Pagan races of the Malay Peninsula - Sabrizain.org

24 RACIAL AFFINITIES part
( "Udai") is used by the Orang Pangan as an ex-
pression of contempt for the tribes dweUing near
Belum in Perak, and that its meaning is equivalent to
" bastard." He also alleges it to be applied by the
Malays in the north to the Orang Jinak, i.e. the
more settled ("Tame") Semang. His explanation of
the word, however, is certainly incorrect.^
RACIAL AFFINITIES—GENERAL.
The Older Views.
The descriptions of these tribes by the older
writers were based on very inadequate knowledge,
and were often extremely speculative and misleading.
De Quatrefages, De Morgan, M.-Maclay, Vaughan-
Stevens, and others held what may be called the Pan-
Negrito theory, i.e. the belief that all the wild tribes
were of Negrito origin, and attempted to account for the
anthropological difficulties involved by premising the
intermixture of these tribes with Malays and certain
other races, selected apparently at random, such as
Siamese, Papuans, and African negroes, to account
for the presence of whom the " wrecked slave-dhow "
theory was introduced, without the slightest regard to
the obvious geographical objections, or to the remark-
able racial discrepancies between the races compared.
We have it, for instance, on the authority of Mr.
H. N. Ridley, that Vaughan -Stevens at one time
regarded the Semang as descendants of "escaped
negro slaves brought over by Alexander the Great " !
' Vaughan- Stevens, iii. Heft. 3-4, p. 100.