Four years in Upper Burma

by W. R. Winston

The honour paid to the monks by the people is quite extraordinary. In the Burmese language the commonest acts of life as performed by the monks are spoken of with respectful expressions, which are never applied to similar acts as done by the common people. The oldest layman honours the youngest monk, and gives place to him. The ordinary posture before a monk is down on their knees, and often on their elbows also, with the palms of the hands joined together, and raised as if in supplication, and the title “Paya” is used—the very name which has to do duty for the deity.

An instance is on record of a venerable monk being called from Mandalay to settle a dispute between two parties concerning some religious point, in a town on the banks of the Irrawaddy. On his arrival the whole population lined both sides of the path up to the monastery, and kneeling, they loosed down their long black hair, for the men as well as the women wear it long, and spread it across the path, so that he walked all the distance from the river bank to the monastery on human tresses.

The pagodas are the ordinary resorts of the people as places of worship; not all of them, however, for the great majority are merely erected as works of merit, and never attain any celebrity as places of worship; only the chief and most notable shrines. There the people assemble of an evening, and are to be seen in the flagged open space around the pagoda, on their knees in the open air, repeating their devotions in Pali. Though many of them come together, it is not of the nature of congregational worship, nor is any one appointed to lead their devotions. It is each one for himself. There is no prayer in our sense of that term, that is, petition. With no God to address, what place is there for prayer? Buddhism knows no higher being than the Buddha, and he is gone, twenty-four centuries ago, into Nirvana. The sentences they utter in Pali consist of expressions in praise of Buddha, the Law, and the Monastic Order. Images of Buddha are extensively used, but for all that, the people can hardly be called idolaters. The burning of candles and of incense at worship time is customary.

The Burmese “duty days,” of which there are four in the month, are observed on the eighth of the crescent, the full, the eighth of the waning, and the change of the moon. These are kept more strictly as worship days during what is called the Wah than at any other time. That is the period from July to October, which is observed as a time of special fasting and solemnity, ever since the days of their founder, who used to spend this, the rainy season, when travelling about in India is scarcely practicable, in retirement and meditation. During the Wah there is a cessation of all festivities, and of the theatrical performances of which the Burmans are so fond.

At the end of the Wah there is a time of general rejoicing. For some days before amusements are observed to be in progress in the streets. Effigies of animals, very well executed, are carried about. Here a buffalo of gigantic size, made of some light material, cunningly finished and coloured to the life, with horns and hide and all complete, is seen walking about on two pairs of human legs, the said legs being clad in the very baggy dark trousers worn by the Shans; its head balanced so as to swing with the walk in a most realistic and natural manner.

Yonder, in the Chinese temple, a huge pasteboard demon is seen disporting himself, with head of frightful aspect and enormous size, and body of cloth. You may freely walk in; and as you look around and admire the excellence of the building and the expensive and choice furniture, lamps and decorations, you may also see the huge creature writhing about, with all manner of contortions, to the deafening din of drums and the clash of cymbals. Somehow Orientals seem to be able to combine amusement with devotion. My three little children who have walked in with me, scared almost out of their wits with the noise, and still more with the portentous sight of the demon, promptly take to their heels and rush out of the temple, and cannot be induced to return, so I go out in search of them. At the corner of the next street an enormous representation of a tiger, ten times life size, in teeth and claws complete, and with a most ferocious aspect, has been glaring at the passers-by for some days. And, as you look, here comes a rude likeness of a gigantic lady ten feet high, who, however, seems to move along very ungracefully, and bows very stiffly in acknowledgment of the cheers of the crowd. The Chinese are particularly fond of getting up a very brilliantly executed figure of a serpent, in great splendour and in very bright colours, many yards long, which is borne high overhead through the streets on these occasions, with quite a procession. This particular show seems to afford scope for high art in representing the wrigglings of the monster as it is carried along.

But this is all only preparatory to the festival called Wah-gyoot (literally “the release from the Wah”). It is a festival of lights. For three nights the whole city of Mandalay is one blaze of illumination. Every house has its complement of candles or oil lamps; the rich in keeping with their means, and the poor according to their poverty. At that season the air is still, there is little or no wind, all the lights are out of doors and burn brightly. The streets are lit up with candles at every ten paces; the pagodas are effectively illuminated with hundreds of lights far up into their spires. Little children are trundling extemporised carts with bamboo wheels, each carrying a tiny illumination, covered with a lamp of thin, coloured paper. In addition to the house illuminations, paper lanterns are quite the fashion in China Street, where the well-known ingenuity of John Chinaman produces fantastic shapes in various colours, representing sundry animals, fishes, ships and what not. On the great river, as soon as it grows dark, the villagers row out into the middle of the stream and set adrift multitudes of oil lamps, each fastened to a little float of bamboo or plantain stem. Thousands of them are sent out by each village, so that the whole Irrawaddy is one blaze of twinkling lights.

Another very prominent and popular festival of the Burmans is the Water Feast, which occurs at their New Year in April. For two or three days at that time “the compliments of the season” consist in walking up to you in the street, or even in your own house, and discharging a jar of clean water over you, with the expression, “I will do homage to you with water”; and it would be considered very bad form to show any resentment for this kind and polite attention. It is obvious that such a custom as this must afford great scope to the rollicking Burmans of both sexes. It leads to abundance of larking and merriment in the streets. Everybody who ventures forth stands a great chance of a thorough drenching. Fortunately it occurs in April, the time of the sun’s greatest power, and the sweltering heat renders it less of an inconvenience than it would be in a colder climate.

There is nothing the Burmans are more scrupulous about than the taking of life. A mother has been seen to pick up the scorpion that stung her child, between two pieces of bamboo, and merely drop it gently outside the door. Twice when I have found a deadly cobra lurking about the house where the children were playing—the most venomous of snakes, whose bite is death—and have asked a Burmese servant to help me to kill it, he has declined, and I have had to kill it myself. But though the Burman will not kill a snake, he will not scruple to take it home to cook and eat it after some other person has killed it. Animal food seldom comes amiss to them, whether it has been killed by another or has died of itself. They are not very choice in their food.

Mandalay swarms with thousands of half-starved, mangy, miserable animals—nobody’s dogs. No matter how they increase and multiply, no Burman is willing to “put them out of their misery”; the firm belief in transmigration prevents this. I have known half a dozen such dreadful creatures quarter themselves uninvited on the Mission premises. One of the half-dozen, a savage brute, living under the school on the Mission premises, one day bit a little Burman boy, and tore his bare arm very badly. This was too much for me. Fearing it might do further mischief, and might even be mad, I waylaid and shot it. The Burmans thought I had done very wrong. Their tender care for animals often appears in touching forms. I have noticed a Burman coolie engaged in mixing mortar, on finding he had brought a number of tadpoles from the neighbouring pond in his bucket of water, take them all out with great care, and carry them back to the pond, though it was 150 yards away and he had to go on purpose. And yet, so strangely inconsistent is human nature, there are perhaps few countries in the world, with any pretensions to civilisation, where human life is held so cheap as in Burma, and where the people have commonly such a propensity to the crime of dacoity or robbery with violence, and often with murder. And yet, again, with strange inconsistency, the coarse and hardened criminal, the Burman dacoit, who has imbrued his hands in his neighbour’s blood more than once, will scruple to harm the vermin that infests his couch.