6o 
FASCICULI MALATENSES 
very much superior position to infidels, like the Orang Laut Kappir and the 
Semangs, who have no scriptures. Though Trang was once the seat of a 
Malay sultanate, it is very doubtful how long the present inhabitants of the 
coast have been Mahommedans. I was told on Pulau Telibun, which lies 
just off" the mouth of the Trang River, that the c Malays ’ of that island only 
entered Islam forty years ago, and when I questioned them, they said that it 
was quite true, adding that until that date they were ‘ infidels like the Siamese ’ 
( orang kappir sarupa Orang Siam). This does not necessarily mean, however, 
that they were Buddhists, for possibly they were pure pagans, like the Orang 
Laut Kappir. 
Like all the races of the Malay Peninsula, the Samsams place implicit 
faith in charms and amulets of many kinds, especially — in which respect they 
resemble the Burmese and Siamese rather than the Malays — in little plates of 
copper or lead engraved with magic squares and other mystical figures, and 
rolled up round pieces of string which are worn as necklaces ; and in cloths 
on which similar but more elaborate figures are painted, together with written 
charms. These cloths are worn as turbans when danger threatens, being 
regarded, as also the metal plates, of sufficient potency to render their wearers 
invulnerable. Many of them claim to have been made in the State of Patalung, 
whose medicine-men, for geographical reasons into which I cannot enter at 
present, are reputed the most powerful in the Malay Peninsula. Other 
magical usages will be noted in a subsequent paper on religion and magic. 
The bahasa Samsam or Susam , commonly spoken by the Trang Samsams, 
is a dialect of Siamese, liberally interlarded with Malay words and phrases. 
Siamese is, of course, a toned language, but no attempt is made to intone 
these Malay additions, so that they strike the ear at once and appear, perhaps, 
to be a more important element in the Samsam dialect than is really the case. 
When the Trang people 1 speak Malay, as they often do, their dialect is 
that of Penang or Kedah, quite different from the dialect spoken by the 
Orang Laut Kappir. 
In the State of Trang the Samsams are confined to the coast and to the 
banks of the rivers described above. They claim to occupy the coast as far 
north as Victoria Point, in Tenasserim, but this is possibly an exaggeration 
of their range. Their southern limit in Perak is practically identical with 
that of the Semangs, for, though the Siamese have made many raids further 
south in the Peninsula, they do not appear to have left traces of their presence 
in the racial characters of the people. 
i. Like the Siamese, they cannot pronounce a true j or dj, so that they say raya instead of raja , kiyang 
{ Cervulus ) instead of k'ljang. 
