Art. XVI.—The Arakanese Dialect of the Burman Language

Extract

It is well known that the people of Arakan are an offshoot of the Burman race, the accepted account being that they first crossed the range of mountains called the Arakan Yoma about b.c. 825 under a Prince Kanruga-gyi. It seems probable that the small portion of the country then inhabited was settled by a few of the advance-guard of the Chin-Lushai or IsTaga tribesmen, with perhaps some colonies of Indians on the sea-coast. These were expelled or absorbed; and the Arakanese kingdom, having its centre in the flat open plains of the Akyab district, gradually extended south as far as the Mawyon-gyaw Hills, in the Sandoway district, and north to Chittagong (a.d. 1450). It was finally crushed by an invasion of Burmans from the east of the Yoma in 1784. The people of Arakan have, however, preserved their peculiar dialect, and in certain customs they differ slightly from the Burmese, against whom in some of the purely Arakanese parts is still cherished a deep hatred, born from the cruel manner in which they were handled at the Burmese conquest. It must be admitted, indeed, that in their intertribal wars the peoples of the Tibeto-Burman race have endeavoured to enforce in the strictest possible manner the modern doctrine of the “survival of the fittest.” Owing to the steady immigration into Arakan of natives of India, principally from the Province of Bengal, which has been going on for centuries, the physical type of the people has been sensibly altered from the pure Mongoloid cast of their first progenitors.