No. 2 (1920) OUTRIGGER CANOES OF INDONESIA 107 



Polynesia, a time prior to the invention of the double type. Neither 

 Dravidian Indians, Polynesians, Micronesians nor Papuasians 

 (save a few borderland Papuans) exhibit any knowledge of this 

 latter type — not the slightest trace that it was ever used in these 

 regions can be found. The Mongoloid inhabitants of the Malay 

 Archipelago— the Indonesians of most writers — are admittedly 

 later comers into the Archipelago: we have definite proof that 

 many of the eastern islands of Indonesia were at one time peopled 

 by Papuasians — their blood persists. The Mongoloid incomers 

 undoubtedly came from the Asiatic mainland via the Indo-Chinese 

 peninsula. These people, more industrious and more enterprising 

 than either the Polynesians or the Papuasians, appear to have 

 rapidly displaced the older races, Polynesians in the hither islands 

 near the Asiatic coast, Papuasians in the outer groups towards the 

 south-east. In the course of this notable race migration the idea 

 of the outrigger canoe was seized upon — probably the new comers 

 were little acquainted with boat-building other than of dugouts. 

 As the Mongoloids advanced and throve, the first to be pushed aside 

 would be the Polynesians ; the impact of conquering hordes upon a 

 weak and scattered people — the Polynesian tribes never seem to 

 have understood the value of cohesion—would drive the more 

 independent spirits to a new migration. Some appears to have 

 passed to India and Ceylon, others took refuge in the islands off 

 the west coast of Sumatra — among their descendants being the 

 Mentawei islanders who still use the Polynesian single outrigger; 

 the bulk, other than those absorbed by the invaders, appear to 

 have gone east to the myriad isles of the Pacific. 



Settled in what we now term Indonesia, the early Malaysians 

 throve and multiplied, more especially in Java, where at a very early 

 date they came under the civilizing influence of Indian mission- 

 aries — whether the first were Buddhist or Brahman it is now 

 impossible to say. Prior to that date, the Malaysians must have 

 improved upon the single outrigger type employed by the Polyne- 

 sians and Papuasians, converting it into the more commercially 

 serviceable double form. This type probably reached its zenith 

 during the heyday of Buddhist influence, for I feel sure that all the 

 outrigger ships sculptured in the great Buddhist shrine of Boro 

 Budur, built during the 8th and 9th centuries, must have been 

 furnished with the double type. Their lineal descendants seem 

 to have divided into two sections, the one retaining the double 

 9 



