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Here it will be sufficient to mention the important work of Mr. He was even able, through the means of vocabularies furnished to him by the late Bishop Bigandet, to discover the nearest kinsmen of the Khasis in the Palaungs, a tribe inhabiting one of the Shan States to the north-east of Mandalay on the middle Salween.
As the different people speaking these languages advanced in civilization they learned to count further; but by this time they had become in some cases like those of the Khasis, the Palaungs, and Mons, widely separated from one another.
There were blue-clad Chinese, Shans with tattooed legs, turbans of pink or white, and Burmans dressed in brilliant purple or green, Las, yellow-skinned Lisos, flat-faced Palaungs, Was, and Kachins in black and red strung about with beads or shells.
Notwithstanding our failure up till now to find any patent and direct social customs in common between the Khasis and the Palaungs, I am in hopes that we may yet discover some such affinities. Mr. Lowis, the Superintendent of Ethnography in Burma, states that there is no vestige of the matriarchal system among the Palaungs; but there is the folk-tale I have quoted above.
We have not so far been able to discover social customs common to the Palaungs and the Khasis; this is probably due to the conversion of the Palaungs to Buddhism, the change in the religion of the people having possibly caused the abandonment of the primitive customs of the tribe.
In matters of succession, inheritance, &c., the Palaungs, Mr. Lowis, says, profess to follow the Shans, whose customs in this regard have a Buddhistic basis. The Palaungs are devout Buddhists, and, like the Burmans and Shans, bury their lay dead, whereas the Khasis invariably burn. There is nothing in the shape of memorial stones amongst the Palaungs.
Primâ facie these appear to be points of differentiation between the Palaungs and the Khasis; but they should not, as has already been stated, be regarded as proof positive that the tribes are not connected, and it is possible that under the influence of Buddhism the Palaungs may have almost entirely abandoned their ancient customs, like the Christian Khasis.
Notwithstanding that Sir George Scott says the story has very Burman characteristics, the Palaung folk-tale is further interesting in that it speaks of the Sawbwa of the Palaungs being descended from a princess. This might be a suggestion of the matriarchate.
In a few years' time, if the progressive rate of conversions of Khasis to Christianity continues, probably the greater number of the Khasi social customs will have disappeared and others will have taken their place, so that it cannot be argued that because no manifest social customs can now be found common to the Khasis and the Palaungs, there is no connection between these two tribes.
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