ALL LIFE IS ONE
'I heard a voice that cried,
"Balder the Beautiful
Is dead, is dead,"
And through the misty air
Passed like the mournful cry
Of sunward-sailing cranes.'
TEGNER'S _Drapa_.
All romance has died out of our woods and hills in England, all our
fairies are dead long ago. Knowledge so far has brought us only death.
Later on it will bring us a new life. It is even now showing us how this
may be, and is bringing us face to face again with Nature, and teaching
us to know and understand the life that there is about us. Science is
telling us again what we knew long ago and forgot, that our life is not
apart from the life about us, but of it. Everything is akin to us, and
when we are more accustomed to this knowledge, when we have ceased to
regard it as a new, strange teaching, and know that we are but seeing
again with clearer eyes what a half-knowledge blinded us to, then the
world will be bright and beautiful to us as it was long ago.
But now all is dark. There are no dryads in our trees, nor nymphs among
the reeds that fringe the river; even our peaks hold for us no guardian
spirit, that may take the reckless trespasser and bind him in a rock for
ever. And because we have lost our belief in fairies, because we do not
now think that there are goblins in our caves, because there is no
spirit in the winds nor voice in the thunder, we have come to think that
the trees and the rocks, the flowers and the storm, are all dead things.
They are made up, we say, of materials that we know, they are governed
by laws that we have discovered, and there is no life anywhere in
Nature.
And yet this cannot be true. Far truer is it to believe in fairies and
in spirits than in nothing at all; for surely there is life all about
us. Who that has lived out alone in the forest, that has lain upon the
hillside and seen the mountains clothe themselves in lustrous shadows
shot with crimson when the day dies, who that has heard the sigh come up
out of the ravines where the little breezes move, that has watched the
trees sway their leaves to and fro, beckoning to each other with wayward
amorous gestures, but has known that these are not dead things?
Watch the stream coming down the hill with a flash and a laugh in the
sunlight, look into the dark brown pools in the deep shadows beneath
the rocks, or voyage a whole night upon the breast of the great river,
drifting past ghostly monasteries and silent villages, and then say if
there be no life in the waters, if they, too, are dead things. There is
no consolation like the consolation of Nature, no sympathy like the
sympathy of the hills and streams; and sympathy comes from life. There
is no sympathy with the dead.
When you are alone in the forest all this life will come and talk to
you, if you are quiet and understand. There is love deep down in the
passionate heart of the flower, as there is in the little quivering
honeysucker flitting after his mate, as there was in Romeo long ago.
There is majesty in the huge brown precipice greater than ever looked
from the face of a king. All life is one. The soul that moves within you
when you hear the deer call to each other far above in the misty meadows
of the night is the same soul that moves in everything about you. No
people who have lived much with Nature have failed to descry this. They
have recognised the life, they have felt the sympathy of the world about
them, and to this life they have given names and forms as they would to
friends whom they loved. Fairies and goblins, fauns and spirits, these
are but names and personifications of a real life. But to him who has
never felt this life, who has never been wooed by the trees and hills,
these things are but foolishness, of course.
To the Burman, not less than to the Greek of long ago, all nature is
alive. The forest and the river and the mountains are full of spirits,
whom the Burmans call Nats. There are all kinds of Nats, good and bad,
great and little, male and female, now living round about us. Some of
them live in the trees, especially in the huge fir-tree that shades half
an acre without the village; or among the fernlike fronds of the
tamarind; and you will often see beneath such a tree, raised upon poles
or nestled in the branches, a little house built of bamboo and thatch,
perhaps two feet square. You will be told when you ask that this is the
house of the Tree-Nat. Flowers will be offered sometimes, and a little
water or rice maybe, to the Nat, never supposing that he is in need of
such things, but as a courteous and graceful thing to do; for it is not
safe to offend these Nats, and many of them are very powerful. There is
a Nat of whom I know, whose home is in a great tree at the crossing of
two roads, and he has a house there built for him, and he is much
feared. He is such a great Nat that it is necessary when you pass his
house to dismount from your pony and walk to a respectful distance. If
you haughtily ride past, trouble will befall you. A friend of mine
riding there one day rejected all the advice of his Burmese companions
and did not dismount, and a few days later he was taken deadly sick of
fever. He very nearly died, and had to go away to the Straits for a
sea-trip to take the fever out of his veins. It was a very near thing
for him. That was in the Burmese times, of course. After that he always
dismounted. But all Nats are not so proud nor so much to be feared as
this one, and it is usually safe to ride past.
Even as I write I am under the shadow of a tree where a Nat used to
live, and the headman of the village has been telling me all about it.
This is a Government rest-house on a main road between two stations, and
is built for Government officials travelling on duty about their
districts. To the west of it is a grand fig-tree of the kind called
Nyaungbin by the Burmese. It is a very beautiful tree, though now a
little bare, for it is just before the rains; but it is a great tree
even now, and two months hence it will be glorious. It was never
planted, the headman tells me, but came up of itself very many years
ago, and when it was grown to full size a Nat came to live in it. The
Nat lived in the tree for many years, and took great care of it. No one
might injure it or any living creature near it, so jealous was the Nat
of his abode. And the villagers built a little Nat-house, such as I have
described, under the branches, and offered flowers and water, and all
things went well with those who did well. But if anyone did ill the Nat
punished him. If he cut the roots of the tree, the Nat hurt his feet;
and if he injured the branches, the Nat injured his arms; and if he cut
the trunk, the Nat came down out of the tree, and killed the
sacrilegious man right off. There was no running away, because, as you
know, the headman said, Nats can go a great deal faster than any man.
Many men, careless strangers, who camped under the tree and then abused
the hospitality of the Nat by hunting near his home, came to severe
grief.
But the Nat has gone now, alas! The tree is still there, but the Nat has
fled away these many years.
'I suppose he didn't care to stay,' said the headman. 'You see that the
English Government officials came and camped here, and didn't fear the
Nats. They had fowls killed here for their dinner, and they sang and
shouted; and they shot the green pigeons who ate his figs, and the
little doves that nested in his branches.'
All these things were an abomination to the Nat, who hated loud, rough
talk and abuse, and to whom all life was sacred.
So the Nat went away. The headman did not know where he was gone, but
there are plenty of trees.
'He has gone somewhere to get peace,' the headman said. 'Somewhere in
the jungle, where no one ever comes save the herd-boy and the deer, he
will be living in a tree, though I do not think he will easily find a
tree so beautiful as this.'
The headman seemed very sorry about it, and so did several villagers who
were with him; and I suggested that if the Nat-houses were rebuilt, and
flowers and water offered, the Nat might know and return. I even offered
to contribute myself, that it might be taken as an _amende honorable_ on
behalf of the English Government. But they did not think this would be
any use. No Nat would come where there was so much going and coming, so
little care for life, such a disregard for pity and for peace. If we
were to take away our rest-house, well then, perhaps, after a time,
something could be done, but not under present circumstances.
And so, besides dethroning the Burmese king, and occupying his golden
palace, we are ousting from their pleasant homes the guardian spirits of
the trees. They flee before the cold materialism of our belief, before
the brutality of our manners. The headman did not say this; he did not
mean to say this, for he is a very courteous man and a great friend of
all of us; but that is what it came to, I think.
The trunk of this tree is more than ten feet through--not a round bole,
but like the pillar in a Gothic cathedral, as of many smaller boles
growing together; and the roots spread out into a pedestal before
entering the ground. The trunk does not go up very far. At perhaps
twenty-five feet above the ground it divides into a myriad of smaller
trunks, not branches, till it looks more like a forest than a single
tree; it is full of life still. Though the pigeons and the doves come
here no longer, there are a thousand other birds flitting to and fro in
their aerial city and chirping to each other. Two tiny squirrels have
just run along a branch nearly over my head, in a desperate hurry
apparently, their tails cocked over their backs, and a sky blue
chameleon is standing on the trunk near where it parts. There is always
a breeze in this great tree; the leaves are always moving, and there is
a continuous rustle and murmur up there. A mango-tree and tamarind near
by are quite still. Not a breath shakes their leaves; they are as still
as stone, but the shadow of the fig-tree is chequered with ever-changing
lights. Is the Nat really gone? Perhaps not; perhaps he is still there,
still caring for his tree, only shy now and distrustful, and therefore
no more seen.
Whole woods are enchanted sometimes, and no one dare enter them. Such a
wood I know, far away north, near the hills, which is full of Nats.
There was a great deal of game in it, for animals sought shelter there,
and no one dared to disturb them; not the villagers to cut firewood, nor
the girls seeking orchids, nor the hunter after his prey, dared to
trespass upon that enchanted ground.
'What would happen,' I asked once, 'if anyone went into that wood? Would
he be killed, or what?'
And I was told that no one could tell what would happen, only that he
would never be seen again alive. 'The Nats would confiscate him,' they
said, 'for intruding on their privacy.' But what they would do to him
after the confiscation no one seemed to be quite sure. I asked the
official who was with me, a fine handsome Burman who had been with us in
many fights, whether he would go into the wood with me, but he declined
at once. Enemies are one thing, Nats are quite another, and a very much
more dreadful thing. You can escape from enemies, as witness my
companion, who had been shot at times without number and had only once
been hit, in the leg, but you cannot escape Nats. Once, he told me,
there were two very sacrilegious men, hunters by profession, only more
abandoned than even the majority of hunters, and they went into this
wood to hunt 'They didn't care for Nats,' they said. They didn't care
for anything at all apparently. 'They were absolutely without reverence,
worse than any beast,' said my companion.
So they went into the wood to shoot, and they never came out again. A
few days later their bare bones were found, flung out upon the road near
the enchanted wood. The Nats did not care to have even the bones of such
scoundrels in their wood, and so thrust them out. That was what happened
to them, and that was what might happen to us if we went in there. We
did not go.
Though the Nats of the forest will not allow even one of their beasts to
be slain, the Nats of the rivers are not so exclusive. I do not think
fish are ever regarded in quite the same light as animals. It is true
that a fervent Buddhist will not kill even a fish, but a fisherman is
not quite such a reprobate as a hunter in popular estimation. And the
Nats think so too, for the Nat of a pool will not forbid all fishing.
You must give him his share; you must be respectful to him, and not
offend him; and then he will fill your nets with gleaming fish, and all
will go well with you. If not, of course, you will come to grief; your
nets will be torn, and your boat upset; and finally, if obstinate, you
will be drowned. A great arm will seize you, and you will be pulled
under and disappear for ever.
A Nat is much like a human being; if you treat him well he will treat
you well, and conversely. Courtesy is never wasted on men or Nats, at
least, so a Burman tells me.
The highest Nats live in the mountains. The higher the Nat the higher
the mountain; and when you get to a very high peak indeed, like
Mainthong Peak in Wuntho, you encounter very powerful Nats.
They tell a story of Mainthong Peak and the Nats there, how all of a
sudden, one day in 1885, strange noises came from the hill. High up on
his mighty side was heard the sound of great guns firing slowly and
continuously; there was the thunder of falling rocks, cries as of
someone bewailing a terrible calamity, and voices calling from the
precipices. The people living in their little hamlets about his feet
were terrified. Something they knew had happened of most dire import to
them, some catastrophe which they were powerless to prevent, which they
could not even guess. But when a few weeks later there came even into
those remote villages the news of the fall of Mandalay, of the surrender
of the king, of the 'great treachery,' they knew that this was what the
Nats had been sorrowing over. All the Nats everywhere seem to have been
distressed at our arrival, to hate our presence, and to earnestly desire
our absence. They are the spirits of the country and of the people, and
they cannot abide a foreign domination.
But the greatest place for Nats is the Popa Mountain, which is an
extinct volcano standing all alone about midway between the river and
the Shan Mountains. It is thus very conspicuous, having no hills near it
to share its majesty; and being in sight from many of the old capitals,
it is very well known in history and legend. It is covered with dense
forest, and the villages close about are few. At the top there is a
crater with a broken side, and a stream comes flowing out of this break
down the mountain. Probably it was the denseness of its forests, the
abundance of water, and its central position, more than its guardian
Nats, that made it for so many years the last retreating-place of the
half-robber, half-patriot bands that made life so uneasy for us. But the
Nats of Popa Mountains are very famous.
When any foreigner was taken into the service of the King of Burma he
had to swear an oath of fidelity. He swore upon many things, and among
them were included 'all the Nats in Popa.' No Burman would have dared to
break an oath sworn in such a serious way as this, and they did not
imagine that anyone else would. It was and is a very dangerous thing to
offend the Popa Nats; for they are still there in the mountain, and
everyone who goes there must do them reverence.
A friend of mine, a police officer, who was engaged in trying to catch
the last of the robber chiefs who hid near Popa, told me that when he
went up the mountain shooting he, too, had to make offerings. Some way
up there is a little valley dark with overhanging trees, and a stream
flows slowly along it. It is an enchanted valley, and if you look
closely you will see that the stream is not as other streams, for it
flows uphill. It comes rushing into the valley with a great display of
foam and froth, and it leaves in a similar way, tearing down the rocks,
and behaving like any other boisterous hill rivulet; but in the valley
itself it lies under a spell. It is slow and dark, and has a surface
like a mirror, and it flows uphill. There is no doubt about it; anyone
can see it. When they came here, my friend tells me, they made a halt,
and the Burmese hunters with him unpacked his breakfast. He did not want
to eat then, he said, but they explained that it was not for him, but
for the Nats. All his food was unpacked, cold chicken and tinned meats,
and jam and eggs and bread, and it was spread neatly on a cloth under a
tree. Then the hunters called upon the Nats to come and take anything
they desired, while my friend wondered what he should do if the Nats
took all his food and left him with nothing. But no Nats came, although
the Burmans called again and again. So they packed up the food, saying
that now the Nats would be pleased at the courtesy shown to them, and
that my friend would have good sport. Presently they went on, leaving,
however, an egg or two and a little salt, in case the Nats might be
hungry later, and true enough it was that they did have good luck. At
other times, my friend says, when he did not observe this ceremony, he
saw nothing to shoot at all, but on this day he did well.
The former history of all Nats is not known. Whether they have had a
previous existence in another form, and if so, what, is a secret that
they usually keep carefully to themselves, but the history of the Popa
Nats is well known. Everyone who lives near the great hill can tell you
that, for it all happened not so long ago. How long exactly no one can
say, but not so long that the details of the story have become at all
clouded by the mists of time.
They were brother and sister, these Popa Nats, and they had lived away
up North. The brother was a blacksmith, and he was a very strong man. He
was the strongest man in all the country; the blow of his hammer on the
anvil made the earth tremble, and his forge was as the mouth of hell. No
one was so much feared and so much sought after as he. And as he was
strong, so his sister was beautiful beyond all the maidens of the time.
Their father and mother were dead, and there was no one but those two,
the brother and sister, so they loved each other dearly, and thought of
no one else. The brother brought home no wife to his house by the forge.
He wanted no one while he had his sister there, and when lovers came
wooing to her, singing amorous songs in the amber dusk, she would have
nothing to do with them. So they lived there together, he growing
stronger and she more beautiful every day, till at last a change came.
The old king died, and a new king came to the throne, and orders were
sent about to all the governors of provinces and other officials that
the most beautiful maidens were to be sent down to the Golden City to be
wives to the great king. So the governor of that country sent for the
blacksmith and his sister to his palace, and told them there what orders
he had received, and asked the blacksmith to give his sister that she
might be sent as queen to the king. We are not told what arguments the
governor used to gain his point, but only this, that when he failed, he
sent the girl in unto his wife, and there she was persuaded to go. There
must have been something very tempting, to one who was but a village
girl, in the prospect of being even one of the lesser queens, of living
in the palace, the centre of the world. So she consented at last, and
her brother consented, and the girl was sent down under fitting escort
to find favour in the eyes of her king. But the blacksmith refused to
go. It was no good the governor saying such a great man as he must come
to high honour in the Golden City, it was useless for the girl to beg
and pray him to come with her--he always refused. So she sailed away
down the great river, and the blacksmith returned to his forge.
As the governor had said, the girl was acceptable in the king's sight,
and she was made at last one of the principal queens, and of all she had
most power over the king. They say she was most beautiful, that her
presence was as soothing as shade after heat, that her form was as
graceful as a young tree, and the palms of her hands were like lotus
blossoms. She had enemies, of course. Most of the other queens were her
enemies, and tried to do her harm. But it was useless telling tales of
her to the king, for the king never believed; and she walked so wisely
and so well, that she never fell into any snare. But still the plots
never ceased.
There was one day when she was sitting alone in the garden pavilion,
with the trees making moving shadows all about her, that the king came
to her. They talked for a time, and the king began to speak to her of
her life before she came to the palace, a thing he had never done
before. But he seemed to know all about it, nevertheless, and he spoke
to her of her brother, and said that he, the king, had heard how no man
was so strong as this blacksmith, the brother of the queen. The queen
said it was true, and she talked on and on and praised her brother, and
babbled of the days of her childhood, when he carried her on his great
shoulder, and threw her into the air, catching her again. She was
delighted to talk of all these things, and in her pleasure she forgot
her discretion, and said that her brother was wise as well as strong,
and that all the people loved him. Never was there such a man as he. The
king did not seem very pleased with it all, but he said only that the
blacksmith was a great man, and that the queen must write to him to come
down to the city, that the king might see him of whom there was such
great report.
Then the king got up and went away, and the queen began to doubt; and
the more she thought the more she feared she had not been acting wisely
in talking as she did, for it is not wise to praise anyone to a king.
She went away to her own room to consider, and to try if she could hear
of any reason why the king should act as he had done, and desire her
brother to come to him to the city; and she found out that it was all a
plot of her enemies. Herself they had failed to injure, so they were now
plotting against her through her brother. They had gone to the king, and
filled his ear with slanderous reports. They had said that the queen's
brother was the strongest man in all the kingdom. 'He was cunning, too,'
they said, 'and very popular among all the people; and he was so puffed
up with pride, now that his sister was a queen, that there was nothing
he did not think he could do.' They represented to the king how
dangerous such a man was in a kingdom, that it would be quite easy for
him to raise such rebellion as the king could hardly put down, and that
he was just the man to do such a thing. Nay, it was indeed proved that
he must be disloyally plotting something, or he would have come down
with his sister to the city when she came. But now many months had
passed, and he never came. Clearly he was not to be trusted. Any other
man whose sister was a queen would have come and lived in the palace,
and served the king and become a minister, instead of staying up there
and pretending to be a blacksmith.
The king's mind had been much disturbed by this, for it seemed to him
that it must be in part true; and he went to the queen, as I have said,
and his suspicions had not been lulled by what she told him, so he had
ordered her to write to her brother to come down to the palace.
The queen was terrified when she saw what a mistake she had made, and
how she had fallen into the trap of her enemies; but she hoped that the
king would forget, and she determined that she would send no order to
her brother to come. But the next day the king came back to the subject,
and asked her if she had yet sent the letter, and she said 'No!' The
king was very angry at this disobedience to his orders, and he asked her
how it came that she had not done as he had commanded, and sent a
letter to her brother to call him to the palace.
Then the queen fell at the king's feet and told him all her fears that
her brother was sent for only to be imprisoned or executed, and she
begged and prayed the king to leave him in peace up there in his
village. She assured the king that he was loyal and good, and would do
no evil.
The king was rather abashed that his design had been discovered, but he
was firm in his purpose. He assured the queen that the blacksmith should
come to no harm, but rather good; and he ordered the queen to obey him,
threatening her that if she refused he would be sure that she was
disloyal also, and there would be no alternative but to send and arrest
the blacksmith by force, and punish her, the queen, too. Then the queen
said that if the king swore to her that her brother should come to no
harm, she would write as ordered. _And the king swore._
So the queen wrote to her brother, and adjured him by his love to her to
come down to the Golden City. She said she had dire need of him, and she
told him that the king had sworn that no harm should come to him.
The letter was sent off by a king's messenger. In due time the
blacksmith arrived, and he was immediately seized and thrown into prison
to await his trial.
When the queen saw that she had been deceived, she was in despair. She
tried by every way, by tears and entreaties and caresses, to move the
king, but all without avail. Then she tried by plotting and bribery to
gain her brother's release, but it was all in vain. The day for trial
came quickly, and the blacksmith was tried, and he was condemned and
sentenced to be burnt alive by the river on the following day.
On the evening of the day of trial the queen sent a message to the king
to come to her; and when the king came reluctantly, fearing a renewal of
entreaties, expecting a woman made of tears and sobs, full of grief, he
found instead that the queen had dried her eyes and dressed herself
still more beautifully than ever, till she seemed to the king the very
pearl among women. And she told the king that he was right, and she was
wrong. She said, putting her arms about him and caressing him, that she
had discovered that it was true that her brother had been plotting
against the king, and therefore his death was necessary. It was
terrible, she said, to find that her brother, whom she had always held
as a pattern, was no better than a traitor; but it was even so, and her
king was the wisest of all kings to find it out.
The king was delighted to find his queen in this mood, and he soothed
her and talked to her kindly and sweetly, for he really loved her,
though he had given in to bad advice about the brother. And when the
king's suspicions were lulled, the queen said to him that she had now
but one request to make, and that was that she might have permission to
go down with her maids to the river-shore in the early morning, and see
herself the execution of her traitor brother. The king, who would now
have granted her anything--anything she asked, except just that one
thing, the life of her brother--gave permission; and then the queen said
that she was tired and wished to rest after all the trouble of the last
few days, and would the king leave her. So the king left her to herself,
and went away to his own chambers.
Very early in the morning, ere the crimson flush upon the mountains had
faded in the light of day, a vast crowd was gathered below the city, by
the shore of the great river. Very many thousands were there, of many
countries and peoples, crowding down to see a man die, to see a traitor
burnt to death for his sins, for there is nothing men like so much as to
see another man die.
Upon a little headland jutting out into the river the pyre was raised,
with brushwood and straw, to burn quickly, and an iron post in the
middle to which the man was to be chained. At one side was a place
reserved, and presently down from the palace in a long procession came
the queen and her train of ladies to the place kept for her. Guards were
put all about to prevent the people crowding; and then came the
soldiers, and in the midst of them the blacksmith; and amid many cries
of 'Traitor, traitor!' and shouts of derision, he was bound to the iron
post within the wood and the straw, and the guards fell back.
The queen sat and watched it all, and said never a word. Fire was put to
the pyre, and it crept rapidly up in long red tongues with coils of
black smoke. It went very quickly, for the wood was very dry, and a
light breeze came laughing up the river and helped it. The flames played
about the man chained there in the midst, and he made never a sign; only
he looked steadily across at the purple mountain where his home lay, and
it was clear that in a few more moments he would be dead. There was a
deep silence everywhere.
Then of a sudden, before anyone knew, before a hand could be held out to
hinder her, the queen rose from her seat and ran to the pyre. In a
moment she was there and had thrown herself into the flames, and with
her arms about her brother's neck she turned and faced the myriad eyes
that glared upon them--the queen, in all the glory of her beauty,
glittering with gems, and the man with great shackled bare limbs,
dressed in a few rags, his muscles already twisted with the agony of the
fire. A great cry of horror came from the people, and there was the
movement of guards and officers rushing to stop the fire; but it was all
of no use. A flash of red flames came out of the logs, folding these
twain like an imperial cloak, a whirl of sparks towered into the air,
and when one could see again the woman and her brother were no longer
there. They were dead and burnt, and the bodies mingled with the ashes
of the fire. She had cost her brother his life, and she went with him
into death.
Some days after this a strange report was brought to the palace. By the
landing-place near the spot where the fire had been was a great
fig-tree. It was so near to the landing-place, and was such a
magnificent tree, that travellers coming from the boats, or waiting for
a boat to arrive, would rest in numbers under its shade. But the report
said that something had happened there. To travellers sleeping beneath
the tree at night it was stated that two Nats had appeared, very large
and very beautiful, a man Nat and a woman Nat, and had frightened them
very much indeed. Noises were heard in the tree, voices and cries, and a
strange terror came upon those who approached it. Nay, it was even said
that men had been struck by unseen hands and severely hurt, and others,
it was said, had disappeared. Children who went to play under the tree
were never seen again: the Nats took them, and their parents sought for
them in vain. So the landing-place was deserted, and a petition was
brought to the king, and the king gave orders that the tree should be
hewn down. So the tree was cut down, and its trunk was thrown into the
river; it floated away out of sight, and nothing happened to the men
who cut the tree, though they were deadly afraid.
The tree floated down for days, until at last it stranded near a
landing-place that led to a large town, where the governor of these
parts lived; and at this landing-place the portents that had frightened
the people at the great city reappeared and terrified the travellers
here too, and they petitioned the governor.
The governor sought out a great monk, a very holy man learned in these
matters, and sent him to inquire, and the monk came down to the tree and
spoke. He said that if any Nats lived in the tree, they should speak to
him and tell him what they wanted. 'It is not fit,' he said, 'for great
Nats to terrify the poor villagers at the landing-place. Let the Nats
speak and say what they require. All that they want shall be given.' And
the Nats spake and said that they wanted a place to live in where they
could be at peace, and the monk answered for the governor that all his
land was at their disposal. 'Let the Nats choose,' he said; 'all the
country is before them.' So the Nats chose, and said that they would
have Popa Mountain, and the monk agreed.
The Nats then left the tree and went away, far away inland, to the great
Popa Mountain, and took up their abode there, and all the people there
feared and reverenced them, and even made to their honour two statues
with golden heads and set them up on the mountain.
This is the story of the Popa Nats, the greatest Nats of all the
country of Burma, the guardian spirits of the mysterious mountain. The
golden heads of the statues are now in one of our treasuries, put there
for safe custody during the troubles, though it is doubtful if even then
anyone would have dared to steal them, so greatly are the Nats feared.
And the hunters and the travellers there must offer to the Nats little
offerings, if they would be safe in these forests, and even the young
man must obtain permission from the Nats before he marry.
I think these stories that I have told, stories selected from very many
that I have heard, will show what sort of spirits these are that the
Burmese have peopled their trees and rivers with; will show what sort of
religion it is that underlies, without influencing, the creed of the
Buddha that they follow. It is of the very poetry of superstition, free
from brutality, from baseness, from anything repulsive, springing, as I
have said, from their innate sympathy with Nature and recognition of the
life that works in all things. It always seems to me that beliefs such
as these are a great key to the nature of a people, are, apart from all
interest in their beauty, and in their akinness to other beliefs, of
great value in trying to understand the character of a nation.
For to beings such as Nats and fairies the people who believe in them
will attribute such qualities as are predominant in themselves, as they
consider admirable; and, indeed, all supernatural beings are but the
magnified shadows of man cast by the light of his imagination upon the
mists of his ignorance.
Therefore, when you find that a people make their spirits beautiful and
fair, calm and even tempered, loving peace and the beauty of the trees
and rivers, shrinkingly averse from loud words, from noises, and from
the taking of life, it is because the people themselves think that these
are great qualities. If no stress be laid upon their courage, their
activity, their performance of great deeds, it is because the people who
imagine them care not for such things. There is no truer guide, I am
sure, to the heart of a young people than their superstitions; these
they make entirely for themselves, apart from their religion, which is,
to a certain extent, made for them. That is why I have written this
chapter on Nats: not because I think it affects Buddhism very much one
way or another, but because it seems to me to reveal the people
themselves, because it helps us to understand them better, to see more
with their eyes, to be in unison with their ideas--because it is a great
key to the soul of the people.