hy a Slave of the Kmg's Eldest Son. 93 
one of the chief tribes of the Gangetic empire, which commu- 
nicated its name to Paliputra, (Palibotra Plinn,) once its capi- 
tah although this tribe is now chiefly confined to the district of 
Dinajpur, and from its obstinate adherence to old customs is 
reckoned impure. Of course, the people of the peninsula, al- 
though they have adopted much of the ancient language, and 
many doctrines and customs of the original Plindus, with some 
intermixture of breed from the intercourse with the propagators 
of these doctrines, yet being originally of a different extraction, 
and adhering more violently than the Pali, not only to doctrines 
now obsolete, but to many of their original customs, they are, 
by the present occupants of Hither India, held utterly abomi- 
nable. The Hindu science thus introduced, having had the 
effect of banishing the Chinese, although it introduced a more 
perfect form of writing, seems to be the cause why the western 
states of the peninsula are less civilized than Cochinchina and 
Tonquin ; for although all have adopted the faith of the Hin- 
du Buddhas, yet the two latter states have received this doc- 
trine through Thibet and China, and still retain the literature 
and education of the last-mentioned state, while the western re- 
gions have received their religion and policy from Ceylon. 
At the time when European nations discovered the naviga- 
tion to India, the Farther Peninsula seems, as at present, by the 
natives of Hindustan, to have been called Chin, while the Chi- 
nese empire was called Maha Chin, or Great China ; and to this 
alone have Europeans confined the name. Nothing, indeed, can 
equal the confusion that arises in the study of this peninsula’s geo- 
graphy, from the variety of names given by different people to 
the same countries and places. Those contained in the map, are 
entirely such as are used by the Burmas or Mranmas ; but I 
shall hereafter endeavour to explain the synonymes. In the 
mean time, I shall only remark, that, even among the Mran- 
mas, almost every place of great note has two names, one in 
the vulgar tongue, or, as Homer would have said, in the language 
of men, the other in the Pali Mgadha or Sangskrita, that is, in 
the language of the gods, or first colonists in India. 
The map accompanying this, I procured from a man in great 
poverty, who said, that, at the time, he was a slave of Eimshe 
IMayn, the heir-apparent of the kingdom, and who probably had 
