BHAMO TO MANDALAY
[Sidenote: BHAMO]
A few years ago Bhamo was regarded by Europeans as far out of the
reach of the ordinary traveller, and beyond the uttermost limits
of what to the complacent Western mind constitutes civilisation.
Since our soldiers took "the road to Mandalay" and ended an almost
bloodless campaign in 1885[365] by annexing Upper Burma and deporting
its misguided monarch, the little north-eastern frontier-town of
Bhamo has entered upon a new phase of its somewhat dramatic history.
It is now a considerable _entrepôt_ of trade, and is bound to
derive the full benefit of any future increase of overland commerce
between China and Burma. It is therefore full of representatives
of all the races of south-eastern Asia who meet there to exchange
their varied goods. There is also a garrison, generally consisting
of Indian troops, but sometimes of a British regiment as well; and
their duty it is not only to watch the Chinese frontier--an easy
task nowadays--but also to keep an eye on the wild Kachins and other
lawless tribes of north-eastern Burma where there is still a vast
tract of country "unadministered"--that is not yet brought under
the direct control of the British Government. There is therefore a
considerable English colony consisting of officers of the army and of
the military police and a few civil officials. Of the latter, the chief
is the deputy-commissioner. Like all members of the great service to
which he belongs, he is a man who plays many parts and fulfils many
functions. He it is who, in the eyes of the subject peoples, represents
the imperial power of Great Britain. The "uncovenanted" service is
represented by officers of the Public Works and Forestry, and other
departments of government. That Bhamo is no longer a barbarous place
outside the pale of civilisation is finally proved by the fact that it
is now the residence of several English ladies who apparently find life
not only supportable but even pleasant.
"There is a wonderful mixture of types in Bhamo. Nowhere in the world
... is there a greater intermingling of races. Here live in cheerful
promiscuity Britishers and Chinese, Shans and Kachins, Sikhs and
Madrasis, Punjabis, Arabs, German Jews and French adventurers, American
missionaries, and Japanese ladies." Such is the concise summing-up
of Dr Morrison; and I may add that I found Bhamo much the same as it
was when he visited it in 1894 except that the French adventurers and
the Japanese ladies appeared to have fled to other pastures. But in
another of his remarks I must confess I am unable to concur. "At its
best," he says, "Bhamo is a forlorn, miserable and wretched station,
where all men seem to regard it as their first duty to the stranger
to apologise to him for being there." No such apologies were made to
me; and if they had, I should have suspected that the apologist was
taking an unnecessarily gloomy view of his surroundings. There are
certainly many worse places in the East than Bhamo. It is within easy
reach of Mandalay and Rangoon by steamer and train, and is therefore
by no means so isolated as its position on the map might lead one to
suppose. Its neighbourhood is picturesque; it has clubs and lawn-tennis
courts; roads are good; there are many open spaces suitable for polo
and the other games that the exiled Englishman loves, and its European
houses are roomy bungalows surrounded by delightful gardens full of
the glories of tropical vegetation. For part of the year the climate
is no doubt trying. The town lies on the banks of the Irrawaddy, and
is less than 400 feet above the sea-level. Before the rains break in
early summer the temperature sometimes goes up to 100° Fahr. It was
over 90° in the shade during the few days that I resided there. But
that is cool compared with Mandalay, where the heat, at the end of
the dry season, is sometimes excessive. I was told in Bhamo that the
temperature at Mandalay about three weeks earlier was no less than 115°
in the shade in the afternoon. But the dryness of the atmosphere both
at Bhamo and Mandalay during the spring and early summer saves European
constitutions from the disastrous results of a high temperature in a
damp climate. The summer climate of Hongkong, where the thermometer
rarely rises much above 90°, is on account of its excessive dampness
far more trying than that of any part of Upper Burma.[366]
[Sidenote: BURMESE VILLAGES]
I remained at Bhamo from the 15th to the 18th June, during which time I
was treated with the greatest hospitality by various local residents.
On the morning of the 18th I started for Mandalay on one of the fine
steamers belonging to the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, and spent the
next two days in a complete idleness, which, after months of arduous
travelling, I found thoroughly enjoyable. The scenery of this part
of the Irrawaddy is not as a rule very striking compared with the
magnificence of some of the Chinese rivers, but its placid waters and
the rich vegetation of its banks have a tranquil beauty of their own
which is quite unique. Perhaps one of the most striking facts about
Upper Burma is that it is one of the few countries where the works of
human hands--native hands, at least--have not spoiled nature's own
loveliness. A Chinese village is seldom a thing of beauty, except
as viewed from a distance:[367] a Burmese village, on the contrary,
hardly ever mars, and very often accentuates, the simple beauty of its
surroundings. The houses--built of wood and bamboo--look as if they
had grown out, and were still an integral part, of the virgin forest
from which their materials have all been drawn. Like the statue which,
according to the old Greek fancy, lay hidden in the shapeless block
of marble until the artist's chisel released it from its prison, so
the Burmese village--as one might dream--was never created by the hand
of man, but only lay buried in the primeval forest until the hour
when the woodman's axe pruned the luxuriance of the jungle growths.
Such, at least, was the impression that came to me as the throbbing
steam-boat glided rapidly in the silver morning haze through the
noiseless waters of the great river of Burma. A nearer acquaintance
with the villages--for we often stopped to embark cargo or to land
passengers--hardly convinced me that my dream was an idle one: for the
finely-carved teakwood monasteries and the shining pagodas with their
gilded summits, and, above all, the graceful figures and merry faces
and tasteful dresses of the people themselves, all tended to intensify
my first impressions. The sites of the stupas or pagodas are always
singularly well chosen.[368] It is sad to reflect that some of the
beauty of the Burmese riverside villages is gradually passing away in
obedience to the dismal Western law of progress. The danger of fire
and considerations of economy, coupled, I fear, with the partial decay
of the exquisite taste which was once the Burman's birth-right, has
brought about the introduction of new methods of building and foreign
architectural designs. Most incongruous of all are the corrugated-iron
roofs. Can the poor Burman be supplied with no roofing material less
hideous? The Burmese are wise enough to retain their own national
costume, a matter for which one should feel grateful; but the adoption
of cheap black European umbrellas is almost as serious a lapse from
good taste as the use of iron roofing, and is apparently recognised as
such by the authorities.
[Sidenote: A BURMESE CROWD]
When the Prince of Wales was recently in Mandalay he was entertained
by the Lieutenant-Governor at a water carnival. It took place on the
waters of the moat close to the walls of Fort Dufferin--the old royal
city--and such parts of the grounds as were open to the public were
crowded with Burmese sightseers, dressed in their finest silks. The
show of colour was unfortunately marred by enormous numbers of black
umbrellas, used as sunshades. As a Burmese crowd (without umbrellas)
is one of the most charming sights to be seen in Burma or anywhere
else and was therefore well worthy of a prince's gaze, messengers were
hurriedly despatched to inform the smiling crowd that in the presence
of British royalty umbrellas must come down. The order was of course
obeyed without a murmur, and the Prince of Wales had the pleasure of
beholding in Mandalay a more brilliant and picturesque assemblage of
his future subjects than he is ever likely to behold in the empire's
capital.
The most striking scenery on the Irrawaddy below Bhamo is undoubtedly
to be found in what is known as the Second Defile.[369] The river at
this point flows through a comparatively narrow channel in a gorge
which is overlooked by a great cliff about 800 feet high. A few years
ago I spent many happy days in a canoe, floating down the beautiful
Nam-U,[370] from Muang Wa to Luang Prabang. A short distance above the
mouth of the river, where it joins the Mekong, there is a stupendous
limestone precipice--how lofty I should not dare to guess--which rises
sheer out of the water on the right bank. In situation and appearance
it is similar to the cliff in the Second Defile of the Irrawaddy, yet,
if I can trust my own recollection, the Nam-U precipice is the loftier
and more magnificent. As, however, the wild beauty of the Nam-U has
never ceased to be a waking dream ever since I shot its rapids in my
little canoe, and camped on its banks night by night at the edge of its
silent and trackless jungles, it may be that its most striking features
tend in my own mind to loom larger than the reality. In any case the
Irrawaddy, too, can furnish food for lifelong dreams of beauty.
[Sidenote: MANDALAY]
Having left Bhamo on 18th June I reached Mandalay on the morning of
the 20th. Here--for the purposes of this book at least--I may regard
my journey as at an end. In travelling overland from the capital of
China to the old capital of Burma, I had carried out the pleasant
task which I had set myself when I started from Weihaiwei almost half
a year before. It were fitting, perhaps, that I should close this
imperfect account of my journey with a description of the marvels of
Mandalay; but I must decline a task for which no casual visitor can or
should regard himself qualified. A week's residence in Mandalay is not
sufficient to justify any one except the globe-trotter--for whom two
days and a night may be sufficient--in attempting a description of one
of the most curious and wonderful of the modern cities of Asia. In the
palace grounds I was shown the magnificent monument which was erected
to the memory of king Mindon,[371] father of the ex-king Thibaw. I was
told that in a recent book about Burma, written by one who was too much
pressed for time to sift his facts, there is a fine photograph of this
monument which is described as "the tomb of king Mindon's favourite
Terrier." There is a moral in this little story which we tourists would
do well to take to heart.
Next to the numerous palace buildings with their gilded
throne-rooms--no longer, thanks to Lord Curzon, used as a European
club--the most interesting sights are outside the walls of the royal
city. No student of Buddhism will omit to visit that wonderful
collection of miniature temples known as the Kutho-daw, which contains
the whole of the Buddhist Pali canon--a collection of sacred writings
at least five times as long, be it remembered, as the whole of the
Christian Bible--carved on nearly a thousand slabs of white marble.
Each slab stands upright in a small pagoda and is fully exposed to
view, though sheltered from the weather. The pagodas are about seven
hundred in number, and are arranged in symmetrical order side by
side, the whole forming a great square with a temple in the centre.
This wonderful work was carried out by Mindon Min in 1857, simply as
an act of religious devotion.[372] The other pagodas of Mandalay and
its neighbourhood are very numerous, and each possesses interesting
features of its own. The finest is perhaps the Maha Myatmuni, generally
known as the Arakan Pagoda. It contains a fine brazen colossal image
of the Buddha, nearly twelve feet high, in a sitting posture. Its
peculiar sanctity is derived from the tradition that it was copied from
life and is therefore a true image of the Buddha as he really was. In
mediæval times wars were waged between several of the kings of Burma
and Indo-China in order to settle the disputed right of its possession.
I was surprised to find that religious scruples have not prevented the
introduction of electric light into this temple; but the effect is far
from displeasing. The lights in the recess containing the famous Buddha
are so arranged that, while they strongly illuminate the image itself,
the neighbouring parts of the pagoda, where I saw many girl-worshippers
devoutly kneeling, are in deep gloom.
[Sidenote: MANDALAY AS A CENTRE]
Starting from Mandalay as a centre I paid several visits to other
parts of Burma, where I remained altogether about six weeks. Among
other places I visited Lashio, only a few days' journey by road
from the Salwen at the Kunlon Ferry, and the furthest point yet
attained by the railway. There I spent a few days as the guest of the
Superintendent of the North Shan States.[373] At Maymyo, the charming
European hill-station, I was kindly entertained by Sir Herbert White,
K.C.I.E., Lieutenant-Governor of Burma, and later on was also his
guest at Government House, Mandalay. Maymyo is only about four hours
distant from Mandalay by train, but during that short distance the
railway climbs a height of over 3,000 feet. Between Maymyo and Lashio
I broke my journey for a couple of days, and, under the auspices of Mr
D. G. Robertson, the British Adviser, I had the pleasure of meeting
the reigning chief or sawbwa of the important Shan State of Hsi-paw. I
had hoped to spend some weeks or months in the trans-Salwen portion of
the province, for the purpose of studying something of the languages
and customs of the numberless tribes that inhabit that fascinating
and little-known country, and comparing them with what I knew of the
allied tribes in French Laos, and those through whose territory I had
recently passed in Chinese territory. As travelling in the Shan States
is, however, practically impossible during the rains, I was obliged
indefinitely to postpone the fulfilment of that part of my programme.
As I hoped to return to the Shan States later on, I commenced the
study of the language and hired a Shan servant to accompany me during
the remainder of my stay in Burma.
My next objective was the old capital of Pagan, on the left bank of
the Irrawaddy, below Mandalay. I spent three days there, exploring the
wonderful ruins of innumerable pagodas and monasteries which are all
that remain of a city that was once not only the capital of a powerful
kingdom but also one of the leading centres of learning and religion in
south-eastern Asia. The secular buildings have nearly all disappeared,
but the remaining ruins possess many features of the greatest interest
to archæologists. I could trace no sign of Chinese influence in the
architecture and decoration of this dead and vanishing city, though it
is alleged--on doubtful authority--that the conquering Chinese arms did
once at least penetrate as far as Pagan. Here, as elsewhere in Burma,
the Chinese invasions do not appear to have left any lasting results or
to have affected in any way the art of the country.[374]
[Illustration: VIEW AT PAGAN, IRRAWADDY RIVER, BURMA.
[_To face p._ 332.]
[Sidenote: EUROPEANS IN BURMA]
Leaving Pagan I continued my journey down the Irrawaddy, and reached
Rangoon on 15th July.
* * * * *
The conviction that a tour through Burma must leave in the minds of
most Europeans is that the country is to be congratulated on its people
and that the people are to be equally congratulated on their country.
That Burma itself is one of the fairest of lands, every traveller can
see for himself; and so far as I could judge from my own short
experience and from what was told me by sympathetic British residents,
the Burmese are perhaps the most cheerful, generous and hospitable,
and on the whole the most attractive people in Asia. But one very
commonly hears them also characterised as frivolous, incorrigibly
lazy, thriftless, superstitious, untruthful, and lacking in courage
and tenacity of purpose. Many European travellers and others have
come to the conclusion that these sad deficiencies in the Burman's
character are gradually bringing about the ruin and extinction of his
race. They point to the fact that the population of Rangoon is far
less than half Burman; that Chetty money-lenders, cooks and labourers
from Madras, and Chinese merchants and shopkeepers, are gradually
monopolising the industry of the country, while the Burman looks on
with apathy at his own displacement from the fields, kitchens, shops
and counting-houses in which his Indian and Chinese rivals wax rich
and fat. In many European houses--perhaps in Lower Burma the great
majority--there is not a single Burman servant, all the duties of cook,
coolie, table-servant and valet being discharged by suave, noiseless
and obedient natives of India. The only people who seem to be able
to attract Burmese servants, and keep them for any length of time,
are members of the Civil Service, who, with their knowledge of the
language and familiarity with the national customs and ideals, are
better able than any other aliens to sympathise with the Burman in his
joys and sorrows, his likes and dislikes, and to understand something
of his point of view. They make good masters, and earn their reward
in retaining the services of loyal and attached Burmese servants. Of
course there are many non-official Europeans who, with the instincts
of gentlemen, treat their dependents quite as well and sympathetically
as any one; while among the civil servants there are no doubt many who
from the beginning to the end of their career in Burma never shake off
the feeling of antipathy to the Oriental--coupled, probably, with a
strong sense of racial superiority--which they had when they first came
out to the East. But these exceptional cases only prove the rule; and
it is strong testimony to the intrinsic worth of the Burman's character
that the more thoroughly he is understood the more he is liked by those
best qualified to judge. The versatile traveller who "does Burma" in
the course of his round-the-world tour, and fills a notebook with
comments on the character of the Burmese as a result of what he hears
at the dinner-tables of Rangoon, would do well to exercise caution
before he gives his notebook to the world. Do not some of us in China
well know how prone the tourist is to echo the too-often ignorant and
one-sided views about the Chinese that he may have heard expressed in
the clubs and drawing-rooms of Hongkong and Shanghai? It seems that the
situation in Burma is not dissimilar.
[Sidenote: THE BURMESE CHARACTER]
I should be courting a well-deserved retort if I were now to attempt,
in a few irresponsible pages, a complete character-sketch of the Burman
as he appeared to me during my too-brief sojourn in his beautiful
country. Instead of doing so I will content myself with recommending
the reader who is interested in Burma but cannot visit it to read and
read again the books that have been written by such well-informed and
sympathetic writers as Sir George Scott, Mr Fielding Hall and Mr Scott
O'Connor. It is satisfactory to know from one of these writers that the
Burmese are by no means likely to be crowded out of their own country
by such vigorous workers as the Madrasis and Chinese. The immigration
of these people enriches the Burman instead of impoverishing him. It
enables him to withdraw from work which he cordially dislikes, and
to devote himself to the tilling of his rice-fields, and to live the
free life--and it is by no means an idle one--that he best loves.
The Burmese are showing no signs of approaching extinction; on the
contrary, they are multiplying with rapidity.[375] The Burmese,
says Mr Fielding Hall, are "extremely prosperous now. There is less
poverty, less sickness, less unhappiness than among any people I have
seen East or West. If there ever was a people about whom pessimism
sounded absurd, it is about the Burmese."[376] If there is, however,
one characteristic of the Burman which appears to be beginning to
show signs of decay--let us hope it is change rather than decay--it
is his artistic sense. His art, like the art of India and Ceylon, is,
it seems, becoming demoralised. But that is not due to the example or
competition of any Oriental race; it is a result--be it said to our
shame--of the English conquest. As regards the common accusation that
the Burman is untruthful, it appears to me that Mr Fielding Hall has
effectually disposed of this in the book from which I have just quoted.
He points out that because a Burman often lies to a European--whom he
can hardly help regarding as an unsympathetic alien--that does not
imply that he is a liar by nature. "Every man has many standards. He
has one for his family, one for his friends, one for his own class, one
for his own nation, and a last for all outsiders. No man considers a
foreigner entitled to the same openness and truth from him as his own
people.... The only way to estimate a people truly is to know how they
treat each other, and how they estimate each other.... I should say,
from what I have seen, that between Burman and Burman the standard of
honesty and truth is very high. And between European and Burman it is
very much what the European chooses to make it."[377] These remarks, I
may add parenthetically, would apply with equal force to the relations
between Europeans and Chinese.
[Sidenote: BURMESE "LAZINESS"]
The question of laziness and want of energy is a very interesting one,
and is not so simple as it appears at first sight. Because the Burman
is glad to leave the rough labour of coolies and the dreary duties of
cooking foreign food and performing the routine work of house-servant
to the Madrasi, and because he is seen smoking big cheroots and wearing
silk clothes much too good to work in while his active wife carries
on the business of the bazaar, the strenuous Englishman, who knows so
well what incessant hard work has done in building up the greatness
of his own nation, is at first inclined to regard him with scorn and
impatience. Perhaps because I am conscious of a secret sympathy with
a life of what I may call intelligent indolence, I am not disposed to
execrate the Burman for a fault in which I am prone to share. But, as
a matter of fact, the Burman is not so idle as he is believed to be.
"Do not suppose," says the eloquent writer from whom I have quoted,
"that the Burmese are idle. Such a nation of workers was never known.
Every man works, every woman works, every child works. Life is not an
easy thing, but a hard, and there is a great deal of work to be done.
There is not an idle man or woman in all Burma."[378] In the face of
a statement so emphatic as this, how is it that the vice of laziness
is so often attributed to the Burman? The reason is not far to seek.
The Burman lives in a rich country where the actual necessaries of
life come easily. He may have to work hard at times, but he does not
and need not labour from morning to night and day after day without
intermission. He is content with little, for he is a frugal eater
and, more often than not, a vegetarian. Money is of little value to
him except to buy some of the novelties that are poured into Burma
from English factories. No doubt the more he craves to possess these
novelties, the harder he will have to work to get the money to pay for
them: and this is a fact that is already having a marked effect on
the national habits. The Burman who has not become half-occidentalised
does not aim at wealth for its own sake: he does not bow down and
worship people who have money: Mammon has not yet secured a niche in
his pantheon. He only wants enough to feed his relations and himself,
to bring up his children in health and strength, and to clothe them
with garments that are not only comfortable to wear but pleasant to
the eye. If his fields produce more food than he needs, he sells the
surplus, and spends the money in works of charity and religion and in
graceful hospitalities. The consequence is that at certain seasons of
the year--when harvests are over, for instance--he has many hours of
what we might call idleness. He wants to live, as well as to be a mere
machine for the manufacture of wealth.
[Sidenote: WESTERN CIVILISATION]
The Burmese theory is one which many a robust and healthy-minded
Englishman will absolutely reject, and perhaps it is as well that the
Englishman should do so. There can be no progress, he will say, if
men are only going to do sufficient work to bring them their daily
food. To be strenuous and active, to be ready to face difficulties
and strong enough to overcome them--these are the only ways to keep
ourselves in the vanguard of progress and civilisation. But, after all,
is there not a good deal to be said for the Burman's point of view,
too? Are we quite sure that we always know what we mean when we speak
of progress and civilisation? That there is a terribly sad and ugly
side to the development of civilisation in Western countries--a sadness
and ugliness chiefly noticeable in the great industrial centres--is a
dreary fact which no Englishman is so likely to realise to the full as
he who revisits his native country after a prolonged absence in the
East. Even in the most squalid quarters of the most densely-populated
cities in China I have never come across anything more painful and
depressing than comes daily within the experience of those who, like
East End missionaries, live in close proximity to the slums and poorer
quarters of our great English cities. Unfortunately, the ugliness, if
not the squalor, extends itself beyond the slums, though it assumes
different forms among the middle and upper classes of our people. At
the risk of having one's words stigmatised as cant and humbug, it is
difficult to refrain from giving utterance to a feeling of wonder that
so much of the energy and activity of the imperial British race should
be devoted to social and political rivalries and the accumulation of
material wealth, and that modern English life should be so strongly
tainted with the vulgarity and brutality that come of sordid ideals.
Make a Burman a millionaire: he will build pagodas, he will support
monasteries, he will entertain his friends lavishly, he will exercise a
graceful charity unheard of in the West,--and all these things he will
go on doing until his money-bags are so empty that he can carry them
on his back with a light heart. The process will not be a long one.
Transport a hundred Burmans to work in an English workshop or factory:
they will probably be all dead or mad in five years; or, what perhaps
is worse, all the joy and buoyancy will have been crushed out of their
souls for ever. This will not be on account of the hard work--they
could work harder if necessary--but because of the mechanical nature of
the labour, the long hours of sunless confinement, the deadly monotony,
the wearisome routine. Englishmen consider themselves the apostles of
liberty throughout the world. The Burman, if asked to give his candid
opinion after a year's experience of English life, would probably say
that the position of the vast majority of Englishmen was not much
better than that of chained slaves.
[Sidenote: CIVILISATION AND WEALTH]
The evils of our civilisation are perhaps less apparent to him who
dwells in its midst than to him who observes it from afar, yet in
England, too, there have been some sad-voiced prophets. The warnings
of Ruskin, Carlyle and Froude, to mention few out of the many who have
uttered oracles since the days when Sir Thomas More in his _Utopia_
satirised the love of gold, seem to have fallen on ears that are deaf
to every sound but the clink of coin upon coin. Even psychologists
and metaphysicians[379] have condescended to come into the arena of
practical life to tell us plain truths about the falseness of our aims
and the barbarities that we have masked with the forms of civilisation.
"The world is too much with us; late and soon
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers."
It is not commercialism and industrialism in themselves that are
harmful: it is only too obvious that our national, or at least our
imperial existence is dependent on our wealth, and that wealth can come
only from flourishing industries and a worldwide commerce. The harm
lies, as Wordsworth saw, in making wealth our deity instead of our
servant, and "laying waste" the powers and faculties which are fit for
nobler and higher functions by forcing them to act as the apostles
and missionaries of a false god. We are apt to speak contemptuously of
pagan religions. Take down the most grotesque idol that grins upon his
shelf in India, China or Central Africa, and put in its place the new
god worshipped by Englishmen and Americans to-day, and who shall choose
between them as fit objects for adoration?
It is frequently taken for granted--naturally enough in commercial
England--that the creation of new wants is one of the finest results
of civilisation; that by artificially creating new desires among the
people of a "backward" race, we not only enrich ourselves by finding
new markets for our trade, but we elevate and ennoble such a people
by compelling them to lay greater store on the accumulation of wealth
in order that they may gratify those new desires. That it is unwise
to accept any such theory as axiomatic may be at least tentatively
suggested. "It is popularly supposed" said Ruskin "that it benefits a
nation to invent a want. Rut the fact is that the true benefit is in
extinguishing a want--in living with as few wants as possible."[380]
To see the whole Burmese nation clad in Lancashire cottons, labouring
with set teeth from morning till night, year after year, their pagodas
deserted and ungilded, their gleaming blue sky polluted with the smoke
of factory chimneys, their beautiful country turned into a vast hive
of ceaseless and untiring industry, simply in order that wealth might
grow and British trade prosper, would no doubt be a consummation most
devoutly to be wished by the working classes of the ruling race, and
also by the alien Government which would congratulate itself on "the
unexampled prosperity of the country and the gratifying elasticity of
the revenue." But, meanwhile, what of the happiness of the Burmese
people? It is a poor answer to say that if they do not want European
luxuries they are not compelled to buy them, and that if they despise
money no one is going to force them to accumulate it.
[Sidenote: BURMESE IDEALS]
If by civilisation we mean an enlightened progress towards the
realisation of the happiness of mankind--without necessarily assuming
the truth of the Utilitarian position that human action ought to be
deliberately directed towards the attainment of the greatest possible
sum of pleasures--there can be no doubt that the Burmese people are
very high indeed in the scale of civilised races. Nothing is easier
than to criticise such statements. Some will say that the happiness
of a Burman is a matter of temperament rather than the result of the
conditions of his social environment. The Christian who holds that his
religion is the only true one, and that all others are false, will
condemn the Burman, because, being a Buddhist and a nat-worshipper,
he is a "heathen." The man of science will say that in spite of his
tolerance and kind-heartedness and humanity, the Burman has made no
discoveries worth speaking of in medicine, knows nothing of surgery,
and has never invented any labour-saving machinery. In fairness
it should be added--for we are still discussing civilisation--that
the Burman is not fond of applying his intellect to the devising of
mechanical contrivances for slaughtering his fellow-men. Whatever be
the shortcomings of his civilisation, the Burman has made one momentous
discovery, and it is to this point that I have been trying to lead up:
he has discovered how to make life happy without selfishness, and to
combine an adequate power of hard work with a corresponding ability
to enjoy himself gracefully. "Put him on the river he loves," says Mr
Scott O'Connor,[381] "with a swift and angry current against him, and
he is capable of superb effort. Turn his beautiful craft, enriched with
exquisite carvings, down stream, with wind and tide in his favour, and
he will lie all day in the sun, and exult in the Nirvana of complete
idleness. And this is not because he is 'a lazy hound,' as I have heard
him called, but because he is a philosopher and an artist; because
there is a blue sky above him which he can look at, a river before him
rippling with colour and light; because the earning of pence is a small
thing to him by comparison with the joy of life, and material things
themselves but an illusion of the temporary flesh."
[Sidenote: ORIENTAL CIVILISATION]
A few years ago I wandered alone, as I have said, through the wildest
parts of the trans-Mekong Shan States and Siam. I had no credentials,
no guide, no servants, and had no knowledge of the languages spoken
around me. I was received everywhere with the utmost kindness and the
most open-hearted hospitality. In village after village in the valleys
of the Nam-U and Mekong I found myself an honoured guest. I could give
numberless instances of the tact and fine feeling constantly displayed
by my hosts in their dealings with the dumb and unknown foreigner who
seemed to have sprung upon them from nowhere. Money did not come into
the matter at all: it was of no use to my hosts, for there was hardly
any trade, and all their food and clothes were prepared in their
own villages. During several memorable weeks I travelled through a
fairyland of beauty, sometimes on foot, sometimes in a canoe or on a
raft. I saw much of the domestic and social life of the people, and so
charming was all I saw that I fear my pleasure was not untainted with
envy. It seemed to me that not a single essential of true civilisation
was there wanting; I felt that all my preconceived notions of what
civilisation really meant had been somehow distorted and must be pulled
down and built up anew. During my few weeks in Burma I did not travel
in the same way, and steamers and trains gave me little opportunity of
seeing Burmese life from the inside; but from what came under my own
notice, and from what was told me by others who knew, I have no doubt
that where the Burman has not lost his national graces through contact
with an alien civilisation he is just as courteous and tolerant and
well-mannered and "civilised" as those neighbours of his of whom I
have such golden memories.
No doubt one of the greatest achievements of a civilisation such as
that of Laos or Burma consists in the spirit of peace and restfulness
that it seems to embody. There is, of course, a fallacy in supposing
that a contented feeling of "having arrived" is to be expected at
all in this human life. Whether we believe in an existence beyond
the grave or not, few of us dare to be so optimistic as to suppose
that perfection in any form can be realised on earth, although we
instinctively feel that we must not be satisfied with anything less.
Yet when in some parts of south-eastern Asia we have once breathed that
Nirvana-like spirit of restfulness and peace, may we not be pardoned if
we find there a strange and magical beauty that all the wisdom of the
West can never yield us? It may be, indeed, that our complex Western
civilisation, in spite of its materialism and its grossness, contains
germs of a higher perfection than ever Burma or Indo-China dreamed
of. A full realisation of human capacities, to use the phrase of T.
H. Green, can hardly be expected in a simple form of society which
calls for no great effort and in which there is no great temptation to
deviate from the normal in either an upward or a downward direction.
Our strenuous Western life, ugly and brutal as much of it is, and
besmirched with the stains of blood and toil, may yet give birth to
ideals nobler than ever stirred the imagination of southern Asia. The
mountain rent by torrents and chasms, or the ocean tearing with white
fangs the face of a cliff, presents to human eyes and minds a spectacle
that contains a deeper and grander meaning than can ever be conveyed by
the fragile beauty of the royalest of flowers: and the rose, for all
its loveliness, fades and dies. Still, let us not despise the beauty
that is flower-like, even if we meet it in a land of alien faces: we
know that "he is false to God who flouts the rose."
[Sidenote: ORIENTAL CIVILISATION]
I have said that the Burman shows himself able, in play-hours, to enjoy
himself gracefully. In the Burman--he is not alone among Orientals in
this--there is no vulgarity. When he and his friends are having what
we might call "a spree," he never behaves rudely or uproariously, nor
does he get drunk.[382] His good taste and self-control are shown
in his demeanour just as they are in his clothes. He is never a
"bounder," either in manners or appearance. All these remarks apply
with equal force to his women-folk. The Burmese woman, whatever her
class may be and whatever her occupation, is always a lady. There may
be much merriment, a great deal of noise, a considerable amount of
good-humoured chaff, but no "mafficking." Can we say quite the same of
"Merrie England"?
It is hardly fair to dwell on the brightest and most picturesque side
of Burmese life--which no doubt has its dark side as well--and compare
it with the gloomier and more horrible features of the social life of
modern England. But what I wish to emphasise is the one fact that the
Burmese people of all classes are able to enjoy themselves--and do so
most heartily--without the least admixture of "hooliganism," which
a very large class of our own countrymen and countrywomen are too
obviously unable to do.[383] If an intelligent Burman were to visit
England and set himself to discover why it is that among the poorer
classes of our great cities merry-making is apparently inseparable
from hideous and raucous vulgarity, he would probably ascribe it to
the effect of long hours of degrading and mechanical labour, the
drudgery and incessant routine of daily life in the sunless workshop
and the dismal office--work from which the victims, owing to strenuous
competition, derive only the meanest subsistence, and through which all
ideas of gracefulness and good taste are obliterated, and all sense of
beauty utterly destroyed.
[Illustration: MONASTERY AT PAGAN, IRRAWADDY RIVER, BURMA.
[_To face p._ 349.]
[Sidenote: BUDDHISM IN BURMA]
The most wonderful and beautiful feature of Burmese life I have barely
referred to, and yet it would deserve a whole volume to itself. The
greatest thing in Burma is the Buddhist religion. We have been told
by several people who ought to know, that the real religion of Burma
is not Buddhism but Animism;[384] that Buddhism is merely an outward
label, and that what the Burman really worships is not the law of
Buddha, but the nats and spirits that inhabit the rivers and mountains
and forests. There is, of course, a considerable element of truth in
this criticism, and it applies even more truly to the Shans than to the
Burmese. I have had evidence of this in the neighbouring countries,
when the Shan boys who guided my canoe down the rivers of Laos used
to stop to offer up prayers to the river-nats whenever we came to a
dangerous rapid. But to describe Buddhism in Burma as a mere label
seems--though I say it with all deference to those who know better--to
be an exaggeration. The Burmans not only "profess and call themselves"
Buddhists, but they are brought up in the tenets of that religion from
their earliest childhood, and before the British Government established
secular schools they received all their education from Buddhist monks
within the walls of Buddhist monasteries. The great majority do so
still, though some are sent to the secular schools as well. Like the
Siamese, all Burmese boys at some time or other wear the yellow robe
and take the monastic vows. Most of them return as a matter of course
to the secular life, but it would be contrary to all human experience
to expect them to forget the religion they have been taught both at
home and at school during their most impressionable years; and, as
a matter of fact, throughout their lives they continue to have the
greatest reverence for the yellow robe--the symbol, in their eyes, of
all that is holy.
[Sidenote: BUDDHISM AND ANIMISM]
I would go so far as to say that the average Burman of the present day
is at least as much entitled to the name of Buddhist as the average
Englishman or German is to the name of Christian.[385] The law of
Buddha is certainly not broken by Burmans in the same lighthearted
manner that European Governments and individuals consistently break the
commands contained in the Sermon on the Mount: it is not contemptuously
thrust aside as "an excellent ideal, but quite unworkable in practice."
Buddhism, as it is taught and practised in Burma, is a beautiful
religion. I never met a single European in Burma--I must admit that I
did not come in contact with the Christian missionaries there--who had
a single harsh word to say about the wearers of the yellow robe,[386]
or the general effect of their teachings. Whatever their own religious
views may be, all Europeans seem ready to acknowledge that Buddhism was
and still is a great power for good, and that it will be a dismal day
for the Burmese people when their religion decays or relaxes its hold
upon them. Fortunately, there seems to be every reason to believe that
it will not do so, that Buddhism is for the Burman, if for no other,
a κτῆμα ἐς ἀεί. It seems strange to be told by one of the foremost
living exponents of Burmese life and character that the professed
religion of Burma is only "an electro-plating, a bloom, a varnish,
enamel, lacquer, a veneer."[387] Surely this must not be taken quite
seriously. A "bloom," a "varnish," a "veneer" suggests something that
may be more or less easily rubbed off, without materially affecting the
substance on which it has been laid. Can it be held in good faith that
Buddhism could be rubbed away like the bloom from a grape and leave
the Burmese people substantially unaffected? Do the gentleness, the
patience, the humanity, the kindness to animals, the winning manners
and the limitless charity and generosity of the Burmese owe nothing
to Buddhism? If Buddhism has had even a minor share in the shaping of
the character of the modern Burman we dare not call it a mere bloom or
varnish. That there is, however, a very broad stratum of animism in
the various deposits that have helped through the shadowy centuries
of an unrecorded past to build up the religious mind of Burma may be
granted without dispute. Animism, as we know, is to be traced in the
popular versions of all or nearly all the religious systems of the
world. The eleventh book of the _Odyssey_ is--as F. W. H. Myers has
remarked--"steeped in animism,"[388] and we have only to turn to the
eighth book of the _Æneid_[389] to find that even in the polished age
of Augustus animistic ideas were far from dead. Brahmanism, Buddhism,
Islam, the Greek and Roman mythologies, the popular semi-religious
superstitions of China and Japan, and Christianity[390] are all to
some extent interpenetrated with animism, and it is only natural that
in the case of Buddhism the animistic influences should be specially
strong: for that faith enshrines, among the noble and simple moral
teachings that all can understand, a profound philosophical system far
beyond the comprehension of the average half-educated peasant; and it
has always shown, perhaps, even too generous a tolerance of the alien
opinions and practices with which it has come in contact.
We are told by the well-known writer on Burma from whom I have just
quoted, that when in 1888 the _hti_ (pinnacle) of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda
at Rangoon was thrown down by an earthquake, a magnificent new one,
costing 600,000 rupees, all collected by public subscription, was put
up by gratuitous labour.[391] I am far from wishing to lay any emphasis
on the significance of the mere voluntary expenditure of so large a sum
of money, for we know that in Burma all wealth is dross, and that as
judged by Burmese ideas few of the rich philanthropists of Europe would
rank as other than mere misers; but the fact of the gift of _gratuitous
labour_ by a people who are constantly stigmatised as "lazy dogs"
and haters of all kinds of hard work, is surely worthy of a moment's
consideration. The average Briton is credited with being anything but
lazy, yet what would Christian England say if the Primate were to call
upon the British workman to give the work of his hands for nothing in
the restoration of St Paul's Cathedral? The result of his appeal might
possibly suggest in some minds the disquieting reflection that the
Burmese were not the only people whose professed religion was a mere
"varnish."
[Sidenote: THE SHWE DAGON]
Any one who visits the pagodas and watches the people at their
devotions--they make a far more beautiful picture, by the way, than
the congregation of any European church, though that is not to the
point--is not likely to see anything suggestive of the decay of
Buddhism. There are, on the contrary, healthy signs of a renewed
religious activity which, if guided aright, should lead to splendid
results and silence all forebodings. Meanwhile, the jewelled pinnacle
of "the greatest cathedral of the Buddhist faith"[392]--the Shwe Dagon
Pagoda--still bears silent witness to the vitality and beauty of the
religion which called it into being. So long as the Buddhist faith is a
living force in Burma, there will never be wanting eager hands to dress
the altars and lay gold-leaf on the dome of that splendid fane, and
never will the grand and passionless face of the Lord Buddha be averted
from the little Burmese children who with their fathers and mothers
come to lay their gifts of flowers at the Master's feet. If Buddhism
dies out of Burma the country will lose the most precious of all its
possessions; and when the Shwe Dagon, deserted by its last pilgrim,
crumbles away into a shapeless heap of bricks, the world's diadem will
lose one of its most lustrous gems.
FOOTNOTES:
[365] The years of dacoit-hunting that followed were, unfortunately,
far from bloodless; and it was during those years that the Burman
learned to respect the British soldier.
[366] The latitude of Hongkong is almost exactly the same as that of
Mandalay and Calcutta.
[367] Some villages in Ssuch'uan may be said to be an honourable
exception.
[368] "Est-ce la colline qui a été façonée pour la pagode, est-ce la
pagode qui a choisi la colline, si bien faites l'une pour l'autre,
ravissantes d'ensemble? Qu'elle est jolie, cette réflexion blanche,
tombant de haut dans le cristal de l'eau!"--_Birmanie_, par Mme.
Quenedey, p. 218.
[369] The first is above Bhamo, where, owing to the dangers to
navigation, steamers have temporarily ceased to run.
[370] A large river of French Laos or the trans-Mekong Shan States.
It is navigable only for canoes of the most primitive description,
for it is full of dangerous rapids. It enters the Mekong a few miles
above Luang Prabang. The scenery of this river, which I descended from
its highest navigable point (Muang Wa) to its mouth, is exceptionally
beautiful.
[371] The founder of Mandalay, and second last king of Burma. He
reigned from 1852 to 1878, and was succeeded by his son Thibaw, who
reigned until his deposition by the British Government in 1885.
[372] There is an interesting essay by Max Müller on the Kutho-daw in
his _Last Essays_ (Second Series).
[373] Mr G. C. B. Stirling.
[374] See Note 45 (p. 440).
[375] See Note 46 (p. 441).
[376] _A People at School_, chap. xxiv.
[377] _Op. cit._ chap. xxi.
[378] Fielding Hall's _Soul of a People_, p. 125.
[379] See, for instance, Mr R. B. Arnold's _Scientific Fact and
Metaphysical Reality_, pp. 321-323. Professor William James, in his
_Varieties of Religious Experience_, asks whether "the worship of
material luxury and wealth, which constitutes so large a portion of
the 'spirit' of our age" does not "make somewhat for effeminacy and
unmanliness." He goes so far as to recommend, as a cure for some of
our social diseases, the adoption of that form of asceticism which
consisted in "the old monkish poverty-worship." Wealth-getting,
he says, "enters as an ideal into the very bone and marrow of our
generation." It is certain, he adds, that "the prevalent fear of
poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from
which our civilisation suffers."--(Pp. 365-369.)
See also Professor W. R. Inge's _Personal Idealism and Mysticism_,
especially pp. 175-176. I strongly recommend the reader who is
interested in the pressing problems presented by the changing
relations between the Occident and the Orient to read Dr Inge's book
(especially Lectures IV. and VI.) in connection with Mr Percival
Lowell's _Soul of the Far East_. Both are, as one would expect, able
and well-written books, but they take diametrically opposite views
of a very important question. Mr Lowell finds that the most notable
characteristic of the East, and the secret of its fatal weakness, is
what he calls its Impersonality, and that the peoples of the West,
deriving an irresistible strength from the exact opposite--an intense
Individualism--have nothing to fear from the impersonal civilisations
of the East, which they will eventually overpower and crush. Dr Inge
arrives independently at a similar belief as to the remarkable absence
of individualism in the East, but so far from adopting Mr Lowell's
interpretation of its results he finds in this Oriental Impersonality
a very remarkable source of strength and permanence; while he
prognosticates possible disaster to Western civilisation from the very
fact that it is based on individualism. Already, he says, "it shows
signs of breaking up from within." It seems possible that the events of
the not-distant future will show that Dr Inge was right.
[380] _Time and Tide._ See also an article by W. T. Seeger in the
_Hibbert Journal_ for October 1906, p. 75; and Sir Oliver Lodge's
article in the same journal for April 1907, p. 527.
[381] _The Silken East_, p. 37.
[382] Of course there are exceptions, especially in the larger towns
where Burmese and English civilisations have clashed.
[383] "It is the way in which hours of freedom are spent that
determines, as much as war or as labour, the moral worth of a nation.
It raises or lowers, it replenishes or exhausts. At present we find,
in these great cities of ours, that three days' idleness will fill
the hospitals with victims whom weeks or months of toil had left
unscathed."--Maurice Maeterlinck, _The Kingdom of Matter_.
[384] See the Burma Census Report for 1891 and Sir George Scott's
_Upper Burma Gazetteer_, and his _Burma: a Handbook_, pp. 380-381.
[385] Perhaps that is not saying much after all. "In reality," said the
German philosopher Nietzsche, "there has been only one Christian, and
He died on the Cross."
[386] Here, again, there are, of course, exceptions. There are "black
sheep" within the monastic fold as well as outside it.
[387] Sir George Scott, in _Burma: a Handbook_, p. 381.
[388] See his _Greek Oracles_, pp. 8, 18, 20-21. (Eversley Series.)
[389] See ll. 349 _seq._
[390] See Frazer's _Golden Bough_, vol. iii. p. 49, and vol. i. pp.
170-171 (2nd ed.). See also Tylor's _Primitive Culture_, vol. i. pp.
475-476, and ii. pp. 217-218 (4th ed.); and Rhys Davids' _Buddhist
India_, chap. xii.
[391] Sir George Scott, _Burma: a Handbook_, p. 22.
[392] Scott O'Connor, _The Silken East_, p. 128.