54 EARLY INDO-CHINESE INFLUENCE 



the old pre-Muhammadan days there would be hardly any social 

 barrier between Malays and Indo-Chinese. So slight to an 

 outsider's eye was the difference between them at that time 

 that an Arabian^^ authority speaks of the Malays as a branch of 

 the race of Comer, by which he undoubtedly meant Khmer, that 

 is Cambojan. Any Cambojans remaining- in the Peninsula, who 

 did not retire into the interior and throw in their lot with the 

 wild tribes, could hardly fail to be absorbed by the Malays. 



Be that as it may, we have at any rate clear proof of 

 a former connection or contact between the Peninsular aborig-ines 

 and a race of Mon-Annam stock. From Patani to Johor among- 

 a great number of isolated tribal communities, which appear to 

 belong to several distinct races and whose dialects are mutually 

 unintelligible, we yet find clear indications of a dominant Indo- 

 Chmese influence imbedded, as it were, in the elements of their 

 speech, the evidence, as it seems to me, of the former presence 

 of a ruling race that has long since passed away from the land. 



Before concluding this paper, I wish to point out that the 

 fact of these dialects having much in common has been recog- 

 nized before and, as I think, entirely misinterpreted. Nearly 

 twenty years ago the identity of manj^ words in the different 

 aboriginal dialects was pointed out by M. de Miklucho-Maclay ; ^^ 

 it astonished him and confirmed him in his belief that a trace of 

 " Melanesian " (or as it would perhaps be better to put it "Negrito") 

 blood exists in the Orang Utan of the southern parts of the 

 Peninsula. Some years later, M. de Quatrefages^^ remarked 

 on this fact " there is nothing in it which will not seem quite 

 natural to any one who studies the history of Negritos taken as 

 a whole." 



I may be pardoned if, with all deference to an enterprising 

 explorer and a distinguished man of science, I venture to point 

 out that as the words in question are mostly of Indo-Chinese 

 origin, they cannot be adduced to support the theory of the 

 existence of Negrito blood in the Oran,^ Utan of the South of 

 the Peninsula, or to illustrate " the history of Negritos taken as 

 a whole." The Negrito theory, the truth of which I do not for 



50. Ibn Zaid in the middle of the 12th century. The identity of 

 Comer and Khmer was pointed out by Col. Yule. i". Forbes op. cit. p. 47. 

 61 v.. J. S. B. E. A. S, No. L p. 43. 

 52. V. ibid,. No. 13, p. 7. 



