Introduction: Siraya, Taivuan, and Makatau were Formosan languages formerly spoken in the southwestern plains of Taiwan. They all became extinct in the first half of the 19th century. Aside from Dutch missionary documents and short wordlists from that area, we have at our disposal a third type of language data, the so-called "Sinkang manuscripts," which were mostly contracts written in a roman alphabet. These texts were found in various villages in the southwestern plains that belong to the three different groups. This volume is divided into three main parts. Part 1 contains all 101 of the Sinkang manuscripts that appeared in Murakami (1933). Part 2 contains a further 69 Sinkang manuscripts collected since then. And Part 3 consists of photocopies of all available Sinkang manuscripts, 150 in total. A map shows the geographical distribution of Siraya, Taivuan, and Makatau villages on the southwestern plains of Taiwan by the end of the 19th century. Appendix I is a list of Siraya names occurring in the manuscripts. This is basically a volume of transcribed texts with translation. Word-for-word interlinear English glosses and free Chinese translations are given for each text when possible. Only 34 texts have free translations in both Chinese and English. This volume may be of interest of to linguists, anthropologists and historians.

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