The Shan States extend eastward beyond the Salween to the Mèkong, which forms the boundary between them and French Indo-China for about 100 miles. The area of these States has been estimated at between 40,000 and 50,000 square miles and, roughly speaking, may be said to lie between the 19th and 24th parallels of latitude, and the 96th and 102nd of longtitude. Their shape is approximately that of a triangle, with its base on the plains of Burma and its apex on the Mèkong River (Fig. 1).
The Salween runs almost centrally through the British Shan States. Its mountainous banks have always formed a serious barrier; so that the branches of the Tai or Shan race on either side differ in name, dialect, written character and costume.
The History of the Shans or Tai.
The Tai or Shan race is the most widely spread of any in the Indo-Chinese peninsula, and it is also the most numerous. It extends beyond the peninsula for the Li, who inhabit the interior of Hainan, are almost entirely pure Tai, having similar tribal customs to the Shans and a written character very like theirs.
Siam is now the only independent Tai State in existence, and of the people occupying that district previously to A.D. 1350 there is no record.
The remaining Shan tribes inhabit the Northern and Southern Shan States, the Tai Mao or Chinese Shan and the Burmese Shan districts.
Burma is under the political control of the Government of India and is ruled by a lieutenant-governor. For administrative purposes the country is divided into two parts, Upper and Lower Burma, and the Shan States are treated as semi-dependencies under the Commissioner for Upper Burma. Although, therefore, no part of Burma can be said to be under native rule, the petty chieftains in the Shan States and in the Chin, Arakan and Kachin hills have considerable influence over their sometimes turbulent followers.
The Tai race formed the dominating power in Yünnan for many centuries, and their migration into Burma probably began 2,000 years ago. These first movements were most likely due to restlessness of character, but later, larger and more important migrations were due to the pressure of Chinese invasion and conquest.
Most Northern Shan chronicles begin with the legend that, in the middle of the sixth century, two brothers descended from heaven and took up their abode in the valley of the Shewli, or the Irrawaddy, or some other valley in which local pride desires to place the settlement; there they found a people which immediately accepted them as Kings.
A great wave of immigration certainly did descend from the mountains of Southern Yünnan into the Shewli, or Nam-Mao valley, in the sixth century, and this legend is the folks-myth fashion of stating an historical fact. At any rate all traditions and chronicles so far discovered assert that the Shewli valley and its neighbourhood was the first home of the Shans in Upper Burma. (The Shewli river is an important tributary of the Irrawaddy, flowing in from the Shan States and China.)
From this valley the Shans spread south-east over the present Shan States, north into the Hkamti region (Fig. 1) and west of the Irrawaddy into all the country lying between it and Assam, finally, some centuries later, 1229, conquering that country also.
About the end of the thirteenth and during the fourteenth centuries, wars with China and Burma were frequent and caused great loss. There was no central Shan power, the various principalities possessing semi-independence, and of these Mong Kawng (Mogaung) was the farthest from China, and seems to have been the most powerful.
