66 EARLY IXDO- CHINESE INFLUENCE 



have from time to time occupied this region, to establish, it 

 may be, on a more certain footing" the ethnology and philology 

 of Southern Indo-China, and to furnish additional data towards 

 the elucidation of the origin of the Malay race, it will be admitted 

 that even the collection of a short vocabulary, provided it be 

 accurate, is a valuable contribution to what is at present an 

 almost unexplored field of investigation. Those who have the 

 opportunity should however aim at more than that, and should 

 supplement every list of words by a series of sentences and 

 phrases illustrating as fully as possible the construction and 

 grammar of the language, dialect, or jargon which they represent, 

 as well as by a careful description of the people who speak it. 

 It is only by the collation and comparison of a large mass of such 

 materials, collected independently but according- to the same 

 general plan, that we can hope to attain to a thorough knowledge 

 of the pre-Malayan philology of the Peninsula, which will enable 

 us to fill up many a blank in its history and ethnology, besides 

 contributing an additional chapter to the ever growing Science 

 of Language. 



C. OTTO BLAGDEN. 



