CHAPTER IV SUMMARY
IN drawing general conclusions regarding Polynesian mythology it was possible to employ a roughly statistical system, though with the clear realization that the use of this method was barely justified in view of the fragmentary character of the material. In the case of Indonesia, this treatment is less available, for here the incompleteness and in particular the unevenness of our material are much greater. No attempt, therefore, will be made to apply any statistical methods, and conclusions must depend very largely on more general features.
Considering first the question raised at the beginning of this section as to a distinction between specifically Indonesian mythology as opposed to Malay, the results are, it must be confessed, rather disappointing. Practically the only data from the reasonably pure and uninfluenced Indonesian tribes are from the Igorot and Ifugao of northern Luzon in the Philippines, and even this material is as yet scanty. The Tinguian seem to show fairly clear evidence of some outside influence. From the wilder tribes of the rest of the whole East Indian Archipelago no myths are available, so far as the writer knows. judging from this scanty store alone, it would appear that the type of myths characteristic of the Indonesian tribes, who presumably spread over the whole Archipelago before the arrival of the Malays, was distinguished (1) by the absence of any strictly cosmogonic tales, together with those relating to the origin of man, and (2) by the considerable development of flood-legends. So far as known, the trickster tales, so widespread elsewhere in the Archipelago, are practically absent;