This is navigable for native boats throughout the year to the point where it sinks underground in Karen-ni. The chief cultivation is rice, with about two acres of dry or hill rice to one of wet bottom. The hill fields are left fallow for ten years after two years’ cultivation. The chief, the Sawbwa Hkun Yōn, held charge through the reigns of four Burmese kings, and submitted early in 1887 on the first arrival of British troops. He abdicated in favour of his son in 1890, and died a few years later.
MŌNG PAN (the Burmese Maingpan), a state in the eastern
division of the southern Shan States, lying approximately
between 19° 45′ and 20° 25′ N. and between 98° and 99° E.,
with an area of 2299 sq. m., and a population (1901) of 16,629.
The main state lies, except for a few insignificant circles, entirely
west of the Salween, but beyond that river are the four subfeudatory
states of Mōng Tun, Mōng Hang, Mōng Kyawt and
Mōng Hta. The only considerable area of flat land is round the
capital, which lies in a large and fertile plain, marking roughly
the centre of the state. From this plain rise on all sides low
hills covered with scrub jungle, sloping up to ranges of about
5000 ft. on nearly every side. Rice is the only crop, irrigated
where possible; elsewhere dry cultivation prevails. The state
has valuable teak forests on both sides of the Salween, which
cover a considerable but undetermined area. The general
altitude of the valleys is about 2000 ft. The capital is small,
and has only about 200 houses. The chief is of Sawbwa rank.
MONGREL (earliest form mengrel, probably from the root meng-, or mong-, to mix, cf. mingle, among), a dog that is the progeny of two different breeds, or one whose breed it is impossible to tell on account of the various crossings. In the
case of other animals or plants it is the result of a fertile cross between two varieties of the same species, and so to be distinguished
from a “hybrid,” the result of a fertile cross between two distinct species (see Hybridism).
MONIER-WILLIAMS, SIR MONIER (1819–1899), British
orientalist, son of Colonel Monier-Williams, surveyor-general in
the Bombay presidency, was born at Bombay on the 12th of
November 1819. He matriculated at Oxford from Balliol
College in 1837, but left the university on receiving in 1839 a
nomination for the East India Company’s civil service, and
was completing his course of training at Haileybury when the
entreaties of his mother, who had lost a son in India, prevailed
upon him to relinquish his nomination and return to Oxford.
As Balliol was full, he entered University College and, devoting
himself to the study of Sanskrit, he gained the Boden scholarship
in 1843. After taking his degree he was appointed professor
of Sanskrit, Persian and Hindustani at Haileybury, where he
remained until the abolition of the college upon the transfer of
the government of India from the Company to the Crown. He
taught oriental languages at Cheltenham for ten years, and in
1860 was elected Boden professor of Sanskrit at Oxford after a
contest with Professor Max Müller (q.v.), which attracted great
public interest and severe criticism, the motive of the nonresident
voters, whose suffrage’s turned the scale, being notoriously
not so much to put Monier-Williams in as to keep Max Müller
out. Although, however, far inferior to his rival in versatility
and literary talent, Monier-Williams was in no way inferior in the
special field of Sanskrit, and did himself and his professorship
much honour by a succession of excellent works, among which
may especially be named his Sanskrit-English and English-Sanskrit
dictionaries; his Indian Wisdom (1875), an anthology
from Sanskrit literature; and his translation of Sakuntala (1853).
In his later years he was especially attracted by the subject of
the native religions of India, and Wrote popular works on Brahmanism,
Buddhism and Hinduism. His principal undertaking,
however, was the foundation of the Indian Institute at Oxford,
which owes its existence entirely to him. He brought the project
before the university in May 1875, and in that year and the
following, and again in 1883, visited India to solicit the moral
and financial support of the native princes and other leading men.
Lord Brassey came to his aid with a donation of £9000, and in
November 1880 the institute was adopted by the university,
but the purchase of a site and the erection of a building were left
to the professor. Upwards of £30,000 was eventually collected;
the prince of Wales, in memory of his visit to India, laid the
foundation stone in May 1883; and the edifice, erected in three
instalments, was finally completed in 1896. Ere this, failing
health had compelled Monier-Williams to withdraw from the
active duties of his professorship, which were discharged by the
deputy-professor, Dr A. Macdonell, who afterwards succeeded
him. He continued, nevertheless, to work upon Sanskrit
philology until his death at Cannes on the 11th of April 1899.
He had been knighted in 1886, and was made K.C.I.E. in 1889,
when he adopted his Christian name of Monier as an additional
surname.
MONISM (from Gr. μόνος, alone), the philosophic view of the world which holds that there is but one form of reality, whether that be material or spiritual. The aim of knowledge is explanation, and the dualism or pluralism which acquiesces in recognizing two or more wholly disparate forms of reality has in so far renounced explanation (see Dualism). To this extent monism is justified; but it becomes mischievous if it prompts us to ignore important differences in facts as they present themselves to our intelligence. All forms of monism from Plotinus downwards tend to ignore personal individuality and volition, and merge all finite existence in the featureless unity of the Absolute; this, indeed, is what inspires the passion of the protest against
monism. Turning to the historical forms of the theory we may class
Plotinus as a mystical monist: he attains to the One which is the
All by an act of mystic union raising him above the phenomenal
sphere. Spinoza is a materialistic monist with an inconsistent
touch of mysticism and a certain concession, more apparent than
real, to the spiritual side of experience. Hegel’s is an intellectualist
monism, explaining matter, sensation, personal individuality and
will as forms of thought. The doctrine of Schopenhauer and
von Hartmann is a monism of cosmic will which submerges the
individual no less completely than Hegelianism, though in a
different manner. Haeckel’s monism is mere materialism
dignified by a higher title. Those who maintain that all these
forms of synthesis are hasty and superficial stand by the conviction
that the right philosophic attitude is to accept provisionally
the main distinctions of common sense, above all the distinction
of personal and impersonal; but to press forward to the underlying
unity so far as experience and reflection justify.
See Absolute; Dualism; Metaphysics; Materialism; Idealism.
MONITION, or Admonition (Lat. monere, to admonish), in
English ecclesiastical law, an order requiring or admonishing the
person complained of to do something specified in the monition,
or appear and show cause to the contrary, “under pain of the
law and penalty thereof.” It is the lightest form of ecclesiastical
censure, whether to clergymen or laymen, but disobedience to it,
after it has been duly and regularly served, entails the penalties
of contempt of court. Monitions of a disciplinary character
are either for the purpose of enforcing residence on a benefice,
or in connexion with suits to restrain ritual alleged to be unlawful.
MONITOR (from Lat. monere, to warn, advise), an advisor or counsellor, one who warns another person as to his course of action, also used of things that are more or less personified, as conscience. The word is chiefly applied to senior pupils (also known as “prefects”) in some of the great secondary schools in England; in America to senior students in certain colleges to whom special duties are assigned, particularly that of keeping order; and also to pupil teachers in English elementary schools. It is used in a general way of anything that gives warning, and
in this sense is applied to a lizard of the family Monitoridae, or
Varanidae, found in Africa and Australia, which is supposed to
give warning of the approach of crocodiles. The name of monitor
was also given to a particular kind of ironclad invented for
the American navy by Captain John Ericsson (q.v.) in 1862, which had a very low freeboard and revolving gun-turrets. The letter of Ericsson to the assistant secretary of the navy, of the 20th of January 1862 (quoted in the Century Dictionary),
gives the inventor’s reason for the name. “The impregnable
and aggressive character of this structure will admonish the
leaders of the Southern Rebellion that the batteries on the banks
