Peeps at Many Lands: Burma

by R. Talbot Kelly

As a matter of fact, Mandalay is little better than an enlarged village, and is built much in the same way as the towns I have already described, and has really only two points of great interest—its religious buildings and the "fort."

I am referring, of course, to the Burmese town, for surrounding the fort are a large number of well-built bungalows, and streets of shops built of stone or brick; but these are for the use of Europeans and Indian or Chinese traders, the Burmans here, as elsewhere, contenting themselves with their thatched houses of timber. It may appear surprising that a people who could erect their marvellous temples should be satisfied with such poor dwellings. The reason is to be found in their custom of removing their capital on each change of dynasty, and since a.d. 1740 the capital of Burma has been moved no less than eight times! Mandalay itself is only fifty years old, so that it hardly appeared to them worth their while to build more substantial dwellings, which might so soon have to be deserted; and in this way they came to regard their homes as temporary, expending their energies and wealth in the building of temples and monasteries instead.

The streets of Mandalay are wide, and laid out in rectangles, as in Rangoon, and, like all towns in Burma, the roads are heavily shaded by trees. Foreign types are common in Mandalay, but the Burmese life here is very pretty. Nowhere else are the people better dressed, and the ladies rival the silk bazaar in the variety and beautiful colour of their clothing. Until recently this was a royal city, and the ladies pay great attention to the demands of fashion, whether it is in their delicately-tinted garments, their embroidered sunshades or fan, or the lace handkerchief with which they love to toy; and nothing in the way of crowd could be nicer than these daintily-dressed and usually prepossessing men and women. Fashion, however, has always some drawback. The ladies in many cases smear their faces with a paste called "thannakah," which has the effect of whitening the skin. The result is very unfortunate, for it is not always put on evenly, and only serves to make the ugly more forbidding, while it destroys the soft warmth of colour and skin texture which so often makes these women beautiful. Another unfortunate custom is their habit of smoking such huge cheroots, which no mouth of ordinary size could possibly hold without distortion.

All roads in Mandalay lead to the fort, lately the residence of the Court. This consists of a huge square, 1-1/4 miles each way, entirely surrounded by battlemented walls, and further protected by a wide and deep moat. Quaint bridges cross the moat, and lead to gateways, each surmounted by a "pyathat." Within the walls are the palace of the King, and many other buildings of highly ornate and purely Burmese character. Many of them have lately been destroyed by fire; but what will interest us most is the rambling but most picturesque palace, the lofty "pyathat" which is erected over Thebaw's throne being the finest in the country, and so much admired by the Burmans as to be called "the centre of the universe."

All these buildings are of timber, only the finest teak being used, and the many columns which support the roofs of the halls of audience consist of single tree-trunks of unusual size and great value.

The moat serves to supply Mandalay with its drinking-water, and is fed by a conduit from the hills. I am afraid the water is not very clean, but it is a very pretty sight to see the people coming to fill their jars from the little stages which jut from the banks, while the whole surface is at some seasons of the year a mass of purple lotus and white water-lily, and, although in the middle of the city, paddy-birds and other ibis wade about its margins.

Mandalay is a station for our troops, who are quartered inside the fort, which was only captured after severe fighting. The stockade, which offered so great an obstacle to our men, has been swept away, and "Tommy Atkins," as well as Indian troops, now inhabit the palaces of King Thebaw's time! But it is an unhealthy station, and nowhere in Burma have I seen such crowds of mosquitoes, the common cause of fever in Europeans.

The most beautiful of Mandalay's pagodas, "the Incomparable," has been destroyed by fire; but a large number remain, one of which is very interesting. This is the "Kuthodaw," a temple built by Mindon Min, King Thebaw's father. The central dome is not remarkable, but on each side of the large flagged space which surrounds it are rows and rows of miniature temples, each with an ornamental cupola, supported upon pillars. Each of these 729 cupolas contains a slab of alabaster, on which is inscribed a chapter of the Pali Bible. The entrance-gates, also, are large, and unusually ornate in design.

Each quarter of the town has one or more large pagodas, and others surround its outskirts from the river-bank to the top of Mandalay Hill; but these differ from the others we have noticed in one respect, being covered by carved plaster-work, each stage of which is beautified by some elaborate or striking pattern, so that the dome of pure white, broken by sharp contrast of light and shade, is quite as rich in effect as the gilded temples of Rangoon or Prome.

Most remarkable of all the buildings in Mandalay, however, are the monasteries, of which there are a large number, many of great interest, the principal one being the "Queen's Golden Monastery," for beauty of design and elaborate embellishment unquestionably the finest structure of its kind in Burma.