Eight Lectures on India

by Halford John Mackinder

|23.
The 450 Pagodas from Mandalay Hill.| At Mandalay we are again on the banks of the Irawaddy. There is a hill in the northern suburbs several hundred feet in height, from which we may look over the city. The houses are so buried in foliage that, seen from the height, the place appears almost like a wood of green trees. The square Dufferin Fort, with walled and moated boundary, and sides more than a mile in length, is distinguishable in the centre, but for the rest there is none of the ordinary panorama of a European city. One striking feature, however, lies at our feet, a little to one side. It is a square group of 450 white pagodas, with a more considerable gilded pagoda in the centre. Beside each of these pagodas there stands a large stone, and on these stones are inscribed quotations from the sacred books of the Buddhists. In the distance to the southeast are the hills inhabited by the Shan tribes.

|24.
The Moat, Fort Dufferin.| |25.
King Thebaw’s Palace.| |26.
The Aindaw Temple, Mandalay.| |27.
Maker of Temple Htis, Mandalay.| The Dufferin Fort was built around the Palace of King Thebaw, the last of the Burmese dynasty. It is enclosed by a square of red walls pierced by three gates on each side, each gate bearing a pointed pagoda-like super-structure. Without there is a broad moat, a hundred yards wide, with lotus plants, floating in it like water lilies. This moat is crossed by five wooden bridges. Inside the walls is the King’s Palace, of which we have here the spire, surmounted by a “hti” finial. This spire is called by the Burmese the “Centre of the Universe,” since it is in the centre of Mandalay, which they claim as in the centre of the world. A “hti” we may observe again at the summit of the great Aindaw Temple in the south of Mandalay, and here we have one before it has left the home of its maker.

|28.
The Queen’s Palace.| |29.
The Verandah of King Thebaw’s Palace.| |30.
Entrance to the Arakan temple, Mandalay.| We return to the Fort, and to the palaces within it. This is the Queen’s Palace, a very beautiful building of gilded teak, exquisitely carved, and here is the verandah where King Thebaw in 1885 surrendered to the British generals. He was taken away to India, and there he still lives under surveillance on the Malabar Coast. Here we have the entrance to the Arakan Temple, specially venerated by Buddhists, for it contains a great image of Gautama, over twelve feet high, made of brass. Pilgrims gain merit by placing gold leaf upon this figure. This is the building which Kipling spoke of as the Moulmein Pagoda; it is not, however, a pagoda, which is a solid spire, but a temple.

|31.
Sappers and Miners, Fort Dufferin.| |32.
Crossing the Moat, Fort Dufferin.| |33.
A Garrison Family.| Burma has been gradually annexed to India as the result of three successive wars. The first ended in 1826, and then the low-lying coastal strips known by the names of Tenasserim and Arakan were taken, and also the great valley of the Brahmaputra, known as Assam. In 1852 the country of Pegu, or Lower Burma, comprising the delta of the Irawaddy, was annexed, but Upper Burma round Mandalay remained independent. The last king of Mandalay was Thebaw, a notorious tyrant, guilty of the most horrible atrocities. Being anxious to maintain his independence, he intrigued with the French in the lands of Tonkin and Annam to the east of Burma, and as a result brought upon himself the conquest of his country in the time when Lord Dufferin was Viceroy of India. It took fully ten years to reduce Burma to order, for the land was infested with dacoits or robbers, as it is still in some of the remoter districts. Every village in those days was defended by a palisade. Here we have two views of a party of troops in Fort Dufferin, with the King’s Palace in the background, and then a family scene in the married quarters of the garrison. The Burman does not make a good soldier, for he has very little sense of discipline. Even the police of the province are for the most part Gurkhas, Sikhs, and Punjabi Musulmans.

|34.
The Bazaar, Mandalay.| |35.
The Flower and Seed Market, Mandalay Bazaar.| The Bazaar or market of Mandalay, as in every other Indian city, is the centre of public life. Externally it is of little interest, having been constructed since the conquest, but internally it is an epitome of the varied peoples who have thronged of late into the growing centres of Burmese trade. Here is a scene in the fruit market; but it is the silk market which delights the Burmese lady, who will be seen there accompanied by her maid, making purchases and enjoying the touch of more than she buys, as in similar places in Europe. The most striking contrast which is presented by Burma to one accustomed to Indian life is the freedom of the women, who move about unveiled. In Burma, under the Buddhist religion, we have neither seclusion of women nor the distinctions of caste. The city of Mandalay has a population of about 190,000, so that it is now smaller than the upstart Rangoon.

|36.
Ferryshaw Siding, near Mandalay.| |37.
Mora.| |38.
Katha.| Let us make a voyage up the Irawaddy to the border of the Chinese Empire. This is a river scene a short way above Mandalay, with a group of white pagodas conspicuous on the bank, and here is a village scene. There follows a view at Katha, a large straggling village on the Irawaddy, remarkable for its many pagodas, most of them ruined. The majority of the Burmese pagodas are thus dilapidated for the reason that there is considered to be no merit in merely restoring an existing Buddhist shrine. The wealthy devotee prefers therefore to erect a new pagoda. The Shwe Dagon is an exception, for it contains sacred relics.

|39.
Raft on the Irawaddy.| |40.
On the Irawaddy.| |41.
In the defile between Katha and Bhamo.| |42.
The Same.| |43.
Burmese Children.| |44.
Cart with solid Wheels.| |45.
Lacquer Workers.| Here we have a raft of bamboos and teak logs floating down the river, and then a typical river craft with a great oar for a rudder. Our steamer must progress with care, measuring the depths with bamboo poles at either bow. None the less, navigation extends for more than nine hundred miles from the sea. From Mandalay to Katha the bank of the river is in most places low and sandy, but between Katha and Bhamo there are striking defiles, where the ground rises with wooded fronts from the water’s edge. There is population along the banks the whole way, as is evidenced by the pagodas amid the vegetation. Here are three little Burmese villagers, and then a rustic cart with solid wheels, and here a picture showing the process of the famous lacquer work of Burma. A “shell” is first made of very thin and finely plaited bamboo, and this is covered with a pigment which, when dry, is softened on a primitive lathe. Then red lacquer is put on by hand, and the bowl is dried in the sun. When dry it is buried for some days in order that it may harden. Finally it is engraved, and often inlaid with gold.

|46.
Bhamo from the Irawaddy.| |47.
China Street, Bhamo.| |48.
Kachin Women, Bhamo.| |49.
Houses at Bhamo.| We approach Bhamo, at the head of the Irawaddy navigation, lying low along the bank of the river, twenty miles from the Chinese frontier. There are naturally many Chinese at Bhamo. This is China Street. Here, on the other hand, is a group of Kachin women, heavy-faced, in picturesque costume. The Kachins are the hill tribes of the northern frontier of Burma, as the Shans are of the eastern frontier and the Chins of the western. Until quite recently the Kachins often raided the caravans passing from Bhamo to China. They are now becoming civilised under British rule. The Burmese people proper, of ancient civilisation, are a relatively small population confined to the valley and the delta. Here we see a row of houses at Bhamo, raised high upon piles. The change which has come over Burma since the British occupation may be appreciated from the fact that twenty years ago it was no uncommon sight on the voyage up from Katha to Bhamo to see along the river banks, and on rafts floating down the river, the dead bodies of Kachins who had been tortured to death under the terrible rule of the kings of Mandalay.

|50.
The Gokteik Gorge and Bridge.| |51.
Native House, Hsipaw.| |52.
The Bazaar, Hsipaw.| From Mandalay a railway runs eastward into the Shan country. At one point this line crosses a gorge by a steel bridge, nearly half a mile long and over 800 feet above the water of the stream. The bridge is so light in design that its great size and real solidity are difficult to grasp. Beyond this bridge we come to the chief place of the Shans, Hsipaw. Here are a couple of scenes in Hsipaw, the one of a Shan house, the other of a Shan market.

|53.
Pagan.| |54.
The Ananda Temple, Pagan.| |55.
The Ananda Temple, nearer view of the west side.| |56.
Buddha Image at Pagan.| To realise the antiquity and the splendour of early Burmese civilisation, we must descend the Irawaddy below Mandalay to a place called Pagan. There, for some ten miles beside the river, and for three miles back from its bank, are the ruins of a great capital which flourished about the time of the Norman Conquest of England. From the centre of the ruined city it is impossible to point in any direction in which a pagoda or a temple is not visible. We have here a general view of the remains, and then the Ananda Temple, seen in the midst of a bank of vegetation, from which at various points rise other smaller red and white ruins. The Ananda Temple was built more than eight hundred years ago by the Thatons, the original inhabitants of the country, who were overcome by the invading Burmans. Some thirty thousand of these Thatons were brought to Pagan as slaves, and set to build the pagodas and temples, just as during the captivity in Egypt the Israelites were employed in building the pyramids. Here is the Ananda Temple close at hand, white and glittering in the sunshine, as though built of sugar. If we enter the great portal—there are three other portals similar, for the plan of the building is that of a cross—we find facing us a huge image of the Buddha, over ten yards in height.