Burma: Census of India 1901 Vol. I - Khamkoo

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REPORT d.N THE CENSUS OF BURMA. 1 33
Kachjn are a singular mixture of exogamy and endogamy. Another significant
point is that among the Szis certain specified families whom we will call A's may
take females from other families who may be denominated B's, but the B's may
not take their wives from among the A's and are obliged to go elsewhere to other
specified families for their consorts. "Mr. George describes this as an arrangement
" whereby one family is, so to speak, general parent-in-lav: to another family, and
gives females only to the members of the latter family." The custom is interesting
as being the nearest, in fact the only near, approach to hypergamy I have been
able to discover in Burma. I think we may take it that the hill dwellers on our
Western and Northern borders are fully imbued with the principles (whatever they
may be) that are reflected in the practice of exogamy. Turning from the north
and west to the east of the Province one finds that among the hill tribes such
restrictions as are set on marriage are not exogamous, as among the Chins and
Kachins, but, on the contrary, endogamous, and, as a matter of fact, endogamous
to a very marked degree. At one time many of the Palaungs were sticklers for
endogamy. In the past the members of the Pato Ru clan of this race did not'
look for spouses outside their clan. Now, however, there are no prohibitions in
regard to matrimonial selections. It is further south among the Karens and their
fellow dwellers amid the Eastern hills that endogamy is carried to its most absurd
extremes. The Padaungs are quoted in the Upper Burma Gazetteer as almost the
only exception to the rule ordinarily obtaining among the Karens that compels a
man to marry one of his own blood. Among the Sawngtiing Karens " marriages
are only permitted between near relations such as cousins," and only certain villages
may intermarry with certain villages. The same is the case among the
Banyang Karens. Here their abnormal matrimonial customs have reduced the
race to the inhabitants of a single village of six houses, whose residents custom
compels to contract alliances—apparently with extreme unwillingness,—solely
among themselves. We shall have to learn a great deal more about the people of
Karenni before it will be possible to attempt to account for their remarkable
usages in connection with marriage.
200. The question of endogamy naturally leads to that of totemism. Sir
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George Scott says in the Upper Burma Gazetteer
"All the Indo-Chinese races have a predilection for
totemistic birth stories. Some claim to be sprung from eggs, some from dogs, some
from reptiles." The Was, like a tribe in North-West America cited by Mr. Andrew
Custom and Mythj state that their primaeval ancestors were tadpoles.
Lang in his
The Palaungs trace their beginnings back to a Naga princess who laid three eggs,
out of the first of which their early ancestor was hatched. An egg-laying Naga
princess figures in the early legendary history of the Mons or Talaings and points
to an affinity between the Palaungs and the Talaings which the most recent
linguistic research has done much to- strengthen. The totemisp suggested by
the marriage customs of the Kachins has been adverted to in the preceding
paragraph. Up to the present time all attempts to ascertain the origin of the
Kachin family names have failed. The totem of the Kachins should, if anything,
be a pumpkin, for legend has it that the whole race is descended from a being who
was made out of a pumpkin. So far as I can discover, however, their belief in this
singular genesis does not deter Kachins from eating the vegetable to which they
owe their origin. They do not even appear to be precluded from gathering. it under
certain circumstances or at a particular period of the year, as is the case with
some of the western Australian tribes. The Southern Chins on the other hand
are forbidden to kill or eat- the king-crow which hatched " the original Chin egg."
The bird is regarded in the light of a parent, but, as it is not used as a crest by
the Chins, Mr. Houghton is of opinion that it cannot be looked upon as, properly
speaking, a totem. The rising sun of the Red Karens is something of the nature
of a totemistic badge. Mr. Smeaton refers to it as follows in his Loyal Karens
of Burma
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" Every Red Karen has a rising sun—the crest of his nobility—tattooed on his back. In
challenging to combat he does not slap his left folded arm with his right palm, as the rest
of the Karens and the Burmans do, but, coiling his right arm round his left side, strikes
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