MANTRA GAJAH. 7 



It is well known that the Malays have the same tradition 

 regarding the old mining shafts that are to be found in various 

 localities throughout the Peninsula. Everywhere they are 

 called lumbong siam. " Siamese mines." In the gold area of 

 Ulu Pahang I have even heard the word used as a verb with 

 reference to land that had been so extensively pitted as to be 

 practically worthless. Tanah itu suclah siam a Malay will say, 

 meaning that the land has been worked out by a long-past gen- 

 eration of " Siamese ". 



It is, I believe, a generally accepted theory among 

 scientists that these shafts are not really Siamese, but are the 

 work either of the Indonesian race whose tools were the batu 

 lintar, or else of the Mon-Khmer race who populated the south- 

 ern part of Indo-China before the invasion of the Lao, or Thai, 

 from the north. (As members of the society will remember, the 

 affinity of the M!on-Khmer language with the dialects of the 

 " aboriginal " tribes of the Malay Peninsula was pointed out by 

 J. R. Logan* and elaborated by C. O. Blagden §) I was therefore 

 anxious to learn whether the Malays ascribed the mantras and 

 the mining shafts to the same period or to the same race of 

 orang siam. But this connexion of ideas appeared to be new 

 to them, and they could say nothing more definite than "per- 

 haps." 



An examination of the mantras shows that they consist 

 of more or less corrupt Siamese words, the uncouth sounds of 

 the words probably having been considerably altered in the 

 mouths of the Malays during the generations that the 

 mantras have been in use. It is probable that though the 

 mantras are now preserved in manuscripts their commit- 

 ment to writing is only of recent date. For instance, the 

 manuscript now translated is only twenty-six years old, and 

 there is nothing to show whether it is a copy of an older manus- 

 cript or a collection of mantras committed to writing for the 

 first time. Of what Colonel Yule termed Hobson Jobson 

 words we probably have two excellent examples in sections 9 



* Journal of the Indian Archipelago vol. IV. p. 345. 

 t J. S. B. R. A. S. No. 27 p. 21. 



R. A. Soc, No. 45, 1905. 



