REPORT ON MALAY STUDIES. 
31 
Accordingly it was decided to set up a Committee for Malay 
Studies in the Federated Malay States which should encourage and 
assist the collection and publication in a systematic form of all 
manner of information on such subjects as Malay life, customs, 
history, language, literature, etc. This committee was set up a few 
years ago and the results have been very satisfactory, both from the 
practical and the scientific point of view. 
The movement I have referred to arose out of the actual prac- 
tical needs of the situation. But movements are generally inspired 
by individuals, and in this case the chief merit is due to one man, 
Mr. R. J. Wilkinson, now Governor of Sierra Leone. A Malay 
scholar of distinction, author of an excellent Malay-English dic- 
tionary, he had also planned a comprehensive work on the Malays 
of the Peninsula, but eventually decided to issue it provisionally in 
the more manageable form of separate monographs. In 1906 he 
published his “ Malay Beliefs,” a stimulating and interesting 
pamphlet on the subject of Malay religion and folklore, in which 
he describes and assesses the relative importance of the influence 
of Islam, the present official faith of the Malays, and of the sur- 
viving relics of their former faiths, such as Hinduism and Animism. 
This was to have been the first of his series of monographs, but it 
was also the last. The work of continuing the series was taken up 
bv the Committee for Malay Studies, of which he became the leader 
and virtually the motive force. Interesting and valuable pamphlets 
were now brought out in quick succession under the Committee’s 
auspices, on Malay History, Literature and Law, Malay Life, 
Customs and Industries, and on the Aboriginal Tribes of the 
Peninsula, and these were followed by another series of monographs 
dealing with the history and constitution of several of the Malay 
States of the Peninsula individually. 
More than half of these opuscula are from the pen of Mr. 
Wilkinson himself, and they all mark a considerable advance both 
in the collection of material and in the critical treatment of it. 
That one should always find oneself in agreement with every word 
contained in such an extensive range of monographs, was not to 
be expected, nor were their authors all equally qualified to do full 
justice to their subjects. Mr. Wilkinson, in particular, sometimes 
disposes too hastily of the views of his predecessors and occasionally 
fails to give them the credit which was their due. But no one who 
studies his work will come away from it without having derived new 
information, and what is even more important, fresh stimulus from 
its perusal. On the whole Mr. Wilkinson was also fortunate in 
his collaborators, among whom one must specially mention Dr. R. 
0. Winstedt. That gifted scholar’s contributions to this series of 
“ Papers on Malay Subjects,” as they are modestly styled, are of 
peculiar value owing to his exceptionally intimate acquaintance with 
native life and his complete mastery of the language, both colloouial 
and literary. He has also to his credit an excellent grammar of 
Malay, published in 1913 by the Clarendon Press, an English- 
R. A. Soc., No. 83, 1921. 
