Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalofstrait121878roya).pdf/37

 duty and destiny there, that is in all cases the primary thing for him, and creatively, determines all the rest. That is, his religion; and I say, if you tell me what that is, you tell me to a very great extent what the man is, what the kind of things he will do is."

Then there is a great want of a good account of Malayan Literature. And ii order that that may be given, it will be necessary to make a good collection of Malay writings. Great help may be rendered in this matter by persons possessing Malay manuscripts sending them in to the Library which this Society proposes to form, either as gifts, or as loans to be copied. I suppose there is no really good collection of Malay books in existence. We all know how the large one which Sir Stamford Raffles made was unfortunately burnt at sea on the way home. I know of none out here. I thought it likely that there might be such a thing in the British Museum; and when I was in England the year before last I went to see. They told me that there were Malay books but they were undescribed, and their contents and value were unknown. However the LibrarainLibrarian [sic] kindly gave me every facility for examining them myself. I found that the whole collection amounted so some thirty volumes most of them purchased from Mr. Crawford in 1812. I hope that the Museum did not pay a very large price for them. The manuscripts were chiefly Shair and Hikayat, poems and romances, many of them incomplete, some bearing evident marks of having been copied for European reading, and more or less adapted to European ideas. There were several examples of the Sual Jawab, or Religious Catechism, and some printed books in the inferior style of typography, which may be seen any day by the curious in the book-shops in Kampong Glam. One cannot call this a good collection, but I rather doubt if there is a much better one to be found. If one is ever to be made it should be done at once. For Malay manuscripts are becoming more and more difficult to obtain. The introduction of printed books has not at present tended to preserve the older literature. The Educational works which have been published for the use of schools, and the weekly newspapers, will probably, for some time to come satisfy a not too keen appetite for reading; and the manuscripts (never very numerous) are likely to be less prized, and more rarely copied; and many will no doubt be lost for ever, unless an effort is made to discover and preserve them.

About the non-Malayan aboriginal races I will only say that, though much has been written about them, there remains much