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DECEMBER, 1892.]
ARCHEOLOGICAL TOUR THROUGH RAMANNADESA.
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who maintain the kyaung, may be a low one, but the pôngyi in charge of the kyaung is fed on the fat of the land.
On the 14th December, I visited Kókarok, which is inhabited by Burmans, Talaings, Shâns, Karens, and Taungoûs. The Taungoûs are an interesting people. They have a literatures of their own, and I obtained a copy of a poetical work called Suttanippan (Suttanibbana or Nibbúnasutta). The language of the Taungoas contains words bodily borrowed from the languages of the peoples by whom they are surrounded. The Taungoûs resemble their congeners, the Karens, in physical appearance; their build is thick-set, and they have full, round, and heavy features. At Kòkarêk the Taungoû language is purer than at Thatôn, although there have been many inter-marriages between the Taungöûs and the Shâns.
The meaning of the word "Taunga' is Highlander, in contradistinction to the people of the lowlands. A similar distinction obtains in Cambodia, the ancient Kingdom of the Khmers.7 The latter M. Mouhot describes thus: "Having a great taste for music, and being gifted with ears excessively fine, with them originated the tam-tam, so prized among the neighbouring nations; and by uniting its sounds to those of a large drum, they obtain music tolerably harmonious. The art of writing is unknown to them; and as they necessarily lead a wandering life, they seem to have lost nearly all traditions of the past. The only information I could extract from their oldest chief was, that far beyond the chain of mountains which crosses the country from north to south, are other people of the high country (such is the name they give themselves; that of savage wounds them greatly), that they have many relations there, and they even cite names of villages or hamlets as far as the provinces occupied by the Annamite invaders. Their practice is to bury their dead." The above description would, with slight modifications and with the exception of the part relating to their ignorance of the art of writing, answer very well for that of the Taungûs.
The Taungous call themselves Phao, i. e., ancient fathers, and have a tradition that large numbers of them emigrated years ago from their original seat of Thatôn to a State of the same name in the Shân country. Since then they have borrowed largely from Shân literature: in fact, their books, most of which have been translated from Shân, contain a large admixture of Shân words."
The Taunga alphabet appears to have a closer affinity to that of the Talaings or the Burmans than to that of the Shâns, as it recognises the medial letters, which are absent in Shân. The one peculiarity deserving of notice in the pronunciation of the letters is the Indian sound accorded to the letters of the palatal class, e.g., is pronounced ch and not s, as the Tibetans, Burmans, and Talaings pronounce. This is a remarkable fact showing the probability of the Taung as having received their alphabet direct from Indian colonists.10
5" My authority for this is the following extract of a note from a gentleman of the American Mission to Lieutenant Newmarch :
"The Toungthoos have a written language and books, and kyoungs and priests. I have seen their books, and on the fall of Sebastopol I printed the Governor-General's proclamation for Lieutenant Burn in Toungthoo, but I confess it was the first and only thing that was ever printed in Toungthoo."-Yale's Mission to Ava, Appendix M., page 383.
[This is now in the British Museum. Dr. Cushing informs me that Taunga MSS. are frequently to be met with in Shan monasteries, and that the commonest text of all is the Suttanippan.-ED.]
↑ Vide Mouhot's Travels in the Central Parts of Indo-China, Cambodia, and Laos, page 24.
Savages to the East of Cambodia, called by the Cambodians their elder brothers.
⚫ [Dr. Cushing informs me that the Taunga Language is closely related to that of the Pghò Karens and that a Taunga can easily learn to make himself intelligible to a Pgho Karen in a short time.-ED.]
10 [It may some day help much in determining the original sound of many Burmese words, which, no doubt have, in historical times, changed their sounds.-ED.]
