Pagan races of the Malay Peninsula - Sabrizain.org

384 PRESENT STATE AND FUTURE PROSPECTS part iv
for ever impossible. These tribes, surrounded as
they are by men of different faiths and alien races
who despise them and regard them as little better
than brute beasts, have no recorded history ; barely
a few allusions to their mere existence are to be
found in Malay literature, and practically nothing
whatever is on record that can throw any light on
their origin and antecedents. It is to their physical
structure, their customs, and above all to their
languages that we must turn if we would gain any
insight into their past.^
Such is the somewhat pathetic interest which
attaches to the languages of these forest-dwellers ;
and though the study of them is not likely to be of
practical use to any living soul, yet, embracing as
they do the modes of speech of some of the least
developed and most thoroughly wild and uncivilised
members of our race, it is perhaps natural that they
should form a fascinating subject of inquiry.
Apart from this, however, they are of considerable
importance in relation to the study of language in
general, and of the languages of South-eastern Asia
in particular, for they are connected in a peculiarly
intricate way with several groups of these languages,
some of which have hitherto been almost entirely
neglected or at least very inadequately studied.
Situated at the extreme end of a vast continent, these
"aboriginal" tribes of the Malay Peninsula represent
the disjecta membra of several distinct portions of the
human race, and their languages are a curious blend
of the most strangely amalgamated constituents.
' Cf. Logan, y. /. A. vol. i. pp. 290, 291.