Anthropologists trace the home of the Malay race to the northwestern part of Yunnan, in China.
These tribal proto-Malays, or Jakun, were a seafaring people. They were once probably a people of coastal Borneo who expanded into Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula as a result of their trading and seafaring way of life. Malay culture itself has been strongly influenced by that of other peoples, including the Siamese, Javanese, Sumatran and, especially, Indians. The influence of Hindu India was historically very great, and the Malay were largely Hinduized before they were converted to Islam in the 15th century. For nearly two thousand years, the unremitting traffic of traders between the Archipelago and India resulted in frequent inter-marriages along the whole of the west coast of the peninsula, especially Tamils and Gujeratis.