Four years in Upper Burma

by W. R. Winston

In studying Burmese, I found it necessary not only to spend as many hours as I could daily with my munshee and my books, but to go out amongst the people for the sake of learning the spoken language. Every language has some difference between its literary and its colloquial style; and it is quite possible for the foreigner to know a good deal that he reads in the books, and yet to be quite nonplussed with the ordinary talk of the people. Unless the foreigner pays attention to the colloquial, though he may in time find himself able to talk after a bookish fashion, he will be unable to make himself properly understood, and unable also to know what the people say in reply. For this reason I made a practice of going out of an evening, often with one of my children’s picture books in my hand, and sitting down amongst the Burmans at their doors, using the pictures as a means of scraping up a conversation—being myself short of words—with notebook in hand, to take down every new word or idiom I heard. As the Burmans appreciate pictures very much, I found this plan always made them talkative, and thus served my purpose as well as amusing them.

This puts me in mind of an incident which occurred about that time, at a certain Buddhist monastery, where I was in the habit of spending an hour or two of an evening, for the purpose of talking Burmese. The long guerilla war with the forces of disorder and crime was then raging, and the country generally was in a very disturbed state. Plot after plot was set on foot for creating an organised disturbance, with a view to harass the British power, and with some faint hope that they might, by a lucky chance, get the mastery. Judge of my surprise, when one morning I learnt that fifty of the ringleaders of a plot of that kind had been discovered and arrested at midnight, in that very monastery where I was in the habit of visiting. Next time the local paper appeared we were told that we had narrowly escaped such a scene of confusion and bloodshed as was common in the time of the Indian mutiny.

The choice of a site for the mission premises was the first matter to settle. It involved much going to and fro in that great city, and much weighing of advantage and disadvantage, for it was a most important question. At length a block of Government land 5½ acres in extent was fixed upon. I attended the sale. Several pieces of land were put up for sale before ours, and the bidding was fairly brisk. When ours was put up I made a bid; not another voice was heard; they all abstained from bidding because the land was for mission purposes, though I had said not a word on the matter to anybody, and it was knocked down to us at the merely nominal price of one hundred rupees an acre (say £7 10s.). A substantial mission house of teak was at once commenced, and at the earliest possible date we moved into it. Later on we erected on this land a Boys’ Training Institution for teachers, and a Girls’ Boarding School and Training Institution, and a humble beginning has thus been made in the work of training native helpers, the end of which who can predict?

For the first year we lived there we had no proper roads, and when the rainy season came on, we were separated from the rest of the world by a sea of soft, tenacious, black mud, ankle deep; and for many days I could not get either to or from the house without taking off my shoes and socks, and wading barefoot through it. But in course of time these early pioneer experiences became things of the past. Other houses were built around us, also the Government Courts and offices; good streets were made and lighted with lamps at night, and drains were dug at the sides of the roads to run off the surplus water, and things gradually got into shape.

In September 1887 two more workers arrived—two Singhalese young men, trained by our mission in South Ceylon. We do not of course contemplate permanently looking to Ceylon to supply us with men, but at the outset of the mission it seemed likely that these brethren, being from an older Christian community, and far better educated and trained than any Burmans could possibly be for years to come, would be able to render us material help in the pioneer work, and would bring to bear upon it a degree of Christian knowledge, and a maturity of Christian character and habits, far in advance of anything in Burma. These two brethren are now working in the mission with a fair measure of success, and have justified the expectation we formed of them. Their success in acquiring the language, and their consistent Christian life, as they have gone in and out amongst the people, have been a stay and a help to the work.

It was our desire from the first to begin an Anglo-vernacular school in Mandalay, as the first of a series of educational efforts. It is self-evident to the experienced eye that so long as the youth of Burma remain in the hands of the monks, in connection with the monastery schools, to learn idleness, and to have all the springs of life and thought saturated with Buddhism from their youth, the downfall of that religion will be indefinitely postponed. We must enter into friendly competition with the monastery schools, must take hold of the awakening desire for Western learning, and we must give an education so undeniably better than the monks can give that we shall thus win our way to success. I have used, about equally, each and every kind of missionary method within my reach, and I hold no brief for the educational method; but thirteen years of mission work amongst the Hindus in Ceylon, where we have an elaborate system of religion to deal with, has shown me that, in the long run, Christian education plays quite as important a part in the conversion of the people as any other agency. The educational and evangelistic work go hand in hand, and we cannot afford to dispense with either. Educational work gives a backbone of intelligence and solidity to the mission, and to the converts; it introduces us to the most intelligent and influential classes of the people, and gives us a powerful influence we could acquire in no other way, and it leads directly to hopeful conversions. So long as we are merely the preachers of another religion amongst them, our influence is circumscribed within that condition. But if, in addition to that, we move amongst the people as the trusted guides and teachers of their youth, it vastly increases our power for good. In the East the teacher of the young is always treated with the utmost respect. And this position of influence, which so legitimately belongs to the preachers of the Gospel, we cannot afford to despise or forego.

After advertising for several months for teachers, we managed at last to engage a young Christian Karen, from Lower Burma, as the teacher, and we began a school in a rented house, near the centre of the town. This school has developed into a good Anglo-vernacular School. In due course, and after much trouble and delay, from having to buy up some twenty or thirty small holdings, with bamboo houses on them, we managed to secure and clear a good site, and there we erected a neat, substantial brick school-chapel, to which our work was transferred from the rented house, and there we have regularly held services in English, in Burmese, and in Tamil.

We early commenced street preaching in Mandalay, and have continued to hold several open-air meetings every week. As a means of publishing the Gospel to the people at large, we have found nothing better. The streets of Mandalay are broad and spacious, so that even a large crowd does not impede the traffic. The people are generally very willing to listen, tolerant, respectful, and not inclined to cavil. We usually commence by singing a hymn. A number of children are on the scene at once, some of them quite naked up to seven or eight years of age. By the time we have finished the hymn, a crowd of men, women and children has collected, and most of them, having once come, stay till the close. The people, as a rule, look well nourished and healthy, but in almost every Oriental crowd there are evidences of the prevalence of skin disease, in one form or another. Amongst the Tamil people itch is the special form, and in Burma there is quite an excess of ringworm. In Burma many of the people are observed to be pitted with smallpox, for until lately, vaccination was not practised in Upper Burma; and ophthalmia is not uncommon, especially amongst children. The individuals composing the crowd change somewhat. Some are only passers-by, and have to go about their errands; others again have to retire, to attend to household duties. Occasionally a man leaves because he feels a prejudice against hearing the doctrine, or, as one old man put it, because if he listened he would only get “mixed” in his mind. But for the most part they stay and listen attentively until the end. In trying to follow up the address, by conversation with the people at their doors after preaching, I have generally found the Burmans reticent, but still polite.

They are certainly good-natured hearers, and give the preacher a fair chance. To see them sitting on their heels, or on the ground, placidly smoking their cheroots, and looking intently, nodding the head occasionally, and interjecting, “Hoakba, Hoakba” (true, true), one might go away with the idea that they had intelligently taken in the whole discourse, but it does not do to be too sanguine about that. It has to be taken into account that though they may understand the words used, they are sure at first to understand them in a Buddhist sense; and there is such a great deal that is absolutely new to them in Christianity, so many strange names and unfamiliar ideas, that the subject matter of the discourse is by no means easy for them to understand. We are much more liable to underrate than to overrate the difficulty all heathen people have in understanding Christian preaching, at the first. In addressing them on the subject of religion we must use religious terms. But unfortunately those terms have already a Buddhist meaning clinging to them, which is widely different from the Christian sense; and the higher the truths to which we are seeking to give expression, the greater is the difficulty of putting the meaning into the words at our disposal. How are you to get a Buddhist to realise, for example, any adequate notion of the Divine Being, when he has no such conception in his own religion?