Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/617

Rh The common, coarse,  is of an excellent quality; and a better description of  is also made. The art of making, however, is entirely unknown, and this ware is imported from. , as already mentioned, is ; but the Burmans cannot, which is brought from. has been carried to considerable perfection; and the craftsmen take pride in the magnitude of some of their productions. Perhaps the largest specimen is that in the neighbourhood of, which measures 16 feet across the lip and weighs about 80 s. Coarse articles of , including , , , also and , , and ' s, are d in the , and  and  s are produced in every considerable place in the country. Embossed work in drinking and the like is executed with great richness of effect. North of the l, and east of the, as before stated, is an entire of pure white , and there are d  images of  or. The is of the finest quality; and the workmen give it an exquisite polish by means of a  of pulverized. The chief seat of the of ed wares is at, near the ancient city of. Since Burmah was deprived of its s and, its foreign has been extremely limited. The of the country centres chiefly in the. The imports are, and  , and foreign commodities obtained from , the , and. ,, , , , and  s, , , some  ware, , , and s are given in exchange. One of the most important branches of the of the country was formerly that maintained with the   of ; but it has been for a considerable period in abeyance owing to the disturbed state of the. The principal s of this trade, which was carried on at annual s, were, near the l, and. The, setting out from the western  of  at the close of the , generally reached Burmah in the beginning of , after a journey of six s over difficult and ous s. The principal  was held at , comparatively few traders arriving at the. The articles imported from were, wrought ,  or yellow  from the  in  (of a very fine quality, which found its way into Western , and into  through ), , ,  s, -, , , , ,  and gold-leaf, , s, s, , , , s and other wrought s, , , ,  s, , s, s, s, and. The s were chiefly in the  of. The articles sent to consisted of raw, by far the most considerable article of export; s, chiefly of the , for ing the es of  of the  s;  ' s, , ' and s' s; s, used for s to the s of the  s of rank, , and , with a small quantity of  lens. The of the northern part of Burmah proper is chiefly carried on at large s held in connection with  s. One of the most important articles, in addition to an  goods, is, for their supply of which all the -s are dependent on Burmah.

The used by the Burmese is of the rudest description. For the smaller payments is employed; and for the larger payments  almost exclusively. This is not into pieces of any known  and fineness; and in every payment of any consequence the  must be  and is generally ed, for which a premium is paid to the  or -changers of 2½ per cent. besides 1 per cent. which they say is lost in the operation. There are three or four different s of in common use as ; the best is Bau, which is almost pure; next is Dain, with about 6.4 per cent., of ; and so on through several grades. An attempt was made by King Mentaragyi to introduce a ; but his plans failed because he fixed the current value of his considerably above the real value of the. The high rate of for —which is 25 per cent., and 60 per cent. when no security is given—is another proof of the low state of among the Burmese. The s of the Abrus precatorius (Khyin Pthwe), a little red and black, serve as the smallest ; they ordinarily weigh about a, but vary from one to two. Two of them make a rhwe-kyi, four rhwe-kyis a great pae, four great paes a mat, four mats a kyap, and 100 kyaps a piktha (peissa) or viss, which is equal to 3.6516 undefined. The Burmese is divided into three s and twelve s, beginning with what corresponds to our, and every third  a  is. Every pakka or consists of 15 s (ret) of 60 narih each. The ret is divided into the nay or, and the gnyin or ,—the 60 narih being assigned in different proportions to the two periods in each of the twelve s, the first  having 30 in each period, and the second 30 in the time and 28 in the , and so on. The Burmese have borrowed their and, as well as this division of the , from the. They are ignorant of ic ; and in their voyages to, during the fine , they creep along the , never losing sight of it.

The Burmese proper use a, spoken with distinctive s, like the  and several other. Its vocabulary shows distinct relation to on one side and to  on another. In contrast with it is a very soft and flexible, and its  character is somewhat modified in. It has no distinctly sound, the only letter approximate to “s” having a resemblance rather to the  “th.” It is a , and has been under cultivation for perhaps six or seven centuries. It is with an  of n origin, which probably came in with ; and most of the  are of a more or less  form. The remaining the  of, the Burmese has been almost confined to secular uses. It has developed a  of such complete individuality that it is unintelligible without special study. Another peculiar, largely mingled with elements, is spoken at court, and also requires separate study, as it substitutes a vocabulary of elaborate artificiality subordinate to the  of the courtiers. The for “to go,” for example, is different according as it is said that the  goes, or the  goes, or the  goes. Of the forms in which the Burmese express themselves, the favourite one is the, which appears under the various forms of s,  shows, -, and s, as well as in the more dignified character of the regular. The character of the  is often of the lowest kind, the utmost licence both of speech and action being allowed on the. The scenery is of a very simple and purely suggestive kind, a single branch of a standing for a, and frequently the filling up of the  is largely left to the ingenuity of the, little more than hints of the plot being 