Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia Volume 4 (Paperback)

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: 68 THE WEST IHMAI AIC OR TIBETAN TRIBE3 07 A3AM,, BURMA AND PEQU. By 3. R. I.ogan. I Havb already described the general features of the physical geography of South Eastern Asia, and marked out the different provinces into which it is divided by nature, and which have greatly influenced the migrations and the distribution of its tribes. I now propose to give some brief notices of the tribes of the southern Oceanic division; beginning with those of the Irawadi. During the earlier ages of the occupation of N. E. India and Ultraindia by the Tibetan race there was no break in the continuity of its tfibes. But in the historical period the people of Bengal have spread into the valley of Asam, and the predominant inhabitants have long been alien in language, in civilisation and to a considerable degree in race, from the older tribes of 'its mountainous borders. Those on the south being thus cut off from their sister tribes on the north, while they have continued to influence each other, may be noticed separately in the first instance. The connected territory of Ultraindia, over which they and the allied East Himalaic or Mon-Anam tribes are scattered, has as its northern boundary the left side of the valley of the Brahmaputra as far as the head of Asam, and a line drawn thence, eastward along the range in which the Irawadi has its sources and across the converging meridional chains beyond to the most eastern, the Mangli, which separates the Kiang from the Me-kong. Its eastern land boundary is probably the southern continuation of this chain, until the valley of the Kiang turns east, when the eastern water shed of the Sang-koi or river of Tong-kin becomes the boundary to the Gulf of Tong-kin. The most northerly part of its western margin is also the Brahmaputra, or rather t...