Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE BURMESE. Distribution of Races—Various Degrees of Civilisation—Character of the Burman—Distinct Personality of the Burmese Woman— Barbarous Custom attending Childbirth—Success of Lady Dufferin's Scheme for Alleviating this Evil—Position of Woman according to the Buddhist Code—Red-Letter Day in a Burmese Girl's Almanac—Her Freedom—Simplicity of Marriage— Honeymoon Eccentricities—Wives fully Identify themselves with their Husbands—Women fully Protected by Laws— Female Dress—Burmese Origin. There are reasonable grounds for supposing that a comparatively advanced maritime civilisation existed on the seaboard of Burma from the most ancient times, and that a few tribes favourably placed became considerable nations. These races were exposed at intervals to the irruption of inland Mongoloid peoples impelled by the pressure of others behind them. Thus the Mons or Talaings have, as it were, been obliterated by the Burmese, to whose stronger individuality the Arakanese have also succumbed. The Burmese in turn have been enveloped and pressed forward by the Shans or Tais, who have occupied the upper basins of the Salwen and the Mekhong, the formertaking the whole of the Irawadi basin. The Karens again have either dispersed into the more or less inaccessible mountain systems, or have been content to become subjects of plain-dwelling peoples, though not amalgamating with them. Besides these prominent, if not historic races, there are a number of tribes whose civilisation varies through every degree excepting the highest, constituting a ragged fringe to the region between our own territories in Bengal, the Empire of China, and the Kingdom of Siam. The Burmese are probably the gayest and most light-hearted people in the world; their neighbours the dullest and least ... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.