Four years in Upper Burma

by W. R. Winston

Towards sunset we reached Minhla, on the right bank of the Irrawaddy; and as we made fast for the night right opposite, we had time before it was dark to step ashore and climb the precipitous bank and look over the redoubt, the taking of which was the only action worth mentioning in the expedition. It is a square-built stone fort, and was well manned with Burmese troops. The British force went round by the jungle, and got to the back of the fort, where there was a way leading up to the ramparts; and having fought their way up to the summit, the Burmans inside were at their mercy, as the machine guns in the armed steamers on the river covered the exit by the front. Thus the place was taken.

Next morning saw us steaming away again up the river. The scenery varies much. Now the banks of the river are flat, showing the country for miles, and again high banks and rolling hills diversify the scene. Further up, near Bhamo, in the defiles, the mighty river has forced its way between high mountains which rise suddenly from the water’s edge, and the scenery there is majestic. Numbers of villages and small towns are seen on the banks of the river, for here, as elsewhere, the fresh water of the river means life to man and beast, and verdure and freshness to the crops irrigated from it.

Almost every hill and knoll for much of the way has one or more of the dazzling white, bell-shaped, brickwork pagodas so common all over this Buddhist land, in most cases surmounted with the “htee” or “umbrella,” a large iron framework of that shape, richly covered with gold leaf; and at various points the pagoda is hung with numbers of bells, that tinkle musically with every breeze. The number of pagodas is truly astonishing, and the amount they must have cost is one of the marvels of this strange and interesting country.

Pagodas are seen everywhere and in large numbers. Not only is there hardly a village without them, but they are to be seen on lonely hillsides and hilltops in abundance, and sometimes in almost inaccessible places, on some crag or ledge of rock overlooking the plain. The reason for this vast multiplication of pagodas is not far to seek. Of all works of merit none is so effectual as the building of a pagoda.

A VILLAGE ON THE IRRAWADDY.

The following day, in the early morning twilight, we passed Pagân, a most remarkable place on the left bank of the river. It is one of the many former capitals of Burma, being the Royal City in the thirteenth century, but is now practically deserted, except for a few hundreds of pagoda slaves—an outcast class, condemned under Burmese rule to lifelong and hereditary service about the religious buildings.

“It is practically,” says a recent writer, “a city of the dead; but as a religious city, it is certainly the most remarkable and interesting in the world, not excepting Mecca, Kieff or Benares. For eight miles along the river bank, and extending to a distance of two miles inland, the whole surface is thickly studded with pagodas of all sizes and shapes, and the very ground is so thickly covered with crumbling remnants of vanished shrines, that according to the popular saying, you cannot move foot or hand without touching a sacred thing. A Burmese proverb says there are 9,999. This may or may not be true; but in any case it is certain that an area of sixteen square miles is practically covered with holy buildings. They are of every form of architecture and in every stage of decay, from the newly built fane glittering in white and gold, with freshly bejewelled umbrella on its spire, to the mere tumulus of crumbling brick, hardly to be distinguished now from a simple mound of earth.”

They are also of very various sizes, some of them being fine and imposing buildings, and others very small. What a weird sight it was, in the dim twilight of the early morning, to see from the upper deck of the steamer, passing before us like a panorama for eight miles, the towering growths of many centuries of vain offerings, of useless and unavailing endeavours. All was dark and gloomy; mist and the dim twilight covered everything. It was the abode of the dead. Those pagodas were the memorials of a dead faith, and all the self-sacrifice that produced them was but elaborate self-seeking. The buildings seen in the distance put me in mind of a cathedral city, but it was a chilling thought that amid all that grim and solitary vastness there were neither worshippers nor worship—nothing, in fact, but a dreary waste of pagodas, most of them in various stages of decay. A subsequent visit to Pagân, and the more leisurely survey of this marvellous place, made one feel still more the sadness of the spectacle of this untold expenditure of property and labour, and the result neither honour to God nor benefit to man. Such is human “merit,” and such are all attempts to accumulate a store of it.