Abstract
PROF. COLE has aimed at giving, in a comparatively small volume, a conspectus of the extremely varied peoples of Malay affinities, at every stage of culture from that of the primitive food collector of Malayan jungles to the civilized inhabitant of Manilla or Batavia, who inhabit the Indian archipelago. The author postulates an underlying unity of culture multifariously and unevenly affected by various intrusive elements, and accounts for it convincingly by pointing out the way in which the courses of the great rivers of south-east Asia afford a number of extremely divergent outlets to the sea from the comparatively confined area of the sources of the Brahmaputra, Salween, Mekong and Yangtze. In the prolonged and diverse courses of their journeys to the islands, the various branches of the mongoloid stock from which the Malays spring have been subjected to very varied influences, and have received yet more and stronger ones after reaching their island homes. The great diversity that has resulted from this is illustrated by a series of accounts of different tribes chosen from various grades of culture and including tribes of Australoid and of negrito affinities which seem to have preceded the Malayan elements. These accounts are inevitably generalized, and are not all based on personal observation and knowledge, though the author's personal experience of the Indian Archipelago is obviously wide.
The Peoples of Malaysia
ByFay-Cooper Cole. Pp. xiv + 354 + 37 plates. (New York: D. Van Nostrand Co., Inc.; London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1945.) 22s. net,
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HUTTON, J. Peoples of the Indian Archipelago. Nature 160, 732 (1947). https://doi.org/10.1038/160732a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/160732a0