A Murut Vocabulary. 
By THE LATE N. B. BABonEAU. 
Wir Aan IntTRopUCTORY NOTE 
By- G. C. WooLury. 
The following Murut Vocabulary was compiled by the late Mr. 
B. Baboneau, an Officer in the British Nlorth Borneo Service 
from February 1910 to December 1921, and was found amongst 
his papers after his death. The original is carefully typewritten, 
and has been revised, as there are numerous pencil additions and 
‘corrections in the text. I do not know, however, whether Mr. Babo- 
neau considered that it was now as complete as he intended it to 
be. Probably not, for further research would doubtless reveal 
many native terms in place of the Malay or semi-Malay forms here 
elven. 
The only ‘introduction’ is a pencil note on the fly-leaf “A 
Murut Vocabulary compiled with the help of various Keningau 
Muruts, intelligent and otherwise, between the years 1911 and 
1914. N.B. B. Rundum 1914.” 
The name ‘Murut? though now generally adopted and un- 
derstood, was not originally used by the people themselves, but was 
given by Brunei Malay and other Coast people to the inhabitants 
of the hills and Interior of this part of the country. The ‘Murut’ 
districts are Keningau, Tenom and the greater part of Pensiangan 
or Rundum Districts of the Interior, the lower Padas and Bukau 
rivers in Beaufort District, and the greater part of Province Clarke, 
which includes the Lakutan and Mengabong rivers and head waters 
of the Padas. 
So far as I am aware, no ethnologist has yet classified the 
various tribes in this area, but we can perhaps distinguish four 
main tribes, though the number of petty subdivisions, with small 
variations of dialect, is very large. A Murut, if asked his race, 
would probably not state to which main tribe he belonged, but 
would give his local subdivision, generally a geographical descrip- 
tion, according to the river on which he or his people lived, e.g. 
that he was a Tomani or Siliu man, t.e. that he lived on the Tomani 
or Siliu river or that he was a ‘ Keningau Murut.’ 
As the country has got more peaceful under European Govern- 
ment, raiding has died out and intercourse has become more free, 
tribual boundaries have tended to become obscured, and probably 
dialectical variations of language have become less accentuated, 
but a general distribution of tribes can still be given. 
Jour. Straits Branch R. A. Soc., No. 86 1922. 
