A thousand miles on an elephant in the Shan States

by Holt S. Hallett

Whilst the coast of Burmah was under native dominion, our traders had to content themselves with travelling along the great rivers; and it was not until 1829, three years after we had annexed the Burmese provinces of Tenasserim and Arakan, that steps were taken by us to establish overland trade with Northern Siam, the Shan States, and China. In that year Lord William Bentinck, the Governor-General of India, ordered a mission to proceed, under Dr Richardson, from Maulmain to the Siamese Shan States, to ensure friendly relations and trade in that direction; and in 1837, Lord Auckland, then Governor-General, despatched Captain (late General) MacLeod, viâ Zimmé and Kiang Hung to China, with the view of opening up trade with that country. Notwithstanding the favourable reports of these and subsequent missions, and the frequent petitions of our mercantile community asking for the connection of Burmah with China by railway, no action has been taken by the Indian Government in the sixty years that have elapsed since Dr Richardson’s mission, for improving the overland routes leading from Burmah to the great undeveloped markets which immediately border our possessions on the east. Burmah might as well have remained for these sixty years in native hands, for all the good that its acquisition has been to the furtherance of our trade with the neighbouring regions.

When I retired from Government service at the end of 1879, the French were again in the field. They had annexed the south-eastern corner of Indo-China, had seized Cambodia from the Siamese, were determined to wrest Tonquin from China, which they have since succeeded in doing, and had openly avowed their intention to eject British trade from Eastern Indo-China, and to do all they possibly could to attract the trade of South-western, Southern, and Central China to French ports in Tonquin, where prohibitive duties could be, and have since been, placed upon British goods. It was under these circumstances that Mr Colquhoun and I took up the question, placed the necessity of connecting India with Burmah, Siam, and China before the public, and with the aid of the mercantile community determined to carry out a series of exploration-surveys to prove whether or not Burmah could be connected with these countries by railway at a reasonable expense, and to select the best route, financially and commercially, for the undertaking. The present volume deals with my exploration-surveys in Siam and the Shan States.

The country through which I passed, besides being of interest from a commercial point of view, was at the time of my visit shrouded with that glamour which invests all little-known regions; and an accurate knowledge of its physical features and political relations promised to be of great importance in view of the action of France in Tonquin, and our threatened embroilment with that nation in Upper Burmah.

Before commencing the narrative of my journey, in which the manners, customs, and habits of the people will be portrayed, I will, from information recently acquired by myself and other travellers, and from other sources, give a slight sketch of the ethnology and history of the interesting races met with by me on my journey.

The first mention in history of Lower Indo-China is in the ‘Annamese Chronicles,’ where it is stated that Founan—the early Chinese name for Cambodia—in B.C. 1109 was under the rule of a native queen. The next we hear of it is in A.D. 69, at the time when a Brahman from India, named Prea Thong, who is said to have been the fugitive son of the sovereign of Delhi, married the then ruling queen. This Brahman is believed to have introduced Brahmanism, architecture, sculpture, and astronomy into Cambodia. At that time Cambodia consisted of an agglomeration of seven States, which were constantly at war with each other. On the death of the Brahman’s son, the commander-in-chief of the army made an end of the principalities, and was elected to the joint throne.

From B.C. 125 there are many accounts of embassies passing between China and Cambodia, and the country seems rapidly to have reached a height of prosperity and Eastern splendour. In the third century Chinese ambassadors mention palaces, towers, and theatres having been erected for the reception and amusement of the guests, and meeting merchants in the ports from countries as far west as the Roman Empire. The people were described by the Chinese as an active and robust small black race, with long hair knotted on the top of the head; the rich wearing only a silk loin-cloth, and the poor one of cotton. The women had head-coverings, and decked themselves with beautifully wrought silver jewellery set with precious stones. The men excelled in making jewellery, gold and silver vases, furniture, and domestic utensils—and were honest, and hated theft above all things. They worshipped Hindoo gods, and offered up human sacrifices.

This small black race, the Cham or Siam, was of the Malay stock, doubtless darkened by interbreeding with the Negrito aborigines, and perhaps with Dravidian colonists from the Madras coast. Remnants of the Negrito aborigines, evidently akin to the Australioids, are still found in the hilly districts of the Malay Peninsula, as well as in some of the adjacent islands: and the Kha, or Ka, in the neighbourhood of Luang Prabang; the Trao, to the east of Bienhoa in Cochin China; the Hotha Shans, in the Chinese Shan States; and one of the native races in Formosa,—are, according to Professor Terrien de Lacouperie, representatives of the same stock, and akin to the Tiao, a race of pigmies, with whom the Chinese (Peh Sing tribes) became acquainted when they entered North-eastern China more than 4000 years ago.

To the north of the Chams, the country from an early period was occupied by the Lawa, a race with Mon affinities and probably of the Mon stock, who, according to their own traditions, and the beliefs and traditions of their neighbours, are the aborigines of the region stretching southwards from Yunnan, and eastwards from the Salween to the Meh Kong, and perhaps even to the China Sea. Many of the names of principalities and deserted cities are said to have been derived from the Lawa; and fierce battles were fought between them and the Shans before the former were conquered or driven into the hills. In a few years the language of this interesting race will be extinct, as the race have gradually been absorbed into the Shan and Peguan population, and Shan as well as Lawa is now being spoken in their few remaining distinct villages.

To the west of the Lawa were the Mon or Mun, a Mongoloid race of Malaysian affinities, whose scattered tribes spread from Indo-China into Western Bengal and Central India, where they are now known as Kolarian. Their first kingdom in Lower Burmah was founded at Thatone, an ancient seaport on the east of the Gulf of Martaban, by an Indian dynasty from the Madras coast, in the sixth century B.C. About the end of the first century of our era, Mon tribes drove the Burmese from Prome, which had been their capital from B.C. 483. These tribes were probably descendants of the Ngu race, including the Pang, Kuei, and Miao tribes, who, with the Shan, Yang or Karen, and King or Chin tribes, formed the chief part of the population of Central and Southern China during the struggle for empire—604–220 B.C.—between the Dukes of Tsi, Dsin, Ts’in, and Tsoo, which ended in the ruler of Ts’in becoming the first Supreme Emperor of China. Some of the wars waged by Ts’in during this period seem to have been wars of extermination; and many tribes must have sought safety by moving southward and south-westward out of the area of turbulence. In one campaign 240,000 heads are said to have been cut off; in another, 140,000; and in others, 60,000, 80,000, and 82,000 heads.

In A.D. 573, the Mon founded a separate kingdom at Pegu, which, with the Thatone kingdom, was destroyed by the Burmese King of Pugan in the middle of the eleventh century; from that time to 1287, when Pegu was conquered by the Shan King of Martaban, Lower Burmah remained under the Burmese. In 1540 it was reconquered by the latter, and formed part of their empire for 200 years. In 1740 the Mon, aided by the Karen and Gwe Shan, rebelled against Burmah, and, electing a Gwe Shan as their king, commenced the great fight for supremacy, which lasted till 1757, and left the Burmese supreme in the country until we annexed it.