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20 BIRMAH.
mans, lived in a state of degradation, as the Pahlavas,
the Chinas" &c. These emigrant tribes are stated
to have rambled in different bodies to the north-east of
Bengal, and to have established separate principalities
in those countries.* It is a striking coincidence, that,
in the war of the Mahabharat, the tribe of warriors is
represented as having been annihilated. Vishnu,
is fabled to have
under the form of Ramaswara,
gained this triumph, on which occasion he founded a
new order of Brahmans. From this sanguinary revo-
lution dates the overthrow of Buddhism in India,
Buddha being thenceforth reduced to a subordinate
deity in the Hindoo pantheon. In the Mughs, the
Birmans, and the Panduans of Assam, it seems in the
highest degree probable, that we have the remains of
the annihilated Cshatriya class, the widely-dispersed
Palli of the fallen empires of Pandu and Magadha.
Thus much, then, appears tolerably certain; that
the Birmans were originally, as their name indicates,
a tribe of warriors f of the Pali . nation ; that they
fixed themselves in the first instance on the banks of
the Kien-duem, thence extending themselves eastward
over the country of Mien to the confines of
China, and descending the great Irrawaddy, possessed
* Sir W. Jones's Works, 4to. vol. i. p. 96, &c.
t In confirmation of this etymology, it may be mentioned, that
the Birmans are a nation of soldiers, every man in the empire being
liable to be called on for his military service. It is somewhat singular
that the word German, which has, in like manner, become
the geographical designation of a collection of separate states, has
a similar meaning : in the Teutonic, according to D'Anville, it
signifies a war-man or warrior. And the emperor of Germany was
formerly, like the Lord of the White Elephant, the military head
of a body of crowned feudatories. The Birmanic empire, too, is
likely to undergo a dismemberment not very dissimilar to that
which has transformed the circles of Germany into distinct kingdoms.