Pagan races of the Malay Peninsula - Sabrizain.org

I MIXTURE OF RACES 39
Allowing 25,000 as a probable minimum for the
"F.M.S.," the Straits Settlements, Kedah, East
Coast States, and Johor should swell the total to at
least 35,000 or 40,000.'
Mixture of Races.
According to Vaughan-Stevens, the Sakai (" Senoi "
or "Blandas," as he calls them, giving a quite un-
warranted extension to the term Blandas) ^ are a
Negrito tribe with a very large admixture of civilised
Malay blood, which he supposes to have obscured the
original characteristics of the tribe. This view (the
Pan-Negrito theory) is, however, as has already been
said, quite untenable, since it is obvious that what-
ever else may happen anthropologically, the fusion of
two brachycephalic tribes, or even two mesaticephalic
tribes, could not possibly produce a mixed tribe which
was mainly dolichocephalic.
Vaughan-Stevens leaves out of sight, moreover,
the extremely potent cultural and religious barrier
which divides the civilised Mohammedan Malays from
the rude heathen tribes of the jungle. In the case of
a Malay mating with one of these heathen women,
the children as a rule follow the religion of the father,^
and become merged in his race, the only important
exception being the case of Malay traders living with
Sakai women in the Sakai country, and then deserting
them and their children, in which case the children
remain with the tribe. Hence it is the civilised Malay,
and not the uncivilised aboriginal race, that is most
* For fuller details, showing (lis- neighbourhood,
tribution of the sexes, see Appendix. • Among the jungle tribes themselves
^ Blandas or B^landas. It is probably it seems that the tribal name follows the
a mere coincidence that Ptolemy speaks male line ; sons-in-law join their fatherof
a river Palandas (apparently the river in-law'ssettlement.— Vaughan-Stevens,
Muar) and a town Palanda in the same ii. 90, 94.