Four years in Upper Burma

by W. R. Winston

Some of the great Buddhist shrines in Burma are buildings of wonderful magnificence. The Shwê Dagohn Pagoda at Rangoon is one of the most important and sacred. It is considered to be over two thousand years old. Originally it was very small, but now it rises to a height of 370 feet, or a little higher than St. Paul’s Cathedral, and is a quarter of a mile in circumference at the base. It is situated on the top of a very high hill, of which the summit has been, at vast labour and expense, made into a level platform, and carefully paved. This immense platform is partly occupied by many smaller pagodas, resting places for worshippers, and chapels containing colossal images of Buddha; and considerable open space is left for the immense crowds of worshippers that assemble there. In the centre rises the great pagoda in the usual bell shape, one vast, solid mass of masonry terminating in a spire. Four flights of stone steps lead up from the plain beneath, one on each side of the hill. On the summit of the pagoda is the htee, or gilt iron framework in the form of an umbrella, with multitudes of gold and silver bells, richly bejewelled, which tinkle with every passing breeze. The htee was presented by King Mindohn, the father of King Theebaw, and cost £50,000. The pagoda itself with the adjacent buildings must have cost, from first to last, a fabulous sum. This pagoda, like many others of the principal ones, is covered with pure gold leaf. Every few years it has to be regilt. Sometimes this has been done by some particular king, as a great work of merit. One king is said to have spent his own weight of gold upon it. In 1887 there was a regilding by public subscription. The accounts when published showed an expenditure of some £9,000; and this money, be it known to all Christians, was raised at once, without leaving any debt for the next generation to defray. And not only so, but it was raised in money actually contributed directly for this purpose. There was no need to resort to any of the well-known, artful, coaxing methods of raising funds, which have to be adopted in more civilised countries. There was not even a bazaar, not even a raffle! I have no hesitation in stating that it is my belief that Buddhists spend on their religion, in edifices, on the support of the monks, and on other works of charity, much more per head in proportion to their means than the average of Christians spend on theirs.

Another remarkable thing about the Shwê Dagohn Pagoda is its bell, 14 feet high, 7½ feet across, and weighing 42 tons, the third largest bell in the world. This bell has a history. After the second Burmese war in 1853, the English made an attempt to carry it off as a trophy to Calcutta, but ere they shipped it the monster toppled over into the Rangoon river, and sank to the bottom. With the appliances then at hand they were unable to get it up again. After a time the Burmans made request that they might have it.

Yes, they might have the bell if they could get it.

They succeeded in raising it out of the river, and hauled it back in triumph to the position it occupies to-day.

GREAT BELL AT THE MENGOHN PAGODA.

When great shrines like this exist in Burma, on such a vast scale and with such splendour, it is not much to wonder at if there should be some specimens of unfinished and abortive undertakings, by which the kings of Burma, in their ambition to obtain great merit and a name, sought to equal or excel the great shrines of antiquity, but which had to be relinquished because the resources, even of despotic kings, are not unlimited. Such a one is the great unfinished Mengohn Pagoda, which is built in a pleasant spot on the right bank of the Irrawaddy, about nine miles above Mandalay. It is supposed that this must be the largest mass of solid brickwork in the world, and it is now nearly a century old. It covers a square of 450 feet, and has therefore an area of 4¾ acres. Its height is 155 feet, which is much less than it would have been had it gone on to completion. An Englishman, Captain Cox, was there, and saw the beginning of this huge structure. He says in his book that there was a great square chamber built in the basement of the pagoda as usual, to receive the offerings of the king and the people, and amongst many peculiarly Burmese and Buddhist articles, such as models of precious relics in gold caskets, and gold and silver miniature pagodas and images, the miscellaneous collection included an article of Western manufacture—a soda-water machine, at that time almost as great a novelty in England as it was in Burma. Close by this large unfinished pagoda is the second largest bell in the world; the largest is at Moscow. An earthquake, which occurred in 1839, cracked this enormous mass of brickwork, and dislodged a portion of it; but so solid is it that it would take many earthquakes utterly to destroy it.

Notwithstanding the failure to complete this gigantic enterprise, it did not deter a later king, the father of King Theebaw, from attempting a still larger and more ambitious effort. Four miles to the east of Mandalay there was to have been erected the Yankeen-toung Pagoda, built of stone quarried from the adjoining hill; and it was to have been larger considerably than the unfinished Mengohn. The whole kingdom was laid under contribution to furnish men to labour by turns, a few months at a time, on this pious work.

After four years’ labour, so vast was the extent that the basement had only reached a height of four feet. At this stage a French engineer was called in to make an estimate and report upon it. His calculation was that if 5,000 men worked every day on the building, it might at that rate be finished in eighty-four years. It never went beyond the basement.

Since the annexation of Upper Burma, the practical British mind, finding the Yankeen-toung stone eminently suitable for road-making, and seeing that the roads in Mandalay, with its 188,000 people, were not, up to that time, made of anything better than black clay, has devoted this stone, intended for the pagoda, with which King Mindohn had purposed, so to speak, paving his own way to Nirvana, to the humbler, but more generally useful enterprise of mending the people’s ways about the town.