I REFER to your report “Rais takes a swipe at Lian Hoe” (NST, Nov 17) wherein Unmo supreme council member Datuk Seri Rais Yatim accused Gerakan Wanita chief Datuk Dr Tan Lian Hoe of being celupar (loudmouthed) over her statement that Malays were also immigrants from Nusantara.

Sixty years ago, when I was 10, I came across a history textbook apparently used in the St Anthony’s School, Teluk Anson, that had details about the Malays coming to Malaya in the wake of the Orang Asli.

Thus when Lee Kuan Yew, then prime minister of Singapore, said in the mid-1960s that only the Orang Asli were the original people of Malaysia, I thought nothing of it. He must have read a similar history book.

But was that book correct? The Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (JMBRAS) published an article by Professor Datuk Nik Hassan Shuhaimi Nik Abdul Rahman entitled Current issues on Prehistory and Protohistory in Malaysian Archaeology in June 2007 (Volume 80 Part 1, No. 292).

Nik Hassan is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Malay World and Civilisation, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. He has a BA in history from Universiti Malaya, and a MPhil and PhD in archaeology from the University of London.

In that JMBRAS volume, he wrote that one of the issues “concern the origin of the indigenous people of Malaysia, including the Malays”, which “is related to the migration theory postulated in the 1930s by Heine-Geldern. This theory tried to show that the peopling of Southeast Asia took place in two waves.

“Therefore, according to this theory, the Orang Asli were the earliest inhabitants of the Malay peninsula and were different from the Malay.”

Heine-Geldern was supported in this theory by a series of archaeologists. They included Peacock, Dunn, Adi Haji Taha and Nik Hassan Shuhaimi.

In essence, their finding, for a variety of reasons, was that the Malay and the Orang Asli are one and their differences were due to “environmental and cultural influences and neighbourly contacts… made via various inland routes which began during the Metal Age 2,500 years ago.

“These changes were made by the various ethnic groups, who were the ancestors of Bumiputera living in Malaysia since the Paleolithic era, and not by the process of migration. Benjamin’s quote on the relationship between various ethnic groups of Bumiputera, including the Malays and their origins, is apt:

“There is, in fact, other evidence to support the view that a significant portion, at least of the peninsular Malay population, has exactly the same origin as the Orang Asli …. The view that the Malays are in some fundamental sense Orang Asli is not, I think, one that would greatly surprise those who have kept their heads out of school and university text books (Benjamin, 2002).”

Many people tend to date the Malay presence with the beginning of the Malacca sultanate but this is wrong. Demang Lebar Daun’s ancestors long pre-dated that event.

In fact, in his welcoming speech to Tun Abdul Razak in Beijing on May 28, 1974, Chinese premier Chou Enlai said Chinese records showed that China had been trading with the Malays for over 2,000 years, which means that the Malays were here before then.

But what is even more important for us to remember as we try to forge a united nation is what Chou further said: “Between the people of China and the people of Malaysia, there has been a traditional friendship for over 2,000 years. Both of our peoples have always been sympathetic to one another ….”.

He was right. Just read the letter from China’s emperor to Sultan Mahmud of Malacca on the latter’s report that his capital had fallen to the Portuguese.

TUN MOHD HANIFF OMAR, Kuala Lumpur

Source: NST – November 18, 2008