Burma: Census of India 1901 Vol. I - Khamkoo

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— 54 REPORT ON THE CENSUS OF BURMA. Remarriage after divorce is extremely common in Burma, and divorce is, in the eyes of the people, so far less serious a step than in Europe that there is every reason for believing that divorced persons who had a second time ventured on matrimony practically always returned themselves as married and not as divorced when questioned by the enumerator, so that the totals of widowed shown in the tables probably represents very little over and above the population who have actually been bereft by death of their wives or husbands. 79. Volumes might be written about marriage among the inhabitants of Burma. It must suffice here to touch upon one single Marriage in Burma. point whichj jn view of certajn questions that have been put to Provincial Superintendents of Census by the Census Commissioner for India, seems to need to be emphasized. That is the absolutely secular nature of the marriage ceremony. Religion plays as poor a part in it as does the tender passion in the unions of the great bulk of the inhabitants of India proper ; no interval separates the ceremony from the date on which conjugal relations commence, so that when we are asked in Burma to ascertain and report what seasons are deemed propitious for marriages, by what considerations these seasons are determined in each case, and what periods are regarded as favourable for the commencement of married life, our reply must be that the Burman no more selects a special period for marrying or for consummating his marriage than he does for drafting a lease or filing a law-suit. When the promptings to matrimony come he gets married, and is done with it. The questions alluded to possess, no doubt, considerable interest if we are to believe that the place in the calendar assigned to the marriage season affects the sex of the children born into a given community. It is unfortunate that they admit of no reply in Burma. 80. Below are given, side by side, the proportions borne by the representativeS ° f the hree civil Conditions in each t sex to the Percentage of unmarried, married and widowed to total popu- total population whose ages were recorded at the last latl0n - two enumerations Male, unmarried Female, unmarried Male, married Female, married Male, widowed Female, widowed Total 1891
REPORT ON THE CENSUS OF BURMA. 55 sex at the last two enumerations. The increase, in the case of both sexes,' in the number of married children of between ten and fifteen years of age is indicative merely of the increase in the total of Indian immigrants in the province; For the population of between 15 and 25, that is to say, among those persons who have arrived at an age at which the majority of first marriages have been contracted in Burma, there is a marked falling off among the married men and only a slight increase among the married women. By the time the 25—40 age-period has been reached the married males have risen again in number. Here we may claim to see the operation of prudential motives, which tend to defer the marriage day to a more and ever more mature age, but the very appreciable decrease among the widowers in this age-period shows also that a portion of the difference between the proportions per 10,000 for the two enumerations must be put down to re-marriages. Exactly the same may be said regarding the female figures covering this space of 15 years. In the last age-period (40 and over) both widows and widowers show a proportionate falling off during the decade that is past, but the diminution is not counterbalanced by any increase among the married, for wives and husbands too have declining figures to exhibit, while the unmarried totals are practically double what they were at the previous census. For this ageperiod we must, therefore, presume that re-marriage has not been able to affect the totals, and may look for a possible cause of such diminutions as the figures show in a rather higher rate of mortality among those who have entered wedlock than among those who have not. In India an increase in the re-marriage of widows, such as seems to be disclosed by the above figures, would be a symptom of considerable significance. In Burma no special interest can be held to attach to the data. What is more to the point in this province is the fact, that the age of marriage appears to have risen to a slight extent. On the whole, so far as they go, the percentages may be regarded as satisfactory. 82. Any table showing the variation of the strength of the three civil conditions from locality to locality is in Burma of interest D t i 3 C Vil condition mainly in so far for Na tiral Division i as that variation is regulated by the presence of non-indigenous immigrants whose social economy differs from that of the people of the country. Subsidiary Table No. 1VD printed at the end of this chapter gives the distribution by civil condition of 19,000 of each sex for the natural divisions of the province ; and though some of its columns tell us nothing, others are a clear though indirect indication of the spread of the Indian immigrant pop^ation over the land. In Rangoon city, for instance, the abnormally high proportion of married among children of between ten and fifteen years of age (53 in every 10,000 for males and 21 for females) bears indubitable testimony to the presence of foreigners among whose institutions infant marriage plays a prominent part. Similarly, the higher ratio of males in the prime of life in Lower than in Upper Burma speaks to the immigration of able-bodied workers from Madras and Upper Burma into the Southern areas of the province. 83. Imperial Table No. VII, giving, as it does, data for each of the principal religions of the province, will furnish the reader with a fairly adequate conception of the civil condition of the indigenous population on the one hand and of the foreign immigrants on the other. Religion is, however, after all, not altogether a reliable test of nationality in Burma, and perhaps the most profitable statistics regarding marriage among the people with whom we are most intimately concerned, namely,, the natives of the soil, are to be gathered from the columns of Imperial Table XIV, which gives the civil condition by age for 50,000 of each sex for the principal indigenous races of Burma, the 011 by age fr ind "" Burmese enius race!'" > the Shans the chins > > the Karens and the Kachins. The main object of the table, as originally prescribed, was to throw light on the prevalence of infant marriage, the extent the prohibition of widow re-marriage and the prevalence of female infanticide. None of these are questions that can be regarded as in any way burning in Burma, and at first sight the utility of the figures in this province seemed to me problematic. The Census Commissioner, however, pointed out that it was a pity to miss this opportunity of obtaining in Burma data by which to measure the effect of the arbitrary matrimonial systems which prevail in India, and accordingly the table was of
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CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY JOHN M.
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The original of this book is in the
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CENSUS OF INDIA, 1901 VOLUME X//.)
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TABLE OF CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. Th
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CONTENTS. HI- Para. The Chin langua
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REPORT ON THE CENSUS OF BURMA. Take
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REPORT ON THE CENSUS OF BURMA. furr
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REPORT ON THE CENSUS OF BURMA. 5 In
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REPORT ON THE CENSUS OF BURJlA. f T
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— REPORT ON THECENSUS OF BURMA. n
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i i i ' I I i LOWER BURMA SHOWING S
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LOWER BURMA SHOWING DISTRIBUTION OF
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. REPORT ON THE CENSUS OF BURMA. J
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* — — — REPORT ON THE CENSUS
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arid - policy REPORT ON THE CENSUS
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— APPENDIX A. Extracts from the R
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— . APPENDICES. v {e) The final t
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' APPENDICES. Y 11 The checking of
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— APPENDICES. XI not the slightes
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APPENDICES. :*Y {k) The following f
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APPENDICES. XIX (a) Preparation of
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— APPENDICES. XXI ***** From the
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APPENDICES. Scxv arranged that all
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— APPENDICES. ?fXWJl' (/)• The
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* APPENDICES. XXIX (b) House-number
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— APPENDICES. XXXI (c) The agency
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— APPENDICES. XXX111 and the prel
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— APPENDICES. XXXIX excellent arr
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— APPENDICES. xii tor, Charge Sup
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***** APPENDICES. xliii The totals
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APPENDICES. xh (I) Emigration and i
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APPENDICES. xlix With some exceptio
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— APPENDICES. " In the Kodaung, p
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APPENDICES. llil ***** From Captain
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APPENDICES. Iv district to supervis
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— ; APPENDICES. Ivh Agency employ
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— Maung — Maung | Maung — APP
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— APPENDICES. lxi (d) The prelimi
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— APPENDICES. lxiii 2. (a) Non-sy
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A fPENDICfeS. hn the best places to
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— APPENDICES. lxvii States reache
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APPENDICES lxix the town completed.
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— APPENDICES. Ixxi 3. The actual
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APPENDICES. lxxiii I found the popu
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APPENDICES. lXXV From E. O. Fowler,
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— APPENDICES. Ixxvii The statemen
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APPENDICES. Appendix A—continued.
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APPENDICES. lxxxi Appendix A.—con
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APPENDICES. Ixxxiil Appendix C. Exp
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Burma: Census of India 1901 Vol. I - Khamkoo

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