The Karen dialects of the Lower Irawadi and Tenasserim are more closely assimilated with the Yuma languages than with the Burman. Karen has been more assimilated to the Burman phon ology, but it has remarkable affinities with the Mon Anam or Mon Lau alliance. Glossarially, it is mainly Tibeto-Ultra-Indian of the earlier form, or that which characterizes the Yuma and Naga Manipuri languages. A few have become Buddh ists, and atheists are met with. They have no priesthood. They are, however, addicted to a considerable extent to Nat worship, demonolatry or pneumatolatry. To propitiate the spirits of the rivers, hills, plains, and trees, they sacrifice buffaloes, swine, and fowls. A portion of them worship their ancestors and make offerings to their manes. They commonly burn their dead.
Karen who dwell in the Shan country north of Mobya, wear a black dress. In Monai, Lcg-ya, and Theen-nee, and in the southern part of the last district, their villages are quite numerous. They are much darker than the Shams. The men dress like the Shans,but the women wear a dark-blue skirt gathered at the waist and reaching to the knees, with a shorter over - skirt, and a close-fitting jacket tastefully ornamented with seeds trimming.
They are Buddhists, and have Kayoungs, in which the youths are educated to read Shan books. They cat beef and buffalo meat, never pork. The Karen believe that every object of nature has its god, as the god of the sun, or the moon, or the earth, or the ocean. They propitiate evil spirits. They say that formerly they sacrificed oxen. employ wizards to curse their enemies.
KARhZ, a Persian well or a series of wells, connected to each other by an underground aqueduct, and leading the water to the place required, with shafts at intervals to admit of repairs. There are several very valuable karez at Ahmadnaggur in the Dekhau. Pottiuger mentions that, but for the karez or aqueducts, the natives of many parts of Baluchistan could not possibly exist. They are met with in great numbers in all the plain country of Persia and Afghanistan. Those of Ilezekiah, 2 Kings xviii. 17, seem to be of this kind.