Four years in Upper Burma

by W. R. Winston

ENTRANCE TO A BURMESE PAGODA.

It is a curious feature about pagodas that though so many are seen going to decay they still continue to build. The explanation of this is that the work of special merit is to build a pagoda, and no special merit attaches to the work of restoration or repair, except in the cases of the few pagodas of great renown, which are greatly resorted to by worshippers and pilgrims.

On the morning of the fourth day from Prome we reached Mandalay. Here we met the Rev. J. H. Bateson, who had arrived three weeks before, having come out from England in the capacity of Wesleyan chaplain to the Upper Burma Field Force.

The first thing to attend to after we had looked round a little was to find a place to lodge. This matter was soon settled by our Army chaplain taking us to the quarters which had been assigned to him by the military authorities. This lodging was novel, for it consisted of one of the buildings belonging to a large Buddhist monastery, substantially built of teak, and with the usual highly quaint, ornamental and fantastic-looking roof, richly decorated with most elaborate carving all over, and tapering at one end into the form of a spire. There were many other buildings of a similar kind around us, some of them really grand and imposing. Within a very short distance of us, in buildings of a similar kind, which are quite different from the ordinary Burmese houses, the whole of the 2nd Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment, several hundreds strong, were lodged. It was said by the chief Buddhist authorities about the time of the annexation that there were close upon six thousand monks in Mandalay, but there are monastery buildings to accommodate many times that number. In addition to all the monks, the entire British force of English troops, Native Indian Sepoy troops, and military police in Mandalay, altogether several thousands strong, were lodged in monastery buildings, and still there was plenty of room to spare.

Mandalay has been well styled the Vatican of Buddhism. So numerous are the religious buildings they seem almost endless, and it is evident that no small portion of the resources of the country must have gone in these works of merit. Within a day or two of our arrival, when we began to look about, we found that we were in close proximity to many remarkably fine religious buildings, and many startling contrasts were brought into view by the exigencies of the times. Close by the quarters of the Hampshire Regiment was a pagoda of fantastic shape. Being a brick building, and not liable to catch fire, it had been put in use as the armourer’s shop, and there the regimental blacksmith was at work with his anvil and tools, his portable fireplace and bellows, and close beside him, as he worked, was the beautiful marble image of Buddha for which the pagoda was erected.

The regimental canteen, from whence proceeded of an evening the loud laughter of the soldiers in their cups, and the singing of many a long-drawn-out song in the true English vernacular, was originally a building consecrated to Buddhist meditation, asceticism and prayer. The regimental guard-room—and in those days they had to keep good watch and ward, for the country was in a state of great disturbance—was a Burmese zayat or resting-place, built by the piety of some one for the benefit of frequenters of these holy places, who little imagined that his zayat would ever be used as a place of detention for drunken and refractory British soldiers.

But the great sight of the place is the “Incomparable Pagoda,” as the Burmans proudly style it, situated close by the guard-room, and directly facing the beautiful monastery building then used as the officers’ mess. This remarkable structure is a huge pile of building raised upon vast masonry pillars. It measures fully 300 feet in length, is proportionately broad, and rises in the form of a pyramid to such a height as to be visible several miles off. Its sumptuously carved and gilded teak-wood doors, forty-four in number, are quite a sight to see in themselves, as is also the magnificent decorative plaster work all around and over the building, and rising to its very summit. At that time, in the absence of churches and chapels, for want of a better place with sufficient space for hundreds to assemble together, the Hampshire Regiment used to have “church parade” in the vast expanse amongst the pillars at the basement of the Incomparable Pagoda. It was a cool, airy, comfortable place, and open on all sides to the breeze, so that it answered very well in such a hot climate.