Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/362

334 the demons." (Waddell's The Buddhism of Tibet, p. 300.) A trumpet of this kind is blown at the beginning of a mystery play. A Lama with a thigh-bone trumpet also walks before a corpse on its way to burial or cremation, holding the end of a white band secured to the corpse, and by the use of his trumpet attracts the soul and guides it in the right direction.

Both the objects illustrated are placed upon temple altars. Cannibalism is stated by the Tibetans themselves to have been their ancient custom, and is alleged still to linger in very remote districts. The use of the implements described may be a vestige of the practice.

When I was stationed at Banmauk in the Katha district of Upper Burma in 1900, I heard of the following custom, which was practised previous to the annexation of Upper Burma in 1886, and perhaps up to the time of the Wuntho expedition, which resulted in the annexation of the Wuntho state about 1892. The people who practised it are a race of mixed origin known as the Ganans or Ganan-kadus. They inhabit the valley in which the Mu rises (a tributary of the Irrawaddy), about twenty-five miles in length and perhaps eight in breadth, about midway between the Chindwin and the Irrawaddy rivers, between 24° and 25° lat. and 95°–96° long. Their chief villages (marked on a large-scale map) are Hawyaw and Shwegyaung. Before the annexation these people were governed by their own Shwe-hmu (lit. gold (tad) payer), or head-man. They were subject to the king of Burma and an officer of his who lived some sixty miles (by road) to the south-east, and interfered with Ganan little if at all.

A Shwe-hmu's main official duty would be to collect the lump sum assessed on his district as taxation, and pay it in to the king's officer. He would act in a rough sort of way as judge or magistrate in his circle, and would practically settle all disputes and punish malefactors in an out-of-the-way place like Ganan. I am not clear whether there were two Shwe-hmus or only one. The Ganan-Kadus are said to be divided into the Ganan-mas and the