1873.] Sir Arthur P. Phayre —On the History of Pegu. 35 
who had welcomed the invader, was furiously proscribed. It was forbidden 
to he taught in the Budhist monasteries or elsewhere. The result has been 
that in little more than a century, the language of about a million of people 
has become extinct.* 
In physical appearance, the Mun people are scarcely distinguishable from 
the Burmese. They are, however, shorter and stouter, and notwithstanding 
their more southern position, are generally lighter in complexion than Bur¬ 
mese of the same class. Indeed the higher classes of the Muns, and those 
whose callings in cities and towns do not involve much exposure to the sun, 
are much fairer than those of the same classes in upper Burma. This may 
be partly attributable to the large admixture of Shan blood from Zimme 
and the adjoining states, which occurred at a comparatively late period of 
their history. But there are also climatic causes. For about six months of 
the year, the sky of Pegu is more or less obscured with clouds ; and the habit 
of carrying umbrellas as a protection against sun and rain is much more 
common with the Talaings than among the Burmese. But the question of 
complexion among many Indo-Chinese tribes is certainly perplexing. Some 
of the Karen tribes in the mountains, especially the younger people, are not 
darker than southern Europeans ; while those settled in the delta of the 
Erawati, are much the same in that respect as the Mun people among whom 
they dwell. While then the physical characteristics of the Mun would lead 
us to class them with the Indo-Chinese around them, their language points 
to a different conclusion. I believe this peculiarity was first brought to 
notice by the Rev. Dr. Mason, Missionary to the Karen people. That 
learned man has, in his work on Burma, pointed out the remarkable similari¬ 
ty between the language of the Mun of Pegu, and that of the Horo or 
Munda people of Chutia Nagpur, called the Kols. The first syllable of 
the word Munda, which is used, as I understand, to designate the language 
of several tribes in the western highlands of Bengal, rather than as a tribal 
name, is identical in sound with the race name of the people of Pegu. The 
connection of the two peoples as shown by the similarity of their languages 
in a series of test words, has been commented on by the Honourable Mr. 
Campbell in a paper on the Races of India in the Journal of the Ethnologi¬ 
cal Society. We appear then to he forced to the conclusion, that the Mun 
or Talaing people of Pegu, are of the same stock as the Kols, and other 
* There are, however, some thousands of the Mun people in Siam, who emigrated 
there towards the end of the 18tli and in the early part of the 19th centuries, to es¬ 
cape the cruel rule of the Burmese. Descendants of Mun colonists from Tha-htuu 
were heard of by Dr. Richardson, in April 1837, as being located on the northern fron¬ 
tier of the Karenni country. They were said to have been originally placed there by 
king Naurahta, being a part of his captives. It would be interesting to know if their 
language remains unaltered. 
