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108 BIRMAH.
That era, therefore, if connected with these events,
must have been determined by some subsequent political
or ecclesiastical change in one of the two countries.
However this may have been, the supremacy
of the Chinese Boa (Ou-dee-Boa) or emperor, over
the Indo-Chinese kingdoms, territories too distant to
have been retained by the mere tie of conquest, appears
to have been universally acknowledged, till Minderajeepraw,
after the conquest of Arracan, first ventured to
assert his equal dignity and independence by assum-
ing the title of Boa of Birmah.
Thus, then, we seem to have a variety of concurring
evidence to prove that Buddhism had its origin in
India, where it was identified with a dynasty of mo-
narchs, and with a race whose vernacular dialect has become
the sacred language as well of Ceylon as of all the
other Indo-Chinese nations. The origin of the Bir-
raans and Arracanese, as well perhaps of the Singh-
alese, as a people, seems clearly referrible to emigra-
tions of the Khetri caste from Magadha. The aboriginal
population of Birmah was doubtless Tatar, and consisted
of rude tribes similar to the Karayns. The
Birmans themselves had probably well nigh lost all
remembrance of their sacred institutes, having become
a mixed people, when a learned brahman was sent to
Ceylon to copy the sacred writings. In that island,
the Buddhic religion appears to have been preserved
in its greatest purity, probably as having been the
asylum of the fugitive priesthood ; and from thence it
was communicated to Japan and China. In the
mean time, it appears to have spread northward over
Bootan and Tibet, and the shadowy representative of
the Buddhic sovereigns found refuge in China, whose
monarch claims to be considered as the khalif of Bud-
dhism. The emigrations of Chinese fugitives, conse-