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(27)

been shown as branching off from the Kachins. The line adopted in the map merely indicates roughly the probable origin of such of the elements composing the tribe as have been subsequently overlaid by Shan and Chin accretions. If we ever sought to establish a connection between the residents of Burma proper and the Nagas, it is through the Tamans that the line would probably be traced.

The Kachins

From the Tamans we may pass to the last of the Western Tibeto-Burmans with whom we are concerned, namely, the Kachins (Chingpaws, Theinbaws or Singphos). There are few hill tribes that have been so thoroughly described as the Kachins. In a bibliographical summary Dr. Wehrli gives 145 works of reference more or less utilized by him in the preparation of his scholarly monograph published at Leiden in 1904. A large number of these deal with the Singphos of Assam. The most important of the references to the Ching-paw proper of Burma are given in the bibliographical note printed on page 70. The manner of the Kachins coming into Burma is indicated in an earlier portion of this note. Mr. George is still our main authority on the Chingpaws, though the information he has compiled has been supplemented by a mass of useful data supplied by Captain Walker and Major Davies (whose Kachin Gazetteer furnished a large proportion of the matter relating to the Kachins embodied in the Upper Burma Gazetteer), Mr. W. A. Hertz, Dr. Wehrli and others. It is only necessary to remind the reader here that the Kachins are of much the same stock as the Nagas of Assam, known in the west of the Kachin country as Khangs, but that their wanderings have taken them into the midst of hill tribes of a totally different origin (the Marus, Lashis, etc.) to the east of the Irrawaddy with whom they have to a somewhat confusing extent amalgamated.