Chapter SHAMEEANA to SHAN of S by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

Burma, Siam, and China. They are the same people that have been known, after the Portuguese, and some of the early R. C. Missionaries, as Laos (q.v.); but we now give the name an extensive signification covering the whole race. The Siamese, who have been for centuries politically the most important branch of this race, call (or did call themselves—see De la Loubère, who is very accurate) T’ai-Noe or ‘Little T’ai,’ whilst they applied the term T’ai-Yai, or ‘Great T’ai,’ to their northern kindred or some part of these;¹ sometimes also calling the latter T’ai-güt, or the ‘Ta’i left behind.’ The T’ai or Shan are certainly the most numerous and widely spread race in Indo-China, and innumerable petty Shan States exist on the borders of Burma, Siam, and China, more or less dependent on, or tributary to, their powerful neighbours. They are found from the extreme north of the Irawadi Valley, in the vicinity of Assam, to the borders of Camboja; and in nearly all we find, to a degree unusual in the case of populations politically so segregated, a certain homogeneity in language, civilisation, and religion (Buddhist), which seems to point to their former union in considerable States.

One branch of the race entered and conquered Assam in the 13th century, and from the name by which they were known, Ahom or Aham, was derived, by the frequent exchange of aspirant and sibilant, the name, just used, of the province itself. The most extensive and central Shan State, which occupied a position between Ava and Yunnan, is known in the Shan traditions as Mung- Mau, and in Burma by the Buddhisto-classical name of Kausambi (from a famous city of that name in ancient India) corrupted by a usual process into Ko-Shan-pyi and interpreted to mean ‘Nine-Shan- States.’ Further south were those T’ai States which have usually been called Laos, and which formed several considerable kingdoms, going through many vicissitudes of power. Several of their capitals were visited and their ruins described by the late Francis Garnier, and the cities of these and many smaller States of the same race, all built on the same general quadrangular plan, are spread broadcast over that part of Indo-China which extends from Siam north of Yunnan.

Mr. Cushing, in the Introduction to his Shan Dictionary (Rangoon, 1881), divides the Shan family by dialectic indications into the Ahoms, whose language is now extinct, the Chinese Shan (occupying the central territory of what was Mau or Kausambi), the Shan (Proper, or Burmese Shan), Laos (or Siamese Shan), and Siamese.

The term Shan is borrowed from the Burmese, in whose peculiar orthography the name, though pronounced Shan, is written rham. We have not met with its use in English prior to the Mission of Col. Symes in 1795. It appears in the map illustrating his narrative, and once or twice in the narrative itself, and it was frequently used by his companion, F. Buchanan, whose papers were only published many years afterwards in various periodicals difficult to meet with. It was not until the Burmese war of 1824–1826, and the active investigation of our Eastern frontier which followed, that the name became popularly known in British India. The best notice of the Shans that we are acquainted with is a scarce pamphlet by Mr. Ney Elias, printed by the Foreign Dept. of Calcutta in 1876 (Introd. Sketch of the Hist. of the Shans, &c.). [The ethnology of the race is discussed by J. G. Scott, Upper Burma Gazetteer, i. pt. i. 187 seqq. Also see Prince Henri d’Orleans, Du Tonkin aux Indes, 1898; H. S. Hallett, Among the Shans, 1885, and A Thousand Miles on an Elephant, 1890.]

Though the name as we have taken it is a Burmese oral form, it seems to be essentially a genuine ethnic name for the race. It is applied in the form Sam by the Assamese, and the Kakhyens; the Siamese themselves have an obsolete Siem (written Sieyam) for themselves, and Sieng (Sieyang) for the Laos. The former word is evidently the Sien, which the Chinese used in the compound Sien-lo (for Siam,—see Marco Polo, 2nd ed. Bk. iii. ch. 7, note 3), and from which we got, probably through a Malay medium, our Siam (q.v.). The Burmese distinguish the Siamese Shans as Yudia (see JUDEA) S hans, a term perhaps sometimes including Siam itself. Symes gives this (through Arakanese corruption) as ‘Yoodra-Shaan,’ and he also (no doubt improperly) calls the Manipur people ‘Cassay Shaan’ (see CASSAY).

1795.—“These events did not deter Shanbuan from pursuing his favourite scheme of conquest to the westward. The fertile plains and populous towns of Munnipoora and the Cassay Shaan, attracted his ambition.”—Symes, p. 77.

„ “Zemee (see JANGOMAY), Sandapoora, and many districts of the Yoodra Shaan to the eastward, were tributary, and governed by Chobwas, who annually paid homage to the Birman king.”—Ibid. 102.

„ “Shaan, or Shan, is a very comprehensive term given to different nations, some independent, others the subjects of the greater states.”—Ibid. 274.

c. 1818.—“… They were assisted by many of the Zaboà (see CHOBWA) or petty princes of the Sciam, subject to the Burmese, who, wearied by the oppressions and exactions of the Burmese Mandarins and generals, had revolted, and