FESTIVALS
'The law is sweet, filling the soul with joy.'
_Saying of the Buddha._
The three months of the rains, from the full moon of July to the full
moon of October, is the Buddhist Lent. It was during these months that
the Buddha would retire to some monastery and cease from travelling and
teaching for a time. The custom was far older even than that--so old
that we do not know how it arose. Its origin is lost in the mists of
far-away time. But whatever the beginning may have been, it fits in very
well with the habits of the people; for in the rains travelling is not
easy. The roads are very bad, covered even with water, often deep in
mud; and the rest-houses, with open sides, are not very comfortable with
the rain drifting in. Even if there were no custom of Lent, there would
be but little travelling then. People would stay at home, both because
of the discomfort of moving, and because there is much work then at the
village. For this is the time to plough, this is the time to sow; on
the villagers' exertions in these months depends all their maintenance
for the rest of the year. Every man, every woman, every child, has hard
work of some kind or another.
What with the difficulties of travelling, what with the work there is to
do, and what with the custom of Lent, everyone stays at home. It is the
time for prayer, for fasting, for improving the soul. Many men during
these months will live even as the monks live, will eat but before
mid-day, will abstain from tobacco. There are no plays during Lent, and
there are no marriages. It is the time for preparing the land for the
crop; it is the time for preparing the soul for eternity. The
congregations on the Sundays will be far greater at this time than at
any other; there will be more thought of the serious things of life.
It is a very long Lent--three months; but with the full moon of October
comes the end. The rains then are over; the great black bank of clouds
that walled up all the south so long is gone. The south wind has died
away, and the light, fresh north wind is coming down the river. The
roads are drying up, the work in the fields is over for a time, awaiting
the ripening of the grain. The damp has gone out of the air, and it is
very clear. You can see once more the purple mountains that you have
missed so long; there is a new feeling in the wind, a laughter in the
sunshine, a flush of blossom along the fields like the awakening of a
new joy. The rains are gone and the cool weather is coming; Lent is
over and gladness is returned; the crop has been sown, and soon will
come the reaping. And so at this full moon of October is the great feast
of the year. There are other festivals: of the New Year, in March, with
its water-throwing; of each great pagoda at its appointed time; but of
all, the festival at the end of Lent is the greatest.
Wherever there are great pagodas the people will come in from far and
near for the feast. There are many great pagodas in Burma; there is the
Arakan pagoda in Mandalay, and there was the Incomparable pagoda, which
has been burnt; there are great pagodas at Pegu, at Prome, at many other
places; but perhaps the greatest of all is the Shwe Dagon at Rangoon.
You see it from far away as you come up the river, steaming in from the
open sea, a great tongue of flame before you. It stands on a small
conical hill just behind the city of Rangoon, about two miles away from
the wharves and shipping in the busy river. The hill has been levelled
on the top and paved into a wide platform, to which you ascend by a
flight of many steps from the gate below, where stand the dragons. This
entrance-way is all roofed over, and the pillars and the ceiling are red
and painted. Here it was that much fighting took place in the early
wars, in 1852 especially, and many men, English and Burmese, were killed
in storming and defending this strong place. For it had been made a
very strong place, this holy place of him who taught that peace was the
only good, and the defences round about it are standing still. Upon the
top of this hill, the flat paved top, stands the pagoda, a great solid
tapering cone over three hundred feet high, ending in an iron fretwork
spire that glitters with gold and jewels; and the whole pagoda is
covered with gold--pure leaf-gold. Down below it is being always renewed
by the pious offerings of those who come to pray and spread a little
gold-leaf on it; but every now and then it is all regilt, from the top,
far away above you, to the golden lions that guard its base. It is a
most wonderful sight, this great golden cone, in that marvellous
sunlight that bathes its sides like a golden sea. It seems to shake and
tremble in the light like a fire. And all about the platform, edging it
ere it falls away below, are little shrines, marvels of carven woodwork
and red lacquer. They have tapering roofs, one above another, till they,
too, end in a golden spire full of little bells with tongues. As the
wind blows the tongues move to and fro, and the air is full of music, so
faint, so clear, like 'silver stir of strings in hollow shells.'
In most of these shrines there are statues of the great teacher, cut in
white alabaster, glimmering whitely in the lustrous shadows there
within; and in one shrine is the great bell. Long ago we tried to take
this great bell; we tried to send it home as a war trophy, this bell
stolen from their sacred place, but we failed. As it was being put on
board a ship, it slipped and fell into the river into the mud, where the
fierce tides are ever coming and going. And when all the efforts of our
engineers to raise it had failed, the Burmese asked: 'The bell, our
bell, is there in the water. You cannot get it up. You have tried and
you have failed. If we can get it up, may we have it back to hang in our
pagoda as our own again?' And they were told, with a laugh, perhaps,
that they might; and so they raised it up again, the river giving back
to them what it had refused to us, and they took and hung it where it
used to be. There it is now, and you may hear it when you go, giving out
a long, deep note, the beat of the pagoda's heart.
There are many trees, too, about the pagoda platform--so many, that seen
far off you can only see the trees and the pagoda towering above them.
Have not trees been always sacred things? Have not all religions been
glad to give their fanes the glory and majesty of great trees?
You may look from the pagoda platform over the whole country, over the
city and the river and the straight streets; and on the other side you
may see the long white lakes and little hills covered with trees. It is
a very beautiful place, this pagoda, and it is steeped in an odour of
holiness, the perfume of the thousand thousand prayers that have been
prayed there, of the thousand thousand holy thoughts that have been
thought there.
The pagoda platform is always full of people kneeling, saying over and
over the great precepts of their faith, trying to bring into their
hearts the meaning of the teaching of him of whom this wonderful pagoda
represents the tomb. There are always monks there passing to and fro, or
standing leaning on the pillars of the shrines; there are always a crowd
of people climbing up and down the long steps that lead from the road
below. It is a place I always go to when I am in Rangoon; for, besides
its beauty, there are the people; and if you go and stand near where the
stairway reaches the platform you will see the people come up. They come
up singly, in twos, in groups. First a nun, perhaps, walking very
softly, clad in her white dress with her beads about her neck, and there
in a corner by a little shrine she will spread a cloth upon the hard
stones and kneel and bow her face to the great pagoda. Then she will
repeat, 'Sorrow, misery, trouble,' over and over again, running her
beads through her fingers, repeating the words in the hope that in the
end she may understand whither they should lead her. 'Sorrow, misery,
trouble'--ah! surely she must know what they mean, or she would not be a
nun. And then comes a young man, and after a reverence to the pagoda he
goes wandering round, looking for someone, maybe; and then comes an old
man with his son. They stop at the little stalls on the stairs, and they
have bought there each a candle. The old man has a plain taper, but the
little lad must have one with his emblem on it. Each day has its own
sign, a tiger for Monday, and so on, and the lad buys a candle like a
little rat, for his birthday is Friday, and the father and son go on to
the platform. There they kneel down side by side, the old man and the
little chubby lad, and they, too, say that all is misery and delusion.
Presently they rise and advance to the pagoda's golden base, and put
their candles thereon and light them. This side of the pagoda is in
shadow now, and so you can see the lights of the candles as little
stars.
And then come three girls, sisters, perhaps, all so prettily dressed,
with meek eyes, and they, too, buy candles; they, too, kneel and make
their devotions, for long, so long, that you wonder if anything has
happened, if there has been any trouble that has brought them thus in
the sunset to the remembrance of religion. But at last they rise, and
they light their little candles near by where the old man and the boy
have lit theirs, and then they go away. They are so sad, they keep their
faces so turned upon the ground, that you fear there has been something,
some trouble come upon them. You feel so sorry for them, you would like
to ask them what it all is; you would like to help them if you could.
But you can do nothing. They go away down the steps, and you hear the
nun repeating always, 'Sorrow, misery, trouble.'
So they come and go.
But on the festival days at the end of Lent it is far more wonderful.
Then for units there are tens, for tens there are hundreds--all come to
do reverence to the great teacher at this his great holy place. There is
no especial ceremony, no great service, such as we are accustomed to on
our festivals. Only there will be many offerings; there will be a
procession, maybe, with offerings to the pagoda, with offerings to the
monks; there will be much gold-leaf spread upon the pagoda sides; there
will be many people kneeling there--that is all. For, you see, Buddhism
is not an affair of a community, but of each man's own heart.
To see the great pagoda on the festival days is one of the sights of the
world. There are a great crowd of people coming and going, climbing up
the steps. There are all sorts of people, rich and poor, old and young.
Old men there are, climbing wearily up these steps that are so steep,
steps that lead towards the Great Peace; and there are old women,
too--many of them.
Young men will be there, walking briskly up, laughing and talking to
each other, very happy, very merry, glad to see each other, to see so
many people, calling pleasant greetings to their friends as they pass.
They are all so gaily dressed, with beautiful silks and white jackets
and gay satin head-cloths, tied with a little end sticking up as a
plume.
And the girls, how shall I describe them, so sweet they are, so pretty
in their fresh dresses, with downcast eyes of modesty, tempered with
little side-glances. They laugh, too, as they go, and they talk, never
forgetting the sacredness of the place, never forgetting the reverences
due, kneeling always first as they come up to the great pagoda, but
being of good courage, happy and contented. There are children, too,
numbers and numbers of them, walking along, with their little hands
clasping so tightly some bigger ones, very fearful lest they should be
lost. They are as gay as butterflies in their dress, but their looks are
very solemn. There is no solemnity like that of a little child; it takes
all the world so very, very seriously, walking along with great eyes of
wonder at all it sees about it.
They are all well dressed who come here; on a festival day even the poor
can be dressed well. Pinks and reds are the prevailing colours, in
checks, in stripes, mixed usually with white. These colours go best with
their brown skins, and they are fondest of them. But there are other
colours, too: there is silver and green embroidery, and there are
shot-silks in purple and orange, and there is dark blue. All the
jackets, or nearly all the jackets, are white with wide sleeves, showing
the arm nearly up to the elbow. Each man has his turban very gay, while
each girl has a bright handkerchief which she drapes as she likes upon
her arm, or carries in her hand. Such a blaze of colour would not look
well with us. Under our dull skies and with our sober lights it would be
too bright; but here it is not so. Everything is tempered by the sun;
it is so brilliant, this sunlight, such a golden flood pouring down and
bathing the whole world, that these colours are only in keeping. Before
them is the gold pagoda, and about them the red lacquer and dark-brown
carving of the shrines.
You hear voices like the murmur of a summer sea, rising and falling,
full of laughter low and sweet, and above is the music of the fairy
bells.
Everything is in keeping--the shining pagoda and the gaily-dressed
people, their voices and the bells, even the great bell far beyond, and
all are so happy.
The feast lasts for seven days; but of these there are three that are
greater, and of these, one, the day of the full moon, is the greatest of
all. On that day the offerings will be most numerous, the crowd densest.
Down below the pagoda are many temporary stalls built, where you can buy
all sorts of fairings, from a baby's jointed doll to a new silk dress;
and there are restaurants where you may obtain refreshments; for the
pagoda is some way from the streets of the city, and on festival days
refreshments are much wanted.
These stalls are always crowded with people buying and selling, or
looking anxiously at the many pretty wares, unable, perhaps, to buy. The
refreshments are usually very simple--rice and curry for supper, and for
little refreshments between whiles there are sugar-cakes and vermicelli,
and other little cates.
The crowd going up and down the steps is like a gorgeous-coloured
flood, crested with white foam, flowing between the dragons of the gate;
and on the platform the crowd is thicker than ever. All day the festival
goes on--the praying, the offering of gifts, the burning of little
candles before the shrines--until the sun sets across the open country
far beyond in gold and crimson glory. But even then there is no pause,
no darkness, for hardly has the sun's last bright shaft faded from the
pagoda spire far above, while his streamers are still bright across the
west, than there comes in the east a new radiance, so soft, so
wonderful, it seems more beautiful than the dying day. Across the misty
fields the moon is rising; first a crimson globe hung low among the
trees, but rising fast, and as it rises growing whiter. Its light comes
flooding down upon the earth, pure silver with very black shadows. Then
the night breeze begins to blow, very softly, very gently, and the trees
give out their odour to the night, which woos them so much more sweetly
than the day, till the air is heavy with incense.
Behold, the pagoda has started into a new glory, for it is all hung
about with little lamps, myriads of tiny cressets, and the facades of
the shrines are lit up, too. The lamps are put in long rows or in
circles, to fit the places they adorn. They are little earthenware jars
full of cocoanut-oil, with a lip where is the wick. They burn very
redly, and throw a red light about the platform, breaking the shadows
that the moonlight throws and staining its whiteness.
In the streets, too, there are lamps--the houses are lined with
them--and there are little pagodas and ships curiously designed in
flame.
All the people come out to see the illuminations, just as they do with
us at Christmas to see the shop-windows, and the streets are crowded
with people going to and fro, laughing and talking. And there are
dramatic entertainments going on, dances and marionette shows, all in
the open air. The people are all so happy, they take their pleasure so
pleasantly, that it is a delight to see them. You cannot help but be
happy, too. The men joke and laugh, and you laugh, too; the children
smile at you as they pass, and you must smile, too; can you help it? And
to see the girls makes the heart glad within you. There is an infection
from the good temper and the gaiety about you that is irresistible, even
if you should want to resist it.
The festival goes on till very late. The moon is so bright that you
forget how late it is, and only remember how beautiful it is all around.
You are very loath to leave it, and so it is not till the moon itself is
falling low down in the same path whither the sun went before her, it is
not till the lamps are dying one by one and the children are yawning
very sleepily, that the crowd disperses and the pagoda is at rest.
Such is a great feast at a great pagoda.
But whenever I think of a great feast, whenever the growing autumn moon
tells me that the end of Lent is drawing nigh, it is not the great feast
of the Shwe Dagon, nor of any other famous pagoda that comes into my
mind, but something far different.
It was on a frontier long ago that there was the festival that I
remember so well. The country there was very far away from all the big
towns; the people were not civilized as those of Mandalay or of Rangoon;
the pagoda was a very small one. There was no gilding upon it at all,
and no shrines were about it; it stood alone, just a little white
plastered pagoda, with a few trees near it, on a bare rice-field. There
were a few villages about, dotted here and there in the swamp, and the
people of these were all that came to our festival.
For long before the villages were preparing for it, saving a little
money here, doing a little extra work there, so that they might be able
to have presents ready for the monks, so that they might be able to
subscribe to the lights, so that they would have a good dress in which
they might appear.
The men did a little more work at the fields, bamboo-cutting in the
forest, making baskets in the evening, and the women wove. All had to
work very hard to have even a little margin; for there, although
food--plain rice--was very cheap, all other things were very expensive.
It was so far to bring them, and the roads were so bad. I remember that
the only European things to be bought there then were matches and
tinned milk, and copper money was not known. You paid a rupee, and took
the change in rice or other commodities.
The excitement of the great day of the full moon began in the morning,
about ten o'clock, with the offerings to the monks. Outside the village
gate there was a piece of straight road, dry and open, and on each side
of this, in rows, were the people with their gifts; mostly they were
eatables. You see that it is very difficult to find any variety of
things to give a monk; he is very strictly limited in the things he is
allowed to receive. Garments, yellow garments, curtains to partition off
corners of the monasteries and keep away the draughts, sacred books and
eatables--that is nearly all. But eatables allow a very wide range. A
monk may accept and eat any food--not drink, of course--provided he eat
but the one big meal a day before noon; and so most of the offerings
were eatables. Each donor knelt there upon the road with his or her
offerings in a tray in front. There was rice cooked in all sorts of
shapes, ordinary rice for eating with curry, and the sweet purple rice,
cooked in bamboos and coming out in sticks. There were vegetables, too,
of very many kinds, and sugar and cakes and oil and honey, and many
other such things. There were a few, very few, books, for they are very
hard to get, being all in manuscript; and there were one or two tapestry
curtains; but there were heaps of flowers. I remember there was one girl
whose whole offering was a few orchid sprays, and a little, very
little, heap of common rice. She was so poor; her father and mother were
dead, and she was not married. It was all she could give. She sat behind
her little offering, as did all the donors. And my gift? Well, although
an English official, I was not then very much richer than the people
about me, so my gift must be small, too--a tin of biscuits, a tin or two
of jam, a new pair of scissors. I did not sit behind them myself, but
gave them to the headman to put with his offerings; for the monks were
old friends of mine. Did I not live in one of their monasteries for over
two months when we first came and camped there with a cavalry squadron?
And if there is any merit in such little charity, as the Burmese say
there is, why should I not gain it, too? The monks said my present was
best of all, because it was so uncommon; and the biscuits, they said,
though they did not taste of much while you were eating them, had a very
pleasant after-taste that lasted a long time. They were like charity,
maybe: that has a pleasant after-taste, too, they tell me.
When all the presents, with the donors behind them, dressed all in their
best, were ready, the monks came. There were four monasteries near by,
and the monks, perhaps in all thirty, old and young, monks and novices,
came in one long procession, walking very slowly, with downcast eyes,
between the rows of gifts and givers. They did not look at them at all.
It is not proper for a monk to notice the gifts he receives; but
schoolboys who came along behind attending on them, they saw and made
remarks. Perhaps they saw the chance of some overflow of these good
things coming their way. 'See,' one nudged the other; 'honey--what a
lot! I can smell it, can't you?' And, '_My mother!_ what a lot of sweet
rice. Who gave that? Oh, I see, old U Hman.' 'I wonder what's in that
tin box?' remarked one as he passed my biscuits. 'I hope it's coming to
our monastery, any way.'
Thus the monks passed, paying no sort of attention, while the people
knelt to them; and when the procession reached the end of the line of
offerings, it went on without stopping, across the fields, the monks of
each monastery going to their own place; and the givers of presents rose
up and followed them, each carrying his or her gifts. And so they went
across the fields till each little procession was lost to sight.
That was all the ceremony for the day, but at dusk the illuminations
began. The little pagoda in the fields was lighted up nearly to its top
with concentric rings of lamps till it blazed like a pyramid of flame,
seen far across the night. All the people came there, and placed little
offerings of flowers at the foot of the pagoda, or added each his candle
to the big illumination.
The house of the headman of the village was lit up with a few rows of
lamps, and all the monasteries, too, were lit. There were no
restaurants--everyone was at home, you see--but there were one or two
little stalls, at which you could buy a cheroot, or even perhaps a cup
of vermicelli; and there was a dance. It was only the village girls who
had been taught, partly by their own mothers, partly by an old man, who
knew something of the business. They did not dance very well, perhaps;
they were none of them very beautiful; but what matter? We knew them
all; they were our neighbours, the kinswomen of half the village;
everyone liked to see them dance, to hear them sing; they were all
young, and are not all young girls pretty? And amongst the audience were
there not the girls' relations, their sisters, their lovers? would not
that alone make the girls dance well, make the audience enthusiastic?
And so, what with the illuminations, and the chat and laughter of
friends, and the dance, we kept it up till very late; and we all went to
bed happy and well pleased with each other, well pleased with ourselves.
Can you imagine a more successful end than that?
To write about these festivals is so pleasant, it brings back so many
delightful memories, that I could go on writing for long and long. But
there is no use in doing so, as they are all very much alike, with
little local differences depending on the enterprise of the inhabitants
and the situation of the place. There might be boat-races, perhaps, on a
festival day, or pony-races, or boxing. I have seen all these, if not
at the festival at the end of Lent, at other festivals. I remember once
I was going up the river on a festival night by the full moon, and we
saw point after point crowned with lights upon the pagodas; and as we
came near the great city we saw a new glory; for there was a boat
anchored in mid-stream, and from this boat there dropped a stream of
fire; myriads of little lamps burned on tiny rafts that drifted down the
river in a golden band. There were every now and then bigger rafts, with
figures made in light--boats and pagodas and monasteries. The lights
heaved with the long swell of the great river, and bent to and fro like
a great snake following the tides, until at length they died far away
into the night.
I do not know what is the meaning of all these lights; I do not know
that they have any inner meaning, only that the people are very glad,
only that they greatly honour the great teacher who died so long ago,
only that they are very fond of light and colour and laughter and all
beautiful things.
But although these festivals often become also fairs, although they are
the great centres for amusement, although the people look to them as
their great pleasure of the year, it must not be forgotten that they are
essentially religious feasts, holy days. Though there be no great
ceremony of prayer, or of thanksgiving, no public joining in any
religious ceremony, save, perhaps, the giving of alms to the monks, yet
religion is the heart and soul of them. Their centre is the pagoda,
their meaning is a religious meaning.
What if the people make merry, too, if they make their holy days into
holidays, is that any harm? For their pleasures are very simple, very
innocent; there is nothing that the moon, even the cold and distant
moon, would blush to look upon. The people make merry because they are
merry, because their religion is to them a very beautiful thing, not to
be shunned or feared, but to be exalted to the eye of day, to be
rejoiced in.