Pagan races of the Malay Peninsula - Sabrizain.org

viii PREFACE
been written about the Pagan Races of the Malay
Peninsula by dozens of explorers and observers in
scores of more or less inaccessible or obsolete books
and periodical publications, supplemented by and
critically collated with a great mass of the most
recent original material collected on the subject. He
will find in this book many facts, but few hypotheses :
at the present stage of our study of these races the
collection of definite data seems to be the most
immediate duty, and such theories as are here put
forward are intended to suggest lines of research for
future explorers and students.
The work has grown under the hands of its
authors. Both had spent some years of their lives
in districts partly occupied by Pagan tribes in the
South of the Peninsula, and had been attracted to
the study of their peculiarities primarily by the fact
that some of these aborigines spoke strange non-
Malayan dialects. In default of any record of their
antecedents, it seemed that the problem of the past
history of these races could be approached most
readily from the linguistic side ; and though a more
comprehensive survey of their physical and cultural
characteristics has somewhat modified this view, there
is no doubt of the importance of the evidence of
language in this connexion. Both in speech and in
blood the races dealt with in the present work are,
however (except in small and comparatively circum-
scribed areas), mixed and diverse, and it is only by
unravelling the different strands which enter into
their structure that we can hope to understand them.