AKYÁB

n.p. The European name of the seat of administration of the British province of Arakan, which is also a port exporting rice largely to Europe. The name is never used by the natives of Arakan (of the Burmese race), who call the town Tsit-htwé , 'Crowd (in consequence of) War.' This indicates how the settlement came to be formed in 1825, by the fact of the British force encamping on the plain there, which was found to be healthier than the site of the ancient capital of the kingdom of Arakan, up the valley of the Arakan or Kaladyne R. The name Akyáb had been applied, probably by the Portuguese, to a neighbouring village, where there stands, about 1½ miles from the present town, a pagoda covering an alleged relique of Gautama (a piece of the lower jaw, or an induration of the throat), the name of which pagoda, taken from the description of relique, is Au-kyait-dau , and of this Akyáb was probably a corruption. The present town and cantonment occupy dry land of very recent formation, and the high ground on which the pagoda stands must have stood on the shore at no distant date, as appears from the finding of a small anchor there about 1835. The village adjoining the pagoda must then have stood at the mouth of the Arakan R., which was much frequented by the Portuguese and the Chittagong people in the 16th and 17th centuries, and thus probably became known to them by a name taken from the Pagoda.—(From a note by Sir Arthur Phayre .) [Col. Temple writes—"The only derivation which strikes me as plausible, is from the Agyattaw Phaya, near which, on the island of Sittwé, a Cantonment was formed after the first Burmese war, on the abandonment of Mrohaung or Arakan town in 1825, on account of sickness among the troops stationed there. The word Agyattaw is spelt Akhyap-taw, whence probably the modern name."]