(45)
when the Shan States were practically a terra incognita it used to be said that there were three branches of Karens—the Sgaw and the Pwo, i.e., the "male" and the "female"[1] and the Bghai. Sgaw and Pwo are names still known among the Karens of the south, in fact practically all the Karens of Lower Burma are either Pwos or Sgaws. Bghai appears to have been a name given to a collection of communities in and on the borders of, Upper Burma whom we now know as Red Karens, White Karens, Padaungs, Bres, Loilong Karens, Sawngtungs, Banpas, Zayeins and the like. The Taungthus area Karen tribe, probablv an off-shoot of the Pwos. They are almost the only Lower Burma Karens who have preserved their tribal homogeneity. The Pwos and Sgaws are largely dwellers in the plains and foot-hills whom alien surroundings have moulded into some kind of uniformity, but they have never really coalesced. The Upper Burma Karens as a whole, partly on account of the rugged nature of their separating hills, partly as a result of their leaning towards endogamy show an ever-growing tendency to disintegrate into separate clans differing widely from each other in dress, dialect and custom. Prior to the annexation of Upper Burma the best known of these communities was that of the Red Karens, whose home is Karenni in the south of the Southern Shan States. Karenni was in 1901 excluded from the "enumerated" areas and only an estimate of its population was obtained. The exact total of Red Karens is thus not known, but it is probably somewhere in the neighbourhood of 30,000. The authorities quoted at page 98 deal with the Red Karens among others. The men wear short red trousers and sometimes a coat. It used to be customary for them to have a rising sun tattooed in red on the small of the back. The women are peculiar in not wearing the thindaing or smock that is ordinarily the distinctive feature
- ↑ "Burma." Sir George Scott, London, 1906, page 117.
