Since the annexation of Upper Burma, the practical British mind, finding the Yankeen-toung stone eminently suitable for road-making, and seeing that the roads in Mandalay, with its 188,000 people, were not, up to that time, made of anything better than black clay, has devoted this stone, intended for the pagoda, with which King Mindohn had purposed, so to speak, paving his own way to Nirvana, to the humbler, but more generally useful enterprise of mending the people’s ways about the town. CHAPTER XIII. _THE BURMANS._ Of the forty or more different races and tribes dwelling in Burma and on its frontiers, the Burmans are the leading race: first, in point of numbers, for they far exceed any of the others; also as regards position and advantages, for they naturally, as the leading race, have come to occupy all the best and most fertile soil, all the tracts of country lying between the great mountain ranges, the valleys of the Irrawaddy and the Chindwin rivers; and still more in respect of their prestige, for they have long been the ruling race of this region, and their language is far more widely diffused than any other. Most of the other indigenous races of Burma, as we have seen, are demon worshippers, uncivilised, without a written language, and with many and wide diversities from the Burmans. The Burmans, however, have an ancient civilisation, an elaborate religious system, a philosophy and a literature, and with regard to the arts, handicrafts and conveniences of ordinary life, are quite on a par with the Hindus. The present chapter applies to the Burman race. The Burmans are of Mongolian origin, in common with the Chinese, Siamese and other inhabitants of the Indo-Chinese peninsula. Their features plainly show this, especially the almond-shaped eye, the slightly flattened nose and the almost entire absence of hair on the faces of the men. They are lighter in complexion than the majority of the natives of India, and slightly browner than the Chinese. They show a marked contrast in many respects to the races of India, especially in the entire absence of caste. The king was the fountain of all position in the country. He made and unmade nobles at his sole will and pleasure, so that there is no hereditary rank or nobility. There is also no priestly caste like the Brahmins of India; the Buddhist monks are recruited from all classes, from the royal family downwards. Except the pagoda slaves, a class doomed to hereditary servitude in connection with the more important sacred shrines, and with a few other trifling exceptions, the Burmans as a people have all the avenues of native life and privilege open to them. This renders them less fastidious and more approachable than the people of India, and does away with the withering, blighting effects of caste. It renders them less conservative also, and makes them more ready to take up new ideas.