Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 8.djvu/249

 TALAING. (465)

HE ancient appellation of the Talaings was Mon, which was changed to Taming by the Burmese after their conquest of Pegu. "They are," records Colonel Balfour, "an East Himalayan people, who long successfully contested with Burmahs the sway over the basin of the Irawady.T hey were annexed to Bunnah in the middle of the sixteenth century, but again threw off the yoke in the beginning of the eighteenth century, and subjugated all Burmah. Their range embraces the delta of the Salween, where Montama, or Martaban, was then their chief port. They long preceded the Siamese in the Tennaseriin province, and the languages of the Si-mang and Binas of the Malay peninsular, retain deep traces of their ancient influences to the south; a colony is also found in the basin of the Menarn. Before the great southern movement of the Lan, the Mon appear to have occupied that basin also, and to have married and intermixed with the closely allied Kambojans of the Mekong. Mr. O'Riley thinks that the Mons are only distinguishable from the Burmans by their less Mongolian and more Rakhoing aspect. They appear to have been considerably modified by the Indian element, which has always been very powerful at the head of the Bay of Bengal. They seem to have been the chief hordes eastwards from the Bay of Bengal.

"No trace of the Mon is left along the Yuma range, tribes of the Karen family being the exclusive holders of the inner valleys. Some of the very imperfectly described tribes on the eastern side of the Irawady to the north of the Karen-ni, viz.: the Zubaing Ka-Khyner, &c., may belong to the older immigration, but the Mon is the only remnant within the Karen province, and its eastern preservation is doubtless owing to the same causes, its arts, civilization, and wealth, which have enabled it to hold its own against the Tibeto-Burman hordes of the Irawady."—Balfour.

The Talaings of Pegu had, however, been reconquered by the Burmese, though they had emigrated or been driven out of the country. After the gallant defence of Pegu by Colonel Hill in the second Burmese war, and the precipitate