68 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 
more illustrious history. The position of Malay 
proper in its group may be compared to that of Attic 
Greek, which was also a late form as against the mass of 
Hellenic dialects, but became important through the 
political, commercial, and intellectual dominance of 
Athens. The relation of Latin to the ancient Italic 
tongues is another parallel. 
But Malay has not yet replaced and perhaps never 
will replace the allied local languages to the same 
extent as Attic and Latin submerged their congeners; 
and a case in point occurs in the Philippines. The 
Moros of Sulu and Magindanao possess traditions, 
written in Arabic characters, that begin with the crea- 
tion but soon pass from the domain of religion and 
fanciful legend to that of genealogy, carrying the thread 
to the present day. These records credit the introduc- 
tion of Islam and the establishment of the local sul- 
tanates to Malays who came from Johore in the Malay 
peninsula to northern Borneo and the southern Philip- 
pines toward the close of the fourteenth century, or less _ 
than two hundred years before the Spanish conquest. 
This date agrees well with all that is known as to the 
period of Mohammedan spread and Malay expansion, 
and tallies also with the conditions which the first 
Spaniards found in the Mindanao region. If now these 
Malays, who reached the Philippines only five or six 
centuries ago, had come in numbers, they would un- 
doubtedly have retained their speech and probably 
imposed it on many of the natives, as they did succeed 
in imposing Mohammedanism. As a matter of fact 
however, the language of Sulu, Magindanao, etc., is in 
every case a local Philippine dialect, allied most closely 
to the languages of the pagans of Mindanao, and next 
to Bisayan. A few Malay words have crept into Sulu 
and Magindanao, and a certain proportion of the 

