C.—THE SIAMESE-CHINESE.
Shan Tribes: Maingthas, Dayes
For reasons given earlier the Shans proper have not been dealt with specifically in this note. The manner of their coming into the country has been indicated at page 17. All that need be said about them here is that in 1901 the Shans proper totalled 787,087, the Lem Shans 2,134, the Lüs and the Hküns of Kèngtung 16,227 and 41,470, and the Lao Shans 1,047; that they are the preponderating nationality in the Shan States and form nearly half the population of the plains of Upper Burma north of the 23rd parallel of latitude and that an outlying colony of them exists at Hkamti on the Malikha far beyond our administrative border in the north. Reference may here, however, be made to what for want of a better term we may call the Shan tribes of Burma. Several of the communities already referred to when dealing with the Tibeto-Burmans, e.g, the Danus and the Kadus, have Shan in their composition. The Hpons, adverted to on an earlier page, appear at first sight to be of Shan origin, but, as has been pointed out, it is probable that the Shan element in them is of comparatively recent introduction and that originally they were Tibeto-Burmans. Hitherto the Maingthas of the Ruby Mines and the Northern Shan States have been placed in the same dubious category as the Hpons. Their language has been described as a curious mixture into the composition of which both Burmese and Shan enter (page 390, Upper Burma Gazetteer^ Part I, Volume I). It is clear, however, that the name "Maingtha" is a Burmese rendering of Monghsa and indicates that the Maingthas came from the Chinese Shan States of Ho Hsa and La Hsa, and the more recent view is that there is a far
