168 REPORT— 1871. 



proTince of Asam, wliieli they first entered in the thirieentli centuiy as conquerors. 

 The 3fun or Takings of Pegu, the EJwier of Kauiboja, the Cham of Champa have 

 also been famous in their days ; hut they are now shrunken and decayed, and seem 

 likely to be absorbed by the races of gTeater vitality that encompass them. 



These chief races have played the historic part ou the field of Indo-China, which 

 countries like England, France, Germany, or Spain have played on the continent 

 of Europe ; and each in turn has spread its conquests over wide tracts beyond its 

 national frontiers. Champa, Kamboja, Siam, Pegu, Pagan, and probably Yunnan 

 as a Shan state, to say nothing of the island monarchies, have, with immense vicis- 

 situde, in turn been the seats of extensive empires and the subjects of great disasters. 

 But besides these there is a vast mass of races of inferior importance, and generally 

 termed wild or uncivilized. The fact, however, is that their ci^dlization varies through 

 every degree of the scale except the highest. Many of them are inferior to the so- 

 called civilized races whom they border only in the absence of a vratten language, 

 whilst others are head hunters in almost the lowest depths of savagery. Some 

 are as elaborate in the cultivation of their rice-terraces as the Chinese themselves ; 

 others migrate in the forest from site to site, burning down at each remove 

 new areas on which to carry on their rude hand-husbandry. Nearly all on the 

 frontiers of the States claiming civilization are the victims of "kidnappers and inter- 

 national slave-traders. 



Among these, so to call them, uncivilized tribes, none are more worthy of note 

 and of interest than those called Karen, of whom so great a number have in our 

 own time become Christian under the teaching chiefly of American missionaries. 

 Even before this closer claim upon our interest arose, they were remarkable for the 

 value of their traditions, both religious and what we may call historical. Thus they 

 were distinguished from all other Indo-Chinese tribes by their recognition of the ex- 

 istence of one eternal God. They did not worship him ; for, they said. He was angiy 

 with them. They believed that their nation had once possessed a holy book, but 

 they had lost it. According to one strange version of the legend, a dog ate it ! 

 Their historical legends were almost as remarkable ; these related how their 

 ancestors, on their great migration, had to cross the Biver of Munning Sand, the 

 name and description of which point apparently to the terrors of the Gobi. They 

 also relate how they found the Shans in occupation of the territory to which they 

 were bound, probably tlie upper Meuam. And the Karens cm-sed them, saying, 

 " Dwell ye in the dividing of countries," the applicability of which what has 

 already been said about the Shans will interpret. 



Spealnng generally, the Languages of all these races, civilized or wild, are mono- 

 syllabic and nasal, with distinctive tones analogous to those of the Chinese, and 

 belong to the same great class with the languages of Thibet and the Himalayan 

 tribes. The written characters employed by the civilized nations, with one excep- 

 tion, are various modifications of Indian writing. The Cochin Chinese seem never to 

 have possessed a similar alphabet, and have no memory of any but the Chinese ideo- 

 graphic character. In the Malay Islands also exists a variety of written characters 

 which it is more difficult to trace to the same Indian root, though they are probably 

 derived from it. If so, they have been carried into wide deviation by modifications, 

 probably springing out of the various implements originally employed, whether 

 the knife-edge upon a bamboo, the graving tool upon stone, the style-point upon 

 the palm-leaf, the steatite pencil upon blackened paper, or black pigments upon 

 slips of wood or ivory. 



It is not a little remarkable that, whilst in India Proper there has come down to 

 us scarcely more than one genuine ancient historical record, all the states of Indo- 

 China, even the petty ones of Interior Laos, haA'e from early times preserved chro- 

 nicles of their respective dynasties. How far these go back with any claim to truth, 

 I am not prepared to say ; but certainly from the twelfth century, or thereabouts, 

 their chronology seems to be genuine and trustworthy ; for in various comparisons 

 of such fragments of these annals as have been translated, we find a remarkable 

 agreement both mutually and with the facts recorded in the annals of China, which 

 contain so many notices of the border states. 



We spoke some time ago of the remains of Hindu influence which can be traced 

 all over these regions. How and when this influence began, we have no real know- 



