EARLY INDO-CHINESE INFLUENCE 41 



Although many of these identifications are very doubtful 

 and some will probably turn out to be erroneous, it will be 

 admitted, after full allowance has been made for such cases, that 

 coincidences as numerous as the above cannot be the result of 

 mere accident but point to the influence of one common language. 

 It would however be rash to conclude that all these aboriginal 

 dialects, or any of them, are cognate to Peguan or Cambojan, 

 and still more rash to thence infer that the races which speak 

 them are ethnologically and genealogically related to the Peguan 

 and Cambojan peoples. It seems pretty clear that the abori- 

 gines of the Peninsula cannot be regarded as one stock and the 

 evidence-^ available seems to separate them into at least two 

 distinct families: (a) the Xegritos, (h) the relatively fair race of the 

 centre of the Peninsula; to which I should be disposed to add 

 as a doubtful third (c) the mixed tribes of the South, {. e. Johor, 

 Malacca and paits of the Negri Sembilan, in which there is much 

 reason for suspecting an aboriginal Malayan stock distinct from, 

 thoug'h no doubt to some extent crossed with, the other two. 

 To the best of my belief I have included in my comparison 

 specimens of the speech of all three varieties, and it has been 

 observed that all three, in varying degrees, show traces of 

 Mon-Annam influence. If however they belong to different 

 stocks, it is clear that they cannot all be ethnologically related 

 to the Mon-Annam races, and in the case of the Negritos the 

 things IS entirely out of the question. Without, therefore, 

 going into details of ethnology which are outside the scope of 

 this paper and which I have had no opportunity of studying, I 

 will merely remark in passing that the fact of several distinct 

 dialects of wild tribes of apparently different stocks bearing the 

 impress of one common language is strong evidence that the 

 influence in question was due not to the casual intrusion of an 

 uncivilized tribe, but to the circumambient pressure of a race of 

 relatively higher culture: that is a point to which it will be 

 convenient to recur later on. 



The ethnolog-y of the Peninsula seems, however, to be a 

 matter of much complexity and one towards the elucidation of 



S5. Besides the more recent authorities referred to in this paper 

 Anderson (Considerations relative to the Malayan Peninsula App. p. xxxv.) 

 is quite clear on this point. 



