Pagan races of the Malay Peninsula - Sabrizain.org

I MIXTURE OF RACES 41
Malays/ gives reasons for this remarkable divergence,
pointing out that whereas the rest of the Peninsular
Malays at the time of the Menangkabau immigration
were, speaking generally, mere piratical freebooters
bent on conquest and rapine, the Menangkabau people,
on the other hand, were peaceful agriculturalists who
had been forced to emigrate through the pressure of
population in their own country. Hence all that the
latter desired was land for cultivation, and this they
were quite satisfied to obtain by peaceful means. And
hence in the case of these Menangkabau colonies there
has been a true amalgamation between them and the
Jakun of Rembau, which has not been the case elsewhere.
It must not be forgotten, as I have already said,
that large masses of the soi-disant Malay population
in many parts of the Malay States from Kedah to
Singapore are undoubtedly the descendants of savage
tribesmen who, by intermarriage with the civilised
Malays and by the adoption of the higher level of
culture which in these parts accompanies conversion
to the Mohammedan religion, have in the course of
a few generations become barely distinguishable from
the ordinary Malay inhabitants, of the western and
southern portions of the Peninsula.
Traces of such absorption, in which the meta-
morphosis is not quite complete, are certainly to be
found, for instance, in the State of Kedah, in which,
some years back, it was noticed by Logan that the
Malayan population approximated in their general
appearance to the wild Negrito tribes of the interior.
dang ") was chosen from each of these Negri Sembilan, aboriginal descent is
sections alternately. " Originally the claimed, in order to prove the owner-
Batins {i.e. the Jakun chiefs) had a say ship of land."
in the matter, but now they are squeezed > In J. R. A. S., S. B., No. 32,
out of it." And yet "all over the p. 300.