LEGEND OF ME-LANG-TA.
Another legend of the local genii runs as follows: On the Shans’ first entering the Zimmé country, they found the city of La-Maing, which had recently been founded by Me-lang-ta, the king of the Lawas, deserted. At that time the whole of the country to the south of the Burmese Shan States belonged to the Lawas, who resided in the hills in the dry season and cultivated the plains in the rainy season. Overrunning the plains at a time when cultivation was not going on, the Shans occupied La-Maing, the ruins of which adjoin the present city of Zimmé, as well as Lapoon and other similarly deserted Lawa towns.
The Lawa king gathered a great army in the hills to drive the Shans out of his country, but finding them strongly intrenched and in great force, he offered to form an alliance with them if they would cement it by giving him in marriage Nang Sam-ma-tay-we, the beautiful and accomplished daughter of the Shan Prince of Lapoon.
The Shan chief haughtily rejected the offer of the Lawa king, and marched with a great host into the hills, attacked Me-lang-ta, scattered his army, and slew him. The place where he was killed is known as La-wat, “the Lawa destroyed”; and the king became the Pee Hluang, or tutelary deity of the region, and resides in a cave at Loi Kat Pyee, a hill to the north-east of Zimmé. Unlike Poo-Sa and Ya-Sa, he is not a reputed cannibal, but is satisfied with sacrifices of pigs every third year and fowls in the intervening period.
The Yaks of Indo-China are close kin to the giants in our nursery tales, and the Buddhist stories relating to them and other mythical beings would compare well with our own nursery tales. To show what fearful beings they are, I take the following story from ‘Nontuk Pakaranam,’ the translation of which appeared in the ‘Siam Repository’ for 1873:—