IN THE MALAY PENINSULA. 47 



old temples and palaces still bear witness to the former splendour 

 of a now decayed civilization, the Peguan or Cambojan race 

 spread into the Peninsula and remained there long- enough 

 as a dominant power to make a lasting impression on the ruder 

 tribes inhabiting these regions ? 



That at any rate is the conclusion to which the evidence I 

 have adduced all appears to me to tend. 



There remains the question whether the Indo-Chinese domi- 

 nion in the Peninsula was that of the Cambojans or the Peguans 

 or both, either mixed together or in successive epochs. That is 

 a point of considerable interest, because closely related as these 

 two races appear to be and intimately connected as they un- 

 doubtedly w^ere at former periods of their history, it is neverthe- 

 less a fact that their language, letters and general civilization 

 did in course of time diverge and each accordingly left its pecu- 

 liar impress on the race with which it came into contact, the 

 Peguans handing on their civilization to the Burmese, the 

 Cambojans to the Siamese. Accordingly in^* western and central 

 IndO'China two distinct but closely connected sets of alphabets, 

 two different modes of dress, and so forth, are discernible, the 

 one derived from the Mon the other from the Khmer race, and 

 both ultimately traceable to Indian sources. 



In language however the relationship of these two races is 

 after all more striking than their divergences, and it is hardly to 

 be expected that with the materials now before us, we should 

 positively decide to which of the two the aboriginal Peninsular 

 dialects owe the Mon-Annam element in their vocabulary. The 

 materials now available appear to me to be too scanty to enable us 

 to come to a certain decision and it would, moreover, be necessary 

 to carefully investigate archaic Peguan and Cambojan, as well 

 as the modern forms of those languages. For it is at any rate 

 quite certain that any Mon-Annam influence that may have been 

 at work in the Peninsula dates back a considerable time and has 

 now for a good many centuries been entirely cut off: it follows 

 therefore that a really accurate comparison should be based on 

 the archaic forms of the Indo-Chinese languages and not on their 

 modern vernacular representatives. Unfortunately, with the 

 exception of a few words of old Cambojan found in Garnier's 



3A, Forbes op. cit. p. 96, 



