Pagan races of the Malay Peninsula - Sabrizain.org

BIBLIOGRAPHY
The authorities enumerated in the following list are of course of a varying value,
into which the personal equation to a large extent enters, nevertheless it is possible
to make a rough classification which may be of service to intending students. To
begin with, it should be perfectly evident that, although the work done by those
writers who have actually had local experience is of immeasurably greater importance
in questions of fact than any, even the very best, work of home-staying writers
can be, yet in respect of deductions from, or in the scientific treatment of those
facts, the home -staying student, with his easy access to libraries, museums,
laboratories, and other scientific machinery, holds the field at a very great
advantage. It is necessary to draw attention to this point, because the full
measure of credence to be given to any particular part of the material here got
together cannot otherwise be properly arrived at. Broadly speaking, then, the
entire series of writers here recorded may be briefly classified as follows :
(a) Writers with local experience, including not only government officials but
European missionaries (chiefly French Roman Catholics), planters, and
miners, to whom may be added a few scientific men who have acquired
some local field-knowledge.
(iJ) Scientific men who have no local field-knowledge, but who possess other
advantages, as above.
((') Travellers without any scientific training, and at the same time without any
adequate local knowledge. These might well be expected to be mere
discoverers of "mare's-nests," but taking their work as a whole, I am
glad to be able to state that, though they have made some bad blunders,
there are fewer of these than might be expected.
The foregoing remarks being duly borne in mind, I have next to point out
that the modern study ^ of the Wild Races of the Malay Peninsula may be divided
advantageously, from an historical point of view, into three main stages or
periods of development :
—
The first of these stages covers, roughly speaking, the first half of the nineteenth
century, from 1800-1850. This period contains the name of no systematically
trained anthropologist, and the evidence collected pending its duration rests upon
the observations of various able but, from a modern point of view, comparatively
untrained European observers, among whom may be mentioned. Sir Stamford
Raffles, the founder of Singapore, William Marsden (author of the History of
Sumatra, a Malay- English and English-Malay Dictionary, and other works), John
Leyden (translator of the Malay Annals), John Crawfurd (a most prolific writer
but much inclined at times to spread himself in mere speculation), John Anderson
(author of the "Considerations"), P. J. Begbie, and Lieutenant Newbold, all of
whom did much good pioneer work in the early days.
The second period runs from the year 1850 to about 1890. At the very outset
of this period the (for his time, remarkably) critical, accurate, and voluminous
writings of J. R. Logan, based in the main on his own personal investigations,
placed the study of these races on an altogether higher plane. At the same time
the reports of travellers like Miklucho-Maclay, Miss Isabella Bird (the latter in a
1 In this " modern study " are not, of It will of course be remembered that
course, included the few scattered the Portuguese domination which cornnotices
from Dutch sources (before the menced with the capture of Malacca by
timeof Raffles), or from early Portuguese d'Albuquerque in 15 11, was terminated
v/riters such as Goudinho de Eredia, by their loss of Malacca to the Dutch
who is the only one of these early in 1641, who ceded it in turn to
authorities that is really worth quoting. England by treaty.
VOL. I XXV /;
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