This is a story that has been often told; and I confess I did not
believe it when I heard it in 1895, in the district where it happened.
Long afterwards, in 1908, Mr G. Tilly, who had been the District
Superintendent of Police on the spot at the time, told me he held a
local inquiry, and was so completely satisfied of the truth of it that
he recommended the payment of a reward of R100 to the girl, and the
Deputy Commissioner and the Commissioner agreed with him, and the
Chief Commissioner of Burma sanctioned the reward, which was paid. In
the absence of any motive for rash credulity on the part of these
officers, this might seem enough; but I happened to be acquainted with
Mr Grant Brown, who is now the Deputy Commissioner of that district,
called the Upper Chindwin, and wrote to him about it. He replied on
21/2/09: "... I remembered the incident quite well as told in the
_Rangoon Gazette_, and should have included it in my article on
Burmese women if I had been able to remember more of the details; but
I had no idea that it took place in this district. Curiously enough,
the very first person I asked was the headman of the village where the
thing happened. He could give me no details beyond those you
mention.... The heroine is dead, and as I thought I was sure to find
an account of what happened in the record-room I did not make further
inquiries. A search has been made, however, without result...."
The "article" mentioned is Mr Grant Brown's article in _The Women of
all Nations_, by Messrs Joyce & Thomas, published by the Messrs
Cassell lately.
Failing to find the record of the original inquiry held by Mr Tilly,
which had perished, as a thing no longer needed, in a periodical
destruction of papers, Mr Grant Brown had a new inquiry held, and the
vernacular record of it is now before me. I sent a set of
interrogatories, which have been answered by Ma Shway U, an
eye-witness, and the head man of the village and another man, who were
soon on the scene, measured the tigress and did everything else that
needed to be done. None of these persons has any motive for
misstatement, and the chance of mistake is infinitesimal. That time
has not altered their stories I can myself testify, for what they say
tallies with what I was told in 1895.
Readers can now see how my doubts have been removed, and must be
impatient to know what it was that I was so slow to believe. As
Mr Tilly tells me the newspapers merely gave more or less abbreviated
versions of his report, I have not referred to them.
The scene was Seiktha village on the Chindwin, an Upper Burman
tributary of the Irrawaddy, in one of the districts that form the
southern fringe of the mountains between Burma and Assam. One day in
1894 three nut-brown girls set out from Seiktha to cut firewood in the
forest, making for a likely place they knew, a little south-east of
their village. They carried one or two heavy knives or choppers, like
butchers' cleavers, such as are common in Burman houses.
Now if there had only been a man with them, or even a big boy, he
would certainly there and then, in going and coming, have walked in
front, bearing a spear or dah, a big curved knife like a sword. What
makes it needful to mention a thing so obvious to us who have lived
there is that Englishwomen sometimes resent, as degrading to their
sex, the Oriental custom that makes the man stalk in front; whereas a
little reflection would show them, when familiar with plain facts of
this kind, that there are reasons for it honourable to human nature.
It is not as a master that a man, who is a man, precedes a woman, or
goes into war, or business, or politics; but as a pioneer, protector,
provider, and in short head servant. The old maid, at whom Dean Ramsay
made us laugh, because she "thought a man was perfect salvation," was
moved by a wise inherited instinct, far different from what simple
sophisticated persons have hitherto supposed.
On this occasion there was no man at all, and in the absence of any
natural protector it was "go as you please." A tigress in the bush saw
her chance. The lightest-limbed and lightest-laden of the trio was a
little girl, Mintha by name, who ran on in front. The tigress seized
her and carried her away.
There is a lot, at times, in etymology. An Englishman who knows
Burmese would tell you that _Mintha_ means prince, or son of an
official (min); but, as written in Burmese, without a long accent on
the _tha_, and pronounced like an ordinary English word with the
stress in front, the name Mintha has another modest meaning which you
may discover from a dictionary, but can only with difficulty persuade
a Burman to tell you. It means _Better-than-an-Official_, a name
curiously recalling the kind of names that were common in England in
the great days of Cromwell.
"We know what judges can be made to do," said Selden, grimly.
"We know what officials are," the Burmans have been saying for
centuries; and they class them with thieves and plagues, perhaps with
more emphasis to-day than ever before. So Mintha is an unpretentious
name, and so common that the little girl who bore it had probably
never thought of the meaning of it, and would certainly have referred
you to her mother if you had asked her about it.
She was perhaps eleven years old, but small for that age, this brown
little maiden whom they called "Better-than-an-Official," and swift
and silent like a dream the tigress stepped out and picked her up and
carried her away between its teeth, as a cat does a little mouse.
Her older sister, Ngway Bwin, which means Silver-blossom, a girl on
the verge of womanhood, about fourteen years old, was next behind her,
and beheld her taken. She quickly turned to the third girl, Shway U or
Grain-of-Gold, who happened at that moment to have a chopper in her
hand; and, snatching the chopper, little Silver-blossom ran at the
very top of her speed after the tigress. She overtook it, and lifting
the big knife high above her head with both hands, she brought it down
heavily on the animal's head. It dropped little Mintha,
"Better-than-an-Official," and stood as if it were stunned. It was
easy to see the need of keeping it stunned. Silver-blossom knew that
that was her only chance. So hammer, hammer, hammer, cut succeeding
cut, the little Burmese maiden killed the tigress.
Grain-of-Gold was the only other person near. She always said, and
says still (1909), that she did nothing but look on. The village
headman reported, and still reports, that the animal, which was shown
to everybody in 1894, was a full-grown tigress in the prime of life,
measuring "8 cubits and 2 meiks." A cubit, in rough village measures,
is still the original cubit, from the elbow to the farthest
finger-tip, and a "meik" is the width of a clenched fist with the
thumb standing out. So 8 cubits and 2 meiks can hardly be less than 11
or 12 feet; but the villagers measure along the curved outline of the
body, so we may conclude the straight measurement was 8 or 9 feet.
The soft brown skin of Better-than-an-Official had been broken and she
was a little hurt on the back of the neck and on one arm; but these
injuries were so slight that it is likely the tigress meant to give
its cubs the pleasure of playing with her, instead of which
Better-than-an-Official, saved by her sister and quickly cured of her
scratches, is now reported to be living at Kule village, Mingin
township. The sister, Silver-blossom herself, was quite unhurt. She
became, deservedly, the pride of the countryside, but "died of a
decline" ten years afterwards.
If her adventure appeared in a romance one would smile at the
absurdity of the author who expected to be believed for a moment. Yet,
after carefully questioning everybody concerned, Mr Tilly, who is a
man of sense, believed it at the time and has never doubted it; and
Mr Grant Brown, after a new local inquiry, believes it; and so do I.
Let readers please themselves.
It may assist them to a right conclusion to remind them that Michelet
has shown that Joan of Arc seems stranger to us than she really was
because we are ignorant of history. Her performance was glorious for
herself and France, one of the most glorious episodes in the history
of the world; but all the same it was only the superlative of many
similar doings of brave French women. Precisely in the same way it has
to be remembered that, like hens emboldened to fly in the faces of
dogs or boys in defence of chicks, many girls in charge of brothers or
sisters have been known to surpass belief in their feats of devotion.
So Silver-blossom was not odd in the sense of being peculiar. She was
like other brave girls, only more so.
At the same time it would be wrong to minimise what she did. It is the
exact truth to say she expanded the range of human possibilities.
Think of a Burmese child doing that!
Let them who know no better "explain" the miracle. The man who ceases
to wonder at it does not understand it. I frankly admire the girl, and
have no "explanation," unless it be one to quote the hymn--
"God moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform."
A pious Quaker's phrase would have been, "God moved her." If there is
in English any better name for the Living Spirit of the Universe that
surged in her heart and nerved her arm, it is not known to me. But, as
a good Muslim Imam of my acquaintance once remarked to me, "There are
many names for God."