The Banyan Tree.
TALAING, n.p. The name by which the chief race inhabiting Pegu (or the Delta of the Irawadi) is known to the Burmese. The Talaings were long the rivals of the Burmese, alternately conquering and conquered, but the Burmese have, on the whole, so long predominated, even in the Delta, that the use of the Talaing language is now nearly extinct in Pegu proper, though it is still spoken in Martaban, and among the descendants of emigrants into Siamese territory. We have adopted the name from the Burmese to designate the race, but their own name for their people is Mōn or Mūn (see [MONE]).
Sir Arthur Phayre has regarded the name Talaing as almost undoubtedly a form of Telinga. The reasons given are plausible, and may be briefly stated in two extracts from his Essay On the History of Pegu (J. As. Soc. Beng., vol. xlii. Pt. i.): "The names given in the histories of Tha-htun and Pegu to the first Kings of those cities are Indian; but they cannot be accepted as historically true. The countries from which the Kings are said to have derived their origin ... may be recognised as Karnáta, Kalinga, Venga and Vizianagaram ... probably mistaken for the more famous Vijayanagar.... The word Talingána never occurs in the Peguan histories, but only the more ancient name Kalinga" (op. cit. pp. 32-33). "The early settlement of a colony or city for trade, on the coast of Rámanya by settlers from Talingána, satisfactorily accounts for the name Talaing, by which the people of Pegu are known to the Burmese and all peoples of the west. But the Peguans call themselves by a different name ... Mun, Mwun, or Mon" (ibid. p. 34).
Prof. Forchhammer, however, who has lately devoted much labour to the study of Talaing archæology and literature, entirely rejects this view. He states that prior to the time of Alompra's conquest of Pegu (middle of 18th century) the name Talaing was entirely unknown as an appellation of the Muns, and that it nowhere occurs in either inscriptions or older palm-leaves, and that by all nations of Further India the people in question is known by names related to either Mun or Pegu. He goes on: "The word 'Talaing' is the term by which the Muns acknowledged their total defeat, their being vanquished and the slaves of their Burmese conqueror. They were no longer to bear the name of Muns or Peguans. Alompra stigmatized them with an appellation suggestive at once of their submission and disgrace. Talaing means" (in the Mun language) "'one who is trodden under foot, a slave.'... Alompra could not have devised more effective means to extirpate the national consciousness of a people than by burning their books, forbidding the use of their language, and by substituting a term of abject reproach for the name under which they had maintained themselves for nearly 2000 years in the marine provinces of Burma. The similarity of the two words 'Talaing' and 'Telingana' is purely accidental; and all deductions, historical or etymological ... from the resemblance ... must necessarily be void ab initio" (Notes on Early Hist. and Geog. of Br. Burma, Pt. ii. pp. 11-12, Rangoon, 1884).
Here we leave the question. It is not clear whether Prof. F. gives the story of Alompra as a historical fact, or as a probable explanation founded on the etymology. Till this be clear we cannot say that we are altogether satisfied. But the fact that we have been unable to find any occurrence of Talaing earlier than Symes's narrative is in favour of his view.
Of the relics of Talaing literature almost nothing is known. Much is to be hoped from the studies of Prof. Forchhammer himself.
There are linguistic reasons for connecting the Talaing or Mun people with the so-called Kolarian tribes of the interior of India, but the point is not yet a settled one. [Mr. Baines notes coincidences between the Mon and Munda languages, and accepts the connection of Talaing with Telinga (Census Report, 1891, i. p. 128).]
1795.—"The present King of the Birmans ... has abrogated some severe penal laws imposed by his predecessors on the Taliens, or native Peguers. Justice is now impartially distributed, and the only distinction at present between a Birman and a Talien, consists in the exclusion of the latter from places of public trust and power."—Symes, 183.
TALAPOIN, s. A word used by the Portuguese, and after them by French and other Continental writers, as well as by some English travellers of the 17th century, to designate the Buddhist monks of Ceylon and the Indo-Chinese countries. The origin of the expression is obscure. Monseigneur Pallegoix, in his Desc. du Royaume Thai ou Siam (ii. 23) says: "Les Européens les ont appelés talapoins, probablement du nom de l'éventail qu'ils tiennent à la main, lequel s'appelle talapat, qui signifie feuille de palmier." Childers gives Talapannam, Pali, 'a leaf used in writing, &c.' This at first sight seems to have nothing to support it except similarity of sound; but the quotations from Pinto throw some possible light, and afford probability to this origin, which is also accepted by Koeppen (Rel. des Buddhas, i. 331 note), and by Bishop Bigandet (J. Ind. Archip. iv. 220). [Others, however, derive it from Peguan Tilapoin, tala (not tila), 'lord,' poin, 'wealth.']
c. 1554.—"... hũa procissão ... na qual se affirmou ... que hião quarenta mil Sacerdotes ... dos quaes muytos tinhão differentes dignidades, come erão Grepos (?), Talagrepos, Rolins, Neepois, Bicos, Sacareus e Chanfarauhos, os quaes todas pelas vestiduras, de que hião ornados, e pelas divisas, e insignias, que levarão nas mãos, se conhecião, quaes erão huno, e quaes erão outros."—F. M. Pinto, ch. clx. Thus rendered by Cogan: "A Procession ... it was the common opinion of all, that in this Procession were 40,000 Priests ... most of them were of different dignities, and called Grepos, Talagrepos (&c.). Now by the ornaments they wear, as also by the devices and ensigns which they carry in their hands, they may be distinguished."—p. 218.