Pagan races of the Malay Peninsula - Sabrizain.org

BIBLIOGRAPHY xxvii
may himself have been deceived. But what has most detracted from the credit he
has earned as a serious student is his reputation as a teller of after-dinner "yarns,"
which certainly had something of the true Gilbertian ring about them, and it is no
doubt this fact that has most adversely affected the opinion of his work held by
more than one authority of standing. Some of his stories, I have been informed,
were capital, and Vaughan- Stevens was a born raconteur^ Yet even Rudolf
Martin (page 174) himself hesitates to deny that there may be still some value in
Vaughan- Stevens' •' voluminous " communications (of course with the proNdso that
they must be most carefully and critically handled and sifted from an expert
point of view, before they can be safely regarded as material for the comparative
ethnologist) ; and his conclusion is, that if we eliminate from the material left
behind by Vaughan-Stevens what may be styled the "accretions" of his own
fancy, there must yet always be left over a foundation of valuable facts the
collection of which will remain Vaughan-Stevens' permanent contribution to the
subject of our inquiry.
It is with this view (which is also that of Blagden) that I desire to associate
myself, but I may here explain that in order to assist the reader and the student I
have taken the precaution of having the uncorroborated or more doubtful portions of
Vaughan-Stevens' material (such as his remarks on " totemism," which, though to
my mind hopelessly wide of the mark, are too important to omit) set in smaller
type, except in cases of isolated facts or portions of a particular context, in which
instances attention is drawn to the doubtful or inaccurate portion in the footnotes.
An exception to this treatment had to be made in the chapter on " Decorative
Art," where to avoid the perpetual alternation of small and large type, the doubtful
and uncorroborated passages have been enclosed in square brackets, as has been
explained in the text. It should also be here noted that I have, as a general rule,
throughout my own {i.e. the non-linguistic) portion of this work (Parts I. -III.
inclusive) taken the opportunity of correcting mistakes and misspellings, and of
unifying the spelling of native words, though otherwise adhering as closely as
possible to the exact wording of the texts quoted. With regard to the references,
it should be borne in mind that in dealing with the Semang of Kedah, the Pangan
(where so stated), the Blandas and Besisi of the Kuala Langat district in Selangor,
I am writing from my own experiences ; no foot references therefore are given,
^ A few instances of the tales so corpse, into the sacred and inviolable
embroidered by Vaughan-Stevens are enclosure of the Towers of Silence in
given as evidence well known to resi- order to have the opportunity of selectdents
in the Malay Peninsula : In New ing at leisure the skull of a Parsee ;
Guinea a whole tribe he was staying being refused permission to return,
with were massacred by a rival tribe, he made the doorkeeper drunk with a
Vaughan-Stevenshimself escaping to the bottle of whisky that he had by him.
Fly River and floating down it for three And so forth, and so forth. Small
weeks clinging to a drifting log, and wonder that his professional reputation
feeding on raw fish that he caught with went by the board, more especially as
his hands as he drifted by.—He was he brought from Ceylon the name of an
sleeping in the king's hut in a cannibal artist in fiction scarcely, if at all, inferior
island in the South Pacific, and expect- to that he earned in the Straits. Yet
ing treachery, slept with his feet wide e.xamples of professional men who have
apart on the pillow, and his head where done good work, although they may have
his feet should have been ; his foresight suffered from a similar weakness have
was justified, as at midnight an axe-head not been uncommon, and if we compare
crashed into the unoccupied part of the one part, of Vaughan-Stevens' work with
pillow, and jumping up, he found him- another, and the whole with the work
self presenting his pistol at the head of of other observers, we shall find suffi-
his royal host.—He was in Bombay, ciently conclusive proofs of his general
and got himself carried, disguised as a good faith in the facts that he recorded.