Pagan races of the Malay Peninsula - Sabrizain.org

CHAP. VI GENERAL REMARKS 261
The Use of Ipoh.
The question whether the use of Ipoh is of
Malay origin must (says Geiger, p. 38) in all prob-
ability be answered in the negative. It is clear,
however, that he is here using the word Malay in its
narrowest sense, as he subsequently points out (pp.
40, 41) that the eastern boundary-line between those
who use the blowpipe (and Ipoh) and those who do
not does correspond to the boundary-line between the
Malay and the Polynesian languages (p. 41). In this
latter case he is clearly using the word Malay in its
wider sense, as applied to what may be called
" Greater Malaya " (including the countries inhabited
by the " savage Malays " of Wallace). Moreover, he
then proceeds to quote Brandes' remark, that " the
natives who use the blowpipe form one family of
languages."
The true conclusion, after all, appears to be that
the use of Ipoh may be of Malay origin, but only in the
wider sense of the word; and in the same way, it is just
conceivable that the blowpipe may be (in its wooden
form at least) of " Greater Malayan " origin. On the
other hand, the wooden blowpipe is so different a
weapon from the blowpipe of bamboo that it will
perhaps be maintained that the two forms may have
arisen independently. Even, however, if this was the
case, the bamboo weapon must certainly have been
invented in some country like the Malay Peninsula or
Sumatra, where Bambiisa ]Vrayi or longinodis is known
and further, as has been remarked
to be indigenous ;
already, it is inconceivable that any intelligent race
should descend to using the wooden form ot blowpipe
when it had once known and used the infinitely