Vol. Ill, No. 7.] Notes on Clay Tahlets. 461 



[N.S,] 



in Perak and the Patau! States orang Slam generally means no 

 more tban a professor of Buddhism. Ycvy little reliance can be 

 placed on legends referring to the Siamese, as tlieir name would 

 seem to have been applied to any northern race who were not 

 Chinamen and whose skins were not very dark ; very dark people 

 would probably have been called orang Klit^g, whatever their reli- 

 gion might have been. The phrase orang Kling Islayn (^'.e., a 

 Muhammadan from Madras) is quite legitimate, at any rate in 

 Patani Malay, Moreover, although it is very doubtful whether 

 the Siamese, who arc a comparatively recent nation, ever occupied 

 any part of the peninsula south of the states of Senggora and 



Trang at all permanently, there is no doubt that in the seven- 

 teenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, if not earlier, they 

 were in the habit of making hasty southward raids which struck 

 terror into the Malays and became a fruitful source of legend — 

 aud this although the practical effect of the raids was small. 



Evanescent legends arising from sudden catastrophes of the kind 

 are always liable to be antedated and to confuse events of com- 

 paratively recent times ^vith others long antecedent to them and 

 differing from them widely even in essential facts. 



In the Straits Settlements, Job ore and the Federated Malay 

 States, Buddhism does not now exist except Bniaong recent immi* 

 grants. In Kelantan and Trenganu its position is precarious, the 

 great majority of the population professing Muhammadanism, 

 which gradually becomes less and less predominant towards the 

 north. North of Kedah on the west coast of the peninsula and of 

 Patani on the east, however, Buddhism is not only the reliijion of 

 the majority but even appears to be gaining a firmer hold upon 

 the people as the political influence of Siam increases. This Bud- 

 dhism is of the modern Siamese type (which has chnracteristics 

 of its own) and is possibly of recent growth ; there is considerable 

 evidence to show that it has not originated from direct intercourse 

 with India. In the State of Trang, from which came the tablets 

 described in the present paper, practically the whole of the 'inland 

 population consists of ** Siamese" {i.e.^ Buddhists) and Chinamen, 



while the "sea-folk" of the coast are pai-tly " Malays " (Muham- 

 madans) and partly "Kaffirs" (pagans). The images found in the 

 temples attached to the Siamese monasteries are of the somewhat 

 peculiar type best if somewhat loosely described as *' Indo- 

 Chinese," differing greatly from the Indian tablets found in caves 

 but agreeing with the fitjures made by other Buddhists in the 

 peninsula. Babu Rakhal Das Bannerjee has described the Indian 

 figures in detail, and I need not attempt to point out the points 

 which stamp them as Indian, 



In the Patani States and elsewhere on the east side of the 

 main range which forms the backbone of the Malay Peninsula, 

 tablets of another type, to one of which Babu Rakhal Das Ban- 

 nerjee refers at the end of his paper, are found in large numbers. 

 I have seen them by the hundred in the Siamese state of Jalor^ 

 and apparently they are just as common in those parts of Pahang 

 in which there are suitable sites for the cave-temples of which the 



