232 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



Shah about the middle of the i3th century. It is therefore 

 probable enough that the earlier movements were carried out 

 under Hindu influences, and may have begun long before the 

 historical date 1160. Menangkabau, however, was the first 

 Mussulman State that acquired political s.upremacy in Sumatra, 

 and this district thus became the chief centre for the later 

 diffusion of the cultured Malays, their language, usages, and 

 religion, throughout the Peninsula and the Archipelago. Here 

 they are now found in compact masses chiefly in south Sumatra 

 (Menangkabau, Palembang, the Lampongs) ; in all the insular 

 groups between Sumatra and Borneo ; in the Malay Peninsula 

 as far north as the Kra Isthmus, here intermingling with the 

 Siamese as "Sam-Sams," partly Buddhists, partly Muhammadans; 

 round the coast of Borneo and about the estuaries of that island ; 

 in Tidor, Ternate, and the adjacent coast of Jilolo ; in the Banda, 

 Sula, and Sulu groups ; in Batavia, Singapore, and all the other 

 large seaports of the Archipelago. In all these lands beyond 

 Sumatra the Orang-Malayu are thus seen to be comparatively 

 recent arrivals 1 , and in fact intruders on the other Malayan 

 populations, with whom they collectively constitute the Oceanic 

 branch of the Mongol division. Their diffusion was everywhere 

 brought about much in the same way as in Ternate, where 

 Mr Wallace tells us that the ruling people " are an intrusive 

 Malay race somewhat allied to the Macassar people, who settled 

 in the country at a very early epoch, drove out the indigenes, 

 who were no doubt the same as those of the adjacent island 

 of Gilolo, and established a monarchy. They perhaps obtained 

 many of their wives from the natives, which will account for 

 the extraordinary language they speak in some respects closely 

 allied to that of the natives of Gilolo, while it contains much that 

 points to a Malayan [Malay] origin. To most of these people the 

 Malay language is quite unintelligible 2 ." 



1 In some places quite recent, as in Rembau, Malay Peninsula, whose 

 inhabitants are mainly immigrants from Sumatra in the i;th century; and in 

 the neighbouring group of petty Negri Sembilan States, where the very tribal 

 names, such as Anak Acheh, and Sri Lemak Menangkabau, betray their late 

 arrival from the Sumatran districts of Achin and Menangkabau. 



2 The Malay Archipelago, p. 310. 



