Four years in Upper Burma

by W. R. Winston

It might be thought that as Christianity is so evidently superior to Buddhism as a religious system, it should be an easy matter to get them to discard their religion and accept the religion of Christ. But this is very far from being the case. The superiority is not apparent to a mind sophisticated by a lifelong familiarity with only the one religion, and it is only, as a rule, perceived after a prolonged and impartial study and comparison of the two has opened the mind. This is the great reason for educational work. It is a very difficult matter to make the votaries of an elaborate system like Buddhism see the superiority of Christ over Buddha; they are more than contented with what they have.

Besides this, we ought to remember that Buddhism has everything on its side that tends to make a religion powerful and influential. It has a concrete existence, and very much of outward and visible form and appearance; it is in possession; it has numbers, a voluminous literature, a definite and consistent system of philosophy. It has plenty of popular observances and popular enthusiasm. It is cleverly adapted to man’s natural desire to work out his own salvation. It is most powerfully sustained and buttressed in the regard and confidence of the people by its very numerous monastic institutions, which are recruited from all classes of the people, from the prince to the peasant, for every male Burman must be a monk, for a longer or a shorter time, at some period of his life.

CHAPTER XII.
BURMESE RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS AND USAGES.

The Burmans, like most nations of the East, are essentially a religious people, and pay great regard to the religious usages and institutions in which they have been brought up.

Chief amongst these is the monastic institution of Buddhism. Buddha was not only a great philosopher and thinker, but a great organiser too, and he provided in the monastic system a social bond of union that knits the entire community together in the Buddhist faith. This is made more obvious by the fact that every male Burman must be a monk at some time in his life, for a longer or shorter period, otherwise the demerit attaching to him would so overbalance his merits, as to render it impossible for him ever to make any improvement in his future existences. His ill deeds would swell the sum of his demerits, but no act of charity or pious devotion would be recorded to his advantage. Hence, in Upper Burma, almost every youth dons the yellow robe and becomes a monk. It may be for a week, a month, or a season or two, or it may be for many years, or it may prove to be lifelong. The longer they stay in the monastery the more sanctity attaches to them. But the Buddhist monk, unlike some other monks, is at liberty to terminate his monastic vows at pleasure, and return to ordinary life. The monks reckon the continuance of their monastic condition by the number of Wahs spent in the monastery, the Wah being the annual recurrence of a kind of Buddhist Lent, extending from July to October.

This recruiting of the monks from the entire population—so different from Hinduism, which acknowledges a rigidly exclusive, priestly caste—immensely strengthens the hold Buddhism has on the people, and widens the popular basis upon which it rests. In my missionary life amongst the Hindus in Ceylon, I have observed in reading and expounding the parable of “The Good Samaritan” to a heathen congregation, a great readiness to apply, of their own accord, the cases of the Priest and the Levite, who passed by on the other side, to their own Brahmin priests, and they were always ready to take sides against them as quite a separate caste; but there can never be the same alienation between monks and laity in a Buddhist land like Burma, where the monks are their own kith and kin.

The monasteries are very extensively spread over the country. Mandalay, at the time of the annexation, was officially stated to have close upon 6,000 monks, and you can visit scarcely any town or village, however small or remote, which has not its monastic establishment. The monastery is always the best building in the place, and has the cleanest enclosure of any house in the village, and there is an air of sanctity and repose about it. The monks are very approachable. The stranger, whether native or foreigner, is always made welcome; indeed, that is a characteristic of the Burmans everywhere, that they receive strangers freely and affably, and being free from those caste scruples so usual amongst the Hindus, one is not for ever fearful of transgressing their notions of propriety, or unwittingly hurting their dignity. As the monasteries are spacious, and often supplied with additional zayats or rest-houses, it will rarely happen in travelling that they will be unable or unwilling to assign the stranger some humble place of rest, where he may tie up his pony, eat his food, and spread his mat and pillow for the night. To the poor and destitute the monastery is a place of relief, where they can always hope to obtain a little food out of that which is daily given to the monks in their house to house morning visits.

It must be frankly admitted that the monasteries of the country do a useful work in the way of imparting elementary education. To them is chiefly due the creditable fact that there are comparatively few of the men who cannot read and write; and this does much to bind the people to the support of the Order. But the education scarcely ever goes beyond the most elementary stage. They learn to read Burmese, and they learn to repeat a few Pali prayers and forms of devotion. Pali is the sacred language; very few even of the monks understand the meaning.