XXI ETHNOLOGY OF BORNEO 229 



have been effected at a remote period in the south- 

 eastern corner of Asia, probably before the date at 

 which Borneo became separated from the mainland. 

 If, as seems probable, this blending was effected by 

 the infusion of successive doses of Mongol blood 

 from the north into a Caucasic population that had 

 previously diffused itself over this corner of Asia 

 from the west,^ the smaller proportion of the 

 Mongol element in the Polynesians may be due to 

 their having passed into the islands, while the 

 Indonesians remained on the continent receiving 

 further infusions of Mongol blood. 



The separation of Borneo from the mainland then 

 isolated part of the Indonesian stock within it, at 

 a period when their culture was still in a very 

 primitive condition, presumably similar to that of the 

 Punans. The Proto-Malays, on the other hand, 

 represent a blending of the Mongol stock (or of 

 a part of the Indonesian race) with darker stock 

 allied to the Dravidians of India, which is perhaps 

 properly called Proto-Dravidian, and of which the 

 Sakai of the Malay peninsula (and, perhaps, the 

 Toala of central Celebes) seem to be the surviving 

 representatives in Malaysia. In this blend, which 

 presumably was effected in an area south of that in 



^ Prof. A. H. Keane {Man, Past and Present, p. 206), after citing the 

 statements of various observers to the effect that persons of almost purely 

 Caucasic or European type are not infrequently encountered among several 

 of the tribes of Upper Burma, Tonking, and Assam, notably the Shans, 

 and the allied peoples known as Chins, Karens, Kyens, and Kakhyens, 

 writes : " Thus is again confirmed by the latest investigations, and by the 

 conclusions of some of the leading members of the French school of anthropo- 

 logy, the view first advanced by me in 1879, that peoples of the Caucasic 

 (here called ' Aryan ') division had already spread to the utmost confines of 

 south-east Asia in remote prehistoric times, and had in this region even 

 preceded the first waves of Mongolic migration radiating from their cradle- 

 land on the Tibetian plateau." While we accept this view, so ably maintained 

 by Keane, it is only fair to point out that J. R. Logan, in a paper published in 

 1850, had maintained that a Gangetic people (by which he meant a people 

 formed in the Gangetic plain by the blending of Caucasic and Mongoloid 

 stocks) had wandered at a remote epoch into the area that is now Burma, 

 following the shore of the Indo-Malayan sea ; and that he recognised the 

 Karens and Kakhyens as the modern representatives of this people of partially 

 Caucasic origin ("The Ethnology of Eastern Asia," The Journal of the Indian 

 Archipelago, vol. iv. p. 481, 1850). 



