Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 8.djvu/241

 BURMAN. (463)

GROUP OF BURMESE. (464)

HE Burmese claim a very considerable antiquity as a settled and powerful kingdom. Colonel Sir Arthur Phayre, in a paper contributed to the Royal Asiatic Society in 1868, upon the dynasties of Burman kings, assigns, from the records of the Maha Rodza Weng, the year 483 B.C. to the commencement of the reign of Maim Tham-ba-wa, and it then continues, occasionally broken by the succession of collateral relatives forming new dynasties, to the year 1279 and subsequently. In his ethnological description of Indian tribes Colonel Balfour thus describes them:— "The Burmans, the predominant people of the basin of the Irawady, occupy the lower part of the basin above Pegu, the southern part of the upper basin, and the valley of the river beyond as far as Ba-ma. They are also found in the delta, but their progress there has been comparatively recent, and the prior inhabitants still form the greater majority. Their native name Ma—ran—ma, M'yanma, M'yama, is the origin of the European corruption of Burman. The primitive seat of the Burman power appears to have been for the longest period in the same part of the basin where it now is. In the era of their greatest stability and prosperity their capital was at Pagan (probably the place of that name above Ava), from the second to the middle of the fourteenth century. Previous to this, on their rst advance from Arracan, they appear to have conquered the northern part of the ancient kingdom of the Mons, for their capital was for 395 years at Prome. It was not till the middle of the sixteenth century that they succeeded in annexing Pegu; but in the middle of the eighteenth century the Mons threw off their yoke, and in turn subjugated all Burmah for a short period.

"The Burmans differ from the Assamese in being stouter and darker, and in