The Natural History of the Varieties of ManLatham, R. G. (Robert Gordon)
Science
The Natural History of the Varieties of Man
Latham, R. G. (Robert Gordon)
Ethnology
_Orang Maruwi._--The small islands of Pulo Nako, close upon the
western side of Nias, also Pulo Babi, and Pulo Baniak.--These are
merely noticed for the sake of saying that their dialect is said to
be unintelligible to the Nias and Poggi people, and that a minute
distinction between them has been recognized.
We may now consider some of the moral attributes of the Malay race;
and in doing this there is no better a division of the different forms
of their civilization than the one indicated and illustrated by Dr.
Prichard. The two areas which we have just considered--the peninsula of
Malacca, and the Island of Sumatra--have sufficiently shown that there
are, _at least_, two degrees in the civilization of their occupants.
The civilization of the kingdom of Atchin, and of the proper Mahometan
Malays in general, is a _derived_ civilization, introduced by the
conquerors, the traders, or the missionaries of Mahometan Arabia; in
which we have a literature consisting, to a great extent, of annals, an
Arabic alphabet, and no very prominent traces of any original paganism.
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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