ABSTRACT
Burma, being little more than the valleys of a river system shut off from the outer world by hills and sea, is fitted to be the home of a unified people. The Shans did not enter the plains till the thirteenth century and the Kachins were penetrating Upper Burma when the English annexed it in 1885. In Upper Burma Indian immigrants came overland through Assam; in Lower Burma they came by sea from Madras. The Chinese describe Burma in the ninth century as containing eighteen states and nine walled towns all of which were dependent on the Pyu. The Chinese make girdles of this horn and pay high prices among themselves, up to three or four thousand dinars and even more according to the figure’s beauty. The people of Nanchao, probably Shans, combined, in the middle of the eighth century, into a considerable state which defeated Chinese attempts at conquest until 1253.
