The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c23.s3.26

v4.c23.s3.26

² Elizabethan travellers who say they actually saw half a million men march out of Pegū are only repeating bazar talk. The Burmese chronicles give a list of Bayinnaung's levies totalling over a million men, but in the Anglo-Burmese wars of the nineteenth century our troops found Burmese commanders habitually overestimating numbers by at least one decimal. Even in the early nineteenth century the population of Burma can hardly have exceeded four millions. Harvey, *History of Burma*, p. 333, and Burney, *Population of Burman Empire*, in *Journal Statistical Society*, 1842.