In Tavoy are descendants of an Arakanese colony, planted there before the Burmese had conquered the intervening Talaing or Mon. The principal inhabitants of Amherst province are Paining, Karen, and Toungthu, with small numbers of Arakanese, Shan, Burmese, Hindus, Chinese, Muhammadans, and Malays.
The Yau live on a western tributary of the Ira wadi, about the latitude of Pagan. They do not differ much from the Burmese either in race or language. They are the pedlars of Upper Burma.
The la-bein are almost indistinguishable from the Burmese. Their language is a dialect of the Burmese. They rear silk-worms, which is never done by the pure Burman.
Choung-tha, or children of the stream, are a part of the Arakanese nation who have remained in the hills. They are gradually descending into the plains. They speak Arakanese, and are Buddh ists.
In the Tibeto-Burman family, and belonging by origin to the same great Mmmma group as the Burmese, are classed the hill tribes of Arakan, the Sak, Chaw, Kway-mi, Koon, Mru, and Shan doo tribes,—who live near the Koladyn and its tributaries. Their languages are marked by differences sufficient to entitle them to be separ ately named.
The Burmans proper occupy the valley of the Irawadi, mixed with Karen, from lat. 18° N. to the delta. They are Buddhists. Their language, the Burmese, is spoken in Arakan, in the valleys of the Irawadi and Siting, and in Tenasserim to the south of Tavoy. There are numerous Shan States far to the north-cast, but they generally owe fealty to the Burmese monarch. The tribes and natives under the sway of the respective rulers are numerous.
The Burmans are lively, inquisitive, active, irascible, and impatient. The men have long bodies, with short, stout thighs. They are of a reddish-yellow colour, are not fond of continuous daily labour. Both men and women wear a jacket, and a wrapper for the lower part of the body.
The Burman woman's lower garment is a narrow cloth of various colours, of a pleasing eoutrast, which descends generally from the waist or from below the arm to the feet. It is made to overlap, and is tucked in in front, at the waist, but it is so narrow that most of the inner thigh is shown at each step. The young people are little restricted iu their intercourse, and the marriage ceremony, and that of divorce, are simple ; the women are naturally affectionate, very intelligent, engage largely in market and shopping business, and even undertake extensive mercantile transactions.
Every male Burman is tattooed in his boyhood from the waist to the knees ; in fact, he has a pair of breeches tattooed on him. The pattern is a fanciful medley of animals and arabesques, but it is scarcely distinguishable, save as a general tint, excepting on a rather fair skin. Erskine, in his Course in the Pacific, mentions that the natives of the Samaon or Navigators' Islands have exactly the same fashion.
The Burmese are spirit worshippers. They propitiate the Naides, they reverence the snake. Almost every Mon village has a Nat sin or Nat shed.
They believe in astrology, alchemy, and witch craft, the evil eye, philtres. The Hman Tsaya is the witch-finder. Diseases are supposed to be the work of evil-disposed Nat& The Kyat or Jat are elfs or goblins, who live in the earth-mounds found in the forest.
Pangyi or Phoungye, meaning Great Exemplar or Great Glory, is the name by which the members of the monastic rule of Buddhism are commonly known in Burma.
Illugh is a term which the Muhammadans and British have given to the Arakanese, but that people restrict it to the descendants of Arakanese by Bengali mothers. The Mugh form six-tenths of the native population of Arakan, one-tenth being Burmese and the remainder Hindu. In Arakan, and in the basin of the Irawadi, are several tribes of the same stock with the Burman, and their lan guages are in their present form so much akin to it that they may be almost considered as forming, with Burman, dialects of one tongue.
Karen is a term by which the Burmese desig nate most of the mountaineers of Pegu and Southern Burma. The Shan call them Yang, which is pronounced by the Burmese Yen, and there are tribes known as Yen], Yen-seik, Yen bau. Some of the Karen tribes wear white clothing, some black, and some red, and these colours have been used to designate them. But as sonic of their tribes wear a frock or tunic, while others have short trousers as a costume, the forms of their clothing have been employed as designations.