Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/615

rally described as of a stout, active, well-proportioned form; of a brown but never of an intensely dark complexion, with black, coarse, lank, and abundant hair, and a little more beard than is possessed by the Siamese. The name they give their own race is Mran-má (as written), generally pronounced Ba-má, and from this the various forms of “Burmah” appear to have been taken. Besides the Burmese proper, there are numerous tribes of Paloungs, Toungthoos, Karens, and others toward the east, many of them in a state of semi-independence; and all round the northern frontier and along the ranges that traverse the upper regions, vast hordes of Kakhyens or Singphos maintain a rough, cateran life, and come down to levy black mail on the more peaceful inhabitants. The Shans constitute a great number of small principalities along the whole eastern border, subject some to Burmah, some to China, some to Siam, and in some cases owning a double allegiance, according to their position. The Shans everywhere profess Buddhism, and have some kind of literature and the traces of culture. To their race the Siamese themselves belong. The Kakhyens are square-faced, strong-jawed, and oblique-eyed. They are still in a low state of civilization, are destitute of letters, and continue in paganism. Their chiefs are supported by offerings in kind,—receiving, for example, a leg of every animal that is killed. One kind of industry—the manufacture of toddy and arrack—is extensively carried on, and the whole population are regular consumers of the produce.^[1] Various other tribes, as the Pwons and the Kakoos, are scattered throughout the empire; but they are not of much individual importance. The population of the country has been variously estimated and grossly exaggerated by the ignorance of Europeans, who have raised it to 17,000,000, 19,000,000, and even 33,000,000. Mr Craufurd, on the best data that he could procure, rated the inhabitants at 22 to the square mile, which, under the now contracted limits of the empire, would give a total population of 3,090,000, and Colonel Yule estimated, in 1855, that, within the area between the British frontier and 24° N. lat., it probably did not exceed 1,200,000, while within the whole empire at its widest limits there were not more than 3,000,000. Count Bethlen states, in 1874, that he obtained statistics of the houses in Burmah from a Burmese official, which made the number 700,000, without including those among the Shans to the east of the Salwin; so that if we allow five inhabitants to each we have 3,500,000 for a total population, and if we include the Shans probably 4,000,000.

Government.

The Burmese government is a pure despotism, the king dispensing torture, imprisonment, or death, according to his sovereign discretion. The chief object of government seems to be the personal honour and aggrandizement of the monarch; and the only restraint on the exercise of his prerogative is the fear of an insurrection. He is assisted in his administration by a public and a privy council, known respectively as the Hlot-dau and the Byadeit; all questions, before they are submitted to the public advisers of his majesty, are debated in the privy council, which consists generally of four Atwen-woons to whom are attached deputies, secretaries and other officers (Tsaré dau-gyis, “great royal writers;” Than-dau-zens, “receivers of the royal voice”), who carry messages, and report from time to time the proceedings of the council to the king. The Hlot-dau also usually consists of four ministers or Woongyis, and is presided over by the crown-prince (Einshé-men, or lord of the eastern house). The paymaster-general is an officer of high importance; and the other officers of distinction are the king's armour-bearer and the master of the elephants, but the latter have no share in the administration of public affairs. The king may order any of those great officers to be punished at his pleasure; and a minister may, by his order, be seized by the public executioner, and laid at the side of the road for hours under the burning sun with a weight upon his breast; and after undergoing this disgraceful punishment, may continue to discharge his high function as before. The country at large is ruled by provincial governors, and is divided into provinces (or Myos), townships, districts, and villages. The civil, military, judicial, and fiscal administration of the province is vested in the governor, or Myo-woon, who exercises the power of life and death, though in all civil cases an appeal lies from his sentence to the chief council at the capital. In all the townships and villages there are judges with a subordinate jurisdiction. But from a mere detail of the provincial administration and judicial institutions of the Burmese, their extreme inefficiency can scarcely be known. No Burmese officer ever receives a fixed salary. The higher class is paid by an assignment either of land or of the labour and industry of a given portion of the inhabitants, and the inferior magistrates by fees, perquisites, and other emoluments; and hence extortion and bribery prevail amongst all the functionaries of the Burmese Government. Justice is openly exposed for sale; and the exercise of the judicial functions is so lucrative, that the two executive councils have by their encroachments deprived the regular judge of the greater part of his employment.

The Burmese laws are mainly contained in the Dhammasat, a code ascribed to Manu, but quite different from the Manu's Code of the Brahmans. It is said to have been introduced into Burmah from Ceylon by Buddaghosha, the traditional apostle of the Indo-Chinese nations.^[2] The criminal code is barbarous and severe, and the punishments are shocking to humanity. Gang robbery, desertion from the king's service, robbing of temples, and sedition or treason, are considered the most heinous crimes, and are cruelly punished, the criminal being in some cases embowelled, or thrown to wild beasts. Decapitation is the general mode of execution, but crucifixion and fracture of the limbs are also practised, and women are usually put to death by the stroke of a bludgeon across the throat. For minor offences, fines, whipping, and imprisonments are the punishments adjudged. In important cases torture is applied both to principals and witnesses; and the jailers often torture their prisoners in order to extort money from them. The English and American prisoners during the war of 1824 were frequently tortured, and had to pay fines to the jailer in order to procure milder treatment. Trial by ordeal is sometimes resorted to, as well as other superstitious modes of procedure. The administration of justice, however vexatious and expensive, is far from efficient; and the police is as bad as can possibly be conceived.

Ranks of society.

There are no hereditary honours under the Burmese Government. All the public functionaries may be dismissed from their offices, and deprived of their rank at the caprice of the sovereign; while any subject, with the exception of a slave or outcast, may aspire to the first offices in the state, to which, in reality, persons of very mean origin do frequently attain. The great officers of Government hold the first rank after the king and the princes of the blood, and are distinguished by a chain or badge, which is the order of nobility, and of which there are different degrees, distinguished by the number of strings or small chains which compose the ornament. Three of open chain-work mark the lowest rank; three of neatly-twisted wire the next; there are then six, nine, twelve, and finally twenty-four, which the king alone is entitled to wear. But every article possessed

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1. See for details regarding the Shans and Kakhyens Anderson's Expedition to Eastern Yunan, ch. v. Appendix B contains a list of 200 words in the Shan, Kakhyen, Paloung, and Leesaw languages.
2. A translation has been made into English by Richardson.