heir 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
[v.04 p.0840] plains of Burma. The indigenous tongues of Burma are divided
into the following groups:--

A. Indo-Chinese (1) Tibet-Burman (a) The Burmese group.
family sub-family (b) The Kachin group.
(c) The Kuki-Chin group.

(2) Siamese-Chinese (d) The Tai group.
sub-family (e) The Karen group.

(3) Mon-Annam (f) The Upper Middle
sub-family Mekong or Wa Palaung
group.
(g) The North Cambodian
group.
B. Malay family (h) The Selung language.

Burmese, which was spoken by 7,006,495 people in the province in 1901, is a
monosyllabic language, with, according to some authorities, three different
tones; so that any given syllable may have three entirely different
meanings only distinguishable by the intonation when spoken, or by accents
or diacritical marks when written. There are, however, very many weighty
authorities who deny the existence of tones in the language. The Burmese
alphabet is borrowed from the Aryan Sanskrit through the P[=a]li of Upper
India. The language is written from left to right in what appears to be an
unbroken line. Thus Burma possesses two kinds of literature, P[=a]li and
Burmese. The P[=a]li is by far the more ancient, including as it does the
Buddhist scriptures that originally found their way to Burma from Ceylon
and southern India. The Burmese literature is for the most part metrical,
and consists of religious romances, chronological histories and songs. The
_Maha Yazawin_ or "Royal Chronicle," forms the great historical work of
Burma. This is an authorized history, in which everything unflattering to
the Burmese monarchs was rigidly suppressed. After the Second Burmese War
no record was ever made in the _Yazawin_ that Pegu had been torn away from
Burma by the British. The folk songs are the truest and most i