Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/90

78 race and often in sharp contrast with those of the mass of the people of India. They are separated from India by a broad barrier of mountains inhabited by wild tribes, across which there is hardly any communication. A succession of mountain ranges also divides them from China, but over these there is far more intercourse, and their affinities are on the whole with the Chinese, whom they regard with respect and commonly refer to as "the great nation." Indeed Mr. Taw Sein Ko, the late Government Archaeologist, has pointed out that the Burmese words for the fundamental acts of the Buddhist religion are not Indian but Chinese in origin, and he suggests that the first Buddhist missionaries may have come to Burma from China. Moreover, as mentioned by me in Man for February 1916, a Burman always turns to the east in offering Buddhist prayers if there is no symbol of his religion in the neighbourhood, in spite of the fact that Gotama's country lies to the west. He must sleep with his head to the east or south, never to the west or north, and he is invariably buried with his head to the east. This may conceivably be due to the tribe which eventually imposed its language and customs on the inhabitants of the Burma plains having come from the east, or in other words from China, where there are still tribes speaking languages closely allied to Burmese. The Tamans, as will presently be seen, certainly came from China, and they are but a tribe which happens to have retained its individuality while others have lost theirs.