34 
Sir Arthur P. Phayre —On the History of Pegu. 
[No. 1, 
“ or six centuries of our era. The first great Budhist persecution both 
“ checked it and also drove great numbers of the victims to the opposite 
“ coast. The Tamil and Telugu local histories and traditions are full of such 
u narratives. When the Chalukya prince, brother of the king of Kalyan, 
“ was founding a new kingdom at Raj amah endri, which involved the rooting 
“ out and dispersion of the pre-existing rulers, nothing is more probable than 
i( that some of the fugitives should have found their way to Pegu. One 
“ Tamil MS. refers to a party of Budhist exiles, headed by a king of Man- 
“ du, flying in their ships from the coast.” 
The building of the city of Pegu in A.D. 573, by emigrants from Tha- 
htun under the princes Tha-ma-la and Wi-ma-la, together with the attempt¬ 
ed occupation of the site by the representatives of the king of Bij-ja-na-ga- 
ran, have already been related and commented on. There appears no reason 
for doubting the general facts of the narrative ; and it may be admitted that 
the princes and people of Indian descent in Ramanya, while having causes for 
dissension among themselves, may have resisted the attempted establishment 
of a new dynasty from Talingana. But as has already been observed as 
regards the names of the early kings of Tha-htun, so the names of the actors 
in the scenes at Pegu, have probably been taken in after times from the chro¬ 
nicles of Talingana, or even of the modern state of Vijayanagar. The name 
Yimala occurs in the list of kings of the latter state so late as A. D. 1158. 
I have not found the name Thamala, but the term Malla as a surname occurs 
constantly among the Chalukya kings of the western line, commencing with 
Yuddha Malla in A. D. 680. 
The early establishment of a colony, or city for trade, on the coast of 
Ramanya by settlers from Talingana, satisfactorily accounts for the name 
Talaing, by which the people of Pegu are known to the Burmese and to all 
peoples of the west. But the Peguans call themselves by a different name. 
It remains then to be inquired whether we can trace from what race they 
are descended ; whether, like the peoples around them—the Burmese, the 
Siamese, and the Karens—they belong to the Indo-Chinese family, a branch 
of the Mongoloids of Huxley, or come from another stock. 
« 
The people of Pegu, as has already been stated, call themselves Mun, 
Mwun, or Mon. Their original language has almost disappeared. It is 
probable that there are not now one hundred families in Pegu proper, in 
which it is spoken as their vernacular tongue. In the province of Martaban, 
however, including a part of Maulamyaing, there are thousands who still 
speak the Mun language only. These are chiefly the descendants of emi¬ 
grants who left Pegu in 1826, when the British army retired and occupied 
the Tenasserim territory. The Burmese, since the conquest of Pegu by 
Alompra (Alaung Plira) in 1757-58, had strongly discouraged the use of the 
Mun language. After the war with the British, the language of the people 
