254 H. L. St. Barbe — Pali Derivations in Burmese. [No. 4, 



tribes with scarcely a shred of order, civilization or authority among them. 

 The advent of an Indian prince (be he real or the reverse), with a little band 

 of refugees, would have much the same effect as the advent of a Burmese 

 " mintha" among the Karen Highlanders. He may be the sole element 

 required for order, coherence and organization. The separate clans become 

 a nation, the separate states a kingdom, a dynasty is established, and his- 

 tory commences. The rulers will introduce as far as possible their own 

 language, usages and religion. Their sons and cities will have sonorous 

 Indian titles, and they will import astrologers, sages and as many represen- 

 tatives of their native Pantheon as their subjects can comfortably digest. 

 A hundred years or so, and these will remain the sole testimonies to their 

 foreign extraction. This is exactly what has happened in Burma. The bulk 

 of the Aryan element, no doubt, found its way into the language hundreds 

 of years later through a Pali channel, when Anorahta in the eleventh cen- 

 tury A. D. brought the " Three Baskets" from Thahton and had them 

 translated into the vernacular. But Sanskrit words had entered the lan- 

 guage before this, without any connection with Buddhism. The names 

 for the days of the week are derived from a Sanskrit source, though dis- 

 torted at times beyond recognition. Anga, Buddhahu. :, Sokra :, Krasa- 

 pate :* and Chane are identifiable, but Tanarila and Tanariganve have as yet 

 defied analysis. So too the signs of the zodiac, such as priccha, karakat, 

 prissa, more nearly resemble the Sanskrit ; while such words as khyanse 

 a lion, rasse a rishi, athwad (S. thud to cover) a pinnacle, hura : (S. hora) 

 astrologers, pritta (S. preta) the dead, missa (S. mesa) a ram, prassad (S. 

 prasada) a tower, seem to point to a time when the foreign vocables were 

 written down as they sounded in Burmese, without reference to their 

 etymology. The presence of the " r" also in such words as samuddara, 

 krattika, amruik (amrita), kramma, drap (darpa), gruih (graha), chakra, 

 aggirat, bhumirat, indicate an earlier source than Pali. As time went 

 on, the importations vastly increased, and an estimate of words of Indie 

 extraction as constituting one-seventh of the whole Burmese vocabulary 

 would be rather under than over the actual proportion. Many, no doubt, 

 are corrupted and contorted beyond all knowledge. Captain Latter 

 remarks in his grammar that there is no such thing as orthography in the 

 Burmese language, and no doubt the existence of 12 superfluous characters 

 and the slurred enunciation of final consonants have led to a good deal of 

 confusion. Such forms as vibhak (vipaka), puppa (pubba), phothappa 

 (photthabba), ku (guha), bhavak (bhavaggam) are typical instances of 



* The change of an initial labial into a guttural is rare in Burmese. The only 

 other instance I know of is pattard into Jcattard. The change of t into s is common 

 enough. 



