ruptedly on the dark mysteries which surround our beginning, our end, and every moment of our life. The earth is only a camping-ground, in which it does not repay the trouble to establish one's self firmly and comfortably. The rich man carries his gold and silver, the poor his last handful of rice, to the pagoda, and deposits it there at usurer's interest for his future home beyond. Let the black coolie of India talk all day and dream all night of his filthy pice; let the greasy Chetty money-lender gloat over his bloated money-bags; let the English merchant delight in all the refined luxuries wealth can bring him : the Burman is content if he has enough to eat and remain a free man, happy if he accumulates sufficient to build a work of merit, or give a free festival to his less fortunate brethren. Who shall say he is not wise?

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE LANGUAGE.

THE Burmese language is monosyllabic, and is, therefore, like all the other monosyllabic languages, forced into the tonic system on account of the limited number of combinations of which the consonants admit. The multitude of meanings which a slight difference of accentuation gives to an otherwise identical sound is the greatest difficulty which a stranger has to contend with in studying the language, and never fails to land the beginner in a most embarrassing maze of complications. The modulations of the voice which European nations employ only to express astonishment, disbelief, interrogation, and alarm, become in Burmese and other Indo-Chinese tongues a means for distinguishing between words of different meaning; and this peculiarity offers particular difficulties to the phlegmatic, monotonous-voiced Englishman. It does not simplify matters that Burmese is, of all these languages, the softest and most pliable, and has therefore received the title of the Italian of the far east. The varying cadence of the sounds produces to the ear the semblance of a chant, and all the people seem to speak in a kind of rhythm, so that as long as a man has ideas, it is not a very difficult matter to compose linga. But this only renders it more puzzling

to the Occidental, and accounts for the fact that very few Englishmen learn Burmese, and still fewer speak it well. Of the mercantile community not one in fifty has any knowledge of Burmese at all; and the civil officers, who have to pass examinations before they get promotion, are but poor hands in conversation. The chief reason of this is, of course, that the European is accustomed to learn by the eye, while the Burman learns almost entirely by ear, and the language is correspondingly affected. The semicivilised man has a gift for catching faint distinctions of sound; and a modulation hardly perceptible to the European is enough to give to the Burman an entirely new meaning to the word. Fortunately the grammar is of the easiest possible character, and there is an extensive written literature, so that recourse may be had to the system of learning by the eye; but this only produces book scholars, and without a knowledge of the pronunciation it is impossible to appreciate the smooth flow of the dramatic metres. Individual sentences, too, may be clear enough, and the immediate connection of subordinate ideas with the leading thought is a great help, but longer compositions can often only be understood by a careful collating of the whole meaning, when once reading aloud would make the whole idea perfectly evident to a Burman.

One of the principal features in the language is the arrangement of words in a sentence, which, as is the case also in Thibetan, is the exact reverse of the order followed in English. This is the more singular and significant to the philologist because the surrounding Shans, Talaings, and Karens observe practically the same sequence as in English. Another peculiarity is in the nouns, adjectives, and tenses of verbs, which are all formed by the addition of suffixes or affixes to the verbal root. Passive verbs are in very many cases transformed into the active form by the

aspiration of the initial consonant, and transitives from intransitives in the same way; as kya-thee, to fall; hkyathee, to throw down, or cause to fall; pyet-thee, to be ruined; hpyet-thee, to bring to ruin; loht-thee, to be free ; hloht-thee, to set free. The language is written from left to right, and there are no spaces between the words, and but very few peik, or stops, to mark separate sentences, except the peik-gyee which divides paragraphs, and consists of four short perpendicular lines arranged in couples. The written characters are, all but one or two, composed of circles, or segments of circles, having acquired that shape from the original Nagari, by the custom of writing with a pointed style on palm leaves. The alphabet is derived from the Magadhi or Pali (the latter word properly meaning a text and not a language), and was doubtless imported into Burma with the teachings of Buddhism. The monosyllabic character of the language has however considerably changed the sound of many of the letters. There are ten vowels and thirty-two consonants, every alternate vowel having the sound of that preceding it, but considerably longer and broader in tone. The consonants are divided into groups of gutturals, palatals, cerebrals, dentals, and labials, with five liquids, a sibilant pronounced th, and an aspirate. In each class there are five letters; the first the simple sound, the second its aspirate, the third the sound rough and hard, the fourth its aspirate, and the fifth the corresponding nasal. The letters of the alphabet have all names descriptive of their shapes, beginning with ka-gyee, and ka-gway, "great ka," and "curved ka." Some of the names are singular; "big-bellied ta," "elephant shackles hta," "bottom indented da," " steep pa," "hump-backed ba," "bridle za," and "supine ya." The vowel a is inherent in every consonant, and is pronounced in every case, except when it is "killed" by the "that" mark, when the consonant

itself is also killed, and the effect produced is a short, sharp, abrupt termination to the word, as if the letter were strangled in the attempt to pronounce it.

A peculiarity which Burmese shares with all the other cognate tongues is the use of help words in counting"nouns generic" as they have been called. One cannot say in Burmese, as in English," two dogs," "four spears," "three trees," and so forth. It is requisite to mention first the thing spoken of, second, the number or quantity of objects, and finally, the genus, or class to which they belong. Thus kway hni'-goung, dogs, two animals, or two dogs; hlan laysin, spears, four long, straight things; ohn-bin thohn-bin, cocoa-nut palms, three trees, and so forth. The cardinal is not placed in immediate juxtaposition with the noun, but has the guiding word in between. There are a vast number of these generic nouns, and they come quite naturally to a Burman. He speaks of boxes and pots as so many "round things"; books and letters as "writings"; mats, as "flat things"; horses and carts as "things to be ridden on "; coats and waist cloths as " things to be worn"; and so forth in infinite variety. Even the numeral auxiliaries applied to human beings vary. The Buddha, as well as superior beings and pagodas, is spoken of as ta-zoo; kings, members of the Sacred Order, and persons in power generally are referred to as ta-ba; respectable people to whom it is wished to be polite are numbered as ta-00 (so many "foreheads "); and in ordinary conversation, mankind generally are denominated ta-youk. Foreigners-regarded as aliens and indeed not entitled to rank as human beings at all, since they have never worn the yellow robe-receive but scant reverence from the tongues of the older people, and all Upper Burmans, the same auxiliary being applied to them as would be used in speaking of a buffalo, or a pig. Thus you would say kalah hni'-goung, foreigners, two

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X