The Chinese and Siamese have an annual ploughing festival. The Siamese kings formerly attended, and personally held the plough ; but in later years it is the duty of the Phonlat'hep, or superintendent of the rice granaries, who proceeds in great point) to a field beyond the town, where lie ploughs ground sufficient to yield a crop of five measures of grain. On the second month he revisits the field, and stands on one foot for three solar hours, in invocation of the Devata.
Tho Siamese and the Burmese Buddhists, though they avoid killing any creature for food, eat the flesh of animals which other people have killed, as also that of creatures, cattle, and sheep that have died of disease.
Slavery exists in Siam, but only war captives are kept with severity. Gambling in every form, as with the Chinese and Malay, is common, and cock-fighting, fish-fighting, cricket-fighting, and lotteries. • Siamese appears by far the most widely spoken language of Ultra-India. It was at one time the lingua franca of Quedali, almost as much as the Malay, and even that wandering Negro tribe the Seinang spoke it in some places. It was also current in .Assam and Yunnan, at the opposite extremities of Ultra-India. No dialect of the Thai is intelligible to a Burmese. The alphabets also differ, but on the whole the essentials of their civilisation are the same, the chief difference being in the language. The Laos alphabet. slightly differs from that of the Siamese proper, but, prac tically speaking, the language is spoken with remarkable uniformity over the whole T'hai area, and the Siamese proper, the Laos, the Shan dialects, and the Khamti are one. From Assam to Bankok, the difference in the language is merely that of pronunciation.
Pali is the sacred literature of the Siamese, and is called Pali, Bali, and Pasa Makata (Bhasha Magadha), the language of Magadlia. The tala poin or priests are enormously diaproportioned to the rest of the inhabitants. In Bankok alone their numbers exceed 30,000. The Plieek'ho, or priests of Siam, are taken from the mass of the people. They can revert to the laity at pleasure.
With the richer classes, the body, after the bowels have been extracted, is laid in a wooden coffin, externally lacquered and gilt, and this is placed for some days ou a high table. In the meantime the priests light up tapers, burn per fumes under the coffin, and chant funeral hymns at night. A procession of relatives and friends, dressed in white and covered with white veils, follow the corpse. Beside it are borne figures of
various animals or singularly-shaped monsters carved out of bamboo, and the accompanying talapoins exclaim, ' We must all die, we are all mortal l' The mourners attest their sorrow by their tears, and often hire women for the express purpose. The body is then taken from the coffin and placed naked on the pile, which is set fire to, and the remains are scorched. The body is then replaced in the coffin, and deposited under one of the pyramids erected about the temple. Graves are held sacred among the Siamese, and their violation is considered as a heinous offence. The bodies of persons killed by accident, by lightning, the still-born, those who die in child-birth or from small-pox, and suicides, are either thrown into the water or exposed to the beasts of prey. When a person dies absent from home, his heir writes his name and age on slips of paper, and burns them along with an effigy or a portrait of the deceased.
Zimmay, also written Chang-mai and Xieng mai, is due north of Siam proper, on the Menam river, between lat. 19° and.23° N. It is tributary to Siam. Its capital has a population of 50,000. The Laos form the humbler population. The Miaotse or Miautsi are said to belong to the T'hai group.
The mountain races in Siam are the Kariang, the Lawa, the Ka, and the Chong.
The Kariang inhabit the mountains on the N.W. frontier of Slain, as far as lat. 20° N.
The Lawa dwell in the same mountain range, but to the S. of the Kariang.
The Ka are in the range of mountains between the valleys of the Menem and Mei-kong. The Ka and the Chong (the Gueo of the Portuguese) are rude tribes, elephant hunters.
Chong are a hill tribe on the side of the Mei-kong basin, but towards the sea, between lat. nic. and 13° N., in the hilly region at the N.E. angle of the Gulf of Siam. They preserve more of the Australo - Tamilian character than any of the neighbouring tribes. Their hair, instead of being stiff or harsh as in the Mongolian, Tibetan, and prevalent Ultra-Indian and Malaya-Polynesian race, is comparatively soft, the features' are much more prominent, and the beard is fuller.
Luang Praban, Sien-kan, Muong-Nan are also tributary to Siam. The last named is probably Muang Loon, a small state S.E. of Zimmay ; and Muang Phre Bang, on the Mei-kong, is a larger state which acknowledges the supremacy of Siam.