#Temperament.# _Somewhat sluggish, with little initiative, but great endurance; cunning rather than intelligent; generally thrifty and industrious, but mostly indolent in Siam and Burma; moral standard low, with slight sense of right and wrong._ #Speech.# _Mainly isolating and monosyllabic, due to phonetic decay; loss of formative elements compensated by tone; some (south Chinese, Annamese) highly tonic, but others (in Himalayas and North Burma) highly agglutinating and consequently toneless._ #Religion.# _Ancestry and spirit-worship, underlying various kinds of Buddhism; religious sentiment weak in Annam, strong in Tibet; thinly diffused in China._ #Culture.# _Ranges from sheer savagery (Indo-Chinese aborigines) to a low phase of civilisation; some mechanical arts (ceramics, metallurgy, weaving), and agriculture well developed; painting, sculpture, and architecture mostly in the barbaric stage; letters widespread, but true literature and science slightly developed; stagnation very general._ Main Divisions. #Bod-pa.# _Tibetan; Tangut; Horsok; Si-fan; Balti; Ladakhi; Gurkha; Bhotiya; Miri; Mishmi; Abor._ #Burmese.# _Naga; Kuki-Lushai; Chin; Kakhyen; Manipuri; Karen; Talaing; Arakanese; Burmese proper._ #Tai-Shan.# _Ahom; Khamti; Ngiou; Lao; Siamese._ #Giao-Shi.# _Annamese; Cochin-Chinese._ #Chinese.# _Chinese proper; Hakka; Hok-lo; Pun-ti._ * * * * * The Mongolian stock may be divided into two main branches[375]: the _Mongolo-Tatar_, of the western area, and the _Tibeto-Indo-Chinese_ of the eastern area, the latter extending into a secondary branch, _Oceanic Mongols_. These two, that is, the main and secondary branch, which jointly occupy the greater part of south-east Asia with most of Malaysia, Madagascar, the Philippines and Formosa, will form the subject of the present and following chapters. Allowing for encroachments and overlappings, especially in Manchuria and North Tibet, the northern "divide" towards the Mongolo-Tatar domain is roughly indicated by the Great Wall and the Kuen-lun range westwards to the Hindu-Kush, and towards the south-west by the Himalayas from the Hindu-Kush eastwards to Assam. The Continental section thus comprises the whole of China proper and Indo-China, together with a great part of Tibet with Little Tibet (Baltistan and Ladakh), and the Himalayan uplands including their southern slopes. This section is again separated from the Oceanic section by the Isthmus of Kra--the Malay Peninsula belonging ethnically to the insular Malay world. "I believe," writes Warington Smyth, "that the Malay never really extended further south than the Kra isthmus[376]."