Malays Sentence Examples

Pottery, common to Malays and Papuans, the bows and arrows of the latter, and the elaborate canoes of all three races, are unknown to the Australians.

Again, while they differ physically from neighbouring races, while there is practically nothing in common between them and the Malays, the Polynesians, or the Papuan Melanesians, they agree in type so closely among themselves that they must be regarded as forming one race.

Only an insignificant fraction of these forests has ever been visited by human beings, the Malays and even the aboriginal tribe having their homes on the banks of the rivers, and never, even when travelling from one part of the country to another, leaving the banks of a stream except for a short time when passing from one river-system to another.

The rivers on the east coast are practically the only highways, the Malays always travelling by boat in preference to walking, but they serve their purpose very indifferently, and their great beauty is their chief claim to distinction.

The Malays formerly suffered severely from smallpox epidemics, but in the portion of the peninsula under British rule vaccination has been introduced, and the ravages of the disease no longer assume serious dimensions.

As a whole, the Malays are, however, a remarkably healthy people, and deformity and hereditary diseases are rare among them.

The Asiatic elephant; the seladang, a bison of a larger type than the Indian gaur; two varieties of rhinoceros; the honey bear (bruang), the tapir, the sambhur (rusa); the speckled deer (kijang), three varieties of mouse-deer (napoh, plandok and kanchil); the gibbon (ungka or wawa'), the siamang, another species of anthropoid ape, the brok or coco-nut monkey, so called because it is trained by the Malays to gather the nuts from the coco-nut trees, the lotong, kra, and at least twenty other kinds of monkey; the binturong (arctictis binturong), the lemur; the Asiatic tiger, the black panther, the leopard, the large wild cat (harimau akar), several varieties of jungle cat; the wild boar, the wild dog; the flying squirrel,.

These are the Semang or Pangan, the Sakai or Jakun, and the Malays.

Representatives of their race are also found scattered among the Malayan villages throughout the country, and also along the coast, but these have intermixed so much with the Malays, and have acquired so many customs, &c., from their more civilized neighbours, that they can no longer be regarded as typical of the race to which they belong.

Though they now use metal tools imported by the Malays, it is noticeable that the names which they give to those weapons which most closely resemble in character the stone implements found in such numbers all over the peninsula are native names wholly unconnected with their Malay equivalents.

Instead, we find the Sakai occupying this position, thus indicating that they have been driven northward by the Malays, and that the latter people has not been expelled by the Mon-Khmer races from the countries now represented by Burma, Siam and French Indo-China.

Siqueira's expedition ended in failure, owing partly to the aggressive attitude of the Portuguese, partly to the very justifiable suspicions of the Malays, and he was presently forced to destroy one of his vessels, to leave a number of his men in captivity, and to sail direct for Portugal.

The Malays, who occupy the peninsula and most of the islands of the Archipelago called after them, are Mongols apparently modified by their very different climate, and by the maritime life Malays.

It would seem from this distribution that the Malays are not continental, but a seafaring race with exceptional powers of dispersal, who have spread over the ocean from some island centre - perhaps Java.

Three periods can be traced in the history of the Asiatic Malays.

Besides the distinctions of human and nonhuman, hostile and friendly, the demons in which the lower races believe are classified by them according to function, each class with a distinctive name, with extraordinary minuteness, the list in the case of the Malays running to several score.

Another way in which a demon is held to cause disease is by introducing itself into the patient's body and sucking his blood; the Malays believe that a woman who dies in childbirth becomes a langsuir and sucks the blood of children; victims of the lycanthrope are sometimes said to be done to death in the same way; and it is commonly believed in Africa that the wizard has the power of killing people in this way, probably with the aid of a familiar.

According to the Malays a penanggalan (vampire) is a living witch, and can be killed if she can be caught; she is especially feared in houses where a birth has taken place and it is the custom to hang up a bunch of thistle in order to catch her; she is said to keep vinegar at home to aid her in re-entering her own body.

For the purposes of this article, however, only those among these races which bear the name of Orang Malayu, speak the Malayan language, and represent the dominant people of the land, can be included under the title of Malays.

In the peninsula especially, where the presence of the Malays is more recent than elsewhere, many traditions exist which point to a comparatively recent occupation of the country.

It has been remarked that there is evidence that the Malays had attained to a certain stage of civilization before ever they set foot in Malaya.

The use by the Malays of artificially constructed terms to denote these things may certainly be taken to strengthen the opinion that the Malays arrived in the lands they now inhabit at a comparatively late period in their history, and at a time when they had developed considerably from the original state of primitive man.

Wallace notes the resemblance which he traced between the Malays and the Mongolians, and others have recorded similar observations as to the physical appearance of the two races.

The cranial measurements of the Malays and an examination of their hair sections seem to bear out the theory that they are distinct from the Mongolian races.

Their language, which is neither monosyllabic nor tonic, has nothing in common with that of the MonAnnam group. It has, moreover, been pointed out that had the Malays been driven southwards by the stronger races of the mainland of Asia, it might be expected that the people inhabiting the country nearest to the border between Siam and Malaya would belong to the Malayan and not to the Mon-Annam or Mon-Khmer stock.

It might also be anticipated, were the theory of a southward immigration to be sustained, that the Malays would be new-comers in the islands of the archipelago, and have their oldest settlements on the Malayan Peninsula.

The facts, however, are in exact contradiction to this; and accordingly the theory now most generally held by those who have studied the question is that the Malays form a distinct race, and had their original home in the south.

John Crawfurd, in the Dissertation to his Dictionary of the Malay Language, published in 1840, noted the prevalence of Malayan terms in the Polynesian languages, and attributed the fact to the casting away of ships manned by Malays upon the islands of the Polynesian Archipelago.

It has been suggested that their separation did not take place until after the continent which once existed in the north Pacific had become submerged, and that the Malays wandered northward, while the Polynesian race spread itself over the islands of the southern archipelago.

The Malays to-day are Sunni Mahommedans of the school of Shafi`i, and the y habitually use the terms Orang Malayu, i.e.

Mahommedanism undoubtedly spread to the Malays of the peninsula from Sumatra, but their conversion was slow and gradual, and may even now in some respects be regarded as imperfect.

Compared with other Mahommedan peoples, the Malays are not fanatical, though occasionally an outbreak against those of a different creed is glorified by them into a holy war.

Prior to their conversion to Mahommedanism the Malays were subjected to a considerable Hindu influence, which reached them by means of the traders who visited the archipelago from India.

Throughout, however, the superstitions of the Malays show indications of this Hindu influence, and many of the demons whom their medicine-men invoke in their magic practices are clearly borrowed from the pantheon of India.

For the rest, a substratum of superstitious beliefs, which survives from the days when the Malays professed only their natural religion, is to be found firmly rooted in the minds of the people, and the influence of Mahommedanism, which regards such things with horror, has been powerless to eradicate this.

The Malays of the coast are a maritime people, and were long famous for the daring character of their acts of piracy.

Inland the Malays live by M o e, o preference on the banks of rivers, building houses on piles some feet from the ground, and planting groves of coco-nut, betel-nut, sugar-palm and fruit-trees around their dwellings.

The Malays also work jungle produce, of which the most important are gutta, rattans, agila wood, camphor wood, and the beautiful kamuning wood which is used by the natives for the hilts of their weapons.

The principal manufactures of the Malays are cotton and silk cloths, earthenware and silver vessels, mats and native weapons.

The pottery of the Malays is rude but curious.

When the first Europeans visited the Malay Archipelago the Malays had already acquired the art of manufacturing gunpowder and forging canon.

The Malays are excellent boat-builders.

While the Malays were famous almost exclusively for their piratical expeditions they naturally bore an evil reputation among Europeans, but now that we have come into closer Character, contact with them,, and have learned to understand aca them better, the old opinions concerning them have been greatly modified.

Unlike many Orientals, the Malays can be treated with a friendly familiarity without such treatment breeding lack of respect or leading to liberties being taken with the superior.

The Malays are indolent, pleasure-loving, improvident beyond belief, fond of bright clothing, of comfort, of ease, and they dislike toil exceedingly.

The sexual morality of the Malays is very lax, but prostitution is not common in consequence.

The Malays are an intensely aristocratic people, and show a marvellous loyalty to their rajas and chiefs.

The Malays wear a loose coat and trousers, and a cap or headkerchief, but the characteristic item of their costume is the sarong, a silk or cotton cloth about two yards long by a yard and a quarter wide, the ends of which are sewn together, a forming a kind of skirt.

The principal weapon of the Malays is the kris, a short dagger with a small wooden or ivory handle, of which there are many varieties.

The kris most prized by the Malays are those of Bugis (Celebes) manufacture, and of these the kind called tuasek are of the greatest value.

Besides the short kris, the Malays use long straight kris with very narrow blades, shorter straight kris of the same form, short broad swords called sundang, long swords of ordinary pattern called pedang, somewhat shorter swords curved like scimitars with curiously carved handles called chenangkas, and short stabbing daggers called tumbok lada.

The principal tools of the Malays are the parang or golok, a heavy knife used in the jungle, without which no peasant ever stirs abroad from his house, the beliong or native axe, and the pisau Taut, which is used for scraping rattan.

With the Mahommedan conquest the Perso-Arabic alphabet was introduced among the Malays; it has continued ever since to be in use for literary, religious and business purposes.

The Malays avoid the building up of long sentences.

The Malays cannot, strictly speaking, be said to possess a literature, for none of their writings can boast any literary beauty or value.

The collections of Malay Proberbs made by, Klinkert, Maxwell and Clifford also give a good idea of the literary methods of the Malays.

The settlement in Flying Fish Cove now numbers some 250 inhabitants, consisting of Europeans, Sikhs, Malays and Chinese, by whom roads have been cut and patches of cleared ground cultivated.

The number of Asiatics in the Transvaal in April 1904 was 12,320, including 904 Malays, natives of South Africa, and 9986 British Indians.

The larger islands (Wokan, Kobrur, Maikor and Trangan), and certain of the lesser ones, are regarded by the Malays as one land mass which they call Lana besar (" great land").

A few villages are nominally Christian, and the Malays have introduced Mahommedanism, but most of the natives have no religion.

Carried northward by the warm current known as the Kuro Shiwo, the Malays seem to have landed in KiUshithe most southeFly of the main Japanese islandswhence they ultimately pushed northward and conquered their Manchu-Korean predecessors, the Izumo colonists.

They once occupied the whole country, but were gradually driven northward by the Manchu-Koreans and the Malays.

They consist of the Sirani or Christian descendants of the Portuguese, of Malays, with a Papuan element, Galela men from the north of Halmahera, immigrants from Celebes, with some Chinese and Arabs.

The mixture of races among the inhabitants, especially the presence of numerous Malays, who on all festive occasions appear in gorgeous raiment, gives additional animation and colour to the street scenes.

Of the coloured inhabitants 6561 were Malays; the remainder being chiefly of mixed blood.

On the west coasts there is a semi-civilization, due to intercourse with Malays and Bugis, who have settled at various points, and carry on the trade with the neighbouring islands, in some of which, while the coast population is Malay or mixed, that of the interior is identical with the people of the mainland of New Guinea.

The town, which is built on a promontory at a point nearest to the mainland, is largely occupied by Chinese and Tamils, though the Malays are also well represented.

Among the Malays Penang is usually spoken of as Tanjong or "The Cape," on account of the promontory upon which the town is situated.

The population was composed of 71,462 Chinese, 34,286 Malays, 18,740 Tamils and other natives of India, 1649 Eurasians, 993 Europeans and Americans, and 1699 persons of other nationalities.

The Laos predominate in northern and eastern Siam, Malays mingle with the Siamese in southern Siam, and the Chinese are found scattered all over, but keeping mostly to the towns.

The typical Siamese is of medium height, well formed, with olive complexion, darker than the Chinese, but fairer than the Malays, eyes well shaped though slightly inclined to the oblique, nose broad and flat, lips prominent, the face wide across the cheek-bones and the chin short.

While the pure-blooded Malays of the Peninsula are Mahommedans, the Siamese and Lao profess a form of Buddhism which is tinged by Cingalese and Burmese influences, and, especially in the more remote country districts, by the spirit-worship which is characteristic of the imaginative and timid Ka and other hill peoples of Indo-China.

The most widely distributed is the Malay, which has not only been diffused by the Malays themselves throughout the coast regions of the various islands, but, owing partly to the readiness with which it can be learned, has become the common medium between the Europeans and the natives.

The main object of the Portuguese was to obtain a share in the lucrative spice trade carried on by the Malays, Chinese and Japanese; the trade-routes of the archipelago converged upon Malacca, which was the point of departure for spice merchants trading with every country on the shores of the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea.

But the ramparts were long ago demolished; only natives, Malays, Arabs and Chinese live here, and the great European houses have either fallen into decay or been converted into magazines and warehouses.

The population of Batavia is varied, the Dutch residents being a comparatively small class, and greatly intermixed with Portuguese and Malays.

Here are found members of the different Indian nations, originally slaves; Arabs, who are principally engaged in navigation, but also trade in gold and precious stones; Javanese, who are cultivators; and Malays, chiefly boatmen and sailors, and adherents of Mahommedanism.

Codrington (Melanesian Languages) has adduced evidence to prove that Melanesia is the most primitive form of the oceanic stock-language, and that both Malays and Polynesians speak later dialects of this archaic form of speech.

It has been urged that these brown peoples sprang from one stock with the Malays and the Malagasy of Madagascar; and that they represent this parent stock better than the Malays who have been much modified by crossings.

It is practically certain that the Polynesians at least are an older race than the Malays and their subfamilies.

Such an explanation of the Polynesian's origin does not preclude a relationship with the Malays.

They are undoubtedly a very hybrid race, owing this characteristic to their geographical position in the area where the dominating races of the Pacific, Malays, Polynesians, Melanesians, Japanese 1 From these the three main divisions of the islands are named Polynesia, Melanesia, Micronesia.

But on the borders of the region, often without real boundary lines, are grouped other peoples, the true Malays, the Indonesians or pre-Malays with the Negritos to the westward and the Australians, who are generally admitted to be a distinct race.

The fact that the trade route to Manila passed through Vera Cruz, Mexico City and Acapulco entailed the settlement also of a few Chinese and Malays, chiefly on the Pacific coast.

The Solomon islanders are of Melanesian (Papuan) stock, though in different parts of the group they vary considerably in their physical characteristics, in some islands approaching the pure Papuan, in some showing Polynesian crossings and in others resembling the Malays.

The tiger frequently makes his presence felt, but is seldom seen; he prefers to prowl in what the Malays call tiger weather, that is, dark, starless, misty nights.

The plains east of this territory are occupied by the Siaks, and farther south on the east coast are the Jambis, both Malays.

Borneo has possessed a diamond industry since the island was first settled by the Malays; the references in the works of Garcia de Orta, Linschoten, De Boot, De Laet and others, to Malacca as a locality relate to Borneo.

The chief mines are situated on the river Kapnas in the west and near Bandjarmassin in the south-east of the island, and the alluvial deposits in which they occur are worked by a small number of Chinese and Malays.

The natives belong to a Sundanese group, but in the north contain a large admixture of Malays.

Whatever be the origin of the Polynesians, they are not Malays, though, themselves of mixed blood, they have probably certain racial elements in common with the latter, who are undoubtedly hybrids.

Brinton's theory, that they form a branch of the Malays, fails.

Even in this case the chiefs or ' Morgan has founded one of his forms of family - the consanguine - on the supposed existence in former times among the Malays and Polynesians of the custom of " intermarriage of brothers and sisters, own and collateral, in a group."

Since then law and order have been maintained without difficulty by a small mixed police force of Punjabis and Malays.

There were 3,509 Chinese, while the remaining 108,847 included persons of European, African or mixed descent, Malagasy, Malays and Sinhalese.

The Moros (275,224 wild and 2323 civilized) were the last of the Malays to migrate to the islands; they came after their conversion to the Mahommedan religion, and their migration continued until the Spanish conquest.

The mixture of the races is principally that of the Chinese with the Malays or the Spaniards with the Malays.

The most important numerically are the Dyaks, the Dusuns and Muruts of the interior, the Malays, among whom must be counted such Malayan tribes as the Bajaus, Ilanuns, &c., the Bugis, who were originally immigrants from Celebes, and the Chinese.

Accounts of the Malays, Dyaks and Bugis are given under their several headings, and some information concerning the Dusuns and Muruts will be found in the section below, which deals with British North Borneo.

The traditions of the Malays and Dyaks seem to confirm the statements, and many of the leading families of Brunei in north-west Borneo claim to have Chinese blood in their veins, while the annals of Sulu record an extensive Chinese immigration about 1575.

They are called Kehs by the Malays, and are of the same tribes as those which furnish the bulk of the workers to the tin mines of the Malay Peninsula.

The seashore and the country bordering closely on the west coast are inhabited chiefly by Dusuns, by Kadayans, by Bajaus and Ilanuns - both Malayan tribes - and by Brunei Malays.

The constabulary numbers some 600 men and consists of a mixed force of Sikhs, Pathans, Punjabi Mahommedans, Dyaks and Malays, officered by a few Europeans.

The natives of Taliabu are allied to those of the Banggai Islands and the eastern peninsula of Celebes; but immigrant Malays are the principal inhabitants.

There are some thousands of Mahommedans in the Cape (chiefly Malays) and larger numbers in Natal, where there is also a large Hindu population.

The Achinese, a people of Malayan stock but darker, somewhat taller and not so pleasant-featured as the true Malays, regard themselves as distinct from the other Sumatrans.

The ill-chosen name of Caucasian, invented by Blumenbach in allusion to a South Caucasian skull of specially typical proportions, and applied by him to the so-called white races, is still current; it brings into one race peoples such as the Arabs and Swedes, although these are scarcely less different than the Americans and Malays, who are set down as two distinct races.

Besides the black and white races there is a large colony of Malays in Cape Town and district, originally introduced by the Dutch as slaves.

The ceremony of turning to the west three times with renunciation of the Evil One, then to the east, is exactly paralleled in a rite of purification by water common among the Malays and described by Skeat in his book on Malay magic. If the Malay rite is not derived through Nlahommedanism from Christianity, it is a remarkable example of how similar psychological conditions can produce almost identical rites.

The interior people have for centuries been subject to petty oppression, and there is too much of the old spirit left among the Malays to avoid acrimonious dispute and rebellion.

The bulk of the inhabitants, who consist of Malays, Kadayans, Orang Bukits and a few Muruts, are to be found in and about the capital - also called Brunei - the population of the city being estimated at about 15,000, and the population of the whole territory being about 25,000.

His tomb, which is handsomely built of stone, is still to be seen in Brunei, and is constantly visited by Malays, who leave money and various articles on the tomb as offerings to his memory.

Mammals are few in species, but remarkable, especially Macacus niger, an ape found nowhere else but in Bachian; Anoa depressicornis, a small ox-like quadruped which inhabits the mountainous districts; and the babirusa or pig-deer of the Malays.

The typical civilized Indonesian peoples, Malays and Javanese, are variants of a Proto-Malay race with Indian, Arab and other foreign admixtures.

As a result, Malaysia has a multicultural and multiracial population consisting of Malays, Chinese, Indians and numerous indigenous peoples.

The Malays, also, would seem to have been acquainted with the northern coast; while Marco Polo, who visited the East at the close of the 13th century, makes reference to the reputed existence of a great southern continent.

The Semang, as they are most usually called by the Malays, are Negritos - a small, very dark people, with features of the negroid type, very prognathous, and with short, woolly hair clinging to the scalp in tiny crisp curls.

Native tradition attributes these mines to the Siamese, but no importance can be attached to this, as it is very general for the Malays to give this explanation for anything which is obviously not the work of their own ancestors.

A theory, which seems to have some probability in its favour, is that these mines were worked by the Khmer people during the period of power, energy and prosperity which found its most lofty expression in the now ruined and deserted city of Angkor Thom; while another attributes these works to the natives of India whose Hindu remains are found in Java and elsewhere, whose influence was at one time widespread throughout Malayan lands, and of whose religious teaching remnants still linger in the superstitions of the Malays and are preserved in some purity in Lombok and Bali.

These traders were also missionaries of their religion, as indeed is every Mahommedan, and to them is due the conversion of the Malays from rude pantheism, somewhat tinctured by Hindu mythology, to the Mahommedan creed.

These words are formed by the addition of the substantial affix "-an," the use of which is one of the recognized methods by which the Malays turn primitive words into terms of more complex meaning.

This may be taken to indicate that when first the Malays became acquainted with the fruits which are indigenous in Malayan lands they already possessed a language in which most primary words were represented, and also that their tongue had attained to a stage of development which provided for the formation of compound words by a system sanctioned by custom and the same linguistic instinct which causes a Malay to-day to form similar compounds from European and other foreign roots.

While the Malays were famous almost exclusively for their piratical expeditions they naturally bore an evil reputation among Europeans, but now that we have come into closer Ch aracter, contact with them,, and have learned to understand aca them better, the old opinions concerning them have been greatly modified.

The nervous affliction called latah, to which many Malays are subject, is also a curious trait of the people.

Examples of reduplication are - ajar-ajar, a sainted person; ajar-berajar (or belajar), to be learning and teaching by turns; similarly there are forms like ajar-mengajar, berajar-ajaran, ajar-ajari, memperajar, memperajarkan, memperajari, terbklajarkan, perbelajarkan, &c. Altogether there are upwards of a hundred possible derivative forms, in the idiomatic use of which the Malays exhibit much skill.

Thirdly, there are the immigrant Malays.

They undoubtedly constitute the oldest ethnic stock sometimes modified on the spot by crossings with migratory peoples (Malays, Polynesians); sometimes, as in the eastern Pacific, giving way entirely before the invaders.

The plantation labourers are almost entirely alien coolies, largely Chinese, and the Malays are comparatively few in number.

Amok-A culture-specific psychiatric syndrome first described among the Malays, in which adolescent or adult males are overcome by a sudden fit of murderous fury provoked by a perceived insult or slight.

While their neighbours, the Malays, Papuans and Polynesians, all cultivate the soil, and build substantial huts and houses, the Australian natives do neither.