Comparative vocabulary of the dialects of some of the wild tribes inhabiting the Malayan peninsula, Borneo, etc., collected and compiled for the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society
F. A. Swettenham, Honorary Secretary of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, compiled and published this comparative vocabulary in 1880 (JSBRAS Vol. 5, pp. 125–156), presenting a systematic lexical survey of nineteen dialects spoken by indigenous and semi-nomadic peoples across the Malayan Peninsula, Borneo, and adjacent islands. The work operationalizes the Society’s standing invitation to colonial officials, missionaries, and travellers to collect linguistic data on what the period termed “wild tribes,” with the explicit aim of furnishing ethnologists and philologists with a standardized basis for cross-tribal comparison.
Summary
The publication is structured as a 100-word vocabulary plus fifteen numerals, translated into Malay and then rendered into each of the nineteen dialects. The categories progress from kinship terms (man, woman, husband, wife, father, mother, child) through body parts, fauna, flora, materials, tools, natural phenomena, and adjectives, before concluding with a numeral series from one to ten. This taxonomy follows the methodological recommendations of James Logan, whose 1850 framework for ethnological description is quoted at length in the preface (pp. 126–127). The Society printed and distributed blank vocabulary forms to collectors across the region; Swettenham acknowledges that “in by far the majority of cases they have never been returned,” and the published results reflect only partial success, with several dialects—particularly the Sakei and Semang entries—showing extensive gaps (p. 128).
The accompanying notes (pp. 152–156) provide the principal ethnographic content, identifying the collector, locality, and brief cultural observations for each dialect. These notes reveal the uneven quality of the data: some entries rest on a single informant of “some rank” (Bulud-Opie), others on a missionary’s fieldwork (the Dyak dialects collected by Revd. J. Holland and Revd. J. L. Zehnder), and still others on a brief encounter by a colonial official (Semang of Ijoh, collected by Swettenham himself). The notes also record practical details of colonial administration, such as the naming of Semang children from local natural features as documented in a kidnapping inquiry before W. E. Maxwell (p. 153).
The comparative value of the vocabulary lies less in any single dialect than in the patterns it reveals across the Austroasiatic (Semang, Sakei) and Austronesian (Dyak, Dusun, Iranun, Sulus) language families. Swettenham’s preface makes clear that the Society intended this as a living document: the publication is explicitly designed to prompt further collection, with the hope that members receiving the journal “may, by themselves or their friends, assist in furthering an object” (p. 128).
Key Findings
- The vocabulary covers 19 dialects across three major language families: Austronesian (Iranun, Dusun, Bulud-Opie, Sulus, Nias, six Dyak varieties, Tagbenua), Austroasiatic (Perak Semang ×2, Chendariang Sakei, Kinta Sakei, Semang of Ijoh, Semang of Ulu Selama), and one unclassified entry (Samoe) (pp. 129–151).
- The Bukutan Dyaks “cannot count higher than ten; when they get to ten, they begin again,” a notable limitation in their numeral system (p. 151).
- Among the Semang of Ijoh, the price of a wife was ordinarily $7, rising to $10–$20 for a very young woman and falling to $1–$2 for a previously married woman; polygamy was permitted up to two wives by mutual consent, and there was no formal divorce (p. 156).
- The Chendariang Sakei use the prefix “Ba” to denote male and “Wa” to denote female in personal names, with all names apparently common to both sexes (p. 155).
- The Semang of Ijoh are described as short in stature, dark in colour, with close woolly hair; all men wear four or five small corkscrew tufts (jamul) on the back of the head; they believe in spirits inhabiting trees, a male fire-spirit (jin oss) who is malevolent, and a good female cloud-spirit (jin mak tok) (p. 155).
- The Bulud-Opie origin legend, recorded by W. H. Treacher, narrates the union of a Chinese settler’s daughter with a jungle spirit, producing a new race; the tribe is described as Mahomedan, quiet, and declining in numbers due to Sulus raids and fever (p. 152).
Conclusion
Swettenham’s vocabulary is best understood as an institutional instrument of the Straits Branch’s broader programme of ethnological data-gathering rather than a standalone analytical study. Its definitive contribution is the establishment of a standardized 100-word frame that made cross-tribal comparison possible for the first time in the region, and the aggregation of scattered field reports into a single published reference. The work simultaneously documents the limits of colonial-era linguistic collection: the high non-response rate of distributed forms, the reliance on single informants, and the frequent gaps in the Austroasiatic entries all testify to the difficulty of accessing the very populations the vocabulary was designed to describe.
Context
- Swettenham served as Honorary Secretary of the Straits Branch and was himself a senior colonial administrator (later High Commissioner of the Federated Malay States); the vocabulary was compiled in his official capacity as the Society’s agent for coordinating field collection across the Straits Settlements and protectorates.
- The term “wild tribes” throughout the title and text reflects the colonial administrative taxonomy of the period, which categorized indigenous forest-dwelling peoples as distinct from “civilised” Malay and Chinese populations; this framing shaped both the selection of dialects and the ethnographic observations recorded in the notes.