Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/617

The common, coarse, unglazed earthenware is of an excellent quality; and a better description of pottery is also made. The art of making porcelain, however, is entirely unknown, and this ware is imported from China. Iron ore, as already mentioned, is smelted; but the Burmans cannot manufacture steel, which is brought from Bengal. Bell-founding has been carried to considerable perfection; and the craftsmen take pride in the magnitude of some of their productions. Perhaps the largest specimen is that in the neighbourhood of Amarapura, which measures 16 feet across the lip and weighs about 80 tons. Coarse articles of cutlery, including swords, spears, knives, also muskets and matchlocks, scissors, and carpenters' tools, are manufactured in the capital, and gold and silver ornaments are produced in every considerable place in the country. Embossed work in drinking cups and the like is executed with great richness of effect. North of the capital, and east of the Irawadi, as before stated, is an entire hill of pure white marble, and there are sculptured marble images of Gautama or Buddha. The marble is of the finest quality; and the workmen give it an exquisite polish by means of a paste of pulverized fossil wood. The chief seat of the manufacture of lacquered wares is at Nyoun-goo, near the ancient city of Pagán. Commerce. Since Burmah was deprived of its harbours and maritime districts, its foreign commerce has been extremely limited. The trade of the country centres chiefly in the capital. The imports are rice, pickled and dried fish, and foreign commodities obtained from Bengal, the Asiatic Archipelago, and Europe. Petroleum, saltpetre, lime, paper, lacquer-ware, cotton and silk fabrics, iron, cutlery, some brass ware, terra japonica, sugar, and tamarinds are given in exchange. One of the most important branches of the trade of the country was formerly that maintained with the Chinese province of Yunnan; but it has been for a considerable period in abeyance owing to the disturbed state of the frontier counties. The principal marts of this trade, which was carried on at annual fairs, were Madé, near the capital, and Bhamo. The Chinese caravan, setting out from the western province of Yunnan at the close of the periodical rains, generally reached Burmah in the beginning of December, after a journey of six weeks over difficult and mountainous roads. The principal fair was held at Bhamo, comparatively few traders arriving at the capital. The articles imported from China were raw silk, wrought copper, orpiment or yellow arsenic from the mines in Yunnan (of a very fine quality, which found its way into Western Asia, and into Europe through Calcutta), quicksilver, vermilion, iron pans, brass-wire, tin, lead, alum, silver, gold and gold-leaf, earthenware, paints, carpets, rhubarb, tea, honey, velvets and other wrought silks, spirits, musk, verdigris, dry fruits, paper, fans, umbrellas, shoes, and wearing apparel. The metals were chiefly produced in the province of Yunnan. The articles sent to China consisted of raw cotton, by far the most considerable article of export; feathers, chiefly of the blue jay, for ornamenting the dresses of ceremony of the Chinese mandarins; esculent swallows' nests, ivory, rhinoceros' and deers' horns; sapphires, used for buttons to the caps of the Chinese officers of rank, jade, and amber, with a small quantity of British woollens. The trade of the northern part of Burmah proper is chiefly carried on at large fairs held in connection with religious festivals. One of the most important articles, in addition to European cloth goods, is salt, for their supply of which all the hill-tribes are dependent on Burmah.^[1]

Money.

The currency used by the Burmese is of the rudest description. For the smaller payments lead is employed; and for the larger payments silver almost exclusively. This is not coined into pieces of any known weight and fineness; and in every payment of any consequence the metal must be weighed and is generally assayed, for which a premium is paid to the bankers or money-changers of 2½ per cent. besides 1 per cent. which they say is lost in the operation. There are three or four different alloys of silver in common use as money; the best is Bau, which is almost pure; next is Dain, with about 6.4 per cent., of copper; and so on through several grades. An attempt was made by King Mentaragyi to introduce a coinage; but his plans failed because he fixed the current value of his money considerably above the real value of the silver. The high rate of interest for money—which is 25 per cent., and 60 per cent. when no security is given—is another proof of the low state of commerce among the Burmese. Weights. The seeds of the Abrus precatorius (Khyin Pthwe), a little red and black pea, serve as the smallest weight; they ordinarily weigh about a grain, but vary from one to two. Two of them make a rhwe-kyi, four rhwe-kyis a great pae, four great paes a mat, four mats a kyap, and 100 kyaps a piktha (peissa) or viss, which is equal to 3.6516 ℔ avoirdupois. Calendar. The Burmese year is divided into three seasons and twelve months, beginning with what corresponds to our April, and every third year a month is intercalated. Every pakka or half-month consists of 15 days (ret) of 60 narih each. The ret is divided into the nay or period from sunrise to sunset, and the gnyin or period from sunset to sunrise,—the 60 narih being assigned in different proportions to the two periods in each of the twelve months, the first month having 30 in each period, and the second 30 in the daytime and 28 in the night, and so on. The Burmese have borrowed their astronomy and astrology, as well as this division of the day, from the Hindus. They are ignorant of oceanic navigation; and in their voyages to Calcutta, during the fine season, they creep along the coast, never losing sight of it.

Language and literature.

The Burmese proper use a monosyllabic language, spoken with distinctive tones, like the Chinese and several other Indo-Chinese tongues. Its vocabulary shows distinct relation to Chinese on one side and to Tibetan on another. In contrast with Siamese it is a very soft and flexible language, and its monosyllabic character is somewhat modified in pronunciation. It has no distinctly sibilant sound, the only letter approximate to “s” having a resemblance rather to the English “th.” It is a literary language, and has been under cultivation for perhaps six or seven centuries. It is written with an alphabet of Indian origin, which probably came in with Buddhism; and most of the letters are of a more or less circular form. The Pali remaining the dialect of sacred literature, the Burmese has been almost confined to secular uses. It has developed a poetic diction of such complete individuality that it is unintelligible without special study. Another peculiar dialect, largely mingled with Pali elements, is spoken at court, and also requires separate study, as it substitutes a vocabulary of elaborate artificiality subordinate to the etiquette of the courtiers. The word for “to go,” for example, is different according as it is said that the king goes, or the prince goes, or the priest goes. Of the literary forms in which the Burmese express themselves, the favourite one is the drama, which appears under the various forms of masquerades, puppet shows, ballet-opera, and farces, as well as in the more dignified character of the regular tragedy. The moral character of the plays is often of the lowest kind, the utmost licence both of speech and action being allowed on the stage. The scenery is of a very simple and purely suggestive kind, a single branch of a tree standing for a forest, and frequently the filling up of the dialogue is largely left to the ingenuity of the actors, little more than hints of the plot being con-

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1. An interesting survey of the various trade-routes from Burmah to China is given by Mr J. Coryton in the Jour. of the R. Geogr. Soc. for 1875.