Man, Past and Present - Agustus Henry Keane, A. Hingston Quiggin, Alfred Court Haddon (most popular novels txt) 📗

tribal name, and often one or two others, descriptive, abusive and so on, given them by their neighbours. Thus the Nwengals (Nun, river, ngal, across) are only that section of the Soktes now settled on the farther or right bank of the Manipur, while the Soktes themselves (Sok, to go down, te, men) are so called because they migrated from Chin Nwe (9 miles from Tiddim), cradle of the Chin race, down to Molbem, their earliest settlement, which is the Mobingyi of the Burmese. So with Siyin, the Burmese form of Sheyante(she, alkali, yan, side, te, men), the group who settled by the alkali springs east of Chin Nwe, who are the Taute ("stout" or "sturdy" people) of the Lushai and southern Chins. Let these few specimens suffice as a slight object-lesson in the involved tribal nomenclature which prevails, not only amongst the Chins, but everywhere in the Tibeto-Indo-Chinese domain, from the north-western Himalayas to Cape St James at the south-eastern extremity of Farther India. I have myself collected nearly a thousand such names of clans, septs, and fragmentary groups within this domain, and am well aware that the list neither is, nor ever can be, complete, the groups themselves often being unstable quantities in a constant state of fluctuation.

Most of the Chin groups have popular legends to explain either their origin or their present reduced state. Thus the Tawyans, a branch of the Tashons, claim to be Torrs, that is, the people of the Rawvan district, who were formerly very powerful, but were ruined by their insane efforts to capture the sun. Building a sort of Jacob's ladder, they mounted higher and higher; but growing tired, quarrelled among themselves, and one day, while half of them were clambering up the pole, the other half below cut it down just as they were about to seize the sun. So the Whenohs, another Tashon group, said to be Lushais left behind in a district now forming part of Chinland, tell a different tale. They say they came out of the rocks at Sepi, which they think was their original home. They share, however, this legend of their underground origin with the Soktes and several other Chin tribes.

Amid much diversity of speech and physique the Chins present some common mental qualities, such as "slow speech, serious manner, respect for birth and knowledge of pedigrees, the duty of revenge, the taste for a treacherous method of warfare, the curse of drink, the virtue of hospitality, the clannish feeling, the vice of avarice, the filthy state of the body, mutual distrust, impatience under control, the want of power of combination and of continued effort, arrogance in victory, speedy discouragement and panic in defeat[419]."

Physically they are a fine race, taller and stouter than the surrounding lowlanders, men 5 feet 10 or 11 inches being common enough among the independent southerners. There are some "perfectly proportioned giants with a magnificent development of muscle." Yet dwarfs are met with in some districts, and in others "the inhabitants are a wretched lot, much afflicted with goitre, amongst whom may be seen cretins who crawl about on all fours with the pigs in the gutter. At Dimlo, in the Sokte tract, leprosy has a firm hold on the inhabitants."

Although often described as devil-worshippers, the Chins really worship neither god nor devil. The northerners believe there is no Supreme Being, and although the southerners admit a "Kozin" or head god, to whom they sacrifice, they do not worship him, and never look to him for any grace or mercy, except that of withholding the plagues and misfortunes which he is capable of working on any in this world who offend him. Besides Kozin, there are nats or spirits of the house, family, clan, fields; and others who dwell in particular places in the air, the streams, the jungle, and the hills. Kindly nats are ignored; all others can and will do harm unless propitiated[420].

The departed go to Mithikwa, "Dead Man's Village," which is divided into Pwethikwa, the pleasant abode, and Sathikwa, the wretched abode of the unavenged. Good or bad deeds do not affect the future of man, who must go to Pwethikwa if he dies a natural or accidental death, and to Sathikwa if killed, and there bide till avenged by blood. Thus the vendetta receives a sort of religious sanction, strengthened by the belief that the slain becomes the slave of the slayer in the next world. "Should the slayer himself be slain, then the first slain is the slave of the second slain, who in turn is the slave of the man who killed him."

Whether a man has been honest or dishonest in this world is of no consequence in the next existence; but, if he has killed many people in this world, he has many slaves to serve him in his future existence; if he has killed many wild animals, then he will start well-supplied with food, for all that he kills on earth are his in the future existence. In the next existence hunting and drinking will certainly be practised, but whether fighting and raiding will be indulged in is unknown.

Cholera and small-pox are spirits, and when cholera broke out among the Chins who visited Rangoon in 1895 they carried their dahs (knives) drawn to scare off the nat, and spent the day hiding under bushes, so that the spirit should not find them. Some even wanted to sacrifice a slave boy, but were talked over to substitute some pariah dogs. They firmly believe in the evil eye, and the Hakas think the Sujins and others are all wizards, whose single glance can bewitch them, and may cause lizards to enter the body and devour the entrails. A Chin once complained to Surgeon-Major Newland that a nat had entered his stomach at the glance of a Yahow, and he went to hospital quite prepared to die. But an emetic brought him round, and he went off happy in the belief that he had vomited the nat.

Ethnically connected with the Kuki-Naga groups are the Kakhyens of the Irawadi headstreams, and the Karens, who form numerous village communities about the Burma-Siamese borderland. The Kakhyens, so called abusively by the Burmese, are the Cacobees of the early writers[421], whose proper name is Singpho (Chingpaw), i.e. "Men[422]," and whose curious semi-agglutinating speech, spoken in an ascending tone, each sentence ending in a long-drawn i in a higher key (Bigandet), shows affinities rather with the Mishmi and other North Assamese tongues than with the cultured Burmese. They form a very widespread family, stretching from the Eastern Himalayas right into Yunnan, and presenting two somewhat marked physical types: (1) the true Chingpaws, with short round head, low forehead, prominent cheek-bones, slant eye, broad nose, thick protruding lips, very dark brown hair and eyes, dirty buff colour, mean height (about 5 ft. 5 or 6 in.) with disproportionately short legs; (2) a much finer race, with regular Caucasic features, long oval face, pointed chin, aquiline nose. One Kakhyen belle met with at Bhamo, "with large lustrous eyes and fair skin, might almost have passed for a European[423]."

It is important to note this Caucasic element, which we first meet here going eastwards from the Himalayas, but which is found either separate or interspersed amongst the Mongoloid populations all over the south-east Asiatic uplands from Tibet to Cochin-China, and passing thence into Oceanica[424].

The kinship of the Kakhyens with the still more numerous Karens is now generally accepted, and it is no longer found necessary to bring the latter all the way from Turkestan. They form a large section, perhaps one-sixth, of the whole population of Burma, and overflow into the west Siamese borderlands. Their subdivisions are endless, though all may be reduced to three main branches, Sgaws, Pwos and Bwais, these last including the somewhat distinct group of Karenni, or "Red Karens." Although D. M. Smeaton calls the language "monosyllabic," it is evidently agglutinating, of the normal sub-Himalayan type[425].

The Karens are a short, sturdy race, with straight black and also brownish hair, black, and even hazel eyes, and light or yellowish brown complexion, so that here also a Caucasic strain may be suspected.

Despite the favourable pictures of the missionaries, whose propaganda has been singularly successful amongst these aborigines, the Karens are not an amiable or particularly friendly people, but rather shy, reticent and even surly, though trustworthy and loyal to those chiefs and guides who have once gained their confidence. In warfare they are treacherous rather than brave, and strangely cruel even to little children. Their belief in a divine Creator who has deserted them resembles that of the Kuki people, and to the nats of the Kuki correspond the la of the Karens, who are even more numerous, every mountain, stream, rapid, crest, peak or other conspicuous object having its proper indwelling la. There are also seven specially baneful spirits, who have to be appeased by family offerings. "On the whole their belief in a personal god, their tradition as to the former possession of a 'law,' and their expectation of a prophet have made them susceptible to Christianity to a degree that is almost unique. Of this splendid opportunity the American mission has taken full advantage, educating, civilising, welding together, and making a people out of the downtrodden Karen tribes, while Christianizing them[426]."

In the Burmese division proper are comprised several groups, presenting all grades of culture, from the sheer savagery of the Mros, Kheongs, and others of the Arakan Yoma range, and the agricultural Mugs of the Arakan plains, to the dominant historical Burmese nation of the Irawadi valley. Here also the terminology is perplexing, and it may be well to explain that Yoma, applied by Logan collectively to all the Arakan Hill tribes, has no ethnic value at all, simply meaning a mountain range in Burmese[427]. Toung-gnu, one of Mason's divisions of the Burmese family, was merely a petty state founded by a younger branch of the Royal House, and "has no more claim to rank as a separate tribe than any other Burman town[428]. "Tavoyers are merely the people of the Tavoy district, Tenasserim, originally from Arakan, and now speaking a Burmese dialect largely affected by Siamese elements; Tungthas, like Yoma, means "Highlander," and is even of wider application; the Tipperahs, Mrungs, Kumi, Mros, Khemis, and Khyengs are all Tungthas of Burmese stock, and speak rude Burmese dialects.

The correlative of Tungthas is Khyungthas, "River People," that is, the Arakan Lowlanders comprising the more civilised peoples about the middle and lower course of the rivers, who are improperly called Mugs(Maghs) by the Bengali, and whose real name is Rakhaingtha, i.e.people of Rakhaing (Arakan). They are undoubtedly of the same stock as the cultured Burmese, whose traditions point to Arakan as the cradle of the race, and in whose chronicles the Rakhaingtha are called M'ranmakrih, "Great M'ranmas," or "Elder Burmese." Both branches call themselves M'ranma, M'rama (the correct form of Barma, Burma, but now usually pronounced Myamma), probably from a root mro, myo, "man," though connected by Burnouf with Brahma, the Brahmanical having preceded the Buddhist religion in this region. In any case the M'rama may claim a respectable antiquity, being already mentioned in the national records so early as the first century of the new era, when the land "was said to be overrun with fabulous monsters and other terrors, which are called to this day by the superstitious natives, the five enemies. These were a fierce tiger, an enormous boar, a flying dragon, a prodigious man-eating bird, and a huge creeping pumpkin, which threatened to entangle the whole country[429]."

The Burmese type has been not incorrectly described as intermediate between the Chinese and the Malay, more refined, or at least softer than either, of yellowish brown or olive complexion, often showing very dark shades, full black and lank hair, no beard, small but straight nose, weak extremities, pliant figure, and a mean height[430].

Most Europeans speak well of the Burmese people, whose bright genial temperament and extreme friendliness towards strangers more than