ARAKAN, Will-kiln', or ARACAN. The north ern division of Lower Burma, British India, ex tending along the Bay of Bengal from about 18° to 21° 33' northern latitude, and covering, with the adjacent islands, an area of 18,540 square miles. The surface is very mountainous in the interior, which is traversed by several parallel chains. There are vast, forests and marshes covered with a thick growth of grasses and un derbrush. The climate is exceedingly ful. The lower parts of the country are well adapted to the cultivation of rice, indigo, pepper, and raw sugar, and many tropical fruits are found in a wild state. The chief articles of ex port are rice, salt, and teak-wood. The chief port is Akyab. The town of Arokan, situated in the interior to the northwest of Akyab, which before the British conquest is said to have num bered nearly 100,000 souls, is now a place of ruins. The natives of Arakan are shorter and
somewhat less round-headed than the Burmese proper, with whom they belong by race and lan guage. A caste system with monogamy pre vsils among them. The population increased from 671,899 in 1891 to 760,848 in 1901. About seventy per cent. of the inhabitants are Bud dhists, while the remainder is made up chiefly of Mohammedans. Arakan was formerly an in dependent kingdom. At the end of the Seven teenth Century it began to decline, owing to in ternal strifes, and a century later fell into the possession of Burma, from which it passed to Great Britain in 1820. Anthropological details concerning the peoples of Arakan will be found in Lewin, Wild Races of Southeastern India (London, 1870), and Risley, Tribes and Castes of Bengal (Calcutta, 1891).