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THE ETHNOLOGY OP THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. 7 



and the insular tribe* have often been remarked as strongly favour- 

 ing the supposition that they belong to one family, and coincidences 

 in manners and customs have from time to time been noticed, 

 but not of sufficiently decided a character, or numerous enough, 

 to lead to anv positive inferences as to community of origin. Sir 

 Stamford Raffles considered it probable that the tide of population 

 originally flowed towards the islands from that quarter of too Con- 

 tinent b ine between Stam and China.* 



Dr Prichard makes the following general remarks on the subject ' 

 of the relation of the Oceanic tribes to those of the Continents. 

 " The tribes of people who inhabit the widely spread tracts of tins 

 Grout. O'-amV, region dihVr amonfy themselves and from the rest 

 of mankind in physical and moral characters. Some of them bear 

 certains traits of resemblance to the bordering nations of the coasts 

 which surround the Great Ocean on different sides ; hut none of 

 these traits arc so strongly marked or of such a kind as to identify 

 the insular tribes with those of the adjacent main-lands, or to afford 

 satisfactory proof that the islanders are descended from the conti- 

 nental nations. We can neither deduce the tribes of the Oceanic 

 isles from the races of people who inhabit the Peruvian Cordillera 

 on the eastern border of the great basin of the ocean, nor from the 

 inhabitants of the South African mountain-ridges which enclose 

 it on the western side. The only continental region where human 

 tribes exist plainly allied to tlie native races of the islands is the 

 south eastern extremity of Asia, on the remarkable promontory 

 which may be repprded as a southern prolongation of that conti- 

 nent into tlie Indian Ocean. There, — namely in the peninsula of 

 Malacca, — tribes of wild people inhabit inland tracts, who are 

 different from each other in physical characters, and who bear a 

 resemblance to more than ono of the races of the Great Ocean. 

 It is possible that this may have been the point from which all 

 these rnces originally came. It must however he observed that 

 the inhabitants of the Malayan coast, who are known to be allied to 

 the natives of the adjacent islands, are believed, apparently on 

 sufficient grounds, to have been originally colonies from the 

 islands. 17 Mr Crawfurd was still more impressed with a sense of 

 the extreme darkness of the early history of the tribes of the Ar- 

 chipelago . He remarked in 1820, — " In the present state of know- 

 ledge, I fear we must pronounce that the origin of the nations 

 which inhabit the Indian islands seems buried in unfathomable 

 obscurityj and hardly appears less mysterious than that of the 



* In envious papers in thu Journal I have referred the primary lank-haired. 

 Indonesian tribe* to 8. Eastern Aim general It, Sf* "The present coalition of the 

 Indian YrvhijMln:; V Vol. I. p. II) ; "Custom* r>mmi}n tit \\v * I ill rnh^ l>onierin<r 

 on Assam and those of the India* Arch ipe logo' ' Vol. II. p. 331.238 ; f A general 

 sketch of Snrnatm" Vnh III . p. #3,2. In the second of these papers I remarked 

 thejpi>cvakmrr of indnn^Un civilisation and customs op to the northern boaodnrv 

 of Cllra-Indla. lr will be seen in the *> nntl bow Car a comparison of the lan- 

 fWfae, and a more ••xtendrd rampariwo ri msiom*. tins tended io conftrni iti« 

 »m indicated in the above papers* 



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