Burma: Census of India 1901 Vol. I - Khamkoo

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REPORT ON THE CENSUS OF BURMA. .117
of the Chingpaw or Kachins. It is strongly represented south of this area also,
but it is only above the parallel of latitude indicated that it forms the bulk of the
population. .Fifty years ago, we are told, the southern limit of the Kachins was
a matter of two hundred miles further north than it is now. Since then the race
has been drifting steadily southward, a vast aggregate of small independent
clans united by no common Government, but all obeying a common impulse to
move outwards from their original seats along the line of least resistance. Mr.
Cholmeley, Deputy Commissioner of Bhamo, referring to the golden days of the
Shan dominion, " when the towns, whose moats and walls one comes upon mouldering
in the dense forests, each held its petty Sawbwa and its busy populace," writes
as follows of the ever-encroaching Chingpaw :
" At that time the warlike and destructive Kachin had not yet appeared on the scene,
his advent only dating back some 230 years, and the peaceful Palaung still_occupied the hills
from which the gradual southward flow of the Kachin presently drove him forth. When we
arrived on the scene the Palaung was making a last determined stand in the uplands in the
Kodaungoi Mong Mit, but the crest-of the wave of Kachin immigration was rising very high
behind the Shweli, and in no long time M6ng Mit and the Ruby Mines must have fallen
before his advance. As it is, the movement has been checked, and the result is that the
southern part of the hilly portion of the district is badly congested."
Mr. Stirling in the Northern Shan States Census Report refers in the following
words to the trend of the wanderings of the Chingpaw :
"The southward movement of the Kachin tribes continues. Here and there they have
been checked, but on the whole they spread a little farther each year. Kachin villages
are found in South Hsenwi, in Tawngpeng and in the Mong Long sub-State of Hsipaw.
They have settled on the fringe of the Wa country and in Mang Lon, and have begun to
get a footing in Kengtung. * *
. It is a serious matter for the Shan population. The
more far-sighted recognize it as such and all keenly resent it. But the Shans have neither'
the numbers nor the fighting qualities to check the tide."
The most recent philological enquiries show that it is probable that the progenitors
of the Kachins were the Indo-Chinese race who, before the beginnings of
history, but after the Mon-Annam wave had covered Indo-China, forsook their
home in Western China to pour over the region where Tibet, Assam, Burma and
China converge, and that the Chingpaw were the residue left round the headwaters
of the Irrawaddy and the Chindwin after those branches which were destined to
become the Tibetans, the Nagas, the Burmans and the Kuki Chins had filtered
away westwards and southwards. In these remote uplands they appear to have
been content to remain till a comparatively recent date, when pressure from above,
over-population or some obscure migratory instinct began to drive them slowly but
surely southwards. In the north of the province they have been brought up by
the opposing front of British domination, and the stream, instead of flowing down
the hill ranges of Burma, has been diverted eastwards, and, skirting the edge of
the province, shows signs of emptying itself down the other great waterways of
Indo-China. Whatever the ultimate trend of their wanderings may be, the Kachins
are now with us, on this side of, as well as upon and beyond, our marches, and
will long be a force to be reckoned with by our frontier administrators, for they are a
pugnacious, vindictive, stiff-necked generation, and, when beyond our administrative
border, are still apt to be turbulent and unreasonable. Mr. George's monograph
on the Kachins, published as an appendix to the 1891 Census Report, is still
our main source of information regarding the customs and practices of this people.
It forms a substantial portion of the article on the Kachin Hills and the Chingpaw
in the Upper Burma Gazetteer. There were 64,405 Kachins enumerated at the
Census. Had the inhabitants of the estimated areas of Upper Burma been shown
on the schedules, this total would probably have been more than doubled.
The divisions of the Chingpaw are numerous and varied, and must be kept
apart if confusion is to be avoided. The classification of the race into Khakhus
and Chingpaws is, roughly speaking, geographical. The Khakhus are the up-river
men, the Chingpaw the Southerners. There is a further political division into
Kamsa, or chief-ruled, and Kumlao, or democratic Kachins, but neither the democrats
nor their rfwwa-ruled congeners are peculiar to either of the geographical
areas. The most obvious Kachin units are the clan and the tribe. Of tribes there
are five—the Marips, the Lahtawngs, the Lepais,the 'Nkhums and the "Marans
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