Man, Past and Present by Agustus Henry Keane, A. Hingston Quiggin, Alfred Court Haddon (free reads .TXT) 📕

Thus the Antimerina have three main castes; Andriana or nobles (i.e. pure-blooded descendants of the conquerors), Hova, or freemen (descendants of the incorporated Vazimba more or less mixed with the conquerors), and Andevo or slaves. The king was regarded almost as a god. An institution thoroughly suggestive of Malayo-Polynesian sociology is that of fadi or tabu, which enters into every sphere of human activity. An indefinite creator-god was recognized, but more important were a number of spirits and fetishes, the latter with definite functions. Signs of tree worship and of belief in transmigration are sporadic. At the present time, half the population of the island is, at least nominally, Christian.

A good deal of fancy is displayed in the oral literature, comprising histories, or at least legends, fables, songs, riddles, and a great mass of folklore, much of which has already been rescued from oblivion by the "Malagasy Folklore Society." Some of the stories present the usual analogies to others in widely separated lands, stories which seem to be perennial, and to crop up wherever the surface is a little disturbed by investigators. One of those in Dahle's extensive collection, entitled the "History of Andrianarisainaboniamasoboniamanoro" might be described as a variant of our "Beauty and the Beast." Besides this prince with the long name, called Bonia "for short," there is a princess "Golden Beauty," both being of miraculous birth, but the latter a cripple and deformed, until found and wedded by Bonia. Then she is so transfigured that the "Beast" is captivated and contrives to carry her off. Thereupon follows an extraordinary series of adventures, resulting of course in the rescue of Golden Beauty by Bonia, when everything ends happily, not only for the two lovers, but for all other people whose wives had also been abducted. These are now restored to their husbands by the hero, who vanquishes and slays the monster in a fierce fight, just as in our nursery tales of knights and dragons.

In the Philippines, where the ethnical confusion is probably greater than in any other part of Malaysia, the great bulk of the inhabitants appear to be of Indonesian and proto-Malayan stocks. Except in the southern island of Mindanao, which is still mainly Muhammadan or heathen, most of the settled populations have long been nominal Roman Catholics under a curious theocratic administration, in which the true rulers are not the civil functionaries, but the priests, and especially the regular clergy[551]. One result has been over three centuries of unstable political and social relations, ending in the occupation of the archipelago by the United States (1898). Another, with which we are here more concerned, has been such a transformation of the subtle Malayan character that those who have lived longest amongst the natives pronounce their temperament unfathomable. Having to comply outwardly with the numerous Christian observances, they seek relief in two ways, first by making the most of the Catholic ceremonial and turning the many feast-days of the calendar into occasions of revelry and dissipation, connived at if not even shared in by the padres[552]; secondly by secretly cherishing the old beliefs and disguising their true feelings, until the opportunity is presented of throwing off the mask and declaring themselves in their true colours. A Franciscan friar, who had spent half his life amongst them, left on record that "the native is an incomprehensible phenomenon, the mainspring of whose line of thought and the guiding motive of whose actions have never yet been, and perhaps never will be, discovered. A native will serve a master satisfactorily for years, and then suddenly abscond, or commit some such hideous crime as conniving with a brigand band to murder the family and pillage the house[553]."

In fact nobody can ever tell what a Tagal, and especially a Visaya, will do at any moment. His character is a succession of surprises; "the experience of each year brings one to form fresh conclusions, and the most exact definition of such a kaleidoscopic creature is, after all, hypothetical."

After centuries of misrule, it was perhaps not surprising that no kind of sympathy was developed between the natives and the whites. Foreman fells us that everywhere in the archipelago he found mothers teaching their little ones to look on their white rulers as demoniacal beings, evil spirits, or at least something to be dreaded. "If a child cries, it is hushed by the exclamation, Castila! (Spaniard); if a white man approaches a native dwelling, the watchword always is Castila! and the children hasten to retreat from the dreadful object."

For administrative purposes the natives were classed in three social divisions--Indios, Infieles, and Moros--which, as aptly remarked by F. H. H. Guillemard, is "an ecclesiastical rather than a scientific classification[554]." The Indios were the Christianized and more or less cultured populations of all the towns and of the settled agricultural districts, speaking a distinct Malayo-Polynesian language of much more archaic type than the standard Malay. According to the census of 1903 the total population of the islands was 7,635,428, of whom nearly 7,000,000 were classed as civilised, and the rest as wild, including 23,000 Negritoes (Aeta, see p. 156). At the time of the Spanish occupation in the sixteenth century the Visayas of the central islands and part of Mindanao were the most advanced among the native tribes, but this distinction is now claimed for the Tagalogs, who form the bulk of the population in Manila and other parts of Luzon, and also in Mindanao, and whose language is gradually displacing other dialects throughout the archipelago. Other civilised tribes are the Ilocano, Bicol, Pangasinan, Pampangan and Cagayan, all of Luzon. Less civilised tribes are the Manobo, Mandaya, Subano and Bagobo of Mindanao, the Bukidnon of Mindanao and the central islands, the Tagbanua and Batak of Palawan, and the Igorots of Luzon, some of whom are industrious farmers, while among others, head-hunting is still prevalent. These have been described by A. E. Jenks in a monograph[555]. The head form is very variable. Of 32 men measured by Jenks the extremes of cephalic index were 91.48 and 67.48. The stature is always low, averaging 1.62 m. (5 ft. 4 in.) but with an appearance of greater height. The hair is black, straight, lank, coarse and abundant but "I doubt whether to-day an entire tribe of perfectly straight-haired primitive Malayan people exists in the archipelago[556]."

Under Moros ("Moors") are comprised the Muhammadans exclusively, some of whom are Malayans (chiefly in Mindanao, Basilan, and Palawan), some true Malays (chiefly in the Sulu archipelago). Many of these are still independent, and not a few, if not actually wild, are certainly but little removed from the savage state. Yet, like the Sumatran Battas, they possess a knowledge of letters, the Sulu people using the Arabic script, as do all the Orang-Malayu, while the Palawan natives employ a variant of the Devanagari prototype derived directly from the Javanese, as above explained. They number nearly 280,000, of whom more than one half are in Mindanao, and they form the bulk of the population in some of the islands of the Sulu archipelago.

Some of these Sulu people, till lately fierce sea-rovers, get baptized now and then; but, says Foreman, "they appeared to be as much Christian as I was Mussulman[557]." They keep their harems all the same, and when asked how many gods there are, answer "four," presumably Allah plus the Athanasian Trinity. So the Ba-Fiots of Angola add crucifying to their "penal code," and so in King M'tesa's time the Baganda scrupulously kept two weekly holidays, the Mussulman Friday, and the Christian Sunday. Lofty creeds superimposed too rapidly on primitive beliefs are apt to get "mixed"; they need time to become assimilated.

That in the aborigines of Formosa are represented both Mongol (proto-Malayan) and Indonesian elements may now probably be accepted as an established fact. The long-standing reports of Negritoes also, like the Philippine Aeta, have never been confirmed, and may be dismissed from the present consideration. Probably five-sixths of the whole population are Chinese immigrants, amongst whom are a large number of Hakkas and Hok-los from the provinces of Fo-Kien and Kwang-tung[558]. They occupy all the cultivated western lowlands, which from the ethnological standpoint may be regarded as a seaward outpost of the Chinese mainland. The rest of the island, that is, the central highlands and precipitous eastern slopes, may similarly be looked on as a north-eastern outpost of Malaysia, being almost exclusively held by Indonesian and Malayan aborigines from Malaysia (especially the Philippines), with possibly some early intruders both from Polynesia and from the north (Japan). All are classed by the Chinese settlers after their usual fashion in three social divisions:--

The Pepohwans of the plains, who although called "Barbarians," are sedentary agriculturists and quite as civilised as their Chinese neighbours themselves, with whom they are gradually merging in a single ethnical group. The Pepohwans are described by P. Ibis as a fine race, very tall, and "fetishists," though the mysterious rites are left to the women. Their national feasts, dances, and other usages forcibly recall those of the Micronesians and Polynesians. They may therefore, perhaps, be regarded as early immigrants from the South Sea Islands, distinct in every respect from the true aborigines. The Sekhwans, "Tame Savages[559]," who are also settled agriculturists, subject to the Chinese (since 1895 to the Japanese) administration, but physically distinct from all the other Formosans--light complexion, large mouth, thick lips, remarkably long and prominent teeth, weak constitution. P. Ibis suspects a strain of Dutch blood dating from the seventeenth century. This is confirmed by the old books and other curious documents found amongst them, which have given rise to so much speculation, and, it may be added, some mystification, regarding a peculiar writing system and a literature formerly current amongst the Formosan aborigines[560]. The Chinhwans, "Green Barbarians"--that is, utter savages--the true independent aborigines, of whom there are an unknown number of tribes, but regarding whom the Chinese possess but little definite information. Not so their Japanese successors, one of whom, Kisak Tamai[561], tells us that the Chinhwans show a close resemblance to the Malays of the Malay Peninsula and also to those of the Philippines, and in some respects to the Japanese themselves. When dressed like Japanese and mingling with Japanese women, they can hardly be distinguished from them. The vendetta is still rife amongst many of the ruder tribes, and such is their traditional hatred of the Chinese intruders that no one can either be tattooed or permitted to wear a bracelet until he has carried off a Celestial head or two. In every household there is a frame or bracket on which these heads are mounted, and some of their warriors can proudly point to over seventy of such trophies. It is a relief to hear that with their new Japanese masters they have sworn friendship, these new rulers of the land being their "brothers and sisters." The oath of eternal alliance is taken by digging a hole in the ground, putting a stone in it, throwing earth at each other, then covering the stone with the earth, all of which means that "as the stone in the ground keeps sound, so do we keep our word unbroken."

It is interesting to note that this Japanese ethnologist's remarks on the physical resemblances of the aborigines are fully in accord with those of European observers. Thus to Hamy "they recalled the Igorrotes of North Luzon, as well as the Malays of Singapore[562]." G. Taylor also, who has visited several of the wildest groups in the southern and eastern districts[563] (Tipuns, Paiwans, Diaramocks, Nickas, Amias and many others), traces some "probably" to Japan (Tipuns); others to Malaysia (the cruel, predatory Paiwan head-hunters); and others to the Liu-Kiu archipelago (the Pepohwans now of Chinese speech). He describes the Diaramocks as the most dreaded of all the southern groups, but doubts whether the charge of cannibalism brought against them by their neighbours is quite justified.

Whether the historical Malays from Singapore or elsewhere, as above suggested, are really represented in Formosa may be doubted,