I do not know what is the meaning of all these lights; I do not know that they have any inner meaning, only that the people are very glad, only that they greatly honour the great teacher who died so long ago, only that they are very fond of light and colour and laughter and all beautiful things.
But although these festivals often become also fairs, although they are the great centres for amusement, although the people look to them as their great pleasure of the year, it must not be forgotten that they are essentially religious feasts, holy days. Though there be no great ceremony of prayer, or of thanksgiving, no public joining in any religious ceremony, save, perhaps, the giving of alms to the monks, yet religion is the heart and soul of them. Their centre is the pagoda, their meaning is a religious meaning.
What if the people make merry, too, if they make their holy days into holidays, is that any harm? For their pleasures are very simple, very innocent; there is nothing that the moon, even the cold and distant moon, would blush to look upon. The people make merry because they are merry, because their religion is to them a very beautiful thing, not to be shunned or feared, but to be exalted to the eye of day, to be rejoiced in.
CHAPTER XIV
WOMEN—I
'Her cheek is more beautiful than the dawn, her eyes are deeper than the river pools; when she loosens her hair upon her shoulders, it is as night coming over the hills.'—Burmese Love-Song.
If you were to ask a Burman 'What is the position of women in Burma?' he would reply that he did not know what you meant. Women have no position, no fixed relation towards men beyond that fixed by the fact that women are women and men are men. They differ a great deal in many ways, so a Burman would say; men are better in some things, women are better in others; if they have a position, their relative superiority in certain things determines it. How else should it be determined?
If you say by religion, he laughs, and asks what religion has to do with such things? Religion is a culture of the soul; it is not concerned with the relationship of men and women. If you say by law, he says that law has no more to do with it than religion. In the eye of the law both are alike. 'You wouldn't have one law for a man and another for a woman?' he asks.