Malay people
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Malays (Dutch, Malayo, ultimately from Malay: Melayu) are a diverse group of people inhabiting the Malay archipelago and Malay peninsula in Southeast Asia.
They constitute the dominant ethnic group in Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, the Philippines, and East Timor, which together with Singapore make up what is called the Malay archipelago.
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 technically a part of the Malay archipelago, the southernmost part of Thailand — the Pattani region — is also primarily inhabited by Malays. These are the descendants of migrations from the neighbouring Malay archipelago which later founded the Pattani kingdom, one of the many Islamic sultanates established during the period of Islamic expansionism in Southeast Asia.
Malays are also linguistically related to the Polynesian and Micronesian groups of the mid-Pacific, as members of the far-flung 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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Origin of the word Malay
The word "Malay" was adopted into English via the Dutch word "Malayo", which ultimately 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 the Mongolian race. The Malay race were those of a "brown color, from a clear magohany 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 propose the reverse; among these are scholars in the field of Austronesian studies such as Peter Bellwood, Robert Blust, Malcolm Ross, Andrew Pawley, and Lawrence Reid.
Malay domain
Image:Malayarch.png 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 Ifugao 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. However, not all Malay people had been converted to Islam.
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") 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.
Ethnic group vs. cultural sphere
Image:Malays5.jpg 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 sizeable 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 but not exclusively 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.
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 Indonesian, Bahasa Malaysia, 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.
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, Brunei and Singapore. 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 modern Filipino government assimilation policies - 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, along with South Korea, whose largest religious group is Presbyterian Protestantism, 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.
See also
External links
fi:Malaijit id:Melayu ja:マレー人 ms:Melayu pl:Malajowie sh:Malajci zh:马来族