Pagan races of the Malay Peninsula - Sabrizain.org

PREFACE ix
With this end in view, the several parts of the book
dealing with their racial and cultural characteristics,
which had originally been arranged under the head-
ings of the various subjects dealt with, were entirely
rewritten upon a phylogenetic system, so as to throw
into relief the differences which separate one race
from another ; and in the part dealing with language,
the several distinct elements of which their dialects
are made up have been analysed in considerable
detail. One great difficulty which besets a student
of this subject is how to reconcile the sometimes
apparently conflicting testimonies of anthropology
and philology :
while
not assuming to have found the
explanation, the authors of the present work claim
that in laying bare some seeming contradictions in the
evidence, they are clearing the ground for the recon-
struction on a sound basis of the early history and
ethnology of an important part of South-Eastern Asia.
It is not, therefore, solely as a monograph on the
particular tribes specially dealt with that the present
work claims to be regarded, but also as a necessary
preliminary to a general scientific survey of the races
of Southern Indo- China and the Malay Peninsula.
Resident as they have been for untold centuries in
the Peninsula, these pagan tribes nevertheless have
much affinity with some of the wild races of Indo-
China, and thus form a link between these two
regions. Moreover, the Malay population of the
Peninsula presents characteristics which vary very
distinctly in different districts, and in some parts it
contains a strong strain of aboriginal blood, so that
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