64 
JOURNAL OF AN EMBASSY 
The name which we give to this town is 
evidently a corruption of that applied to it by 
the Mohammedan residents in the country, and 
which is Pron. According to Bur man ortho¬ 
graphy, the correct name is Pri, always pro¬ 
nounced Pyi, since the Burmans, with very 
few exceptions, convert the consonant r into 
the consonant y. This place, or rather one 
lying about six miles to the east of it, is re¬ 
ported to have been the first and the most 
ancient seat of Burman government. Accord¬ 
ing to Burmese chronology, it was founded by 
King Twat ta-paung, a descendant of Gau¬ 
tama, in the 101st year of the sacred era—the 
249th of the grand epoch, or 443 years before 
Christ. For seventy years the descendants of 
this prince reigned, sometimes at Prome, and 
sometimes at Maj-ji-ma, understood to be some 
part of India,—probably Magad’ha or Behar. 
At the expiration of these seventy years, the 
seat of government was fixed permanently at 
Prome, until the year 107 before Christ. Prome, 
according to this statement, was the seat of 
Burman government for 336 years. The an¬ 
cient town was named Sa-re-k’het- ta-ra, which, 
I presume, is a Pali or Sanscrit word. Accord¬ 
ing to Burman interpretation, it means a bull's 
hide, and refers to a story similar to that which 
