၁၈၅၅ အမရပူရၿမဳိ႕ မြတ္စ္လင္မ်ားရဲ႕ လူေန႔မူ႕ တစိတ္တေဒသ မွတ္တမ္း

၁၈၅၅ မနၱေလးသြား အဂၤလိပ္သံအဖြဲ႕မွာ မွတ္တမ္းတင္ခဲ႔တဲ႔ အမရပူရမွ ဗလီဝတ္ေက်ာင္းေတာ္ရယ္(သံအဖြဲ႕ရဲ႕ဓာတ္ပုံ မွတ္တမ္းမွာေတာ႔ အမရပူရ တ႐ုတ္တန္းလမ္းမွာတည္ရွိသည္)၊ ၿမန္မာဘုရင္မ်ားလက္ထက္ မြတ္စ္လင္မ်ားရဲ႕ လူေန႔မူ႕ တစိတ္တေဒသကုိ မွတ္တမ္းတင္သြားတာ အင္မတန္မွစိတ္ဝင္းစားဖြယ္ရာေကာင္းပါတယ္။ အဲ႔ဒီအခ်ိန္မင္းတုန္းမင္းတရားႀကီးလက္ထက္ အမရပူရတစ္ၿမဳိ႕ထဲမွာ မြတ္စ္လင္လူဦးေရ ၁၀၀၀၀ ကေန ၂၀၀၀၀ ဝန္းက်င္႐ွိၿပီး ဗလီဝတ္ေက်ာင္းေတာ္ ၄၀ကေန၁၂၀အထိရွိမယ္လုိ႔ ထင္ရေၾကာင္း မွတ္တမ္းတင္သြားပါတယ္။ သံအရာ႐ွိကေတာ႔ ဗလီဝတ္ေက်ာင္းေတာ္ ၄၀ ရွိတာပုိမွန္မယ္လုိ႕ ေရးထားတာေတြ႕မိေတာ႔ ၿမန္မာၿပည္ဟာ ၿမန္မာဘုရင္မ်ားလက္ထက္ကတည္းလြတ္လပ္မူ႕အၿပည္႔ေပးထားတာေတြ႕ရေတာ႔ ပုိၿပီးဂုဏ္ယူစရာပါ။

  "A narrative of the mission sent by the governor-general of India to the court of Ava in 1855, with notices of the country, government, and people"
မူ႐င္း သံအဖြဲ႕ရဲ႕ မွတ္တမ္း ထဲကစိတ္ဝင္းစားဖြယ္ရာ တစ္ခ်ဳိ႕ကုိ copy လုပ္လုိက္ပါတယ္။ မူရင္းစာအုပ္ရဲ႕ စာမ်က္နွာ ၁၅၀ ဝန္းက်င္မွာ အၿပည္႔အစုံ ရွာဖတ္နုိင္ပါတယ္။
============================================
West of the Chinese, who have led me into so long a digression from our survey of the city, and in the same suburb, is the ward in which the native Mahomedan community does chiefly congregate, though many of its members are also diffused among the miscellaneous population.

These people, called in the Burmese language Pathee, are numerous in Amarapoora;
so much so that a respectable Indian Mussulman, not deficient in sense, saw nothing absurd in telling me that there were 20,000 families of them in the city. Probably 8000 or 9000 souls would be a better guess at their numbers.
Most of the people can repeat their prayers in Arabic ; without understanding them }
indeed: but this would apply as truly to nine-tenths of the Mahomedans of India. They are pretty regular in attending the Friday prayers in the mosques, but the daily namaz is little regarded. There is said to be one Moulvee in the city who occasionally preaches, or expounds in the vernacular.

The Burmese practice of tattooing the thighs and loins f is unusual among the Ma-
homedans, but some of them do give into this also. Most commonly too they pluck out the hairs of the beard, as the Burmans do, until they become old.

As might be expected they are very ignorant sons of the Faith, and in the indiscrimi-
nating character of their diet are said to be no better than their neighbours; so that our strict Mussulmans from India were not willing to partake of their hospitalities.

Most of the Mahomedans of Amarapoora, so far as they know anything about the
matter, are Soonnis ; but there are some Sheeas, and these have an Imambara for the deposit of the Tazeeas, or gay shrines, carried about by that sect on their great festival of the Mohurrum.
Every indigenous Mussulman has two names. Like the Irishman's dog, though his true name is Turk he is always called Toby. As a son of Islam he is probably Abdul Kureem ; but as a native of Burma, and for all practical purposes, he is Moung-yo or Shwepo.
In passing along the streets occupied by these people we could not have recognized
anything to distinguish them from the other Burmans, had it not been for the little naked urchins who, seeing us to be foreigners, and probably accustomed to regard most foreigners as brethren in the faith, used to run out after us merrily shouting " Salam Alikiim ! ''
Mahomedans are found sparsely in the rural districts as well as in the capital, and have occasionally their humble mosque, where five or six families are found together.
The number of their mosques in the capital has been stated to me variously from forty up to one hundred and twenty. I believe the former to be near the truth.
Most of these mosques must be very insignificant structures, but as they often closely
resemble one class of flat-roofed Burmese idol-houses, they may easily be passed without notice. The largest mosque is a brick building of considerable size in the main street of the western suburb. With its detached minar it forms a very curious and tasteful adapta- tion of Burmese architecture to a foreign worship, showing a good deal of variation from the usual details in bolder and more relieved scroll-work, &c, but all very successfully executed in plaster. Internally the building is a square hall, the roof being supported by numerous timber pillars. The usual niches at the Kibla end of the building are adorned with mirror and gilding, in something of the Burmese style. The top of the minar is a beautiful canopy of carved teak, shaped like an imperial crown. Beside it stands a high mast, intended probably for illumination, but bearing a considerable resemblance to the sacred flagstaves of the Buddhists, and evidently the result of a hankering after pagan
adornments.