1857.] The Remains at Pagan. 25 



To return to details. The angles of all the chief buildings are 



when the maintenance of caste-distinctions among the priesthood by the kings of 

 Candy, provoked the low-caste monks to organize an expedition to the orthodox 

 Buddhists of Burma, with a view to the restoration of equal rights. 



That religious visits were made during the middle ages of the Burmese coun- 

 tries to the sacred spots of Buddhism in India, is proved by an inscription in 

 Burmese at Buddha- Graya, discovered by the Burmese envoys who were sent to 

 Lord W. Bentinck in 1831-33. Some doubt attaches to the reading of the date 

 and the determination of the king whose repair of the temple it commemorates. 

 Burney ascribed it to the reign of Aloungtsee-thoo, A. D. 1105. 



There is no mention of Pegu, by the Mahomedans of the 9th century, whose 

 travels were published by the Abbe Eenaudot and are given in Pinkerton's and 

 various other collections, nor so far as I can learn by any Western traveller till 

 the time of Marco Polo. 



Indeed, the first opening for Christian travellers into Asia was in quite another 

 direction, and much further to the North. Monks of Italy, France and Flanders 

 jostled each other at the court of Kara Korum ; and Mongol ambassadors found 

 their way to Paris and Northampton,* when as yet all that Europe knew of India 

 was derived from Strabo and Arrian. 



It is probably Pagan which Marco Polo speaks of under the name of Mien, " a 

 great and noble city, the head of the kingdom." Mien is said by Col. Burney to 

 be the Chinese name of Burma, f But Marco does not speak as if he had himself 

 been in the country, and there is only one unmistakeably Burmese feature in his 

 story. This is in the description of two towers in pyramid fashion which a cer- 

 tain king caused to be built near his sepulchre ; " upon the top, round about the 

 balls" he says, " many little gold and silver bells were hanged, which at the blow- 

 ing of the wind give a certain sound." The date of the expedition which Marco 

 Polo relates is between A. D. 1272 and 1290. 



In 1444, Nicolo di Conti, J a Venetian, returned from five and twenty years' tra- 

 velling in the East. He visited Racha (Aracan) on a river of the same name, and 

 thence " after seventeen days passing desert hills, came into a champaign coun- 

 try." He must therefore have gone over the Aeng pass, or some other pass of the 

 Aracan Yoma. He speaks of the river of Ava, as greater than the Granges ; the 

 city of Ava, as fifteen miles in circuit, &c, the kingdom itself he calls Macin 



* Remusat, Memoire sur les Relations Politiques des Trinces Chretiens, Sfc. 

 avec les JZm'perewrs Mongols, 1824, p. 154. 



t J. A. S. B. IV. 400. Dr. Buchanan says that the Chinese of Yunan call 

 the Burmese Lau meen y As. Res. V. 223. In Dullalde's Maps, a distinction is made 

 between the kingdoms of* Yaoua and Mien. 



% Ramusio, I. 340. The narrative is very imperfect, which is to be regretted, 

 as it bears the stamp of honesty. A few additional particulars are given in Fur- 

 chas, II. 159, from another version of di Conti's travels. 



