Coastal Malays

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Malay Peninsula Summary

Coastal Malays

The origins of the modern Deutero-Malay or Coastal Malay people are the subject of much debate. Some believe they came to the coastal regions of the Malay Peninsula from mainland Southeast Asia around 2000 BCE. The Malay settlers who first came to the peninsula kept to the rivers, and earlier races were driven inland to the mountains and swamps. These Malays intermarried with the indigenous peoples but failed to absorb them.

Folklore recorded in the Malay Annals has it that the founder of the Malay dynasties in much of insular Southeast Asia from the Malay Peninsula through the archipelago was a prince named Sang Sapurba. He was the son of Raja Suran, the "Ruler of the East and the West," by his marriage to a mermaid who was the daughter of the Kings of the Sea. This prince was believed to have revealed himself on the hill of Si-guntang, near Mount Mahameru, in the hinterland of Palembang, a port city near the east coast of Sumatra.

The legendary Sang Sapurba was said to have crossed the central range of Sumatra into the mountains of Minangkabau, where he slew the dragon Sikatimuna and became king and founded the line of princes of Minangkabau, the noblest Malay dynasty. His relative, Nila Utama from Palembang, had meanwhile crossed the sea, first reaching the island of Bintan and then the island of Temasik, on which he founded Singapore.

The modern or Deutero-Malay of Southeast Asia are believed to be descended from Proto-Malays who lived in the southern states of the Malay Peninsula, the Riau-Lingga Archipelago, Bangka Island, and certain districts in eastern Sumatra. Anthropologists caution against inferring that every modern Malay is descended from Proto-Malay tribe membes. The modern Malay are a mixed race and differ among themselves considerably. They developed from inter-marriage with Chinese (as early as the Chou period), Indians from Bengal and Deccan, Arabs, and Thais.

The earliest immigrants to the Malay Peninsula from the Indonesian archipelago were Minangkabaus from Sumatra. Attracted by the wealth and commerce of Melaka, they moved into what are now the Malaysian states of Negri Sembilan and Melaka. Their legacy of matriarchal social structures remains visible in Malay culture today. In the early eighteenth century, the Bugis of Celebes established themselves in what is now the state of Selangor, later becoming politically dominant in the Riau-Johor empire.

This migration from the archipelago differentiates southern Malays from those in north of the Peninsula in Kedah and Kelantan. These differ from other groups, such as the Patani Malays of northern Perak (another state in modern peninsular Malaysia). These Malays were driven south from Thailand in the mid-nineteenth century and retain aspects of Thai culture.

Southern Malay communities generally spoke Malayan dialects or a language from which Malay has developed. In British Malaya they were known as Biduanda, while in the south and on the islands they were called Orang Laut, or people of the sea. Many of these people were unacquainted with agriculture and lived by fishing. The coastal Malays did well by the sea, as the coasts and rivers of Southeast Asia where they settled were rich in marine life, and the waters yielded more than did the inland jungles. The Orang Laut in their coastal villages had specific indigenous customs, but few of these are left to the Malay.

Coastal Malays appear to have settled along the coasts of Malaya and surrounding areas and intermarried with Chinese and Indians who migrated to and traded in the region, giving rise to the Deutero-Malay. The Malay spoken today is thought to have originated in a language from the archipelago. In the remote past, it is believed that the two great language groups—the language spoken on the archipelago and that spoken by the Indo-Chinese—were connected.

Historians agree that prior to recorded history in the Malay Peninsula and archipelago, there was already a substantial population with a fairly well-developed culture. Early Malays knew how to navigate by the stars on the open ocean and maintained some sort of political and social organization.

Unlike their predecessors, modern Malays are preeminently an agricultural people, and wet rice cultivation and fishing have been traditionally their main occupations wherever they settled. In the Melaka and Kelantan-Trengganu regions, fishing was revived as the main occupation because of better transportation in the eastern coastal region and the substitution of money for barter, which allowed for the division of labor and specialization in fishing by the coastal Malays.

The Malays today number over 200 million people in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia who share similarities in religion, language, general culture, and even political identity. Islam has proven to be a unifying force whose extranational character links the most remote mountain farmers to the townspeople of other Muslim communities in Southeast Asia.