Pagan races of the Malay Peninsula - Sabrizain.org

I RACE-CHARACTERS OF SAVAGE MALAYS 75
M.-Maclay strongly supports the Malayan character
stipulated for the Mantra, although as he believed
that element to be due to admixture with civilised
Malays, he fails to see the full force of his facts.
He says that the Orang Mantra, near Malacca, are a small tribe better known
than the other Orang Utan, from the fact that, so long ago as the year 1848,
Catholic missionaries settled down among them.^ He visited a number of them
at the Ayer Salak Mission near Malacca, and found them, in consequence of the
influence of the school and their constant intercourse with the missionaries, " the
most uninteresting of all the Orang Utan tribes for the purposes of his particular
studies." Their language had been forgotten and had been replaced by Malay,
in which all their school-books and religious works were written. The mission-
aries had done nothing to collect the remains of the old language.
The Mantras whom he saw (most of them children and women) were almost
•without exception of a Malay type ; if he had come to see them without knowing
that they were Mantras, he would probably have taken them for a number of
Malays, badly fed, and brought up in a miserable condition, and he should have
doubted the possibility of any mixture of Melanesian blood.
According to Logan, the Mantra were chary of
bathing, and their only plaything was a kind of top
called "gasing kunde."^
Beduanda.
The Jakun of the Rembau and Negri Sembilan
states are said to bear the closest resemblance, how-
ever, to the Malays of those states. " But we cannot
infer from this that they descend from these Malays,
as we know by history and tradition that they were in
the Peninsula before them ; and that the Rembau
Malays descend from the Jakun by their mother's side,
as we have seen when speaking of the arrival of To'
Peter (Tu Puttair), which explains sufficiently the re-
semblance we perceive in the [Rembauj Malays to
the Jakun."*
Favre states that the Jakun—of these states {i.e.
1 The founder of the mission, M. mission in 1878.
Borie, has written a short paper upon '^
J. R. A, S., S. B., No. 2, pp.
them, since printed in Misc. Essays 218, 219.
on Indo-China, series ii. vol. i.
286-307. Herr Y. Jagor visited
pp.
the
^
J. I. A. vol. i. p. 330*.
^ Favre in^. /. A. vol. ii. p. 245.
^