James George Scott

“ There are teak forests also in the Mekong drainage area in the south of the state, but there is only a local market for the timber. Rice, as elsewhere in the Shan States, is the chief crop. Next to it is sugar-cane, grown both as a field crop and in gardens. Earth-nuts and tobacco are the only other field crops in the valleys. On the hills, besides rice, cotton, poppy and tea are the chief crops. The tea is carelessly grown, badly prepared, and only consumed locally. A great deal of garden produce is raised in the valleys, especially near the capital. ”

“ In the opinion of the Wa the ghost of a dead man goes with his skull and hangs about its neighbourhood, and so many skulls posted up outside his village gate mean so many watchdog umbrae attached to the village, jealous of their own preserves and intolerant of interlopers from the invisible world. ”

“ There are besides a number of Shan States beyond the border of Burma, which are tributary to China, though China exercises an authority which is little more than nominal. The British Shan States were tributary to Burma and came under British control at the time of the annexation of Upper Burma. They rank as British territory, not as native states. By section 11 of the Burma Laws Act 1898, the civil, criminal and revenue administration of each state is vested in the chief, subject to the restriction specified in the sanad or order of appointment granted to him. ”

“ Taxes and land revenue are light; markets for the disposal of produce are constant and prices good; while fresh land is still available in most districts. Compared with the congested districts in the other provinces of India, with the exception of Assam, the lot of the Burman is decidedly enviable.
Forests.—-The forests of Burma are the finest in British India and one of the chief assets of the wealth of the country; it is from Burma that the world draws its main supply of teak for shipbuilding, and indeed it was the demand for teak that largely led to the annexation of Burma. ”

“ The Red Karen women weave their own and their husbands’ clothing. A characteristic manufacture is the pa-si or Karen metal drum, which is made at Ngwedaung. These drums are from 21/2 to 3 ft. across the boss, with sides of about the same depth. The sound is out of proportion to the metal used, and is inferior to that of the Shan and Burmese gongs. It is thought that the population of Karen-ni is steadily decreasing. The birth-rate of the people is considered to exceed the death-rate by very little, and the Red Karen habit of life is most unwholesome. ”

“ Cotton and silk weaving are dying out as industries. Large quantities of shoes and sandals are made of buffalo and bullock hide, with Chinese felt uppers and soft iron hobnails. There is a good deal of pottery work. The chief work in iron is the manufacture of guns, which has been carried on for many years in certain villages of the Sam Tao district. The gun barrels and springs are rude but effective, though not very durable. The revenue of the state is collected as the Burmese thathameda, a rude system of income-tax. ”

“ Agriculture.—The cultivation of the land is by far the most important industry in Burma. Only 9.4% of the people were classed as urban in the census of 1901, and a considerable proportion of this number were natives of India and not Burmese. Nearly two-thirds of the total population are directly or indirectly engaged in agriculture and kindred occupations. Throughout most of the villages in the rural tracts men, women and children all take part in the agricultural operations, although in riverine villages whole families often support themselves from the sale of petty commodities and eatables. ”

“ They take their name from the colour of their clothes. The Bghai, or “Red Karens,” who are supposed by some to be an entirely distinct race, chiefly inhabit the independent hill state of Karen-ni (q.v.) . The Karen is of a squarer build than the Burman, his skin is fairer, and he has more of the Mongolian obliquity of the eyes. In character also the people differ from the Burmese. They are singularly devoid of humour, they are stolid and cautious, and lack altogether the light gaiety and fascination of the Burmese. ”

“ Manufactures and Art.—The staple industry of Burma is agriculture, but many cultivators are also artisans in the by-season. In addition to rice-growing and the felling and extraction of timber, and the fisheries, the chief occupations are rice-husking, silk-weaving and dyeing. The introduction of cheap cottons and silk fabrics has dealt a blow to hand-weaving, while aniline dyes are driving out the native vegetable product; but both industries still linger in the rural tracts. ”

“ It is thought necessary to add some skulls to this pathway every year if the crops are to be good. The heads of distinguished and pious men and of strangers are the most efficacious. The head-hunting season lasts through March and April, and it is when the Wa hill fields are being got ready for planting that the roads in the vicinity become dangerous to the neighbouring Shans. The little that is known of the practice seems to hint at the fact that the victim selected was primarily a harvest victim. A Wild Wa village is a very formidable place to attack, except for civilized weapons of offence. ”

“ The Shans are a peaceful race, fond of trading. During the past decade the trade with Burma has increased very largely, and with the construction of the railway to Lashio a still further increase may be expected in the N. states. The cultivation of wheat and potatoes in the S. states promise them wealth also when a railway furnishes them means of getting the produce out of the country. ”

“ West of the Balu valley the continuation of the eastern rim of the Myelat plateau rises in Loi Nangpa to about 5000 ft. The Nam Pawn is a large river, with an average breadth of 100 yds., but is unnavigable owing to its rocky bed. Even timber cannot be floated down it without the assistance of elephants. The Salween throughout Karen-ni is navigated by large native craft. ”

“ The Burmese women have a keener business instinct than the men, and serve in some degree to redress the balance. The Burmese children are adored by their parents, and are said to be the happiest and merriest children in the world.
Language and Literature.—The Burmese are supposed by modern philologists to have come, as joint members of a vast Indo-Chinese immigration swarm, from western China to the head waters of the Irrawaddy and then separated, some to people Tibet and Assam, the others to press southwards into the plains of Burma. ”

“ Mountainous country so greatly predominates that the scattered valleys are but as islands in a sea of rugged hills. The chief rivers, tributaries of the Salween, are the Nam Hka, the Hwe Lông, Nam Pu, and the Nam Hsīm. ”

“ All the villages are perched high up on the slope of the hills, usually on a knoll or spine-like spur, or on a narrow ravine near the crest of the ridge. The only entrance is through a long tunnel. There is sometimes only one, though usually there are two, at opposite sides of the village. ”

“ The food of the people consists as a rule of boiled rice with salted fresh or dried fish, salt, sessamum-oil, chillies, onions, turmeric, boiled vegetables, and occasionally meat of some sort from elephant flesh down to smaller animals, fowls and almost everything except snakes, by way of condiment.
The staple crop of the province in both Upper and Lower Burma is rice. In Lower Burma it is overwhelmingly the largest crop; in Upper Burma it is grown wherever practicable. ”

“ Kēng Tūng has expanded very considerably since the establishment of British control, by the inclusion of the districts of Hsen Yawt, Hsen Mawng, Möng Hsat, Möng Pu, and the cis-Mekong portions of Kēng Cheng, which in Burmese times were separate charges. The “classical” name of the state is Khemarata or Khemarata Tungkapuri. About 63% of the area lies in the basin of the Mekong river and 37% in the Salween drainage area. The watershed is a high and generally continuous range. ”

“ Race and Language.—According to the census of 1901 there were 787,087 Shans (see above) in Burma. The Thai or Tai, as they call themselves, were first known to the Burmese as Tarôks or Tarets. The original home of the Thai race was S.W. China, or rather that was the region where they attained to a marked separate development as a people. It is probable that their first settlement in Burma proper was in the Shweli valley, and that from this centre they radiated at a comparatively recent date N., W. and S.E. through Upper Burma into Assam. ”

“ Throughout the whole of the moister parts of the province the agricultural season is the wet period of the south-west monsoon, lasting from the middle of May until November. In some parts of Lower Burma and in the dry districts of Upper Burma a hot season crop is also grown with the assistance of irrigation during the spring months. Oxen are used for ploughing the higher lands with light soil, and the heavier and stronger buffaloes for ploughing wet tracts and marshy lands. As rice has to be transplanted as well as sown and irrigated, it needs a considerable amount of labour expended on it ”

“ The defile ends at Hpatin, and below this the river widens out to a wet-season channel of 2 m., and a breadth in the dry season of about 1 m. At Sinkan, below Bhamo, the second defile begins. It is not so narrow nor is the current so strong as in the third defile. The narrowest place is more than 100 yds. wide. The hills are higher, but the defile is much shorter. At Shwegu the river leaves the hills and becomes a broad stream, flowing through a wide plain. The first defile is tame compared with the others. The river merely flows between low hills or high wooded banks. ”

“ The whole is comprised in the districts of Toungoo and Thaton, part of the Karen-ni hills, with the Salween hill tract and the northern parts of Amherst, which form the northern portion of the Tenasserim administrative division. The third natural division of Burma is the old province of Tenasserim, which, constituted in 1826 with Moulmein as its capital, formed the nucleus from which the British supremacy throughout Burma has grown. It is a narrow strip of country lying between the Bay of Bengal and the high range of hills which form the eastern boundary of the province towards Siam. ”

“ In the reserves the trees of commercial value can only be cut under a licence returning a revenue to the state, while unreserved trees can be cut by the natives for home consumption. There are naturally very many trees in these forests besides the teak. In Lower Burma alone the enumeration of the trees made by Sulpiz Kurz in his Forest Flora of British Burma (1877) includes some 1500 species, and the unknown species of Upper Burma and the Shan States would probably increase this total very considerably. ”

“ England takes by far the greatest share of Burma's rice, though large quantities are also consumed in Germany, while France, Italy, Belgium and Holland also consume a considerable amount. The regular course of trade is apt to be deflected by famines in India or Japan. In 1900 over one million tons of rice were shipped to India during the famine there. The rice-mills, almost all situated at the various seaports, secure the harvest from the cultivator through middlemen. The value of teak exported in 1895 was Rs.1,34,64,303, and in 1905, Rs.1,31,03,401. ”

“ Dredging for gold, however, seems likely to prove very profitable and gold dust is found in practically every river in the hills.
The principal seats of the petroleum industry are Yenangyaung in the Magwe, and Yenangyat in the Pakôkku districts. The wells have been worked for a little over a century by the natives of the country. The Burma Oil Company since 1889 has worked by drilled wells on the American or cable system, and the amount produced is yearly becoming more and more important. ”