The Malay Origin/Asal-usul Melayu

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Salam,

In his book, 'Eden in the East', Stephen Oppenheimer presented an interestingtheory, among others was, the Eurasian genetic link with Arboriginal Orang Asliof the Peninsular Malaysia. To quote some of his lines, 'The Polynesians did notcome from China but from the islands of Southeast Asia', and 'The domesticationof rice was not in China but in the Malay Peninsula, 9,000 years ago'.Also on page 208-209 of the book, he stated:'Melton's study also shows the Asian grandmother type (mtDNA) penetrating alongwith her daughter (the Southeast Asia mother) into southern Indian populations.

Further probes shows, however, that the southern Indian grandmother types arenot identical with the Orang Asli types.Instead, the South Indian population shows great diversity in that they sharesix different 9-bp deletion types with those found in nearly every other regionof Southeast Asia and South China except the Malay Peninsula.'at the end of the page, he says: '... the antiquity of East Asian mtDNA markersin India suggests a very ancient migration west.'

The researcher mentioned that according to Ibn Al-Athir, the famous medieval Islamic historian, the Malay race originates from descendents of Prophet Abraham. They were then known as the Jawi Clan, descendents of Prophet Abraham by way of his third wife, Qatura. They were directed by His Highness to emigrate to the east and having adequately supplied them with the necessities to begin a new life, they headed eastwards. They settled from one place to another, migrating further east probably for a number of reasons. It is said that they formerly settled in Tibet and named the Himalayas after them for in Sanskrit, “Himalayas” mean Malay Mountain. That was supposed to have occurred 2000 years ago. Due to endless wars on Chinese and Indian soil, it is said that they eventually migrated to the south where they ultimately settled down at Southern Thailand and Peninsular Malaysia. This incidentally was the land route.Another Jawi group, headed by a king named Mus, apparently took the sea route and sailed eastward where he ultimately landed at Palembang, Sumatra, Indonesia. A local river there, Musi River meaning Mus’s River seems to make reference of his arrival at Palembang.It is said that Prophet Abraham bore three large generations: firstly, the Arabs from Ishmael, secondly, the Jews from Isaac and thirdly, the Jawi/Malays from his children by way of Qatura. Ever since, the Arabs have called the Malay Archipelago as the Jawi land.As a result of the long journey, the Malays acquired numerous knowledge and assimilated many traditions along the way, much of which are closely related to Indian, Chinese and Japanese background. [China and Japanese were added to the list as a result of Budi Dharma, a then Malay traveler who went around disseminating his worldly knowledge].Although the closest link to this research is that "Jawi" is the writing medium traditionally used by Malays, I found it puzzling how the name of the "Jawi" changed to "Malay" in Sanskrit whilst in Tibet. Well, that's all I know. Excuse me while I flip through the other pages of the Lost Jewel...mmm, also very interesting. :D

The topic is the meaning of the word "Himalaya" as it is used>to refer to the Mountain ranges that spans several countries and is>the location for Everest and other mountains that are some of the>tallest in the world. I've read in few books (I don't remember the>titles), that the Malay race originated in the Himalayan ranges and>that they gave their name to the mountain ranges, and that "Himalaya">means "Gunung Melayu". And if we look into the mythology of ancient>Malay-Hindu, we found references to Gunung Mahameru which is said to>be the place where the "dewa" and "dewi" originated. Also, is it a>coincidence that the Malay language has so many Sanskrit words. And>Sanskrit is the the language of the ancient Aryans. I came across the>references to Aryan as the origin of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace>be upon him) in a book titled "Muhammad In Hindu Scriptures". Also,>if we look in the Bible, there is a story on Abraham and his other>wife, Keturah. So, Keturah or Qatura, were ordered by Abraham to>migrate to the east with their children. And Abraham's progeny by>Qatura became the Malay race. So, my deduction from these infos is>that Qatura and her children travelled east and lived for some time>in the mountain ranges that is called Himalaya. After some time, the>children of Qatura decided that the mountains is not suitable for>them and they travelled further east in two groups. One group used>the sea route and settled in the region of Sumatra and they named>themselves after the river Melayu. Another group used the inland>route and settled in the IndoChina region of Kampuchea and Vietnam.>There's only two groups of people that I know who used the name of>rivers to refer to themselves, the Indians and the Malays. The>Indians took the name of the Indus River and the Malays took the name>of the Melayu River. Might be I am wrong in my deductions on these>matters, but can anyone shed some light on this subjects

Not only did Orang Asli become Malays, butout-of-favor or impoverished Malays became Orang Asli (remember the story ofHang Tuah's stay among Orang Asli), just as more Europeans became NativeAmericans than vice versa. I should add that, even earlier, the peoples whowound up in New Guinea and Australia passed through the peninsula, alsopresumably leaving genetic material. Genetic studies of Orang Asli suggesta wildly variegated people. And of course, the Malay upper classesassimilated Brahmins, Indian-Iranian-Bangladeshi-Chinese merchants and soon. In the olden days, I understand, the upper classes in the Hadrahmautspoke Arabic, the unpaid workers kiSwahili and the trading classes Malay,because, when Yemeni traders retired they took their wives back withthem,and the wives taught the kids.

The different phases of the process and the knowledge> we have of their importance in later Malay history seem to points to the> Orang Laut as being possibly the original inhabitants of the coastal> regions, just as the Orang Asli were the original inhabitants of the> forests. Raja Hamzah, the learned man instrumental in preserving Peneyngat's> past, for example insisted that in Riau's tradition, the Orang Laut were> called " Melayu Asli". From what I can> gather (and this is a purely personal impression), the Orang Laut could have> been the initial breed, enriched by interbreeding with Indian, Chinese,> Arabs and regional ethnic groups such as Khmer, which in the course of> history developed into today's Malays. All these people came to the shores> of the Malay maritime crossroad from the earliest days of history and all of> them have necessarily left traces in the genetic heritage of the local> human group through centuries of inter-marriages

We also know that about 2,500 years before Christ a much more technologically advanced group migrated to the peninsula from China. Called the Proto-Malays, they were seafarers and farmers, and their advances into the peninsula forced the Negritos into the hills and jungles. History's periodic waves of cultural evolution, however, soon created another group, the Deutero-Malays. They were a combination of many peoples - Indians, Chinese, Siamese, Arabs, and Proto-Malays - and they had risen by mastering the use of iron. Combined with the peoples of Indonesia, the Deutero-Malays formed the racial basis for the group which today we simply call the Malay.

† From the land of the East. In the Old Testament Abraham sent his sons from Keturah, his third wife, ‘to the land of the east.’ The Malays could choose the better of two worlds. [See Te NIV Study Bible, Gen. 25:6