Malay minorities in The Tenasserim coast

This paper discusses the Malay Minorities of the Malay Minorities in the Tenasserim Coast. And Tanintharyi Division is an administrative region of Myanmar at present. When we look closely at some of the interesting historical facts, we see that this region is “Tanao Si” in Thai, or Tanah Sari in Malay. This region belonged to Tanah Melayu, or Malay Peninsula, which was part of the Sultanate of Kedah. It was occupied first by the Ayutthaya Kingdom and later by Burma. Moken people of the Austronesian-speaking tribes who live on the coast and on the islands of the Andaman Sea up through the Mergui Archipelago of Myanmar have rationally attracted the attention of researchers. The group includes the Mokens themselves, the Moklen (Moklem), the Orang Sireh (Betel-leaf people) and the Orang Lanta. The Orang Lanta are a hybridized group formed when the people of Malay settled in the Lanta Islands, where the proto-Malay Orang Sireh had lived. The Burmese call the Mokens "selung," "salone," or "chalome." For this study, secondary data on the relevant history was collected and two complementary approaches were used as the research methodology to identify, analyze, and understand different patterns of knowledgesharing within complex social systems. Finally, the paper discusses the significance impact of human migration in Southeast Asia.


Introduction
In the opinion of Ibrahim (2013) Malays are increasingly challenged to uphold and sustain their traditional values. The history and civilization they built together and shared must be maintained, for the sake of new generations and the generations to come. Despite the modern multicultural world giving little importance to indigeneity and cultural identity, the importance of exploring and reconstructing Malay roots and its DNA connections, its people's own historical narrative of its land and its seas, are always challenging. "Malay communities" is a broader term encompassing both the diaspora and its minorities. "Diaspora" is sometimes used with a political connotation; likewise, "minority" is a word that is discouraged in order to avoid the feeling of majoritarianism.
"Malay diasporas" are Malays who have gone to other lands to earn a living/study/migrate/ or are even banished to the US, Sri Lanka, etc. "Malay minorities" are Malays are second-class citizen in their own motherland, as, for example, in Tenasserim in southern Myanmar, in Cambodia, etc. Throughout the Austronesian world, Malays are not diasporas. Not even in New Zealand and Australia are they diasporas. They may be minorities, but the Whites there are diasporas. All Malays in the Pacific are natives, being the first human population. The islands are their homeland.
In the earliest of times, the Malay-Polynesians, from 14,000-12,0000 BC, were the leading indigenous inhabitants of the earth, spreading over the globe. Malays were the leading explorers, settlers, agriculturalists, scientists, and navigators, second to none in those exploits. The Malays spread across some four-fifths of the globe, speaking more than 1200 variations of the same language structure and roots. Despite the arrival of others onto Malay shores and lands, the shared Malay values continue to shine as steadily as the morning sun (Ibrahim, 2013).
Many of the present generation scholars and historians in Asia have insisted that the earliest major civilizations of the world were Indian and Chinese. The standard world history may even omit Malays from its mainstream reference. However, more recently, honest Western prehistorians, marine archaeologists, linguists and anthropologists have discovered that Nusantara was once the center of world civilization, and that others, like the Sumerians, Mohenjo-Daro, and the Chinese were passive receivers of the Sunda Civilization. According to Ghazali and Ramli (2013), Malays lost ground in rediscovering and reconstructing Malay civilizational heritage until the moment they were colonized by foreign powers during the 15 th -17th centuries. Lynn (2010) asserted that the Tenasserim Coast is the most southernmost part of the State of Myanmar. Located on the western coast, adjacent to the narrower Isthmus of Kra, connecting South East Asia with the Malay Peninsula and the wider Southeast Asia. In the history, Mergui was the most important town and famous as the major western port on this coast of the Thai state of Ayutthaya until its fall to the Burmese in 1760. However, this area has become unknown to the world today as it is largely located under the control of rebels later few centuries ago. The Tanintharyi Division is a recent administrative region of Myanmar. This region is called ''Tanao Si'' in Thai and ''Tanah Sari'' in Malay.
Historically, this region belonged to Tanah Melayu, or Malay Peninsula, which was part of the Sultanate of Kedah (Stier, 1927) and initially invaded by the Ayutthaya Kingdom and later by Myanmar (Wilkinson, 1923).

Methods
To discuss the significance attached to the aspects of human migration in Southeast Asia with relevant methods used for this study based on migration theory.
According to Bernardini (2005), historically ancient human populations are inherently inaccurate due to their unsettled nature. For instance, to interpreting identity issue from material culture should be responsively needed to identify based on the nature of ethnic group although there was some inadequacy to identifying their groups and movements.
Based on Lucassen, Lucassen, and Manning (2010), researchers in three disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, and history have dominated human migration studies. If we investigated anthropological approaches, there are many types of subdisciplines especially archaeology, ethnology, cultural anthropology. Such approaches have been transformed to theoretical frameworks focused on climateology, genetically engineering and cultural structures such as marriage and the child. Contemporary migration patterns including economic, demographic, social, and political oriented theoretical model are used to analyze human migration based on the sociological approach. Key questions for this approach are to find out who is migrating, why, when, where and how they move in the research context.
According to Din (2011) there is still no proof of the precense of Austronesian speakers in other parts of the world. As a result, all the migration theories were deficient and the Malaysians were the first to create prolonged political and geopolitical entities (like Malay Land). We also relied on the Malay Concordance Project to understand the historical use of words such as "Tanah Melayu" and "Nusantarian motherland"

Waves of prehistoric migration
One of the questions commonly asked when discussing the history of a settlement, the Austronesians created the final wave of the final great human exodus into the Island South East Asia (ISEA) region including Peninsular Malaysia. Hence, Taiwan or ISEA is seen as their homeland based on genetic studies (Chambers, 2006;Chambers & Edinur, 2015;Simanjuntak, Pojoh, & Hisyam, 2006). Crowed marine traffic through the straits of Malacca on the west of Peninsular Malaysia made this region to be the major strategic hub for international trading activities among India, China and other countries in South East Asia, reaching to coastal Africa, Arabia and Europe (Belle, 2014). The later Malay Empires from 6 th -17 th century regulated the rapid growth of trading activities in this region of South east Asia (Baker, 2020;Norhalifah, Syaza, Chambers, & Edinur, 2016) which preceded increased demand for forest products mainly supplied by Orang Asli (Andaya, 2002). In other words, it shows historical evidence of trading interactions between Malay not only with India, Arabs and China but also with Orang Asli.
The Malays were the first to settle on the Tenasserim littoral, at least as far as the islands and the mainland town of Bokpyin (Boutry, 2014). Since the late sixteen century, coastal fishermen on the littoral reproduced the villages in Kawthaung, and in the village of Pulotonton which are similar to the economic structures of the villages in Malay Peninsula (Light & Gold, 2000) until today. In the islands they specialized in piracy, although to a lesser extent than by islands in the Malacca Straits. The Mergui Archipelago pirates were more likely at the extreme edge of the slave raiding that was perpetrated throughout the Malay Archipelago. Andaya (2002) and Andaya and Andaya (2016) noted a presence of "communities of able seafarers" in western Nusantara since three thousand years ago. Many researchers are currently interested in Austro-Asiatic and Austronesian groups.
The term "Austronesian", or "Austronesian-speaking peoples" are used to describe people speaking this language family (Baldick, 2013). This language family consists of Funan grew in prosperity from the 1st through 6 th centuries AD, conquering 10 territories from Myanmar to Vietnam and north Malaya, but was ultimately defeated by Chenla, later Angkor. Chenla's army were relatives of Funan (Coedes) so another Malay kingdom grew on the Mekong River, after which Angkor took over. The Angkor term for empire was Kambujadesa. The Pyus of Myanmar was Ramannadesa. In short, Mons (3 rd -9 th century AD). Another big Malay kingdom on the Menam Chao Phraya was Dvaravati, which fell to invading Thais in the 13th Century.
The West was keen to find the Spice Islands, as well as gold and other precious materials. These were the inspirations that sent Columbus, Drake, Cook, Tasman, Alfonso, Raffles, and Light to Asian shores. Then Asians find how these names became heroes and "discoverers" of Asian native lands, though we had been here 50,000 years before them (Ibrahim, 2013). By time Wan Teh (2016) comprehended to unlock one of Malays prehistoric archives, we were already in the Sunda Civilization. The Sunda Civilization, its knowledge, its influence, and its global maritime reach, may have opened Malaysia's sense of history, its voyages, crafts, and discoveries into a meaningful pattern, making sense of our present lives, enough and complete.  (White, 1922).
As he wrote, Myanmar is the country of the peacock, while in the Tenasserim, as in Malaysia, the pheasant dominates (White, 1922, p. 27-28). Other animals common in Malaysia, such as the pangolin and the mousedeer, are found in this region. As for the flora, the resemblances to Malaysia are significant, with the kanyan, for example, supplanting the teak, and the zalacca (Zalacca rumphii), is indispensable for the construction of the kabang, the boat of the Moken Sea Nomads. Besides the Moken, the Malays were in the majority of those frequenting the islands of the Mergui Archipelago. People of the Sea, live in boats by fishing and hunting seafoods on islands around the Mergui Archipelago in the Andaman Sea. Moreover, their cultivation knowledge is also excellent with more than hundreds of species of culturally important plants used as food, medicine, construction materials and religious utensils (Hinshiranan, 1997).
Throughout culture, all belonging to the Tanintharyi, the Tanintharyi, the Mon State and Southern Kayin Region. After Bagan 's defeat, in 1287, and then King Bayinnaung of the Toungoo Dynasty, the Siamese kingdom of Sukhothai was overthrown in all of Siam.
By 1587 Ayutthaya regained independence and in 1593 regained Taninthary's southern half, the entire peninsula in 1599 and Dawei's the upperside, but not the rest. As a result, Tenasserim south of Dawei (called Tayoy) remained under Siamese control, while the port of Myeik (Mergui) became the key hub for trade between Siamese and European people. (Charney, 2009;Harvey, 2000).
Burma and Siam were engaged in several wars to seize power on the coast from the middle of the 18th to early 19th centuries and Kengtung and Lan Na on the north front for their benefit. The Siamese's attempts to retake Tanintharyi (1787 and 1792) were also unsuccessful. Also, Ibrahim (2017) stated, "The Andaman Sea, off the Tenasserim Coast, was the subject of keen scrutiny from Burma's regime during the 1990s, due to offshore petroleum discoveries by multinational corporations, including Unocal, Petronas and others.". Based on reports from the late 1990s, the Sea Gypsies were forced to relocate to mainland sites by Burma's military regime. Although the Sea Gypies have lived on coastal provinces in Thailand's Andaman for ages but without registered official ownership of their land due to their lack of knowledge on legal protocol, they become the target or land grabs (na Thalang, 2017).

The linguistically evidence
In a cave at Saraburi, about 550 AD, the script of Mon and the alphabet of Pallava adopted by Mon was found. Then in 1057 during the Thaton Kingdom defeated the King Anawraht of Pagan Kingdom, the mon culture and the script were assimilated and came under Bamar rule by the Burmese and mons. In Lower Burma, the Mon remained the majority. In 1230, Mangrai-Northern Thai leader introduced Mon culture and script into the culture of Lanna as Haifunchai was conquered. (Baker, 2014;Haspelmath & Tadmor, 2009).
The Burmans invaded Mon territory and adopted Mon script for Burmese during the time of Anawrahta's reign. There is still no consensus among specialists regarding the ethno-linguistic nature of peple. Hence, most specialists agreed on hypotheses that Funanese were mostly Mon-Khmer, or Austronesian, or they themselve created a multiethnic society. According to Omar (1996) Well, what if there was a relation between Austro-Asiatic people in the Mekong-delta and the Austronesian people that later formed Champa, explaining the rise of both kingdoms? As we now know that the Austronesians were master sea farers, they must have been largely responsible for the trade between India, South East Asian mainland and China. It is also far more likely that the Chams were the first to bring Indian culture to Funan, since there is no documentation of Indian Brahmins (documentation proved that Brahmins emigrated to other countries), but there is no mention of either Funan or Champa.
The Brahmins therefore were most likely Chams who were introduced to Indian culture directly by Indians through trade. This is evident in the earliest inscriptions of Funan, where titles were the same as in the Cham inscriptions. Table 1 below illustrated abudances of Malay classica texts used the term Tanah Melayu (The Malay Land) long before influenced by the Western (Fernandez, 1999).

Conclusion
On the search for regulations and fixed prototypes in human development, tracing the history is considered in the two important, interconnected fields of community engagement and development.
As a result, historical facts assist us, including the young, to encourage flexibility and a willingness to change our minds as we go to answering problems in all fields.  experience and expertise of our colleagues and colleagues from the Malay Academy of Studies, University of Malaysia, who contributed greatly to the work but who may not support all the interpretations and conclusions in this paper. We want also to express our gratitude to all library media experts, who assisted our research in this way and helped us produce better results during data collection.