IN THE MALAY PEXIXSULA, 55 



a moment dispute, must rest on other evidence ; and I may be 

 excused for adding' that we have here yet another instance of 

 the danger of trying' to draw ethnolog-ical conchisions from 

 philological data without at least a critical examination of the 

 latter. ^ 



So much for the unwritten and long' forgotten chapter in 

 the history of the Malay Peninsula, which it has been the object 

 of this paper to recall to the attention of such as are interested 

 in matters of this sort. In our time the aspect of affairs is 

 chauged : the influences to which the aboriginal tribes of jungle 

 men are exposed are widely different. Year by year words of 

 Malay orig'in are supplanting their old equivalents in the speech 

 of the aborig'ines, and the time is doubtless not far distant when, 

 except pehaps in two or three remote districts, the old languages 

 will be altogether superseded by Malay. In other words, the 

 Peninsula has now for centuries past been more closely connected 

 with the neighbouring islands than with the continent of which 

 it forms an outlying part, and the traces of its old subjection to 

 Indo-Chinese influences have so far faded away that it is hard to 

 realize that a closer and more intimate connection at one time 

 existed between them. To collect and analyse such evidence 

 as still remains of an earlier order of things seems to me a work 

 well worth doing, the importance of which as a branch of Oriental 

 research it is hardly possible, as yet, to estimate, but which in 

 any case will not be labour lost. The present paper cannot, 

 in the nature of things, pretend to be more than a slight outline 

 sketch of one side of the matter : it raises more questions than 

 it solves and does not profess to be in any way the last word on 

 the subject. It is to be hoped therefore that this and similar 

 lines of enquiry will be followed up by the more detailed in- 

 vestigations of others, whose opportunities for pursuing them are 

 far greater than such as fall to the lot of any one living in a 

 Malacca district where no aboriginal dialect has been spoken 

 with anything' like purity for several generations. To racord 

 and study the rude jargons of jungle tribes is not indeed an 

 inviting task and if the matter ended there, it would hardly, 

 perhaps, be worth the trouble : but when it is considered that 

 such researches, trifling as they may seem and wearisome 

 as they may be, are likely to throw a new light on the 

 history of the Peninsula and the relations of the races that 



