shewn to us were representations only of our deity, and observing that those varying in form were copied from various forms which GAUDAMA had assumed when in this world, we bowed down and worshipped them. There were seven monasteries. In that first shewn to us, there were 200 priests dressed in yellow, and in another to the westward about 500.

"On the 6th October we were invited to an entertainment given in some temporary buildings in a garden. We went before 6 o'clock, and the emperor came about half past 7 in an open sedan chair. He was dressed as follows:-On the top of his head-dress there was a pearl; on the four sides of his silk dress there was the figure of a dragon, and round his neck hung a string of pearls. He took his seat on a royal chair of the form of a dragon, and about a cubit high, and the officers of his court presented to him cups of spirits and cups of milk. The Wún-gyíh Hô-Tsou ́nTENG and Kou ́N-YE'-THU' and THÍ-TA'-VÍN stood on the right and left of the emperor with swords in their hands. To the right and left were placed tables with all kinds of cakes, and we sat down on the right hand with the Wún-gyíh Hô-Tsou ́N-TENG behind the chiefs of the 48 Tartar countries, and ate and drank. After the soft music and dancing, which were according to the Chinese, Tartar, and Kulá fashions, the emperor returned home. The silks and gold cloths, which had been arranged on the left hand, were distributed in presents to the princes of Tartary, and those on the right hand were distributed by the Wún-gyíh Kou'N-YE'-THU ́* to us according to our respective ranks, and to the officers appointed to take care of us. All kinds of curious cloths, &c. intended for presents to the king of Ava, were also shewn and delivered to us.

"A little after 3 o'clock, on the afternoon of the same day, the emperor of China again came out, and we saw an exhibition of tumblers on poles, and fireworks, and then returned home.

"The emperor having directed us on this last day to go to Pekin, we left Zhehol on the 7th of October, and arrived at Pekin on the 12th October, taking up our residence in some temporary buildings erected on a plain within the southern gateway of the city, where we were attended and supplied with provisions by the same men as before.

"On the 13th, the emperor having directed that the ambassadors should be lodged near him, and that their provisions should be supplied from within the palace, we moved, on the following day, and took up our resi dence on a royal plain†, near the road leading to the southward from the western gateway of the wall surrounding the palace. On the 15th the emperor came to Pekin, and we accompanied the Chinese officers to a temporary building in the lake, where there is a palace, in order to receive his majesty. On the morning of the 20th we attended the emperor, by invi

* This officer was not a Wún-gyíh or First Minister of State, as will be seen in the list of Wún-gyíhs hereafter given, but the Burmese ambassadors repeatedly given him this title.

† Apparently a plain on which princes encamp or live when they visit Pekin.

JOURNAL

OF

THE ASIATIC SOCIET Y.

No. 66.-June, 1837.

I. Some account of the Wars between Burmah and China, together with the journals and routes of three different Embassies sent to Pekin by the King of Ava; taken from Burmese documents. By LieutenantColonel H. BURNEY, Resident in Ava.

[Continued from page 149.]

In the 30th No. of the Gleanings of Science I have given some account of the Chinese caravans, which come principally from Thengye-show and Tálí-fú in Yunan, not only to Ava but to all the Shan towns subject to Ava, Maing: Leng-gyíh, Kyaing:toŭn, Theinní, Mó:né, Thibó, &c., as well as to Zenmay and the Shan towns subject to Síam. A party of Chinese also annually proceed from Santá-fú to Mo:gaung and Payen-dueng for the purpose of procuring amber and the noble serpentine, or the stone so much prized by the Chinese and called by them Yu.

The emperor of China appears never to have surrendered the Tsố:buás of Theinní, Bamó and Mō:gaung agreeably to the terms of the treaty of Bamó; nor can I find a notice of any correspondence between the sovereigns of the two countries until the reign of the present king of Ava's grandfather, MEN:DARA:GYÍH, Symes's MINDERAGEE. That monarch, shortly after he put his nephew to death and seized the throne in the year 1781, appears to have deputed a small party for the purpose of opening a communication with China, but the envoys were seized by the Chinese and sent up to the north of Pekin, to the Tartar province of Quantong. In 1787, however, an embassy came to Ava from China, and I will now give a free translation of the journals and routes of three different embassies, which were sent to

Pekin by the late and present kings of Ava. But before giving these translations it may be proper to explain the system which I have adopted, for writing Burmese and Chinese names in the Roman character.

I have followed, as far as I was able, Sir Wм. JONES's system, excepting that I have used the prosodial long and short signs, instead of the acute and grave accents, for denoting long and short vowels* ; The Burmese have a very bad ear for discriminating new sounds, and, unfortunately, their written character will not admit of their writing or pronouncing many foreign words. They can write ing only as ì, in, en or eng; ang as en or eng; ong as oun, and ƒ as ph, or bh. R, they seldom sound but as y, and they use a soft th for s. A final kg, or t, is often scarcely sounded, if not entirely mute, and I denote this by underlining such letter. The Burmese also change the sound of the initial letter of the second or third syllables of compound and derivative words, sounding b as p; k and k,h as g;t and t,h as d; and ts and tsh, as z. But in copying Chinese names from the Burmese, I have always given the legitimate sound of all such letters in the Roman character. The Chinese, according to DU HALDE, have an h, so strong, that it is entirely guttural, and the Burmese envoys apparently attempt to express this Chinese sound of h, by the double consonant sh or shy of their own alphabet. The Burmese do not sound the two letters which they have derived from the Devanagari ,, as cha and ch-ha, which the Siamese and Shans do, but as a very hard s, and its aspirate, pronounced with the tip of the tongue turned up against the roof of the mouth, and best expressed, in my opinion, by ts and tsh. The Chinese appear to have the same sounds, expressed by DU HALDE by the same Roman letters ts, and tsh; the first of which, he observes, is pronounced as the Italians pronounce the word gratia. For the Burmese heavy accent, marked something like our colon (8), and used to close a syllable, when ending in a vowel or nasal consonant, with a very heavy aspirated sound, I have used two points in the middle of a word, and the letter h, usually, at the close. Our prosodial short mark will best express the Burmese accent marked as a point under a letter, and intended to give a syllable a very short sound. All the Burmese envoys write the names of the Chinese

* Those accentual marks being best adapted for describing the peculiar high and grave tones, in which the same letters are sounded in the Siamese and Shan languages. [We have, however, for want of type been obliged to adhere to the accented system-the absence of an accent denoting the short and its presence the long sound.-ED.]

cities of the first second and third class in Burmese, as p,hu, or b,hu, t,sú, or tso, and shyen; but I have set down these names as they usually appear in our maps of China, as fu, chow and hien.

The following table will show the power of the vowels as used by me.

a, as in America.

á, as in father.

e, as in men.

ê, broad as ey in they, or ay in mayor, or a in name.

i, as in pin.

í, as in police, or ee in feet, and a.

ì, the same with a grave sound like e in me.

o, as in toto.

ó, the same sound prolonged, or as in lone, sown.

ô, broad as in groat.

ô', the same sound prolonged.

u, as in Italian, or like oo in foot.

ú, the same sound prolonged, or oo in mood.

The Siamese and Shan letter, which is sounded something like the French letters eu, I mark, as the Catholic Missionaries in Siam have long marked it, thus, u' and u''.

au,

ai, 1 Each of these vowels is pronounced as when separate, excepting that the sound of the second is a little more prolonged than that of the first vowel. Kaing, Ka-ung, Ko-un, mě-in, yu-on.

ou,

ei,

uo,

The letter ng is pronounced something like the same letters in the French word magnanimité, but as a final, it is usually sounded as a nasal n. When followed by the heavy accent I have usually expressed the g, in the Roman character.

The prosodial short sign is used to shorten the sound of some of the above vowels and diphthongs.

According to the above system I have nearly completed a comparative vocabulary of the Burmese, Siamese, Taung-thú and three Shan dialects.

Of the towns and places in China mentioned by the Burmese envoys in their journals and routes, I shall set down within brackets the proper names of such as I can trace in Du HALDE.

In the year 1787, intelligence was brought to Ava, that an embassy from the emperor of China had arrived at Theinní, and as the ceremony of the public audience given to these ambassadors corresponds in