244 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



and the numerous prehistoric monuments of Easter Island and 

 other places in the Pacific Ocean. Of all the Indonesian peoples 



still surviving in Malaysia, none present so many 

 Mentawi points of contact with the Eastern Polynesians, as 



do the natives of the Mentawi Islands which skirt 

 the south-west coast of Sumatra. "On a closer inspection of 

 the inhabitants the attentive observer at once perceives that the 

 Mentawi natives have but little in common with the peoples and 

 tribes of the neighbouring islands, and that as regards physical 

 appearance, speech, customs, and usages they stand almost 

 entirely apart. They bear such a decided stamp of a Polynesian 

 tribe that one feels far more inclined to compare them with the 

 inhabitants of the South Sea Islands 1 ." 



The survival of an Indonesian group on the western verge of 

 Malaysia is all the more remarkable since the Nias islanders, a 

 little farther north, are of Mongol stock, like most if not all of the 

 inhabitants of the Sumatran mainland. Here the typical Malays 



of the central districts (Menangkabau, Korinchi, and 



Javanese . v 



and Hindu Siak) merge southwards in the mixed Malayo-Java- 



nese peoples of the Rejang, Palembang, and Lampong 



districts. Although Muhammadans probably since the thirteenth 



century, all these peoples had been early brought under Hindu 



influences by missionaries and even settlers from Java, and these 



influences are still apparent in many of the customs, popular 



traditions, languages, and letters of the South Sumatran settled 



communities. Thus the Lampongs, despite their profession of Islam, 



employ, not the Arabic characters, like the Malays 



of th e ai proper, but a script derived from the peculiar Java- 



Maiaysian nese writing-system. This system itself, originally 



introduced from India probably over 2000 years ago, 



1 Von Rosenberg, op. cit. vol. I. p. 189. Amongst the points of close 

 resemblance may be mentioned the outriggers, for which Mentawi has the 

 same word (abak} as the Samoan (va*a=vak(i)\ the funeral rites; taboo; the 

 facial expression ; and the language, in which the numeral systems are identical; 

 cf. Ment. limongapula with Sam. limagafulu, the Malay being limapulah 

 (fifty), where the Sam. infix ga (absent in Malay) is pronounced gna, exactly 

 as in Ment. Here is a case of cumulative evidence, which should establish 

 not merely contact and resemblance but true affinity, the vast liquid inter- 

 vening area presenting no obstacle. 



