The New International Encyclopædia/Arakan

ARAKAN, ä′rȧ-kän′, or Aracan. The northern division of Lower Burma, British India, extending along the Bay of Bengal from about 18° to 21° 33' northern latitude, and covering, with the adjacent islands, an area of 18,540 square miles. The surface is very mountainous in the interior, which is traversed by several parallel chains. There are vast forests and marshes covered with a thick growth of grasses and underbrush. The climate is exceedingly unhealthful. The lower parts of the country are well adapted to the cultivation of rice, indigo, pepper, and raw sugar, and many tropical fruits are found in a wild state. The chief articles of export are rice, salt, and teak-wood. The chief port is Akyab. The town of Arokan, situated in the interior to the northwest of Akyab, which before the British conquest is said to have numbered nearly 100,000 souls, is now a place of ruins. The natives of Arakan are shorter and somewhat less round-headed than the Burmese proper, with whom they belong by race and language. A caste system with monogamy prevails among them. The population increased from 671,899 in 1891 to 760,848 in 1901. About seventy per cent. of the inhabitants are Buddhists, while the remainder is made up chiefly of Mohammedans. Arakan was formerly an independent kingdom. At the end of the Seventeenth Century it began to decline, owing to internal strifes, and a century later fell into the possession of Burma, from which it passed to Great Britain in 1826. Anthropological details concerning the peoples of Arakan will be found in Lewin, Wild Races of Southeastern India (London, 1870), and Risley, Tribes and Castes of Bengal (Calcutta, 1891).