The Kariens, also, believe in Nat, but, as they believe in their influence on human affairs, they sacrifice to them accordingly.
Little, then, as we know, respecting these two families, we know that the common practice of Nat worship connects them; and this worship connects many other members of the Burmese stock. Consequently it helps us to place[103] the Silong in that group. It also favours the notion of the Tenasserim aborigines being Burmese.
It is the delta of the Irawaddi which isolates the Tenasserim provinces; and the British dependency from which it separates them is—
Arakhan.—We are prepared for the ethnological position of the Arakhan populations. They are Burmese.
We are likewise prepared for a division of them; there will be the Indianized and the Pagan—paganism and political independence going, to a certain degree, together.
We are prepared for even minuter detail; the paganism will be Nat-worship; the Indian creed Buddhism: the alphabet also, where the language is written, will be Indian also. In Captain Tower's vocabulary,[26] only seven words out of fifty differ between the Burmese of Arakhan, and the Burmese of Ava; and some of these are mere differences of pronunciation.
The language itself is called Rukheng by those who use it; but the Bengali name is Mug.
This applies to the Indianized part of the population, the analogues of the Avans and Siamese of Tenasserim, and of the Môn of Maulmein. What are the Arakhan equivalents to the Karien?
The Khyen.—These inhabit the Yuma mountains[104] between Arakhan and Ava. A full notice of them is given by Lieutenant Trant, in the sixteenth volume of the "Asiatic Researches." But as they are chiefly independent tribes, it is enough to state that they form the Anglo-Burmese frontier. It is also added that there are numerous Khyen slaves in Arakhan.
Farther notice of them is the less important, because a closely allied population will occur amongst the hill-tribes of—