[13] However, there exist Muslim communities in Malaysia with distinctive cultures and spoken languages that cannot be categorised constitutionally as Malay.
[15] The indigenous animistic belief system, which employed the concept of semangat (spirit) in every natural objects, was predominant among the ancient Malayic tribes before the arrival of Dharmic religions.
[16] Deep in the estuary of the Merbok River, lies an abundance of historical relics that have unmasked several ceremonial and religious architectures devoted for the sun and mountain worshiping.
[17][18][19] At its zenith, the massive settlement sprawled across a thousand kilometers wide, dominated in the northern plains of the Malay Peninsula.
Founded in 535 BC, it is the oldest testament of civilisation in Southeast Asia and a potential progenitor of the Kedah Tua kingdom.
In addition to Sungai Batu, the coastal areas of the Malay Peninsula also witnessed the development of other subsequent ancient urban settlements and regional polities, driven by a predominantly cosmopolitan agrarian society, thriving skilled craftsmanship, multinational merchants and foreign expatriates.
Upon the fifth century AD, these settlements had morphed into a sovereign city-states, collectively fashioned by an active participation in the international trade network and hosting diplomatic embassies from China and India.
[6] It is generally believed that Malayisation intensified within Strait of Malacca region following the territorial and commercial expansion of the sultanate in the mid 15th century.
However, the sultanate remained an institutional prototype: a paradigm of statecraft and a point of cultural reference for successor states like Johor, Perak and Pahang.
Between 1808 and 1813, the Siamese partitioned Patani into smaller states while carving out Setul, Langu, Kubang Pasu and Perlis from Kedah in 1839.
[28][29] In 1786, the island of Penang was leased to East India Company by Kedah in exchange of military assistance against the Siamese.
[30] The leftists from Kesatuan Melayu Muda were among the earliest who appeared with an ideal of a Republic of Greater Indonesia for a Pan-Malay identity.
[32] Another attempt to redefine the Malayness was made by a coalition of left wing political parties, the AMCJA, that proposed the term 'Melayu' as a demonym or citizenship for an independent Malaya.
Mass protests from this group against the Malayan Union, a unitary state project, forced the British to accept an alternative federalist order known as the Federation of Malaya.
Malay is also spoken Brunei, Indonesia, Singapore, Timor Leste as well as Thailand and Australian Cocos and Christmas Islands.
[39] Standard Malay differs from Indonesian in a number of ways, the most striking being in terms of vocabulary, pronunciation and spelling.
The development changed the nature of the language with massive infusion of Arabic and Sanskrit vocabularies, called Classical Malay.
The Melaka-Johor dialect, owing to its prominence in the past, became the standard speech among Malays in Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore.
There is considerable genetic, linguistic, cultural, and social diversity among the many Malay subgroups as a result of hundreds of years of immigration and assimilation of various regional ethnicity and tribes within Southeast Asia.
[47] Around the opening of the common era, Dharmic religions were introduced to the region, where it flourished with the establishment of many ancient maritime trading states in the coastal areas of the Malay Peninsula and Borneo.
[48][49] Much of the cultural identities originating from these ancient states survived among the east coasters (Kelantanese, Terengganuans, Pahangites), northerners (Kedahans and Perakians), and Bornean (Bruneians and Sarawakians).
Among the earliest groups were the Minangkabau who had established themselves in Negeri Sembilan, Buginese who had formed the Selangor sultanate and domiciled in large numbers in Johor.
British census from 1911 to 1931 shows that many of the immigrants concentrated on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula and largely predominated by ethnic Javanese.
[55] The process of adaptation and assimilation carried out by these ethnicities later gave birth to new Malay communities that retain a close relationship with their cultural roots in Java and Sumatra until today.
There is a community of Malaysian Malays who make up 20% of the total population of the Australian external territory of Christmas Island.
[63][64] From the 17th century, Bugis mercenaries and merchants involved in both commercial and political ventures in the Malay sultanates, later establishing their main settlements along Klang and Selangor estuaries.
The resulting intermarriages between the Minangkabau immigrants and the native Proto-Malay Temuan peoples, gave birth to a Malay community in Negeri Sembilan that adopted extensively the indigenous customary law or Adat Benar and traditional political organization.
[63][64][78] In more recent times, during the Vietnam War, a sizable number of Chams migrated to Peninsular Malaysia, where they were granted sanctuary by the Malaysian government out of sympathy for fellow Muslims; most of them have also assimilated with the Malay cultures.
[82][83] The Proto-Malays such as the Temuan people show genetic evidence of having moved out of Yunnan, China, thought to be about 4,000–6,000 years ago.
[84] There are also minor components contributed by other groups such as the Negritos (the earliest inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula), Central Asians and Europeans.