A thousand miles on an elephant in the Shan States

by Holt S. Hallett

The language of the Mon is now nearly extinct in Lower Burmah. The Mon or Peguans, who sided with us during the first Burmese war, were mercilessly ill-treated by the Burmese when we evacuated Martaban and Pegu: those who did not escape into Tenasserim, Zimmé, and Siam, were either murdered or forced to learn and speak the language of their oppressors.

To the north of the Mon race, in the district of the Middle Irawadi, the country was occupied from an early date by Burmese tribes of Tibetan origin, who were gradually welded together by warlike Kshatriya princes, who invaded the country from Northern India. According to the Tagaung Raza Weng, their first capital in Burmah was founded at Tagaung by Abhi Raja, one of the Sakya Rajas. This prince came from Kapilavastu with an army, and, B.C. 923, built the city. One of his sons founded a dynasty in Arakan, and a grandson established another at Kalê in the Kubo valley. The destruction of the first monarchy at Tagaung was due to the irruption of tribes, probably Shans, from the East. This is said to have happened in the sixth century B.C.

About this time a second band of Kshatriyas arrived from Gangetic India, whose chief, Daza Raja, married the widow of the queen of the last dynasty, and some years later, B.C. 523, built old Pugan, near the site of the ancient capital. His successor was expelled and driven south by the Shans, and founded a new capital, B.C. 483, at Prome, in the north of Lower Burmah. Upper Burmah was thus left in the possession of the Shans, many of whose cities in the Shan States lying to the west of the Salween were founded about this time. Moné is said to have been built as early as B.C. 519.

Thirteen years after the Burmese were turned out of Prome by the Mon, they created a new capital, A.D. 108, at Pugan, where the Burmese monarchy continued until 1291, when it was expelled by the Shans, who governed Burmah from that time until 1554. From thence until we annexed the country, Upper Burmah was under Burmese rulers.

The Karen tribes who are found scattered amongst the hills in Burmah and Siam from the latitude of Mandalay southwards, are called by the Burmese Karen or Kayen; by their other neighbours they are known as Yang, pronounced sometimes nasally as Nyang. These people are believed to have been a branch of the Chau or Djow, which entered the north-west of China about B.C. 1276. The Djow displaced the Shang dynasty in China B.C. 1122, and remained supreme over the agglomeration of principalities forming the Chinese Empire until B.C. 336, when some of the States acknowledged Ts’in as their lord. Djow was ultimately overthrown, in B.C. 255, by the Prince of Ts’in, who took possession of Djow’s sacrificial vessels and the nine tripods, the symbols of empire. During their rule the Djow preserved their ancient faith in divination, and the augurs in the courts of the principalities occupied a distinguished position. No expedition or any business of importance was entered into without first consulting the fates.

The Yang or Karen—who gave their name to the Yangtsze Kiang, and settled on its banks—at the time of the destruction of Tsoo, the great principality which covered Southern China, by the Shensi State of Ts’in, B.C. 221, occupied the country to the south of the river in the provinces of Kiangsu, Anhwei, and Kiangsi. They were driven away by the Shan and Mon population of the eastern provinces, 210–206 B.C., and were finally expelled from China by the Shan King of Nanchao, viâ Yungchang, a city on the Bhamo route, A.D. 778. They have since spread southwards into Lower Burmah and Siam. At the time they left China, they are said to have numbered 200,000 families.

The traditions which are repeated from father to son in metrical verse by the Yang, have evoked great interest among the American missionaries, who have done such good work in converting them to Christianity. From the creation until after the flood these traditions are intrinsically the same as the Mosaic accounts. Some people firmly believe the Karen to be the ten lost tribes of Israel; but as their ancestors are known to have been in China some 550 years before the ten tribes were lost, it is much more reasonable to believe that they received their traditions from the Mohammedans of Yunnan, or that before their entrance into China they followed the tracks of the Peh Sing tribes, and had their earlier home in the neighbourhood of the Semite tribes, and there acquired their knowledge. The two other races which have extended southwards from China into Indo-China are the Jung and the Shan. The former was already on the borders of China, and some of its tribes had settled about the southern bend of the Hoang Ho at the time when the Peh Sing Chinese tribes arrived from their long journey from the neighbourhood of Chaldea. The Jung, according to Professor Terrien de Lacouperie, were originally of the same white stock as ourselves, and have become hybrid by intermixture with the neighbouring races. They were so warlike in their disposition that their name became amongst the Chinese equivalent to that of warriors. In the seventh century B.C. they were spread across the north of China from the extreme west of Kansu to the neighbourhood of Pekin. Many of their tribes were absorbed by the Ts’in—the Seres of the Greeks and Romans—of the province of Shensi, whose State name Ts’in has been by Europeans corrupted into China.

The people of Ts’in claimed kinship with the Niao-suk (Nila-Cakas or black Sakœ), and with the Fei or Bod, the people of Tibet. About B.C. 770, Ts’in was incorporated in the agglomeration of dukedoms or States forming the Djow dominion, and rapidly increased in strength by conquest, and partly by the absorption of the neighbouring Jung tribes. It then grew in power at the expense of the eastern States, and brought them into subjection. It further carried its sway across the Yangtsze B.C. 279, and conquered Tsoo. Its duke became Supreme Emperor of Ts’in B.C. 220.

The Jung tribes which were not absorbed by Ts’in, gradually pressed southwards amongst the Shan tribes in Szechuen, and are now found, under the tribal names of Mo-so, Lissu, Lolo, La-hu, La-wa (Lahs and Wahs to the north of Kiang Tung), &c., in the west of that province, and in Yunnan, Kweichau, and the Shan States as far south as the latitude of Zimmé, and as far west as the Salween river. These tribes speak a Tibeto-Burmese language.

The Shan race, known by the self-names of Tai, Pai, Lao, &c., occupies an area of country six times as large as the United Kingdom; yet, owing to the trading propensities of the race, the dialects spoken by the Shans differ so slightly that travellers from the Tonquin hills, Kwangsi, Yunnan, and Bhamo can converse with people at Zimmé and at Bangkok.