Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 12.djvu/825

* MAXAYAN PEOPLES. r33 MALAYAN SUBREGION. veloped their literary instinct to a considerable extent. The literature of the civilized tribes of the Philippines is quite large, several thousand books and pamphlets having been printed in the native dialects. The Malay proper has become a sort oi linyua franca for the whole Malay Archipelago, and has a literature of its own. Among the Malayans agriculture varies from the rudest tillage of the savage tribes to the highly developed .system of the Battas. It is characteristic of the uneven temperament of the Malayan stock that anthropophagy in a curious form (the eating of criminals) lingered so long among a people otherwise so far above the aver- age as the Battas. Head-hunting, once common among the wilder tribes in large regions of the archipelago, is dj"ing out, even in Borneo and Formosa. Widespread among ilalayan peoples is the custom of betel-chewing, the use of the »ii III pi 1 11)1, or blow-gun, and of the kris, or dagger. Pile dwellings (see Lake Dwellings) often occur even on dry land. Of interest to the sociolo- gist are the customs of teknonymy, clan-exogamy, patriarchy, and the co-existence of family and individual property. The utilization of iron by the Malayan peoples is one of the marked fea- tures of their native culture. The Malayan peoples have shown considerable genius in the direction of art and literature, and have produced a number of great men. Some of the native rajas and sultans of Sumatra and Java have been men of much ability. The Tagals, Visa- yans, Ilocans. and other peoples of the Philippines have produced men of letters and science like Rizal, painters like Luna, statesmen like Mabini, popular leaders like Aguinaldo, and lawyers like Arellano, who would take high rank among any race or people. The Malayans, moreover, are not a decadent or a disappearing race, as the large increases in the population of .Java and the Pliilippines show. Their character has generally been rated rather low liy Occidental observers, but the deceit, untrustworthiness, unevenness, treachery, and other bad qualities attributed to tliem have been much exaggerated and the depth of feeling, honor, and moral and intellectual pos- sibilities correspondingly imderestimated. .s to the origin of the Malays, some authori- ties suppose that they have come from the south- eastern part of Asia through the Malay Penin- sula, wlience they spread over the Indo-Pacific world. According to this theory their first occu- pation of Sumatra and Java dates from between one and two thousand years before the Christian Era, and the expansion of the Malays could not have been much later than the Aryan conquest of India. Others consider the Malays proper to be of comparatively recent origin, and attribute the difTusion of the Malayo-Polynesian speech to a period long before the dispersion of the Sumatran peoples, who gave their name to the Eastern Archipelago. The best view is that the Malayan stock is either a modified form of a great human race native to this area, or is of continental origin and of Mongoloid affinities, developed in certain directions in its insular habitat. The discovery in 1891 by Dubois of the remains of the Pithecnnthropua errrtiix at Trinil in -Java (a so-called 'missing link') adds to the interesting problems of the Malayan area. The ]^Ialayan stock is of very great value to the ethnologist by reason of the niimerous and manifold cultures that have influenced it, as Hindu, Chinese, Arab, Portuguese, Dutch, Span- ish, English, American, Japanese, from which have resulted important social, religious, politi- cal, and linguistic complications. In the north- ern part of tlie archipelago intermixture with a primitive Negrito element, Aetas (q.v.) of Luzon, has occurred to some e.xtent, while in the east Papuan-Melanesian elements are discernible. Spanish relations with Mexico have cau.sed even some American Indian blood to mingle with that of the natives of part of Mindanao. The ila- layans have made their influence felt from Mada- gascar to Easter Island, and from .Japan and Hawaii to New Zealand. Consult: Marsden, History of Sumatra (London, 181 1) ; Raffles, History of Java (London, 1817) ; Crawfurd, History of the Indian Archipelago (Edinburgh, 1820) ; Brumund and Von Hoevell, Altertiimer (les ostindischen Archipcls (Berlin, 18G.5) ; Wal- lace, Malay Archipelago (1895); Bastian, In- doiiesien (Berlin, 1884-94) ; Groenvelt, Xotes on the Malay Archipelago and Malacca, Compiled from Chinese Sources (Batavia. 1876): Meyer, liildmschriften des ostindischen Archipcls und der Siidsee (Leipzig, 1881) ; id., Alterthiimer des ostindischen Archipcls (Dresden, 1884) : Rosen- berg, Der malayische Archipel (Leipzig, 1878) ; Forbes, A Xafuralist's Wanderings in the East- ern Archipelago (London. 1878) ; Stratz, Anthro- pologische Studien aus Insulindie (Amsterdam, 1890) ; Steven, Materialien Zur Krnntniss der tcilden Stdmme auf der Hulbinsel Malakka (Ber- lin, 1892 ) ; Martin, Reisen in den Molukken ( Ley- den, 1894) ; Van der Lith and Span, Encyclopw- die van Nederlandsche-hidie (Gravenhage, 1896) ; Hagen, Anthropologischer Atlas osfasiatischcr Yijlker (Wiesbaden, 1898) ; Skeat, Malay Magic (London, 1900) ; id.. Fables and Folk-Tales from an Eastern Forest (Cambridge, 1901). See .Jav.'V, paragraph Ethnology: Philippine Isl- ands; Polynesians; Sumatra. MALAYAN SITBEEGION. In zoogeog- raphy, a faunal district of the Oriental region (q.v.), comprising the Malay Peninsula south of Tenasserim, Sumatra. .Java. Borneo, and all the archipelago west and north of Lonihok and Celebes, as far as and including the Philippines. It intercalates with the Indian and Chinese sub- regions along the eastern coast of the Bay of Bengal, and is known in some books as 'Indo- Malayan.' Its southeastern boundary (Wallace's line), at the Straits of Macassar, is curiously distinct from that of the Australian region, al- though the two are separated only by narrow waters. An explanation of this will be found in the article Distribution of Animals, illustrated by maps. This is almost entirely a region of tropical and forested islands, and its animals are those most typical of the Oriental fauna — that is, organisms suited to uniform but not ex- treme heat, plenty of moisture, and approximate- ly uniform nieteoroloeical conditions throughout the year. One result of this is an interesting similarity between its faunal characteristics and those of equatorial Africa on the one side and of the Amazonian region on the other. The tapirs and trngons of South America, and the .frican anthropoid anes and hornbills. are curi- ously paralleled by sinnlar Malayan species ab- sent elsewhere. A noteworthy resemblance also exists between the Malayan and Malagasy re- gions. Two very conspicuous groups exclusively