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The Kadus of Burma

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

R. Grant Brown
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Extract

The pepole distinguished by the name of Kade, because they speak a language differing form those of their neighbours, live mostly in the Katha district of Upper Burma, and inhabit a tract of country lying roughly between 95° E., and 24° and 24° 30′N.

Type
Papers Contributed
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , October 1920 , pp. 1 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1920

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References

page 1 note 1 Stress the last syllable, and pronounce a as in among. This is the rule for nearly all Burmese dissyllables of which the first syllable ends in a, e.g., Katha, Ganan, Kabaw, Taman, Kala.

page 2 note 1 A person of mixed Indian and Burman descent.

page 4 note 1 As will be seen later, I have since discovered that Sak (or Asak—the prefix a is frequently dropped) is the Kadus' own name for themselves. The name Thet looks suspiciously like the modern Burmese form of the same word. A word written sak in Burmese is pronounced thet. If this is the case the tradition really means that the three great races of Burma north of the delta were the Burmese, the Kadu, and the Pyu. The last has been conjectured to be the people speaking the language of the fourth text of the Myazedi inscriptions at Pagan, dealt with by Mr. Blagden in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for April, 1911. So far as I know this is pure conjecture, but at any rate the language is not Kadu, and it appears to be unlike any now spoken in Burma.

page 5 note 1 “Outlines of Tibeto-Burman Linguistic Palaeontology”: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1896.

page 6 note 1 See also Upper Chindwin District Gazetteer, pp. 18–20, as quoted on pp. 248–9, Burma Census Report, and on p. 328, Indian Census Report, 1911.

page 9 note 1 These characteristics also appear in Japanese, the structure of which altogether shows a close resemblance to that of Burmese, though the particles tend to coalesce and are on their way to become inflections. On translating into Burmese the Japanese text on p. 252 of Chamberlain's Handbook of Colloquial Japanese (ed. 1888) I found I was able to write the Burmese word under the Japanese word orsyllable corresponding to it without making the order unnatural. On the other hand I have been unable to find any language spoken between Japan and Burma in which the same order is maintained. Even Korean, which is said to be the language most closely allied to Japanese, follows a different order.

When the above was written I was unaware that this close relationship between Burmese and Japanese had been noticed by anyone. But see “A Comparison of the Japanese and Burmese Languages”, by Lowell, Percival, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 1891, p. 583Google Scholar, and “Burmese, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean”, by Parker, E. H., id., 1893, p. 136.Google Scholar

page 10 note 1 To me it seems that words signifying actions in these languages are neither verbs nor nouns. Instead of “he has lied” one says “he lie finish”. In this connection the remarks of B. Laufer on the prefix a- on pp. 779–80, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, October, 1915, are much to the point.

page 14 note 1 An unvoiced z (z), the ordinary sound of s in German so, used by some English people for the z in zeal.

page 14 note 2 Except perhaps θ and x. I did not cotne across them, but omitted to ask whether they existed.

page 21 note 1 The Kadu words “two rupees and two quarters” have been translated literally. The Burmese would say “two rupees and a halfé in accordance witgh the system prescribed by the Goverment of Burma.