48 EA.RLY IJSDO-CHINESE INFLUENCE 



comparative vocabularies, no materials of the kind have been at 

 my disposal, and I have been compelled faute de mieux to fall 

 back on the modern colloquial forms of the languages. 



At the same time, it may be worth while to draw attention 

 to a few facts which bear on the question. On general grounds 

 it mig'ht have been anticipated that old Peguan and old Cambojan 

 would approximate to each other more closely than their modern 

 representatives ; and in the Peninsular dialects we sometimes find 

 forms that are decidedly more archaic than their equivalents m 

 either of the modern languages. We know however from evi- 

 dence derived from the inter-comparison of the dialects of the 

 Mekong valley that the old Cambojan of which they have preserved 

 the impress, was in several points nearer to the modern, and 

 therefore to the old, Peguan, than to its own descendant the 

 Cambojan of the present day: that is to say the modern Cambojan 

 is certainly in many respects more corrupt than the modern Pe- 

 guan. That point which is pretty clearly made out by Forbes ^^ 

 is best illustrated in the numerals : a comparison of these shows 

 that modern Cambojan has abandoned its old system of numer- 

 ation and has adopted a quinary system of which no traces are 

 found in the other languages. 



It does not therefore follow, because a word in a modern 

 aboriginal dialect of the Peninsula approximates more closely to 

 modern Peguan than to modern Cambojan, that it is derived from 

 Mon and not from Khmer: the old Khmer form may have been 

 quite as close to it as the present Mon form or even closer, if we 

 only knew it. 



It must be admitted, however, that in certain cases where 

 an archaic Cambojan form is known, the equivalent in the Penin- 

 sular dialects does not correspond with it but with the Peguan. 

 In the comparative vocabulary illustrating the present paper there 

 is no lack of words in which modern Cambojan agrees well with 

 the aboriginal Peninsular dialects and among others with the 

 Johor dialect given by Miklucho-Maclay: ^^ but the latter, which 



35. Op. cit. pp. 49, 50. 



36. Miklucho-Maclay 's other dialect has clearly gone wrong : surely 

 its numerals must be ; 



1 2 3 4 5 6 



, moi =- npe npotn — prui 



12 3 4 



nQ% moi, npotn, npe, prui, as he gives them 



