24 EARLY INDO-CHINESE INFLUENCE 



with Indo-China, and for practical purposes, as well as for purposes 

 of scientific classification, it may be reckoned as part of the Eastern 

 Archipelago rather than as an outlying portion of Further India. 



I venture to think, however, that a careful analysis of the 

 languag'es of the races that preceded the present Malay inhabitants 

 of the Peninsula, the dialects, that is to say, of the scattered 

 aboriginal tribes known generally to the Malays as " Orang utan" 

 (jungle-men), or "Orang bukit," (hill-men) as well as by a variety 

 of other names and nicknames, will bear out a view which seems 

 to me foreshadowed by the fragments of linguistic evidence I have 

 been able to collect ; the view, namely, that in former times the 

 connection of Indo-China with the Peninsula was more vital and 

 effective than it is now or has ever been in recent years; and that 

 an Indo-Chinese race, closely allied to the Peguans and their 

 cousins the Cambojans and speaking a language of the Mon-Annam 

 type, held some sort of sway over at least a part of the Peninsula 

 at a time when the Malays had not yet established a footing 

 there as the dominant power. 



It may seem rash to base theories of this sort on such com- 

 paratively slight evidence as I am at present able to bring for- 

 ward ; but I imagine that in expressing what seems to me the 

 conclusion to which that evidence leads, I am not exceeding the 

 limits of a strictly legitimate hypothesis. Additional facts collect- 

 ed subsequently orindependently can only serve either to disprove 

 or to confirm this provisional conclusion, and either alternative 

 should be welcomed as an addition to our knowledge of a subject 

 which is at present involved in obscurity and has hardly perhaps 

 met with the attention that from the historical point of view it 

 would seem to deserve. 



I will now present the linguistic evidence in the form of a 

 comparative vocabulary in which a considerable number of words 

 of the aboriginal dialects of the Peninsula are compared with 

 their equivalents in Mod (Peguan), Khmer (Cambojan) and a 

 variety of the dialects of the wild tribes of Indo-Chma which 

 have been deeply influenced by the languages of their civilized 

 neig'hbours and sometimes preserve archaic forms that are more 

 primitive than the modern colloquial forms of those languages. 

 With the exception of Besisi and a few Malacca Jakun and 

 Mentra words collected by myself, all the words in this compara- 

 tive vocabulary are given on the authority of the published works 



