Malay people
From ArticleWorld
The Malay people who live in South East Asia are members of Mongoloid race similar to Chinese, Thais, Mongols, Japanese and Koreans. They are related to Micronesian and the Polynesian group of people by virtue of the language they speak. The word Malay means ‘Migrating’ and Melayu is a person who follows Islam and Malay culture and speaks Malay language. In 1775, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach in his anthropological studies included Malay people as the fifth group apart form the Caucasians, Ethiopian, American and Mongolian. But his theory was rejected later by other anthropologists.
The Malay region
The Malays inhabit the regions of
- Malay Peninsula
- Malay Archipelago
- Thailand
- Philippines
- East Timor
- Cambodia
- Sri Lanka
- South Africa
- Madagascar
- Surinam
Languages
A number of languages are spoken by the different ethnic groups of Malay people. A number of Sanskrit words and concepts have been used during the early part of development of the Malay language. These languages are grouped under the Malayo- Polynesian group of languages which in turn is a part of Austronesian group of languages. Some of the languages of this group are
- Bahasa Indonesia
- Bahasa Malaysia
- Tagalong
- Tetum
- Malagasy
- Samoan
- Hawaiian
- Rapanui
- Maori
Ethnicity and religion
In Malaysia, most of the people are Malays, though others like Chinese, Indians and Eurasians also live. The term Malay includes people of Malay Peninsula, Malay Archipelago, most ethnic groups of Philippines and Indonesia to the west of Papua. Though most Malays follow Islamism, they are actually converted from other religions like Hinduism, Animism and Buddhism which flourished before the introduction of Islamism in to that region. Garuda, the mount of Lord Vishnu was found in the Philippine region of Palawan which provides evidence of the existence of Hinduism in that region. The Muslim dominant countries are
- Indonesia
- Malaysia
- Brunei
- Singapore
The Christian dominant countries are
- Philippines
- East Timor
- South Korea
Hinduism is dominant in Bali. Animism and Buddhism are found in smaller islands of Malay Archipelago.