Karen

The Karen are Karenic-speaking Tibeto-Burman peoples, including the upland S'gaw and lowland Pwo, spread across the Irrawaddy delta, the Pegu hills and the Tenasserim border. Linguists date their migration into Burma between roughly 300 and 800, when they learned wet-rice farming from Mon-Khmer villagers, before the Burmese pushed them into the eastern hills and delta.

They appear in Pagan inscriptions in 1165 to 1167, often listed as pagoda slaves. Lowland Pwo Karen served the Mon courts, while highland groups kept to rotation farming and spirit worship. Some southern Karen joined the Palaung in building up Toungoo against Burmese expansion.

Buddhism reached the Pwo Karen through the Mon only in the late 1700s, with the Yedagon monastery on Mount Zwegabin as its literary centre. In 1828 Tha Byu became the first Karen baptized by the American Baptist missionary George Boardman, opening the Christian chapter of Karen history.