Neither term is limited to the nation by which it has been illustrated. Plenty of populations besides those of Mongolia Proper are Mongol in physiognomy. Plenty of nations besides the Chinese are monosyllabic in language.
All the nations speaking monosyllabic tongues are Mongol in physiognomy; though all the nations which have a Mongol physiognomy do not speak monosyllabic tongues. This makes the latter group, which for shortness will be called that of the monosyllabic nations or tribes—a section, or division, of the former.
Little Tibet, Ladakh, Tibet Proper, Butan, and[94] China, are all Mongol in form, and monosyllabic in language. So are Ava, Pegu, Siam, Cambojia, and Cochin China, the countries which constitute the great peninsula, sometimes called Indo-Chinese, and sometimes Transgangetic.
The extremity however—the Malayan peninsula—is not monosyllabic.
The British possessions of Hindostan are monosyllabic on their Tibetan and Burmese frontiers.
Hong-Kong.—Aden was disposed of briefly. So is Hong-Kong; and that for the same reason. Politically, British, it is ethnologically Chinese.
Maulmein, Ye, Tavoy, Tenasserim, and the Mergui Archipelago.—These constitute what are sometimes called the ceded, sometimes the Tenasserim provinces. They came into possession of the British at the close of the Burmese war of 1825. Unlike our dependencies in Hindostan, they are cut off from connection with any of the great centres of British power in Asia—in which respect they agree with the smaller and still more isolated settlements of the Malaccan Peninsula. The power that ceded them was the Burmese, so that it is with the existing subjects of that empire that their present limits are in contact; though only for the northern part. To the south they abut upon Siam.
The population throughout is monosyllabic; except so far as it is modified by foreign intermixture—of[95] which by far the most important element is the Indian. Everything in the way of religious creed which is not native and pagan is Indian and Buddhist. The alphabets, too, of the lettered populations are Indian in origin.
The population of the continental part of these British dependencies is referable to four divisions—of unequal and imperfectly ascertained value. 1. The Môn. 2. The Siamese. 3. The Avans. 4. The Kariens.
1. The Môn.—Môn is the native name of the indigenous population of Pegu, so that the Môn of Maulmein, or Amherst, the most northern of the provinces in question, on the left bank of the lower Salwín, are part and parcel of the present occupants of the delta of the Irawaddi, and the country about Cape Negrais. The Burmese call them Talieng, and under that designation they are described in Dr. Helfer's Report.[22] The Siamese appellation is Ming-môn; apparently the native name in a state of composition. In the early Portuguese notices a still more composite form appears—and we hear of the ancient empire of Kalamenham, supposed to have been founded by the Pandalús of Môn or Pegu.