“You’ll excuse me sitting on the charpoy, but I’ve got entirely out of the use of chairs, and me bones are too stiff to sit doubled up on the floor like a skewered chicken.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Shafto, who was very sleepy. “I suppose you have just come from Upper Burma?”
“Yes, that’s the part I most belong to and that suits me. I can’t do with this soft, wet climate, though I am an Irishman. I’m from Mogok, that’s the ruby mine district, but what I like best is the real jungle. Oh, you’d love to see the scenery and to walk through miles and miles of grand trees on the Upper Chindwin; forests blazing with flowers and alive with birds, not to speak of game. Many’s the time I’ve been aching for the hould of a gun, but, of course, it was an evil thought.”
“Your religion forbids you to take life?”
“That’s true; I’ve not tasted meat for years, but there’s not a word to be said agin fish or an odd egg.”
“Tell me something more about your new faith!”
“Well now, let me think,” said the pongye meditatively. “We have no regular service for marriage or burial, and no preaching. We keep the five great rules—poverty, chastity, honesty, truth, and respect all life. There are two hundred and twenty-seven precepts besides. Most men can say them off out of the big book of the Palamauk, and there are stacks and stacks—thousands of stacks—of sacred writings, but I just stick to the five commandments, the path of virtue and the daily prayers. The singing and chanting is in Pali—a wonderful fine, loud language. Many of the pongyes is teachers, for every boy in Burma passes through their hands; but I’m no schoolmaster, though I was once a clerk in the Orderly room. I could not stand the gabble of them scholars, all roaring out the same words at the top of their voices for hours together.”
“I can’t imagine how you pass your time,” remarked Shafto, “or how you stand the idleness—a man like you who were accustomed to an active life.”
“Oh, I get through me day all right. In the early morning there’s prayers and a small refreshment, and I sit and meditate; the young fellows, like novices, sweep and carry water and put flowers about the Buddha; then we all go with our bowls in our hands, parading through the village, looking neither right nor left, but we get all we want and more—for giving is a great merit. When we return to the kyoung we have our big midday meal, and then for a few hours I meditate again. The life suits me. It’s a different country from India, with its blazing sun and great bare plains; there the people seldom has a smile on them. Here they are always laughing; here all is green and beautiful, with fine aisy times for flowers and birds and beasts. There’s peace and kindness. Oh! it’s a fine change from knocking about in barracks and cantonments, drilling and route-marching and sweating your soul out. By the way, have ye the talisman I give you?”
“If you mean the brown stone—yes.”