Burmah and the Burmese

by Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie

The instrument used in writing upon these MSS. is sometimes (as one of those in the British Museum, presented by John Barlow Hay, Esq., in 1839) of brass, and is eighteen inches in length; it has a decorated top, and a very sharp point. The ink-pot used would appear to be somewhat deep, as the stylus is covered with ink for two or three inches.

In one of the cases there are several gorgeous MSS., one written on five palm-leaves of about the usual length, in the Burmese character (which differs somewhat from the Pali). It is written on a gold ground, and is adorned(?) with figures of Gaudama. The covers are of wood, and are ornamented. This MS. contains the first book of the Kammavâcâ.

The second is on a silver ground, in the Burmese character, on palm-leaves, and was presented in 1771 by Mrs. Mead. There is another MS., in the same case, of the Kammavâcâ, the first and the fourth books. It is profusely gilded. The character is the square Pali. The Kammavâcâ is one of the most esteemed rituals of the Buddhist priesthood.

The other manuscripts are not so fine as those I have mentioned, and present similar characteristics to the inferior sort that I have described above. It is much to be regretted that we have scarcely an Orientalist in England who can unfold to us the meaning of these MSS. Never, in any institution, was a richer bait held out to the scholar than at the Museum at the present time, and yet there are but one or two gentlemen capable of instructing us upon this interesting and important point. The Museum authorities themselves regret, with the rest of scholardom, that so large a portion of their Oriental collection is still a dead letter to them. If the present war be productive of no better result, let us hope that it will cause some one able to translate and comment on these MSS. to turn his attention to this subject, and give his researches to an expectant world.[135]

It may not be uninteresting to append a portion of a list, kindly placed at my disposal by Sir Frederick Madden, of some of the ascertained Burmese Buddhistic MSS., among the Additional MSS. in the British Museum. No. 18,753: A Burmese MS. containing the Sut Sîlakkham, a part of the second division, or Sutrapituka, of the Buddhistic Scriptures, translated from the Pali. No. 15,240. Burmese translation of a portion of the Kammavâcâ, or Kammavâchâ. This was presented by the earl of Enniskillen on the 10th July, 1844, and is written in dark brown letters, on an ivory plate about fifteen inches in length. No. 17,945: The Tîkâ Kavisâra Nissaza, a Burmese translation of a Pali commentary on a Buddhistic work called Kavi-Sara, or the Essence of the Poets. No. 17,700: Part of a Burmese translation of a Buddhistic legend. This MS. is bound in wood, profusely gilt. No. 17,699: A religious treatise in Burmese, on the different sorts of punishment in this life.

“The original,” observes Buchanan,[136] “of most of the Burma books on law and religion is in the Pali, or Pale language, which, undoubtedly, is radically the same with the Sanscrit. I was assured at Amarapura that the Pali of Siam and Pegu differed considerably from that of the Burmas; and an intelligent native of Tavay, who had been at Cingala, or Candy, the present capital of Ceylon, and at the ruins of Anuradapura, the former capital, assured me that the Pali of that island was considerably different from that of Ava.

“In many inscriptions, and in books of ceremony, such as the Kammua, the Pali language is written in a square character, somewhat resembling the Bengal Sanscrit, and called Magata. Of this a specimen may be seen in the description of the Borgian Museum by Paulinus.[137] But in general it is written in a round character, nearly resembling the Burmah letters. Of this kind is the specimen given by the accurate M. De la Loubère, and which some persons have rashly conceived to be the Burmah. There is no doubt, however, that all the different characters of India, both on the west and on the east of the Ganges, have been derived from a common source; and the Burmah writing on the whole appears to be the most distinct and beautiful.

“In their more elegant books the Burmas write on sheets of ivory, or on very fine white palmira leaves. The ivory is stained black, and the margins are ornamented with gilding, while the characters are enamelled or gilded. On the palmira leaves the characters are in general of black enamel, and the ends of the leaves and margins are painted with flowers in various bright colours. In their more common books, the Burmas, with an iron style, engrave their writings on palmira leaves. A hole through both ends of each leaf, serves to connect the whole into a volume by means of two strings, which also pass through the two wooden boards that serve for binding. In the finer binding of these kind of books the boards are lacquered, the edges of the leaves cut smooth and gilded, and the title is written on the upper board; the two cords are, by a knot or jewel, secured at a little distance from the boards, so as to prevent the book from falling to pieces, but sufficiently distant to admit of the upper leaves being turned back, while the lower ones are read. The more elegant books are in general wrapped up in silk cloth, and bound round by a garter, in which the Burmas have the art to weave the title of the book.”

Like the ancients, almost every Burman “carries with him a parawaik,[138] in which he keeps his accounts, copies songs till he can repeat them from memory, and takes memorandums of anything curious. It is on these parawaiks that the zares or writers, in all courts and public offices, take down the proceedings and orders of the superior officers, from thence copying such parts as are necessary into books of a more durable and elegant nature. The parawaik is made of one sheet of thick and strong paper blackened over. A good one may be about eight feet long and eighteen inches wide. It is folded up somewhat like a fan, each fold or page being about six inches, and in length the whole breadth of the sheets. Thence, wherever the book is opened, whichever side is uppermost, no part of it can be rubbed but the two outer pages, and it only occupies a table one foot in width by eighteen inches long. The Burmas write on the parawaik with a pencil of steatites.... When that which has been written on a parawaik becomes no longer useful, the pages are rubbed over with charcoal and the leaves of a species of dolichos; they are then clean as if new, and equally fit for the pencil.”[139]

It will not be amiss to pursue the usual plan that I have proposed to myself, and in every practicable case to illustrate the literature of a nation by extracts from some one of its approved works. Fortunately, the missionary Sangermano has supplied me with the means of doing so, which would otherwise have failed. I cannot do better, therefore, than quote from that writer his account and extracts from one of their volumes. It will, I suppose, furnish as fair a specimen of their literature as any which can be offered.