literal accuracy of rendering. The originals will be found in the Appendix, and it must be left to those who can read Malay to check the author’s versions, and to draw from the untranslated portions such inferences as may seem to them good.

The author himself has no preconceived thesis to maintain: his object has been collection rather than comparison, and quite apart from the necessary limitations of space and time, his method has confined the book within fairly well-defined bounds. Though the subject is one which would naturally lend itself to a comparative treatment, and though the comparison of Malay folklore with that of other nations (more particularly of India, Arabia, and the mainland of Indo-China) would no doubt lead to very interesting results, the scope of the work has as far as possible been restricted to the folklore of the Malays of the Peninsula. Accordingly the analogous and often quite similar customs and ideas of the Malayan races of the Eastern Archipelago have been only occasionally referred to, while those of the Chinese and other non-Malayan inhabitants of the Peninsula have been excluded altogether.

Moreover, several important departments of custom and social life have been, no doubt designedly, omitted: thus, to mention only one subject out of several that will probably occur to the reader, the modes of organisation of the Family and the Clan (which in certain Malay communities present archaic features of no common interest), together with the derivative notions affecting the tenure and inheritance of property, have found no place in this work. The field, in fact, is very wide and cannot all be worked at once. The folklore of uncivilised races may fairly enough be said to embrace every phase of nature and every department of life: it may be regarded as containing, in the germ and as yet undifferentiated, the notions from which Religion, Law, Medicine, Philosophy, Natural Science, and Social Customs are eventually evolved. Its bulk and relative importance seem to vary inversely with the advance of a race in the progress towards civilisation; and the ideas of savages on these matters appear to constitute in some cases a great and complex system, of which comparatively few traces only are left among the more civilised peoples. The Malay race, while far removed from the savage condition, has not as yet reached a very high stage of civilisation, and still retains relatively large remnants of this primitive order of ideas. It is true that Malay notions on these subjects are undergoing a process of disintegration, the rapidity of which has been considerably increased by contact with European civilisation, but, such as they are, these ideas still form a great factor in the life of the mass of the people.

It may, however, be desirable to point out that the complexity of Malay folklore is to be attributed in part to its singularly mixed character. The development of the race from savagery and barbarism up to its present condition of comparative civilisation has been modified and determined, first and most deeply by Indian, and during the last five centuries or so by Arabian influences. Just as in the language of the Malays it is possible by analysis to pick out words of Sanskrit and Arabic origin from amongst the main body of genuinely native words, so in their folklore one finds Hindu, Buddhist, and Muhammadan ideas overlying a mass of apparently original Malay notions.

These various elements of their folklore are, however, now so thoroughly mixed up together that it is often almost impossible to disentangle them. No systematic attempt has been made to do so in this book, although here and there an indication of the origin of some particular myth will be found; but a complete analysis (if possible at all) would have necessitated, as a preliminary investigation, a much deeper study of Hindu and Muhammadan mythology than it has been found practicable to engage in.

In order, however, to give a clear notion of the relation which the beliefs and practices that are here recorded bear to the official religion of the people, it is necessary to state that the Malays of the Peninsula are Sunni Muhammadans of the school of Shafi’i, and that nothing, theoretically speaking, could be more correct and orthodox (from the point of view of Islām) than the belief which they profess.

But the beliefs which they actually hold are another matter altogether, and it must be admitted that the Muhammadan veneer which covers their ancient superstitions is very often of the thinnest description. The inconsistency in which this involves them is not, however, as a rule realised by themselves. Beginning their invocations with the orthodox preface: “In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate,” and ending them with an appeal to the Creed: “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the Apostle of God,” they are conscious of no impropriety in addressing the intervening matter to a string of Hindu Divinities, Demons, Ghosts, and Nature Spirits, with a few Angels and Prophets thrown in, as the occasion may seem to require. Still, the more highly educated Malays, especially those who live in the towns and come into direct contact with Arab teachers of religion, are disposed to object strongly to these “relics of paganism”; and there can be no doubt that the increasing diffusion of general education in the Peninsula is contributing to the growth of a stricter conception of Islām, which will involve the gradual suppression of such of these old-world superstitions as are obviously of an “unorthodox” character.

This process, however, will take several generations to accomplish, and in the meantime it is to be hoped that a complete record will have been made both of what is doomed sooner or later to perish, and of what in all likelihood will survive under the new conditions of our time. It is as a contribution to such a record, and as a collection of materials to serve as a sound basis for further additions and comparisons, that this work is offered to the reader.

A list of the principal authorities referred to will be found in another place, but it would be improper to omit here the acknowledgments which are due to the various authors of whose work in this field such wide use has been made. Among the dead special mention must be made of Marsden, who will always be for Englishmen the pioneer of Malay studies; Leyden, the gifted translator of the Sĕjarah Malayu, whose early death probably inflicted on Oriental scholarship the greatest loss it has ever had to suffer; Newbold, the author of what is still, on the whole, the best work on the Malay Peninsula; and Sir William Maxwell, in whom those of us who knew him have lost a friend, and Malay scholarship a thoroughly sound and most brilliant exponent.

Among the living, the acknowledgments of the author are due principally to Sir Frank Swettenham and Mr. Hugh Clifford, who, while they have done much to popularise the knowledge of things Malay amongst the general reading public, have also embodied in their works the results of much careful and accurate observation. The free use which has been made of the writings of these and other authors will, it is hoped, be held to be justified by their intrinsic value.

It must be added that the author, having to leave England about the beginning of this year with the Cambridge scientific expedition which is now exploring the Northern States of the Peninsula, left the work with me for revision. The first five Chapters and Chapter VI., up to the end of the section on Dances, Sports, and Games, were then already in the printer’s hands, but only the first