At 367 miles we crossed the Huay Pa Au, the last stream that enters the Meh Khow Tome, and fifteen minutes later, without any perceptible rise, reached the Huay Leuk, which is said to enter the Meh Chun. We had crossed the water-parting between the Kiang Hai and Kiang Hsen plains without being aware of it.
Half a mile farther we crossed the toe of a spur, and then passed amidst low hillocks until we reached a dry brook 6 feet wide and 5 feet deep, where we halted for breakfast. The hills had ceased, and we were in the Kiang Hsen plain. The height of the water-parting between it and the plain of Kiang Hai was 1471 feet above the sea, and only 151 feet above Kiang Hai. Our camp was 369½ miles from Hlineboay, and 1447 feet above the sea.
Whilst inking the notes in my field-book, butterflies settled on my hand, and were as brave and persistent as house-flies. No sooner had I shaken them off than they were back again, being rocked on my hand as I wrote. The jungle, particularly in the neighbourhood of water, simply swarms with insect-life. An entomologist could fill a case in a morning’s walk. He would have but to shake his net under the leaves of a few bushes for walking-leaves, stick-insects, ant-cows, lady-birds, and a variety of remarkable beetles, to drop into it.
Tiger-beetles, ground-beetles, bombardier-beetles, whirling water-beetles, mimic-beetles, stag-beetles, chaffer-beetles, click-beetles, scavenger-beetles, rove-beetles, sexton-beetles, chameleon-green beetles, glowworms, fireflies, floral-beetles, blister-flies, long-snouted beetles, capricorn-beetles, tortoise-beetles, ladybird-beetles—all are found in the jungle. Dr Mason, in his work ‘Burmah,’ states that Captain Smith collected specimens of nearly 300 species in Toungoo, a town in Burmah, on the Sittang river.
In connection with butterflies, Dr Mason remarks that “when a person dies, the Burmese say the soul, or sentient principle, leaves the body in the form of a butterfly. This too was the faith of the Greeks more than 2000 years ago. Among the ancients, when a man expired, a butterfly appeared fluttering above, as if rising from the mouth of the deceased. The coincidence is the more remarkable the closer it is examined. The psyche or soul of the Greeks, represented by the butterfly, was the life, the perceptive principle, and not the pneuma or spiritual nature. So the Burmans regard the butterfly in man as that principle of his nature which perceives, but not that of which moral actions are predicated. If a person is startled or frightened so as to be astounded for the moment, they say ‘his butterfly has departed.’ When a person is unconscious of all that is passing around him in sleep, the butterfly is supposed to be absent, but on its return the person awakes, and what the butterfly has seen constitutes dreams.
“The Greeks and Burmese undoubtedly derived these ideas from a common origin. In the Buddhist legends of the creation of man, which originated in Central Asia, it is stated that when man was formed, a caterpillar, or worm, was introduced into the body, which, after remaining ten lunar months, brought forth the living man; and hence the reason why a butterfly is supposed to leave the body at death.”
View of Loi Htong, Loi Ya Tow, and Loi Ta, at 2.34 P.M. 19th March.
Leaving the brook, I skirted some granite boulders, and halted for an hour in a grassy plain, a mile from the camp, to sketch Loi Htong, Loi Ta, and Loi Ya Tow. Where these hills come together, the end of each is precipitous, the precipices confronting each other. The villagers say that Loi Htong and Loi Ta were about to fight when Loi Ya Tow (Ya Tow, an honorific term given the grandmother on the father’s side) stepped in between and stopped them. These hills, or rather the shrines on them, are held in high esteem by the people, and pilgrimages are made to them by pilgrims from great distances, as it is believed that many sacred relics of Gaudama, and of the three previous Buddhs, are enshrined there.
According to “The History of the Shrine of Loi Htong,” which I borrowed from the pagoda slave who had charge of it, the shrine, which is situated in a cave on the summit of the hill, contains 566 relics of Gaudama, the last Buddh. These relics consist of his collar-bones, the hair of his head and body, his teeth, and the little stones, as large as mustard-seed, found in the ashes after the body was burned: 500 of them were deposited there shortly after the Buddh’s death by Phya A-soot-a, the king of Kiang Hsen; 50 by the king of Muang Yong, the State to the north of Kiang Hsen, a hundred years after the death of the Buddh; and 16 by a russi, or hermit, 1980 years later, or in A.D. 1437.