found, not only in
those of the Philippines, but of the South Sea Islands, and even of remote Madagascar,
has been much debated, but certainly not settled, nor, indeed, likely ever to be
precisely determined. The Malays themselves, like all people in the same state of
society, have no true history. The books, which have been called their Annals, are,
in reality, romances, and indeed so called by themselves. The quality of these productions
may be judged from the example of one of them translated by the learned
Dr. Leyden, and which is deemed the most authentic. I t is called Sajarah Malayu,
which is rendered “ Malay Annals,” and stated to have been composed in 1612 at
Malacca of course under the government of the Portugese. This was framed from a
Malay manuscript which had been brought from Goa, and entitled a hakayat, the
Arabic word which the Malays use in common with the Sanscrit one, charitra, for a
tale or romance. Even the name given to these annals themselves is not Malay, but
Javanese, and mis-spelt in adoption. They are without a single date, and indeed, for
the period of Malay history which preceded the conversion to Mahommedanism,
there could hardly have been any dates, as the Malays are not known to have had an
era from which to reckon. The narrative is a wild tissue of fable often drawn from
Hindu and Arabian mythology, and the personages that figure in it not »infrequently
Arabians and Hindus. I t is conclusive of the worthlessness of such writings that
the Malays have long ago converted even the events of the Portuguese conquest of
Malacca into a mere romance.
In order to conjecture what may have been the parent country of the Malays, and
. „ „ .r it. •„ pari v history, nothing better than a reasonable hypothesis
to fo™ s°me notion of their ariy “ / ^ e s little assistance in this enquiry. The
Canil r ° 5 • I S v e X h requires to have a noun prefixed in order to give
word Malayu is an J Malavu, a Malay or Malays ; Tanah Malayu, the “ Malay
the sense require , ^ Bahaga Malayu, the Malay language. In Javanese
land, or land ol t ? > , . ajg0 signifies to run away or flee,’and fugitive, or
Malayu has the same . fhename of the Malayan people in reference to the founders
fleeing. Hence a denvation o f ^ th e™ probably given to the
Portuguese'by*th^ Javanese of Malacca, has probably no better foundation than the
Portuguese y „ i • +-v,e two words. Malayu is no doubt the name of
the original tribe or nation, and its source is as obscure and untraceable as th°s® of
Jawa Javanese, Sunda, Soudanese, Wugi, Bugis, and many others We need not,
indeed go further than our own language for a name as obscure for Angle as applied
to oursefves, our country and our language is as difficult to trace as Malayu applied
t0 IUg*!natural tolook for the parent country of the Malays where this people are
most numerous, and least intermixed with other nationalities; and this locality can
be no other than either Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula or the islandslymg bet ween them
The Malays themselves call the peninsula Tanah Malayu, that is, the Malay land, or
country of the Malays; ” and they designate its wild mhabitants, speaking the Malay
language, as the OiAng bitnua, literally “ people of the soil; or as we should express
H “ aborigines.” The term “ land of the Malays ” is, however, given to the Peninsula
by the civilised Malays, perhaps only on account of its being the only country
almost exclusively peopled by Malays; whereas m Sumatra and Borneo they are
intermixed with other populations. The term « men of the soil, applied by these
civilised Malays may in the same manner, be used by them only to distinguish the
rude natives from themselves claiming to be foreign settlers. The expression, however,
would seem to imply that the civilised Malays considered the wild tnbes, speaking
the same language with themselves, as the primitive occupants of the land. But the
same wild tribes, speaking the Malay language, although not distinguished as “men
of the soil,” exist also in Sumatra, and more especially on its eastern side opposite
to the Peninsula: and they are found also, in several of the islands lying between
those countries, extending even to Banca and Billiton. .
The first seat of the Malayan nation may, therefore, be either the Malay Peninsula,
Sumatra, or the islands lying between them ; and, as in the instance of the Polynesian
people of the islands of the Pacific, where we find men speaking the same language
and of the same race, from the Sandwich Islands to New Zealand and from the Friendly
Islands to Easter Island, it is difficult or impossible to determine on a particular
locality for an original seat. The origin of Malay civilisation, however, is quite a
distinct matter from that of the nation; and we may be tolerably sure that this did
not spring up in the Peninsula, or islands adjacent to it, for no civilisation has ever
sprung up in any part of the globe in a country of such a physical character, in a
region covered with an obstinate tropical forest, destitute of open plains, composed
of mountains without table-lands, without natural facilities for irrigation, and with a
stubborn or sterile soil. Such obstacles would be insuperable in the early and feeble
stages of society, and, indeed, in the Peninsula, have not been conquered even in a
more advanced one. The only Malay state within it that ever acquired any degree
of eminence was Malacca; and it owed it to the strangers who founded it, and to
the convenience of its position as a commercial emporium,—assuredly not to
the fertility of a soil, which never raised sustenance enough for its inhabitants,
many of whom still continue in the condition of mere savages.
All the civilised Malays of the Peninsula claim their origin from Sumatra and from
Menangkabo, the most powerful state of that island; but they do not pretend to
state the time, or the cause of their migration. Some of the states of the interior
even call themselves “ men of Menangkabo,” their chiefs receiving an investiture from
that place. Indeed the migration from Menangkabo to the Peninsula, although in
dribblets, goes on down to the present time. The Malays of Borneo, in like manner
with those of the Peninsula, claim their descent from the same Menangkabo.
This claim of Malays beyond Sumatra of being colonies from a country in the
heart of that island, is probably, after all, no better than a myth founded on a desire
to claim a descent from a country which had, at one time, acquired more power and
distinction than any other inhabited by Malays. The apocryphal Malay Chronicle,
for such without a doubt it is, referred to in the article on Malacca, does not, however,
refer to Menangkabo, but to Palembang, as that part of Sumatra from which