vr:

black. The vvjrd is the bamc as byatn of the
Khmer inscriptions and Sien of the Chinese
sources. The Malay has Syam. The original (Sien-
s\-am) is identical with Shan and Ahom iAhom >
Ah&m > Ask^m > Asam, a branch of the Siian racs
that conquered Assam and gave the country that name
in the r3th century). The people of Syam or the
Siamese was a branch of the Laotien Thai which
migrated to the south, mixed up constantly with
Khmer people already hindmsed and built np in course
of time the Siamese nation. We do not know
anything about the first Thai migration to the valley
of the Menam. But they had already settled down
before the Thai" rulers appear in history. The legen-
dary part of their annals carry back their history to a
remote past but the facts which the historian can
accept with condfience do not allow us to say anything
previous to the foundation of the dynasty of Sukho-
thai.
The liberation of the Siamese Thai from the yoke
of Cambodian suzeranty is not probably an isolated
phenomenon in the history of the Far-East, It was
at about the same time that the Annarnese people
<lus called the native population "Black"—Syama*1. But
the Hindus who come to these regions do not seem to hava
been fairer than the Thai people. Moreover it i» not the
foreigners who gave that appelation to the people but they
called themselves "Syam". The mithority of Schlegel is not
a very trustworthy one. See Ynle—Hobson-Jobsoa, articles
on Siam, Judeaetc; P. Pelliot—]oc. cit.