THE SAKAI AND SEMANG DIALECTS. 4.9 
The author’s merits, however, do not lie inthe mere com- 
pilation of materials: he analyses his sources with the utmost 
invenuity, showing how in some cases two authorities have 
borrowed from one source, which is sometimes a writtén, some- 
times an unwritten one, and how the several vocabularies are 
related inter se*. Here it might have been worth while to go 
even more deeply into the bibliography of the subject, and to 
show, for instance, that Klaproth’s list is an unacknowledged 
copy from the one that appears in Crawfurd’s History of the 
Indian Archipelago, eked out however with some additions from 
elsewhere, and to mention that Roberts merely copies, as he 
himself admits, from Anderson. In dealing with Newbold’s 
somewhat irritating ‘“‘ Benua” list, the author rightly points out 
that it is a heterogeneous mixture of Bésisi with words from 
some Sémang dialect cognate to the one given by Tomlin (and 
Begbie); but his want of first-hand acquaintance with the 
spoken dialects of Malacca has prevented him from recognizing 
in it a third element, viz: Jakun, which is represented by a 
good many words collected for Newbold by Munshi ‘Abdullah, 
as related by the latter in his well-known Autobiography. It is 
worth noticing too, though the author does not mention it, that 
the older sources (i. e., prior to 1875) practically all deal either 
with the Sémang dialects of the North of the Peninsula (collect- 
ed from Penang) or the dialects of the south (collected from 
Malacca). The latter barely take iu the Southern fringe of 
the Sakai group, the purer forms of which, situated as they are 
in the centre of the Peninsula, remained quite unknown (except 
for the short notice by Colonel Low) until the introduction of 
the Residential system opened the Native States to European 
enquirers." 
g. I may, perhaps, be permitted, in this connection, to confirm 
the author’s inference, drawn purely from internal evidence, that I 
did not copy the Bésisi words I gave in a former paper from my friend 
Mr. W. W. Skeat, or vice versa. Mine were collected in Malacea, his 
in Selangor. I venture to think it is rather a tribute to our accuracy 
that they exhibit so few serious discrepancies. He 
r. Bearing these limitations in view and allowing for their oc- 
easional errors, the old lists are still very valuable and well worth 
studying, especially for the Sémang dialects. 
R. A. Soe., No. 30, 1903. 
