34 
REPORT ON MALAY STUDIES. 
What 1 have mentioned goes to show that there is no lack of 
good work in this particular field: there is plenty of enthusiasm 
locally, but unfortunately it inspires only a rather limited number 
of workers. That is a criticism that may legitimately be made, but 
one may hope that other recruits will be enlisted. A gratifying 
aspect of 'the matter is the growing tendency on the part of the 
workers to co-ordinate their work amongst themselves and also to- 
link it up witli that of Orientalists in other fields. It is quite im- 
possible to do justice to Malay studies if one neglects either the 
element of Indian civilization that influenced the Malay race for at 
least a thousand years up to the close of the 14th century, or the 
more recent and now all-pervading factor of Islam, which super- 
vened upon the decline of Indian influence and replaced it as the 
dominant ideal. I am glad to see that local students have begun 
to realize to the full the great importance to their studies of under- 
standing these two factors. 
Conversely, I would turn to the Indianists and the Islamic 
scholars here, and suggest that for them too Malay studies have 
interest and value. They will see therein, if they care to look, 
some curious specimens of the application and development of their 
own systems, working on an alien population, blending and inter- 
mingling with local customs and ideas in a very peculiar way. I 
venture to think that it is part of the functions of Societies like ours 
to co-ordinate studies, to take broad and comprehensive views of 
them, and to think (as it were) in continents. It will give a much 
needed stimulus to local students in a distant corner of the Asiatic 
field, if they know that the headquarters staff is interested in their 
work and has its eye upon them. On these grounds I feel I need 
make no apology for having taken up some of your time with this 
necessarily brief and inadequate notice of what has recently been 
achieved by British scholars in the part of the world with which, 
as Header in Malay in the University of London, I am most directly 
concerned. 
