24 On the History of Arakan. [No. 145. 



kanese refugees, being formed into a levy, accompanied the British 

 army of invasion, and fought by its side. 



The Arakanese are of the same stock as the nation which inhabits 

 the valley of the Era-wadi ; their national name is Myamma, a word 

 which by the Burmese is pronounced Ba-ma, and thence changed 

 by Europeans into Burma. They are a section of that nation, separated 

 from the parent stock by mountains, which, except towards the 

 southern extremity of the range, admit of little intercourse from one 

 side to the other. Hence those Arakanese living in the northern 

 portion of the country, adjoining Bengal, have some peculiarities in 

 dialect and manners. There they touch upon a people totally different 

 from themselves in race, in language, and religion. There the original 

 Mongolian features of the people have become considerably modified, 

 the nose being more prominent and the eyes less oblique than they are 

 found to be among the people of the South of Arakan and in Burma 

 Proper. Whether this change is the result of a partial intermixture of 

 race, or other causes, I am not prepared to say. 



The province of Arakan, taking that term as applied by the British, 

 includes all the highland and lowland territory which extends from 

 the head of the Naf estuary in lat. 21° 10' N. down to Cape Negrais in 

 lat. 16° 2'. The great mountain range called Yu-ma, or Yo-mu, runs 

 in a general direction nearly due North and South, forming the Eastern 

 boundary of the country. On the West is the sea, and as the coast 

 branches out from the South in a N. N. W. direction, the country from 

 being very narrow at its southern extremity becomes on the Northern 

 border about one hundred miles broad from East to West. The Nor- 

 thern, and by far the richest portion of this tract, or that lying between 

 about 20° and 21° 10' N. lat. was alone called by the natives Rakha- 

 ing-dyi or Rakhaing -land, while the rest of the country, consisting of 

 the islands of Ran-byi and Ma-oung, (Cheduba,) and the district of 

 Than-dwai, (Sandoway,) was included in the general term of Rakhaing- 

 taing-gyi, or Rakhaing kingdom. 



The word Rakhaing appears to be a corruption of Rek-khaik, de- 

 rived from the Pali word Yek-kha, which in its popular signification, 

 means a monster, half-man half-beast, which like the Cretan Minotaur, 

 devoured human flesh. The country was named Yek-kha-pu-ra by 

 the Budhist Missionaries from India, either because they found the 



