BRITISH BURMA has an area of 87,220 square miles, and in 1881 a population of 3,736,771. It extends from lat. 10° to 22f° N., 950 miles, from the Pakchan river to near the sources of the Koladyn river.
The province has five natural divisions. In Arakan, the narrow strip of lowland between the Yoma and the sea ; the valleys of the Irawadi, Sitang, and Salwin, separated from each other by the Pegu Yoma and Poungloung ranges ; and, in the south, in Tenasserim proper, a narrow lowland strip between the Siamese frontier and the Bay of Bengal. The coast line is upwards of 1000 miles.
The country is very thinly occupied, only 42.8 to the square mile. The inhabitants are composed of numerous tribes of the Mongoloid family, but owning no connection with each other, and they have entered the districts, some from the north, some from the east, and some from the south. Every year 80,000 to 100,000 immigrants enter Burma, more than one-half of whom are from Upper Burma, the others from Madras and Chitta gong. Most of those who come from Buddhist countries settle in the province, but the bulk of the persons from India make a little money, and in three or four years retire. The Chinese who come to it are, more than others, inclined to settle, most of them being familiar with the Buddhist form of religion, which the races in Burma largely follow.
In the census, of 1881, it was shown that 541,743 persons were born outside the provinces ; of these 316,000 were natives of Upper Burma. The immigrants are mostly men, consequently the females are very few.
Males. Females. Males, Females.
1872, 1,435,518 1,311,630 I 1881, 1,391,005 1,745,766 The Burmese women readily intermarry with the immigrants.
There seem to have been two great branches of immigrants from the great bend of the Brahma putra, one of these, Naga, Kuki, Shandoo, Lushai, Khyen, Mru, and Kum-wi, bending westwards. Another branch moved to the east, \and are now known in the upper valley of the Irawadi as Ka khyen, who, on the watershed of the Trawadi and Salwin, merge into Karen, with the Karen-ni as an offshoot, and advanced into the delta of Pegu as the Karen cultivator ; and of these the Toung thu are probably a fragment. Subsequent to the
descent of these tribes, a great people seem to have entered from the head-waters of the Irawadi, occupying its splendid valley, and driving back the prior occupants into the mountains on either side. These last comers are now represented by the Burmans, from whom the Arakanese branched soon after the occupation of Burma proper.
The tribes that have been exposed on the sea board of Arakan or in the basin of the Irawadi, to the influence of the Chinese, Shan, Mon, Bengali, and more distant commercial nations, have attained a comparatively high civilisation. The Singpho, although much behind the Burmans, are greatly in advance of the Kuki, and the Burmese seem at a very ancient period, when their condition was similar to that of the Kuki, and perhaps in many respects more barbarous, to have spread them selves from the Upper Irawadi to the south and west as far as the highlands of Tiperah on the one side, and Pegu on the other. Wherever the stock from which they have been derived was originally located, they probably first appeared on the Ultra-Indian ethnic stage as a barbarous Him alayan tribe, immediately to the eastward of the Mishmi, if indeed they were not identical with the Mishmi of that era. The Upper Irawadi was probably then occupied by the ruder and inland tribes of the Mon-Annam alliance., Dr. Mason, writing in 1860, classed the races of Burma as follows :— The great Mrciainia family are known to the British as Burmese. They include the Arakanese, Burman, Tavoy, Choung - tha, Yau, Ya - bein races. The people and their speech are of common origin.
The .1 rakanese differ but little from the Burmese in feature or form, and though the Arakanese spoken language is so dissimilar from that of the Burmese, as to be almost unintelligible, when written it is the same in almost all respects. They preserve the letter r, which the Burmese pronounce y in sound. The Arakanesc also retain with its natural sound the inherent vowel a, which on the east of the Arakan Yoma range is pro nounced in several different ways.