Transcriber's Note:
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as
possible, including some inconsistent hyphenation and accents. The
erratum noted after the list of illustrations has been fixed. Some
other changes have been made. They are listed at the end of the
text.
The sentence concerning the penalty for wrongly dividing a word at
the end of a line has been separated from the surrounding paragraph
to prevent re-wrapping.
Italic text has been marked with _underscores_.
A CIVIL SERVANT IN BURMA
[Illustration: BUDDHA’S FOOT.]
A CIVIL SERVANT
IN BURMA
BY
SIR HERBERT THIRKELL WHITE, K.C.I.E.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD
1913
(_All rights reserved_)
TO
MY WIFE
WHO SHARED
MY LIFE IN BURMA
FOR MORE THAN THIRTY-TWO YEARS
PREFACE
This is not a guide-book, or a history, or a study of manners and
customs. It is a plain story of official life for more than thirty
years. It does not compete with any of the books already written about
Burma, except, perhaps, the monumental work of General Fytche. While
pursuing as a rule a track of chronological order, I have not hesitated
to wander into by-paths of dissertation and description. I could not
write without attempting to give fragmentary impressions of the people
and their character. As far as possible I have limited my narrative
to events within my own knowledge; my judgments are based on my own
observation.
I have to express my acknowledgments to the friends who have given me
photographs to illustrate the book. My special thanks are due to Mr.
A. Leeds, I.C.S. (retired), for a large number of characteristic and
charming pictures.
H. T. W.
_September, 1913._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCTORY: A RETROSPECT AND SOME COMPARISONS 1
II. EARLY YEARS AND FIRST IMPRESSIONS 16
III. THE FIRST SUBDIVISION: THE SECRETARIAT 36
IV. SOME ASPECTS OF BURMESE LIFE AND CHARACTER 55
V. ON THE FRONTIER 73
VI. THE SECRETARIAT: THE LAST SUBDIVISION 90
VII. THE TAKING OF MANDALAY 99
VIII. EARLY DAYS AT MANDALAY 114
IX. LORD DUFFERIN’S VISIT--MANDALAY ONCE MORE 137
X. THE FIRST YEAR AFTER THE ANNEXATION 154
XI. A FEW WORDS ON BUDDHISM 183
XII. UNDER SIR CHARLES CROSTHWAITE, 1887-1890 201
XIII. A VISIT TO THE SHAN STATES 225
XIV. RANGOON--MANDALAY 235
XV. LOWER BURMA ONCE MORE 256
XVI. MANDALAY: THE BOUNDARY COMMISSION 266
XVII. THE CHIEF COURT--LAST YEARS IN BURMA 285
GLOSSARY 307
INDEX 309
NOTE
Burmese words are spelt according to the Government system of
transliteration. Consonants have the same power as in English. _Y_
after _g_ combines to form a sound approximating to _j_: _gyi_ = “jee”;
after every other consonant it is short--_my̆o_. _Yw_ is pronounced
“yu.” Vowels and diphthongs have the sounds given below:
_a_ = _a_ in “Ma.”
_e_ = _a_ in “bane.”
_è_ = _e_ in French “père,” without any sound of _r_ following.
_i_ = _ee_ in “feet.”
_o_ or _ô_ = _o_ in “bone.”
_u_ = _oo_ in “fool.”
_au_ = _ow_ in “cow.”
_ai_ = _i_ in “line.”
_ei_ = _ei_ in “vein.”
_aw_ = _aw_ in “law.”
Every letter, except _y_ after _g_, is sounded separately, including
final vowels. Thus, _lu-gale_ is pronounced “loo-ga-lay.” These
instructions are crude and unscientific, and may excite the derision of
purists. They will enable anyone to pronounce Burmese words with some
approach to correctness. In the case of Shan names I have as a rule
adopted the Burmese forms rather than the Shan forms in official use,
which no one who does not know the language can pretend to pronounce
properly.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
BUDDHA’S FOOT (_Photograph by A. Leeds_) _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
BURMESE HOUSES (_Photograph by A. Leeds_) 48
CHIN-LON (_Photograph by E. G. N. Kinch_) 58
THE POTTER (_Photograph by E. G. N. Kinch_) 64
THE MY̆O-ÔK-GADAW (_Photograph by A. Leeds_) 64
SNAKE PAGODA (_Photograph by A. Leeds_) 70
BURMESE GIRL WORSHIPPING (_Photograph by A. Leeds_) 70
WHEN THE FLOODS ARE OUT (_Photograph by A. Leeds_) 84
THE CITY WALL, MANDALAY (_Photograph by A. Leeds_) 120
ROW OF BUDDHAS (_Photograph by A. Leeds_) 128
RELEASING TURTLE (_Photograph by A. Leeds_) 128
A BURMESE FAMILY (_Photograph by A. Leeds_) 162
THE SAWBWA OF THIBAW (_Photograph by London
Stereoscopic Company_) 174
MONASTERY WITH CARVING (_Photograph by A. Leeds_) 184
THE THATHA-NA-BAING (_Photograph by Watts and Skeen, Rangoon_) 190
A MONASTERY (_Photograph by E. G. N. Kinch_) 200
PAGODA AT MONE (_Photograph by Sir J. G. Scott, K.C.I.E._) 226
THE PAUNGDAWU FESTIVAL (_Photograph by Sir J. G. Scott,
K.C.I.E._) 232
BO CHO AND HIS SONS 260
ERRATUM.
Page 12, footnote *, _for_ “Admiral,” _read_ “General,” and _delete_
“naval.”
A CIVIL SERVANT IN BURMA
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY: A RETROSPECT AND SOME COMPARISONS
Burma is a Province of the Indian Empire. It is not, as some suppose,
a Crown Colony administered directly under the Colonial Office. Nor
is it, as others do vainly talk, a foreign State where Britain is
represented by Consuls. It is the largest, yet the least populous,
of Indian Provinces, more extensive even than undivided Bengal. The
estimated area is over two hundred and thirty thousand square miles,
larger than either France or Germany. According to the last census
(1911), the population is about twelve millions. On the west, its
seaboard washed by the Bay of Bengal, Burma marches with Bengal, Assam,
and Manipur; on the east, with China, French Indo-China, and Siam. To
the north, it stretches, through tracts unadministered and unexplored,
to the confines of Tibet. The mass of the people are Burmans, a Mongol
race akin to Chinese and Siamese. Other races in Burma are Talaings,
scattered over the Irrawaddy Delta and the Tenasserim division;
Shans, who occupy the great plateau on the east and are also found
in the northern districts; Karens, whose home is Karenni, but who are
widely spread over Lower Burma; Kachins, people of the hills on the
north-east; and Chins, of many clans, inhabiting the hill-country on
the north-west border.
From the middle of the eighteenth century Burma was ruled by the
dynasty of Alaungpaya, corruptly called Alompra. Alaungpaya seems to
have been a Dacoit chief who began his career at Shwebo,[1] and made
himself master of the whole country. In his time the Burmese were a
warlike people, withstanding the might of China, and carrying their
victorious standards into Siam. Ten Princes[2] of his House ruled over
the whole, or part, of his kingdom. In 1826, after the First Burmese
War, the Provinces of Tenasserim and Arakan were annexed by the East
India Company, the central block from the sea to Tibet remaining under
the Burmese King. In 1852 the Province of Pegu was conquered. In 1862
Pegu, Tenasserim, and Arakan were combined to form the Province of
British Burma, and placed in charge of a Chief Commissioner directly
responsible to the Government of India. In 1885 occurred the Third
Burmese War. Early in 1886, Upper Burma, all that remained under
native rule, was incorporated in the British Empire. Burma continued
to be administered by a Chief Commissioner till 1897, when the first
Lieutenant-Governor was appointed.
These elementary facts are recorded for the benefit of any who may be
thankful for geographical and historical information about distant
dependencies of the Crown. We all know the story of Cape Breton. Most
of us have met people who think that our connection with Burma began
in 1885; that Burma regiments are manned by Burman sepoys; that, to
cite an alien instance, Bengalis serve in the Indian Army. Even what
was long regarded as the mythical confusion of Burma with Bermuda was
seriously printed in a London weekly last year, and all the newspapers
told how an officer who entered the Army in 1886 served in the _Second_
Burmese War. Errors like these justify the platitudes of the preceding
paragraphs.
When I first became acquainted with Burma, the system of administration
was comparatively simple. The Province consisted of three divisions,
each under a Commissioner. Subordinate to the Commissioner were
Deputy Commissioners, each in charge of a district. Under the
Deputy-Commissioner were subdivisional and township officers, in
charge respectively of subdivisions and townships. These jurisdictions
still remain. In those distant days townships were further divided
into circles, the territorial unit of administration, constituted
primarily for revenue purposes. Each circle was in charge of a Taik
Thugyi,[3] a native official of position and dignity and often of
considerable wealth. The Taik Thugyi collected capitation tax and
land and fishery revenue, the main sources of the Provincial income,
and received a substantial commission on the returns. Except as a
tax-collector, he had no statutory powers. But he was the chief man in
his circle, and, if of strong character, exercised great influence.
Every village had its headman, called the Kye-dan-gyi,[4] with onerous
duties and incommensurate powers and emoluments. In recent years
circle and village organization has been reformed. Taik Thugyis have
been abolished or are in course of abolition. The village is now
the administrative unit. The Ywa Thugyi[5] is the local judge and
magistrate, with extensive powers and a respectable position.
Except of purely Imperial offices, such as Post and Telegraphs, the
Commissioner was the head of all Departments in the division. As
Sessions Judge he was also the chief judicial officer. In like manner
the Deputy Commissioner controlled every branch of the administration
in his district. The bulk of petty revenue, criminal, and civil work
was done by Assistant Commissioners, Extra Assistant Commissioners,[6]
and My̆o-ôks,[7] in charge of subdivisions and townships. Most of the
Extra Assistants and all the My̆o-ôks were natives of Burma. I think it
is true that early in 1878 no Burmese officer exercised higher powers
than those of a third-class magistrate, and not one was in charge of a
subdivision.
The judicial administration was controlled by a Judicial Commissioner,
who was the High Court for the whole country except Rangoon, and who
was always deputed from another Province. When I joined, the late Mr.
J. D. Sandford was Judicial Commissioner. In Rangoon the reins of
justice were in the strong hands of the Recorder (the late Mr. C. J.
Wilkinson). The Judicial Commissioner and the Recorder sat together in
a quaint tribunal called the Special Court, which heard appeals from
the decisions of each of its members. When the Judges of the Special
Court failed to agree, a difficult position occurred. The High Court at
Calcutta exercised anomalous jurisdiction in certain cases. Except the
Judicial Commissioner, the Recorder, the Judge of Moulmein, and a Small
Cause Court Judge or two, there were no officers occupied exclusively
with judicial work. All exercised judicial and executive functions.
Divisional, Sessions, District, Subdivisional, and Township Judges, who
now flourish in luxuriant abundance, were not even in the bud.
The rank and file of the police were mostly Burmans, with some
admixture of Indians not of a very good class. The superior officers,
District and Assistant Superintendents, were men of experience, well
acquainted with the people. A few military officers still remained
in the civil police, Major T. Lowndes[8] being Inspector-General.
Perhaps the best-known of the British officers were Messrs. Perreau,
Fforde, Jameson, and Dixon, and Major C. A. Munro. The Burmese
officers--inspectors and head constables--were all men who had risen
from the ranks. Every one of them had to enlist as a constable and work
his way upward. The system was not without merit, and was well suited
to the idiosyncrasy of the Burmese race. One distinguished Talaing
officer held the rank of Superintendent of Police, though without a
district charge. This was Maung Shwe Kyi, who was a King on the Siamese
border at Kawkareik. One of the bravest and most resolute of men, his
good service was recognized by his inclusion in the first list of
Companions of the Order of the Indian Empire. His son carries on the
tradition of his family.
The Forest Department was in its early lusty youth vigorously directed
by a single Conservator, Mr. B. Ribbentrop,[9] assisted by a small
but very able staff. Burmese teak had long been a staple product of
great value; its care and development were the main duties of forest
officers. The forest law was, and still remains, complex, logical,
meticulous. I venture the humble suggestion that its exceeding
obscurity may be due to the nationality of the pioneers of forest
administration in India. We were taught forestry by Germans of great
ability and high scientific attainments, who framed the statutes of
their department as if they were metaphysical treatises. They created
a great and efficient branch of the administration. But they enveloped
its principles in a mist which baffles the ordinary lay intelligence,
and can be pierced only by the philosophic mind, made, or at least
trained, in Germany.
Supreme over all was the Chief Commissioner (then Mr. Rivers
Thompson[10]), assisted by a small but capable secretariat, which
worked for long hours in a small office on the Strand Road in Rangoon.
The Secretary, Major C. W. Street, was a military civilian of character
and ability. The Junior Secretary was Mr. R. H. Pilcher, C.S., who
had been Assistant Resident in Mandalay, and was most learned in
the Burmese and Shan tongues. My old friend, Mr. G. C. Kynoch, was
Assistant Secretary. None of these survives.
The higher officers entrusted with the general administration, as
distinct from special branches, constituted the Commission. In the
Commission were included the Chief Commissioner, Judicial Commissioner,
Commissioners, Deputy Commissioners, and Assistant Commissioners. It
was composed of Indian civilians, officers of the Indian Staff Corps,
and uncovenanted[11] officers. Civilians were few in number. Burma
was not considered of sufficient importance to have men assigned to
it after the open competitions. Men were sent thither for their sins,
either permanently or for a term of years. A Chief Commissioner’s wife
is said to have told one of these young men that other Provinces sent
their worst men to Burma. However this may be, no doubt Burma was
regarded as a place of banishment, a dismal rice-swamp (or, as was
once said, a howling paddy[12]-plain), where the sun never shone. I
remember, while still in London, the commiseration expressed with one
of our seniors whose deportation to this dreary land was announced.
All this was fiction, falser than the Roman’s conception of Britain.
I found Burma a bright and pleasant land, green and forest-clad, with
a climate healthier on the whole than the average climate of Indian
plains; its people singularly human, cheerful, and sympathetic; its
officers of all ranks companionable and friendly. My own considered
opinion is that, in many respects, Burma was one of the best provinces
for a public servant. It is true that, at first, with only British
or Lower Burma open to us, with but little variety of climate, we
were rather cribbed and confined. The rains, lasting from May to
October, began to pall about the middle of August. Fungus growth on
boots was displeasing. The Province was (it still is) expensive, and
promotion was slow. It took Sir Harvey Adamson and myself, who were
contemporaries, over seven years to get a step of substantive rank.
But there were compensations in the lightness of the work (except in
the Secretariat), in the charm and attractiveness of the people, in
the excellent good-fellowship of our brother-officers, in the hope
that before long we should be in Mandalay, and that united Burma would
give ample scope and opportunity. Burmese cheroots, too, cost only
eightpence a hundred.
Among the military civilians were men of conspicuous ability, trained
in the school of Sir Arthur Phayre, whose name is still reverenced
throughout Burma, and who stands in the first class of Indian statesmen
and administrators. Many of them had taken an active part in the
pacification of Pegu after the Second War, and were thoroughly familiar
with the Province and its people, their language and customs. I yield
to none in high appreciation of the men of my own Service. They have
done as good work in Burma, and have got as near to the people, as
any men in India. But military civilians also have maintained to this
day an honourable record, and have furnished to the Commission many
valuable officers. I was just too late to know Colonel David Brown
(Brown-gyi[13]), whose memory still lives in the Province. Colonel
Horace Browne,[14] Colonel A. G. Duff, Captain C. H. E. Adamson,[15]
Colonel W. C. Plant, are among the notable soldier-civilians of my
early service. Other officers, afterwards well-known, were Mr. de
Courcy Ireland, the first officer of his Service in India to become a
commissioner; Mr. A. H. Hildebrand,[16] the first Superintendent of the
Shan States; and Johnny Davis, of Papun, whose knowledge of Burma and
the Burmese was unique. When I joined, all the divisions were in charge
of military officers, and with one or two exceptions, military and
uncovenanted officers ruled every district.
In 1878 there was one line of railway, 160 miles in length, from
Rangoon to Prome on the Irrawaddy. To and from Toungoo, a station on
the Burmese frontier, the journey had to be made by way of the Sittang
River, and occupied about a fortnight. Once upon a time, a man started
from Toungoo with a friend. They travelled in separate boats, in one of
which was stored all the provisions for the voyage. The commissariat
boat started first, and my man never saw his friend again till he
reached Rangoon. For a fortnight he had to subsist on such scanty fare
as he could pick up on the river-bank. When I saw him soon afterwards,
he was perceptibly thinner and still full of wrath. Toungoo is now on
the Mandalay line, and is reached in a few hours. There are 1,529 miles
of railways in Burma; lines to Mandalay, to Myit-kyi-na in the extreme
north, to Alôn on the Chindwin, to Moulmein, one of our ports, to
Lashio in the Northern Shan States, in mid-air on the way to China, to
Bassein and Henzada in the Delta. The sea-borne trade has made immense
progress. In 1878 it was valued at £15,684,920; in 1911 at nearly
£43,000,000.
The garrison consisted of two battalions of British infantry, one of
which gave a detachment to the Andamans, five Madras regiments, and
five batteries of artillery. Troops were stationed at Rangoon, on the
frontier at Toungoo and Thayet-myo, and at Moulmein. There were no
troops in Arakan. There were no military police. The Province was in a
state of profound peace, though there were occasional dacoities on the
borders, and, as always, Tharrawaddy had a bad name.
Of Rangoon in those early days, separate mention may be made. One
glory it had which still abides. The Shwe Dagôn Pagoda, most sacred
and most illustrious of pure Buddhist shrines, dominating the
landscape, rose golden to the sky. From far the traveller approaching
Rangoon from the sea caught sight of that amazing shaft of gold, and
instinctively did reverence. In the bright winter sunshine, in the blue
haze of summer heat, in the veiled mysteries of tropic moonlight, it
towered awe-inspiring, stupendous, divine. On feast days and sabbaths
the platform was thronged with worshippers, surely the brightest,
best-humoured, most laughter-loving of all pious crowds. Even now one
can imagine no scene more gracious, more mystically serene and lovely,
than the pagoda in the light of the full moon, when all that is tawdry
and unseemly is charmed away. But thirty years ago, before the platform
was covered with modern shrines not all in harmony with æsthetic
canons, it was still more gravely and austerely beautiful.
In recent years the erection of new buildings on the pagoda platform,
already overcrowded, has been forbidden. This probably is wise and
right. Being in the centre of a fort, with an arsenal in close
proximity, the pagoda is in military custody. The presence of the
arsenal is a menace to the safety of this famous shrine. A serious
explosion would shatter the fabric and irreparably destroy one of the
wonders of the world. The pagoda would be the natural place of refuge
in time of serious disturbance. For this reason, among others, the
continuance of military control is essential. But the removal of the
arsenal to a distance is an urgent necessity.
After its occupation in 1852, Rangoon was carefully laid out on a
systematic plan, with straight streets of varying width. The broadest
road, edged with shady trees, ran from Soolay Pagoda up to the
cantonment, as fine a thoroughfare as could be seen in East or West.
In the early fifties some far-seeing benefactor planted along Godwin
Road[17] a glorious avenue of padauk, and earned the blessings of men
later born. Three times, at the approach of the rains, these stately
trees burst forth for a day in petals as beautiful and as fleeting
as fairy gold. Then one drives under a canopy of gold, over a golden
carpet of fallen flowers, amidst a crowd each bearing a golden blossom.
To see this lovely sight you must live in Burma. It comes too late in
the season for the casual visitor.
The main lines of the plan of Rangoon have been preserved, and are as
at first designed. But the past thirty years have seen many changes.
In 1878, though there were many strangers within its borders, Rangoon
was still a Burmese town. Now it is the third port in the Indian
Empire,[18] a vast city of over a quarter of a million of people,
speaking a pentecostal variety of tongues, among whom Burmans are a
dwindling minority. Then the cantonment, no doubt of needlessly vast
extent, occupying a wide space on every side of the pagoda, was like a
picturesque park, studded with little wooden houses, each surrounded
by an ample shady garden. Halpin Road, by some sentimentalists called
the Ladies’ Mile, with a humble but select gymkhana[19] at one end,
was restricted to the use of the military and civil community. Now the
gymkhana has been quadrupled in size, and far more than quadrupled in
membership. Jehus of all races and classes raise the dust of Halpin
Road in dogcarts, landaus, and motor-cars. A great modern hotel
occupies a large space; houses of a decadent type, planted as close
together as suburban villas, have devastated the pretty cantonment;
natives of wealth and position live on sites once reserved for the
sovereign race. Doubtless all these are signs of progress. But they
shock the æsthetic sense. The Pegu Club was housed in Cheape Road,
in a wooden building not long ago dismantled. On the Royal Lake a
few boats afforded exercise and pastime. If your boat upset, you
were fined for illegal bathing; and if you scrambled back into your
boat, you were fined for embarking elsewhere than at the prescribed
jetty. Dalhousie Park, it may be gratefully admitted, has been much
improved, mainly by the devoted attention of the late Mr. John Short.
It is now beyond imagination the home of the picturesque, its lovely
lawns and winding paths fringing the lake, with the pagoda shining
in the middle distance. Except a few public offices, there were no
buildings of importance. Government House was of wood, with a small
masonry annexe, near the present imposing and luxurious, but hardly
beautiful structure. A neighbouring house was used as a guest-house,
to accommodate the overflow of visitors, till some years later it was
sold by a frugal Chief. The General Hospital, of wood saturated with
generations of microbes, was then, and for long after, a disgrace to
civilization. It has now been replaced by a magnificent pile, the
best-equipped hospital in the East, one of the best-equipped in the
world. The race-course, round the parade ground, was about two-thirds
of its present size. The little race-meetings twice a year, where one
knew all the ponies and riders, when lotteries were of small value
and attended by one’s friends and acquaintances, when bookmakers
were unknown, and we did our mild gambling at the totalizator, were
more enjoyable and more truly sporting than the present-day monthly
meetings, where more than half the owners are Chinamen or Indians,
and almost all the riders professional jockeys. In wealth, in luxury,
in comfort, Rangoon has made great advances in the last thirty years.
Yet I doubt if it is quite as pleasant a place of abode as it was a
generation ago.
The outskirts of Rangoon were rustic or, as we say, jungly. About this
time a tiger swam across the river from Dalla, then a mere village,
and was shot by Mr. G. G. Collins, an Inspector of Police,[20] under
a house in Godwin Road. Within the last ten years a similar incident
occurred. One morning an old woman, selling cheroots on the pagoda
platform, half asleep or half blind, opened her eyes, and saw in the
dim dawn moving near her stall what she took to be a large cat. She
waved it away, and it went off. It was a tiger which had strolled up
the grassy slope of the Pagoda Hill. The pagoda was being regilt, and
was encased in lattice-work. The tiger climbed half-way up the trellis
and there stopped, till, after some ineffectual attempts, it was shot
by an officer of the garrison. This strange event has an explanation. A
nat[21] came riding on the tiger to inspect the gilding of the pagoda.
He rode half-way up and then dismounted, pursuing his journey on foot.
On his return, he was much surprised and displeased to find that his
steed had been killed. Some say that he was unable to resume his
journey, and is still there. This story was current in Rangoon on the
evening of the occurrence.