IN THE MALAY PENINSULA. 53 



compelled them to retire from their outlying- provinces and 

 attempt to rally their forces in lands more peculiarly their own, 

 is a question which the evidence of language can hardly be called 

 upon to settle, and which history does not appear to answer. But 

 it seems probable that the latter was the determining factor in 

 the situation ; otherwise we should expect to find some traces, 

 either in Malay legend or elsewhere, of the Sumatran Malays 

 meeting' with strong opposition when they made their settlements 

 in the Peninsula, wnereas that does not appear to have been the 

 case. There is no record,"*^ apparently, of the Malays having- 

 found an Indo-Chinese race dominant m the Peninsula and there 

 seems to be no tradition of their having conquered or expelled 

 such a race. It is no doubt possible, as I have already 

 suggested, that a strain of Mon-Annam blood still exists in the 

 Penmsula, blended in the veins of the aboriginal tribes in Perak 

 and Pahang who while speaking distinctly non-Malayan 

 languages, which contain a large proportion of Mon-xinnam words, 

 are described as quite the reverse of the Negritos in physique, 

 being men of comparatively tall and shapely stature and 

 somewhat fairer than the Malays. On the other hand it is not 

 unlikely that a remnant of the old Indo-Chinese stock, may have 

 been absorbed by the Malay immigrants, and may form some 

 small element in the modern mixed Malay race of the Peninsula. 

 The Malays seem to possess in an exceptional degree the power 

 of assimilating and absorbing individuals of other races, and in 



J^d. The account in the ' ' Sejarah Malaj'u " of the taking of Glangkiii in 

 Johor by the Khng Kaja Suran, the mythical founder of Vijayanagar, may 

 perhaps be a faint echo of tlie hist stand made by tlie Indo-Uiiinese power in 

 the Malay Peninsula, and although the Eaja of Glangkiu is spoken of as a 

 Siamese, it is not impossible that the Malay tradition of an early Siamese 

 occupation of the Peninsula may preserve the remembrance of the older Mon- 

 Annam suzerainty which probably proceeded from Siam before that country 

 hai been peopled by the Ihai race. Except this first and purely legendary 

 account, there is no mention of the Siamese till some time after Muhamraa- 

 danism had become the established religion in Malacca, a time which coincides 

 with the period in which they finally broke up the old Cambojan empire and 

 intruded themselves like a wedge between Pegu and the present Camboja. 

 From that period onwards the Malay Peninsula was entirely cut off from the 

 Mon-Annam kingdoms but appears to have been subjected to a succession of 

 Siamese invasions, and it is therefore not inconceivable that floating legends 

 of an older Indo-CMnese supremacy were then by a natural confusion 

 attributed to the Siamese. 



