The Modern Traveller [by J Conder]

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: logicians, and take delight in investigating new subjects. Their books are numerous, some of them written in the most flowing, beautiful style; and much ingenuity is manifested in the construction of their stories. Dr. Buchanan asserts that they possess numerous historical works relating to the different...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: logicians, and take delight in investigating new subjects. Their books are numerous, some of them written in the most flowing, beautiful style; and much ingenuity is manifested in the construction of their stories. Dr. Buchanan asserts that they possess numerous historical works relating to the different dynasties of their princes, the most celebrated of which is the Maha-rajah.waynjee already referred to. They have also translated histories of the Chinese and Siamese, and of the kingdoms of Kathee, Koshan-pyee, Pegu, Sammay, and Layn-zayn. On medicine, the Birmans have several books: they divide diseases into ninety- sis genera. Mummy is a favourite article in their pharmacopoeia. They are acquainted with the use of mercury, but their remedies are mostly from the vegetable kingdom, and chiefly of the aromatic kind. Their practice is almost entirely empirical, and in spite of every mode of indirect influence and preten. sion, the medical class is in low estimation.-f- The Birman language appears originally to have been purely monosyllabic, but it has borrowed largely from the Pali, and has formed many polysyllables from its monosyllabic roots, according to the analogies of that Judson's Account of the American Baptist Mission to the Birman Empire, p. 4. t One curious custom of the Birman physicians may be men. tioned here. If a young woman is dangerously ill, the doctor and her parents frequently enter into an agreement, the doctor undertaking to cure her. If she lives, the doctor takes her as his property; but if she dies, he pays her value to the parents: for, in the Birman dominions, no parent parts with his daughter, whether to be a wife or a concubine, without a valuable consideration. I do not know, adds Dr. Buchanan, if the doctor may sell the girl again, o...