1858.] Notes of the Karen Language. 135 



south of Toungoo, the country is found to be inhabited by Bghais. 

 Their limits on the north are not exactly known, but they are 

 bounded on the east by the banks of the Salwen. They are much 

 greater savages than the other Karen tribes, and are robbers and 

 kidnappers by profession, None are Buddhists, but all are wor- 

 shippers of Indra and stones. There are stones in every house, to 

 which in connection with Indra, buffaloes, hogs or fowls are sacri- 

 ficed, and blood poured on them with prayers. Bghai is the name 

 given them by the Sgaus or Pakus. They have no distinctive 

 name for themselves, each clan calliug itself by the name that 

 designates man, precisely like D*1K in Hebrew, which signifies 

 both man in general, and Adam, the man. The Karens consider 

 themselves as the men, for all the tribes have the habit of charac- 

 terising themselves in the same way. They consist, however, of two 

 or three sub-tribes, one of which, the most civilised, is distinguished 

 by wearing tunics or frocks, while all the rest wear short pants 

 scarcely reaching half down the thigh. The tunic wearers have had 

 different names given them by the Burmans in different localities. 

 Some are called Lielc-hy ga gie, or " great butterflies," and others 

 Liek-hy ga gnag, or " little butterflies." The pant wearers are divided 

 by the Burmese into the Yaing or wild Karens who inhabit the moun- 

 tains on the east and north, and the red Karens who dwell farther 

 east in the valley of the Salwen. They seem to me, however, to be 

 essentially the same people. The "wild Karens" have red radiat- 

 ing lines wrought in their white pants near the bottom, as the rays 

 of the rising sun are sometimes represented ; and the red Karens are 

 said to have their pants all red, or the red lines parallel ; but ail the 

 red Karens I have met wore the Shan blue pants ; and some of 

 those had the radiating lines tattooed on their backs which they 

 exhibited as their coat of arms with considerable pride ; and indeed 

 with one or two wild beasts from their forests, for supporters, it 

 might be worked into a very respectable escutcheon. 



The Sgaus, Pwos, and Bghais are the principal Karen tribes, but 

 there are two or three smaller ones. The Mopghas occupy the 

 secondary range of hills between Thouk-ya-khat and Kanuie, red 

 bank, creeks, whose mouths are about eleven miles apart, the latter 

 falling into the Sitaug five miles north of Toungoo. There are not 



