On awaking in the morning, we made the unpleasant discovery that two packages had been stolen from our bedsides. One was only a fishing-rod and bamboo pipe and stems, but the other contained the solid silver pipe-stem given by the tsawbwa to Sladen, and some other presents. The theft was duly reported to the tsawbwa, who at once offered two hundred rupees’ reward for the recovery of the stolen articles. During the day, many people crowded the khyoung, having clothes and ornaments to sell. The priests were much scandalised to see women’s clothes sold and exhibited in the sacred precincts, and at last procured an order from the tsawbwa, forbidding the women to come for the purpose of such traffic.
We remained at Sanda till July 8th, being detained partly by the rain, and partly by negotiations with the people of the Muangla district, lying on the other side of the Tapeng, relative to our homeward route. The chief persons, a village headman named Kingain, and the poogain of Manhleo, a place opposite to Manwyne, through whose jurisdiction the route lay, had both been hostile to us on the upward journey. The Hotha tsawbwa himself proved to have had some dispute with the Sanda people, which prevented his coming to meet us, while the Sanda headmen were averse to our crossing over to Hotha, for fear any future trade should be diverted from their town. In the course of the negotiations, two Shan headmen of villages informed Sladen that they could conduct us safely by a good and easy hill road to the Molay river, which could be reached in two days, at a point whence it was navigable during the floods, for large salt boats, down to the Irawady.
The skilful patience of our leader was at last rewarded by converting Kingain and the Manhleo poogain into firm friends, and it was settled that we should proceed to Manwyne, and cross the river at that place, whence they would secure our safety. The son of the poogain arrived to act as our conductor, and a letter was received from the Hotha tsawbwa, promising to meet us at Manwyne.
During our stay we had unrestricted opportunities of viewing Shan manners. Every fifth day the regular market was held, and the broad street was crowded by the country folk. Stalls lined both sides of the roadway, which seemed paved with umbrella-like straw hats. Besides Kakhyens from the hills, Leesaws were numerous, bringing oil, bamboos, and firewood for sale. Both men and women shave a circle round the head, leaving only a large patch on the upper and back parts, from which the hair is gathered into a short pigtail. Both sexes dress so much alike that the boys and girls were almost indistinguishable from each other. Some of them were induced to pay us a visit, and give words and phrases of their language, which seemed to be quite distinct from the Kakhyen tongue, and somewhat akin to the Burmese.
Seeing our interest in these people, a respectable old Shan, who had already done some trade with us, invited us to his house, where he professed to have some Leesaw clothing to dispose of. It turned out that he proposed to pass off his own old clothes on the gullible strangers; so our visit became one of politeness only. We were duly seated, and his daughters served us with sliced mangoes and plums, which were eaten with salt. Our host’s two wives were present, and other matrons flocked in from the neighbouring cottages, their hands blue with indigo. We asked if it was usual for Shans to have more than one wife, and were told that it was not, but that every man pleased himself. We also learned that the usual age for marriage is between eighteen and twenty, and the consent of the parents alone is required to make the contract binding, as there is no religious ceremony, and the priests have no voice whatever in the matter.
The house, like all the Shan cottages, was enclosed in a courtyard, and consisted of three rooms—a central living-room, with a sleeping-room on either side. Against the wall of the “keeping-room,” facing the door, stood the family altar, a small table having on it an incense vase and an ancestral tablet. A broad verandah ran along the front of the cottage, at one end of which stood a large indigo vat, hollowed out of a solid block. From this house we visited the Shan and Chinese khyoungs. Both were plain bamboo structures, built on the sites of the former buildings, described as having been rich and splendid structures, destroyed by the Panthays some years previously. The Shan temple contained only one figure of Gaudama, and as the phoongyees were seated at their rice, round a small bamboo table, we went on to that of the Chinese, next door. Here there was one principal Buddha, clothed in a yellow robe, and crowned with a nimbus resembling ostrich plumes. On the altar were a few small Buddhas freshly gilded, and a number of old pictures. On a small table was a wooden fish, such as was of frequent occurrence in the Momien khyoungs. Tradition says that in one of his former existences Gaudama was shipwrecked, but brought to land by a large fish, which he afterwards fed during its life. A strange mixture of Arion and Jonah pervades this legend; but the fish is probably a mystic legacy from the more ancient religions to which Kwan-yin and other deities belong. The chief phoongyee was very courteous, and had seats brought covered with red rugs, while his waiting-man served the guests with tea and fruit. He exhibited a number of pictures representing the judgment and punishment of sinners. One figure, evidently the judge, was seated at a table, with a book before him, and pens and ink-horn at his side, while two figures stood on either hand—one a hideous-looking monster, the other of more human and gentle aspect. The latter was the good, the former the bad recording angel. In front of the judge, the pious and wicked were depicted, in fleshly forms, departing to their several destinations. Of the latter, some were being dragged away by devils; while others in the foreground were being subjected to torments appropriate to their failings in life. The possessor of a false tongue was having it torn out by the roots, while the slayer of animals was being hacked in two, with his head downwards and his legs wide apart.
There was a grotesque humour about these horrible pictures, which made even the priest smile, as he exhibited and described them; but he waxed very grave as he told of the former splendour of the ruined religious edifices of Sanda.
There was little to be done in the way of collecting zoological specimens, and nothing in the way of sport. A thick grove of fir-trees, marking the burial-place of the tsawbwa’s family, was the only covert, but firing there was looked upon as certain to bring disease and death upon the chief and his household. After one attempt, a formal request was made that we would not shoot on the hills behind the town. A nat is said to dwell in a cutting, which marks the entrenchments made by the Chinese army in 1767, and the Shans believe that if a gun were fired, the insulted demon would come down as a tiger and carry off children. The chief himself came one day complaining of cough and headache, and asking for medicine to dislodge the nat who had seized him, but sulphate of magnesia proved too much for the demon. A Burman assistant surveyor, who had been sent to make a survey of the river, was prevented by the villagers, who pleaded a dread of the nats’ anger, and the tsawbwa, when appealed to, not only supported this view, but privately asked the interpreter if we had not a secret object in examining the country, and did not mean to return next year with a strong force to take possession. We were perfectly free to stroll about the environs, and one of the chief men undertook to guide us to visit the hill whence the lime sold in the market was procured. The road lay along the paddy fields, and was either knee-deep in mud or up to the saddle-girths in water. We crossed the Nam-Sanda, a deep strong stream flowing from the north through a short narrow glen, on the other side of which the limestone hill rose in a gentle declivity. As we rode through the fields of cotton, now in flower, and kept so clean that not a weed was visible, Shan girls, dressed in dark blue, with short trousers and petticoats with little aprons over them, looked up from their field-work with mute astonishment depicted on their round chubby faces. About four hundred feet up the grassy hill, on which not a tree was to be seen, the bluish-grey masses of hard crystalline limestone occur, lying in irregular heaps overgrown with long grass, as they have fallen down from the rocky heights above. Some superstitious ideas are attached to the occurrence of the limestone in this place, and it was shown to us as a supernatural curiosity. The masses are dug out of the ground, and carried to the villages, where they are calcined, grass being used as fuel in preference to wood. An old kiln was shown us, which had been formerly erected by some Chinese lime-burners, who had come from Tali-fu. On our return, the tsawbwa was anxious to know if the hill contained silver, the Shans having the impression that our field-glasses enable us to see into the very heart of the mountains and detect the precious metals therein concealed. In the bed of a small stream running down the little valley, the hot springs occur, consisting of two separate groups, separated by about a quarter of a mile. In the most easterly, we found only one spring, in a basin about six inches deep and a yard in diameter; the water bubbles up through a gravelly bottom, over which a fine black micaceous mud has been deposited. We found the temperature to be 204°, two degrees below the boiling-point of Sanda, viz. 206°; but in the cold weather, when undisturbed by floods, the temperature is higher. As a proof of this, we saw the feathers of fowls and hair of kids, which had been cooked in the spring, lying all about the banks of the rivulet. The natives deepen the basin by piling stones round its margin, and use the spring as a medicinal bath, and sometimes drink the waters. The other group had five openings, through which the water bubbled up in the bed of the stream, which had been diverted to expose them. All the basins but one had been obliterated by the floods, and the temperature of the water much reduced; but by inserting the bulb into the holes, the temperature was found to be the same as that of the first spring. The atmosphere round the springs was sensibly warm, and the ground so hot in some places that our barefooted companions could not stand on it. A peculiar heavy smell was perceptible, which was also perceived, after boiling, in the water brought away by us. This is probably due to the presence of some empyreumatic matter.[38] Our guide informed us with a serious face that hell was in the immediate vicinity, and that when Gaudama walked over this spot, the flames burst forth, and endeavoured to devour him, but the springs issued forth and quenched them, becoming heated in the contest. He also told us that a footprint of Gaudama was visible close at hand, in a romantic glen, down which flowed a mountain torrent called the Chalktaw. The stream was crossed by a double-spanned bamboo bridge, supported in the middle of the stream by a large boulder, and hung at either end to two bamboos driven into the ground, so that the bridge is partly arched and partly suspended. Many Kakhyen and Leesaw men and women were coming down the hill on their way to Sanda market, bringing great loads of vegetables, firewood, and planks of wood three feet long, fifteen inches broad, and one inch and a half thick. A basket of vegetables and a plank so heavy that one of us could scarcely lift it formed a mountain-girl’s load down the steep hillside. About a quarter of a mile up the wild glen, strewn with enormous waterworn granite boulders, we were shown the giant footprint in a spot surrounded by some fine old banyan trees. The print was on the end of a boulder looking up the glen, and it was evident that the hollow representing the heel had been formed by the friction of a superincumbent boulder. In time the river changed its course, and the boulder was exposed to the view of some devout and imaginative Buddhist. He, struck with the resemblance of the cavity to a huge heel-mark, carved the outline of a human foot, and proclaimed the wondrous discovery. Its great antiquity is shown by the existence of two tablets on the other face of the rock; the carved outlines are still traceable, but the inscriptions are so worn that it is impossible to decipher the form of the characters. On our way back we passed a Leesaw girl with a great display of beads, and succeeded in coaxing her to part with four strings, and six hoops from her neck, for a rupee. A little further on we met some more of her tribe resting under a tree, who rose and offered us rice-spirit out of their bamboo flasks; in exchange we gave them some watered whisky, which they seemed highly to relish. These Leesaw women wore a peculiar turban with a pendant end, of coarse white cloth patched with blue squares, and trimmed with cowries. Their close-fitting leggings were made of squares of blue and white cloth, and their ornaments consisted of large brass ear-rings, necklaces of large blue beads and seeds, and a profusion of ratan, bamboo, and straw hoops round the loins and neck. These resemble the dress of the Moso women described by Cooper, and similar dresses and ornaments are shown in Mons. Garnier’s illustrations of the Leisus in North Yunnan.
At three o’clock in the morning of August 29th, we were all startled from sleep by a loud outcry and a pistol shot. It turned out that a thief had opened the door and stolen one of the handsome silver Panthay spears, but the jingle of the ornaments had awoke Sladen, who fired a shot in the dark after the retreating robber, and raised an alarm, in vain. Suspicion at once fell on a phoongyee who slept in a room close to the door; the sentinel on duty had heard the priest stirring just before, and while he walked a few yards to consult a watch hung up on a post, the robbery was effected. The tsawbwa and his headmen showed great concern, and all agreed in suspecting the priest, whose character, it appeared, was already bad. They taxed him with the theft, and told him that it was a most disgraceful act, to steal a gift made by one official to another; they also threatened, if the spear was not restored, to degrade him from the priesthood, theft, even to the value of six annas, being one of the crimes which, at his ordination, the rahan is specially warned against, as depriving him ipso facto of his sacred character.
The tsawbwa was extremely incensed, and requested us to delay our journey to enable him, if possible, to discover and restore the spear, as well as punish the criminal. Early the next morning an old woman came crying to the khyoung, and, as she entered, threw down her pipe, and rushed up to Sladen with her hands clasped, and the tears streaming down her wrinkled cheeks. The interpreter explained that she was the mother of the suspected priest, and had come to intercede for him. Another of her sons presently joined her, but they were advised to go to the tsawbwa, in whose hands the matter rested. While she was being shown the door through which the thief had entered, the phoongyee himself came in, and the old woman, with a violent outburst of abuse, struck him several blows with her clenched fist, and fairly beat him out of the khyoung.