Excerpt from The Burmese Empire a Hundred Years Ago
During all the past Burma has been a land of attraction to men of adventure, a region of delight to those, like the old travellers, whose eyes sought after what is picturesque and strange. This far-off part of India was, indeed, even in the later centuries, hardly known to the European merchants who had seen the cities under the dominion of the Great Mogul, and the castles and church towers which at Ormus, Goa, and other points along the coasts, marked the rising power of the Portuguese. To the people of India Burma had been known as the Golden Land from remote time, and it may very likely be that this old region was the Golden Chersonese of Ptolemy. Here, on the shores where the rivers Salween and Sitang join the sea, a number of powerful colonies from India, planted 2000 years ago, were engaged in constant struggles with the native tribes. The ruins of Golanagar, the town of the Gaudas or people from Gour in Bengal, are still to be seen. Here, in the time of the Emperor Asoka (the third century B.C.), came the Buddhist missionaries Sona and Uttara, from the Council of Patna, to preach that faith which ultimately spread among the primitive peoples surrounding the colony. Albeit the Hindu communities fell in the end under the people of the land, they contrived for a time to establish powerful kingdoms, and left a strong impress of their own religions, science, and literature on the minds of these Talaings of Pegu. In that country also, as in India and Cambodia, the conflict between Buddhism and Brahmanism lasted long.
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