Ten years in Burma

by Julius Smith

The structure of this pagoda has many other important features. Round its base are found many forms of elephants, and small pagodas that fairly line the lower circle. There are four shrines at the cardinal points of the compass. It will have been noted that the pagoda, unlike all other designs of sacred buildings given to worship, has no interior chamber. Excepting the small cavity given to the relic, there is solid masonry throughout the vast structure. But the most striking display of the pagoda is its covering of gold leaf. From base to top every inch is covered with this golden coat. The devout Buddhists are always renewing this gilding. No provision is made to prevent the rains that beat upon the pagoda for six months of each year from washing away this golden covering. Its rusty appearance on any part simply calls for more offerings for more regilding, by which the devout Buddhist expects to gain much merit. I have been unable to learn the cost of gilding the exterior, though it must be very great. The pagoda is regilded about twice in ten years. It is difficult to determine the cost, as the gilding is put on in patches. The renewal has never been done systematically, but by piece-meal. Besides this, the umbrella that crowns the pagoda and its pendent rings are studded with precious stones and jewelry to the value of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The four shrines are ornamented with hand-carving wrought out with great pains and skill. There are two very large chests near the entrance to the pagoda area, into which all devout Buddhists visiting at this temple drop their offerings. These gifts are taken care of by the trustees of the pagoda, and expended on its maintenance. Round about the temple is an open court, which would accommodate many thousands of visitors, and ofttimes it is crowded to its fullest capacity. On the outside of this court, and inside the walls that make up the four sides of the square known as pagoda hill, there is a grove of palms and peepul-trees. The latter is the sacred tree of Buddhism, and it is usually found wherever pagodas have been built. Underneath these trees, and entirely surrounding the pagoda inclosure, there are many large pavilions, most of them open to all comers, where images of Gautama are numbered by the hundreds. A few images of Gautama are in closed structures behind glass and iron bars. Other symbols of the Buddha or his teaching are there also; but images of Gautama are by far the most numerous. Gautama is represented as reclining on his right side, with his head supported by his hand; as sitting, which is the accepted position; and standing. These are three chosen attitudes. These three postures are all that are commonly used. The images are made of brass, of marble, and of alabaster. Some of them are of the normal size of a man, and some of them are many times larger, but all bear the impassive features of a man absorbed in meditation. These images always bear distinctly Burmanized features.

There are also great bells about the Sway Dagon Pagoda. The larger bells are supported on great wooden beams, and are rung by all the worshipers, and even by the idle passer-by. But the strange thing about all this area of the pagoda is that it is open to all peoples, and no objects except the inclosed images are protected in any way. This is not true of either Mohammedan mosques or Hindu temples. All Buddhists take off their shoes or sandals before going up the steps. And if any Asiatic should attempt to go up the stairs with shoes on, he would be ordered to make bare his feet. Europeans are not so restricted. But this appears to be the only special requirement for admission to the pagoda area. So it comes to pass that the devout Buddhist strikes the great bells with the wooden beam, or horns of an elk that are kept for that purpose, and the next passer-by may be an idle globe-trotter, who strikes the bell to only test the melody of its sound.

Worship at a pagoda is a study. The idea of worship in Buddhism differs so widely from that of any other religion, that it makes the student of comparative religions pause with astonishment. Buddhism is very much a religion of negations at best. There is little that is positive in it. There is no God according to pure Buddhism. It does not teach an unending personal immortality. The character of existence beyond death is believed to be through various transmigrations of beasts, demons, and elevated spirits to final extinction of personal existence in Nirvana. Continued existence is considered a calamity. To extinguish personality in Nirvana is the supreme goal. In that loss of personal identity man passes from under the necessity of being reborn. In all the struggle in which man is engaged he has no aid from without himself. His own meritorious acts must bring him through all lower existences, and finally drop him into the oblivion of neikban. Before men can reach this goal, they must have passed through myriads of existences, many of these lives being spent in hells filled with all tortures. The hells of Buddhism are filled with terrors measured only by the wildest imagination, lasting through millions of years. Buddhism is a system in which there is no God to hear a prayer or speak a consoling word. Then what is worship under such a religion, if indeed it be a religion? The people and the yellow-robed priests fill the spaces before these several shrines, and there offer flowers and food to the images of Gautama. Or they sit upon their heels about the open court that surrounds the pagoda, and offer their flowers toward the pagoda, lifting them toward the top of the gilded dome, while they laud the great teacher of Buddhism. In none of these acts is there any real prayer. There is no confessing of sin or need, nor hope even that Gautama can hear, as he is supposed to have ascended to Nirvana and to have attained to annihilation of conscious self. The whole of their worship seems to be made up of laudations of the name and character of Gautama, and his law, and the Buddhist priesthood. All worship consists in praise of an extinct personality on the part of a man whose highest hope is to attain unto like personal extinction! But in all the dreary and weary struggle there is no eye to pity and no hand to help to attain this goal of spiritual suicide.

Front of a Gautama Temple

One of the incongruities about this great pagoda I found in the fact that the watchmen are Hindus. Perhaps no temple of non-Christians, save that of Buddhists, is cared for by men of other faiths. Christian Churches in Southern Asia do often employ Hindus or Mohammedans to care for them and act as collectors of their funds. But none but Mohammedans go into a Mohammedan mosque, and only Hindus enter a Hindu temple. There sits a Mohammedan also inside the pagoda area selling coffee and bread to all who wish to buy. Bishop Thoburn once remarked that perhaps only in Burma, and that at a Buddhist place of worship, could such an incongruous sight be witnessed.

Another feature of the pagoda area is that at its four sides, east, west, north, and south, it is bounded by brick walls, rising four or five feet above the pagoda area, and of several feet in thickness. The Burmese fortified the pagoda, and the English have done likewise. At the base is another higher wall, and inside of this a moat. The English soldiery guard the pagoda hill, and the ordnance department of the British garrison stationed at Rangoon is inside the outer wall on the west of the pagoda. The guard is not seen about the court. In the northeast corner of the pagoda area are several graves of British officers and soldiers who fell in storming that fortress in 1852. From the southeast corner of the inclosure you see the slope up which that band of soldiers charged, and half down the hillside are a number of graves which are unnamed, and around them a wall is built. Here the common soldiers fell in that charge. They died for “Greater England.”

From the pagoda wall you can get one of the finest views in Lower Burma. To the south and southeast lies the greater part of the city of Rangoon. At the lower extremity of the city the Pegu and Rangoon Rivers unite their ample breadth of waters. The great rice mills line the river and its larger tributaries, and lift their tall chimneys above every other building of the city. To the left the beautiful Royal Lakes reflect the tropical sunlight in dazzling brightness, while to the northward the sweep of vision includes many stately houses of the residents of Kokine, the fashionable suburb of the city.

CHAPTER IX
Buddhism; How Maintained

The hoary system of Buddhism must have some elements of vitality to keep it in existence through the twenty-six centuries of its history. That it has long since passed the stage of its greatest power is quite easily believed. That such a system could remain the religion of progressive races under the light of the present and the future, as indicated by the present, few will maintain. That the number of its present adherents has been greatly exaggerated, there is no doubt. Some of the peoples which have been classed as Buddhistic in religion are clearly not distinctively of that faith.