The facility for divorce has other effects too. It makes a man and a woman very careful in their behaviour to each other. The chain that binds them is a chain of mutual forbearance, of mutual endurance, of mutual love; and if these be broken, then is the bond gone. Marriage is no fetter about a man or woman, binding both to that which they may get to hate.
In the first Burmese war in 1825 there was a man, an Englishman, taken prisoner in Ava and put in prison, and there he found certain Europeans and Americans. After a time, for fear of attempts at escape, these prisoners were chained together two and two. He tells you, this Englishman, how terrible this was, and of the hate and repulsion that arose in your heart to your co-bondsman. Before they were chained together they lived in close neighbourhood, in peace and amity; but when the chains came it was far otherwise, though they were no nearer than before. They got to hate each other.
And this is the Burmese idea of marriage, that it is a partnership of love and affection, and that when these die, all should be over. An unbreakable marriage appears to them as a fetter, a bond, something hateful and hate inspiring. They are a people who love to be free: they hate bonds and dogmas of every description. It is always religion that has made a bond of marriage, and here religion has not interfered. Theirs is a religion of free men and free women.
CHAPTER XVIII
DRINK
'The ignorant commit sins in consequence of drunkenness, and also make others drunk.'—Acceptance into the Monkhood.
The Buddhist religion forbids the use of all stimulants, including opium and other drugs; and in the times of the Burmese rule this law was stringently kept. No one was allowed to make, to sell, or to consume, liquors of any description. That this law was kept as firmly as it was was due, not to the vigilance of the officials, but to the general feeling of the people. It was a law springing from within, and therefore effectual; not imposed from without, and useless. That there were breaches and evasions of the law is only natural. The craving for some stimulant amongst all people is very great—so great as to have forced itself to be acknowledged and regulated by most states, and made a great source of revenue. Amongst the Burmans the craving is, I should say, as strong as amongst other people; and no mere legal prohibition would have had much effect in a country like this, full of jungle, where palms grow in profusion, and where little stills might be set up anywhere to distil their juice. But the feelings of the respectable people and the influence of the monks is very great, very strong; and the Burmans were, and in Upper Burma, where the old laws remain in force, are still, an absolutely teetotal people. No one who was in Upper Burma before and just after the war but knows how strictly the prohibition against liquor was enforced. The principal offenders against the law were the high officials, because they were above popular reach. No bribe was so gratefully accepted as some whisky. It was a sure step to safety in trouble.
A gentleman—not an Englishman—in the employ of a company who traded in Upper Burma in the king's time told me lately a story about this.