Christian missions in Burma

Front matter

BV Ba'io ■ P8’1

CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN BURMA

A PONGYI BYAN

Contents

CHAPTER

I. Burma and the Burmese

FAOE

I. Burma And The Burmese

The first question which the bewildered traveller asks on landing at Rangoon is, “ Where are the Burmese ? ” He sees the wharf crowded with the dark-skinned coolies from India ; he sees Bengali tally clerks, Chinese carpenters, Punjabi police, and Mohammedan merchants ; the river is alive with sampans 1 propelled by Chittagonians ; the ramshackle gharri 2 in which he is conducted to his hotel is driven by a native of India of uncertain race ; the servants in the hotel are Tamils from South India ; the railways, electric trams, and even the hospitals and post offices are staffed by anyone but Burmans ; and the traveller at last forms the opinion that Rangoon is a very cosmopolitan place.

The opinion is a correct one, for in Rangoon, out of a total population of about 300,000, only one half are Burmese. The central streets of Rangoon are almost exclusively occupied by foreigners. There is a Chinese quarter, where Chinese carpenters, bootmakers, and market gardeners live, which possesses several

1 Native boats somewhat like Venetian gondolas rowed by a rrian standing in the stern.

2 Cab.

magnificent Joss houses : there is a Mogul quarter, where the Mohammedan merchants from North-west India live together around their mosques. Then there are the immigrants from South India, who, according to their rank and station, live either in palatial rococo dwellings scattered all over the city, or else herd together in teeming tenements and bastis 1 in various localities. These people have their own temples and shrines, so that Joss house and mosque, temple and pagoda, together with the Christian churches, constantly testify to the cosmopolitan character of the population of Rangoon. Rangoon is to the Far East what Constantinople is to the near East — a meetingplace of numberless races and religions.

And it is not only Rangoon and the large towns of Burma, where the immigrant population is congregated, that are cosmopolitan ; apart from its foreign population, Burma is inhabited by about fifty-seven indigenous tribes, speaking forty different languages. ^ Some of these tribes are large like the Shans, whilst others are small ; but so great are the variations of custom and language, that Burma is of peculiar interest to the ethnologist and philologist. Dr. Grierson has said that there is no part of the world in which so much remains to be learnt about the languages as in Further India.

This book does not profess to give a detailed account of the land and people of Burma : there are numberless books which deal with the subject, and the reader who wishes to pursue it, will find them referred

1 Village or quarter of a town, to in the bibliography. Any book, however, about Burma must say something about the land and its peoples.

The Land. — Burma is the largest and at the same time the most sparsely populated province of the Indian Empire. It is bounded on the north-west by Bengal, Assam, and Manipur ; in the north the limits of the province are still unexplored and undetermined ; on the north-east and east it touches China, French Indo-China, and Siam ; and in the south the Siamese Malay States. Its extreme length is about 1200 miles, and breadth about 600 miles. Its area is about four times that of England and Wales, while its population is about one third.

The River Irrawaddy practically bisects the country from north to south ; parallel to it on either side are the Yoma Mountains (Yoma is Burmese for backbone) ; on the east these mountains form the Shan Plateau which stretches right away to the borders of Siam ; on the west the spurs of the Yomas run down to the sea and account for the singularly indentated and rocky coast of Arakan.

In the extreme north and north-west are the mountainous tracts inhabited by the Kachins and Chins, who are more or less a law to themselves. South and east of these, as far as the Tropic of Cancer, there is a tract of land inhabited ;by a mixed race of indigenous tribes and a considerable sprinkling of immigrant Chinese. South of the Tropic, as far as the frontier of Lower Burma, in the neighbourhood of Thayetmyo, and bounded on the east and west by the

Yomas, is what is known as the dry zone. Here the rainfall is small and precarious (15 to 30 inches annually) and the vegetation is not so luxurious as it is in the other parts of the country.

South of the dry zone, i.e. roughly speaking, from Prome to the sea, stretches the region of the Irrawaddy delta ; it is a vast alluvial plain, once covered by the sea, and now intersected by a network of creeks which connect the various mouths of the Irrawaddy with one another.

Arakan in the north, and Tenasserim in the south, are the two chief coastal strips. The former has already been referred to as lying between the Western Yomas and the sea; its chief town is- Akyab. Tenasserim is the strip of territory stretching down the west coast of the Malay Peninsula ; it includes the Mergui Archipelago, and its chief town is Maulmein. The sea-board has a copious rainfall of 100 to 200 inches annually.

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal are administered from Burma, and are included in the diocese of Rangoon.

In consequence of the difference in the rainfall, climate, and productivity of soil, the agricultural conditions vary greatly in different parts of the country. There are practically only two seasons, the monsoon or rainy season, which lasts from about the middle of May to the middle of September, when in Lower Burma the air is so charged with moisture that a pair of boots will become thickly covered with mildew in a single night ; and the dry season, which extends throughout

S the rest of the year, when there is practically no rainfall at all. What is euphemistically known as the “cold season” lasts for about a fortnight on either side of Christmas. It is so called because the nights are usually cool, and the days are not quite so hot as they are during the other parts of the year.

The rain is brought by the south-west monsoon, a moisture-laden wind which blows in from the Bay of Bengal. The precipitation of the moisture is assisted by the forest-clad hill ranges which run north and south throughout the whole country ; no less than 75 per cent of the total area of Burma is still under forest.

The chief product of Burma is rice. About 2,500,000 tons of this commodity are exported annually, and 70 per cent of the population are engaged in its cultivation. The river fronts of Rangoon, Bassein, and Maulmein are lined with mills where it is husked and prepared for export, and as soon as the harvest begins in November, there is a continuous procession of native boats, ranging from the smallest sampan to the large “ tonkin,” a Chinese-made barge, or the “ loung,” a handsome Viking-like boat built at Pokokko, bringing down the “ paddy,” as the unhusked rice is called, to the mills. The seaports are also crowded with steamers of all nationalities waiting to convey it all over the world.

Next to rice in importance comes teak timber. All the teak in Burma belongs to the Government, and no one is allowed to cut down a tree without a licence ; the revenue from this source alone amounts to about £500,000 annually.

There are also extensive petroleum wells in the dry zone at Y6 nan gyaung ( YI nan , literally smelly water , the Burmese word for petroleum). The crude petroleum is pumped down to Rangoon through a pipe 275 miles long. It passes under the river at Rangoon to Syriam, and the tanks of the refineries are among the first things which the traveller notices on the left bank of the river as he approaches Rangoon. Cotton and tobacco are also grown, though not for export, and there are ruby mines at Mogok on the north-east hills.

The Irrawaddy. — The most cursory description of Burma must contain some reference to this mighty river. Its source is undiscovered, and consequently its exact length is unknown ; but it is navigable for river steamers all the year round as far as Bhamo, which is 900 miles from the sea.

The river is tidal as far as Myanaung, where the delta begins. It enters the sea by nine different mouths, and the river steamer which goes from Rangoon to Bassein traverses them all. Rangoon is really on the Hlaing River, and not on the Irrawaddy at all, but as this river is connected with the Irrawaddy by the Panlang and other creeks, the Rangoon River is reckoned as one of the nine mouths of the delta.

The delta is a labyrinth of creeks and canals, and in many parts of this district the only way of getting from one place to another is by boat. Launches of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company ply between most of the large towns, and the officials are provided with Government steamers for the superintendence of their districts.

WOMEN POUNDING RICE

When steamers are not procurable, or when the creeks are too small for them to ply, one is always able to get about by sampan. The only railway in the delta, which traverses the district from Rangoon to Bassein, is very frequently inundated during the rainy season, and it only succeeds in reaching its destination at all by making a wide detour. Railways will never be used to any large extent in this district.

Perhaps the best way of seeing this part of the country in a short time is to take the I.F.C. launch from Rangoon to Bassein. Some of the creeks which the steamer traverses are so narrow, and the bends are so sharp, that there is barely room for it to pass, but the magnificent coco-nut and areca palms — especially when illuminated by the searchlight at night — the picturesque monasteries, the amphibious habits of the people, the children paddling themselves to school in dug-out canoes, cannot fail to interest those seeing them for the first time.

The People. — It has already been said that apart from the immigrant Indians and Chinese, Burma is inhabited by about fifty-seven indigenous races and tribes. Which of these peoples were the aborigines of the country it is impossible to say with certainty, but the Selung, or Mawken as they call themselves, the sea gipsies of the Malay Archipelago, have the best claim, as they are the only indigenous people who do not belong to the Indo-Chinese family. All the other races i of Burma, with the possible exception of the Talaings, have earlier or later invaded the country from the north. They are classified under the following heads : —

(1) Tibeto - Burmans, including Burmese, Chins, Kachins, etc.

(2) Siamese-Chinese, including the Tai or Shans, Karens, etc.

(3) Mon-Hkmer, including Takings (Mon) Hkmer (Cambodians), Wa, etc.

The total population of the province in 1901 was io,490,624>1 About 7,500,000 of these are people who ordinarily speak Burmese and may be roughly described as Burmans, so that after the immigrants of India and China have been deducted, only about 3,000,000 people are left to be divided amongst the other fifty odd races ; but even this does not sufficiently denote the ascendancy of the Burmans until it is understood that Burmese is the lingua franca of the whole province ; only the most remote tribes, and the women and children of the nearer ones, do not understand Burmese.

The Burmese, Shan, and Talaing languages alone possessed written characters before the advent of Christian missions. The parent alphabet is Talaing, probably derived from the Vengi characters used in South India during the fourth and fifth centuries A.D.

During the past century Karen (Sgaw and Pwo), Chin, Kachin, and other languages have been reduced to writing, and parts of the Bible have been translated into them by Christian missionaries. Still it must be remembered that a great number of these tribes are wholly illiterate, and that up to the present their languages have been unwritten.

'According to provisional statistics of 1911 it is now 12,057,295.

The Burmese. — The Burmese character is a difficult thing to analyse, and the most diverse opinions are expressed with regard to it. One will point to the fact that the Burmese have completely absorbed the Talaing nation, which a century and a half ago was the ruling nation of Burma, but which is now practically extinct, and from this fact will argue that Burma is a second Japan with a great future before it. Another, noticing that half the inhabitants of Rangoon are foreigners — Chinese, Tamils, and Bengalis — will insist that the Burmese are doomed, and that they are being driven out of their own country.

But whatever we think of the Burmese as a nation, there can be no doubt about their charm as individuals. In physical appearance they are not unlike the Japanese, and this is especially true of the women, who are perhaps the most fascinating of all natives of the East. They dress in silk, and both men and women alike have an unerring instinct with regard to the artistic blending of the colours of their clothes. There is never, even amongst the uneducated jungle folk, that harsh clashing of colours which many natives of India display in their dress, and which is not unknown amongst our own people in England.

They are fond of fun, and in addition to the indigenous variety of football — a game played with a basket ball, the object of the players being to pass it from one to the other without touching it with the hands, or allowing it to fall on the ground — English football (Association) and hockey are played excellently well. A few years ago the football team of

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St. John’s College, Rangoon, played a drawn game with the Royal Irish, who were that year the champions of the whole of India. The Burmese generally play Association Football with bare feet !

The people are as light-hearted as children, and they have the defects as well as the qualities of children, for they give way to ungovernable fits of temper, and are then capable of acts of inhuman cruelty. This trait in the character of the people accounts for the fact — stated in the Government Annual Report on the Prome Administration for 1 894 — that Burma is the most criminal nation in the Eastern Empire.

Their love of fun has earned for the Burmese the epithet of the Irish of the East. The open-air theatre ( pwe ) is quite an institution amongst them. Performances are given in the open on moonlight nights, when the whole of Burma is flooded with intoxicating brilliance, and as often as not the entertainment takes place within the precincts of the monastery. It begins about 9 p.m. and goes on till daybreak. The jokes are frequently lewd, and the silence of the night is broken at intervals by roars of laughter. A good deal of drinking and gambling goes on at the outskirt of the crowd, and there are frequent cases of assault with knives (daks), so that in many places these entertainments are prohibited by Government.

The Burman works hard during the paddy season, but when it is over he is frequently idle for months and soon gets through his money in gambling and pleasure, so that when the cultivating season comes

A BURMESE ORCHESTRA

THE BOYS INSIDE THE DRUMS STRIKE THE GONGS THAT ARE ARRANGED ALL AROUND THEM x i round again he not infrequently has to borrow money to buy seed.

The chief tenet of Buddhism is “ all is vanity,” and yet paradoxical as it may seem, it is the Burmese love of pleasure which makes him outwardly appear to be so good a Buddhist. The average Burman is far too much a child of nature to understand or appreciate Buddhist metaphysics ; what he can understand is the periodic festivals which Buddhism offers him. At these festivals he feeds the monks and goes to the pagoda, not so much to say his prayers as to join in the round of festivities.

One of the greatest occasions of rejoicing is the cremation of a monk ( Pongyi byan). Enormous sums of money are spent over these functions. The corpse is generally embalmed with honey and covered with gold leaf; the coffin is placed on a gorgeous catafalque of fantastic design, and the culmination of the ceremony is the setting fire to the whole erection by rockets shot from a distance of about 100 yards, when catafalque and gold leaf are all destroyed.

But it is right to add that it is not only upon religious festivities that the Burmese lavish their money ; many of them impoverish themselves to earn the most coveted of all titles, that of kyoung-taga (i.e. builder of a monastery). As age draws on the devout Burman — impelled by the conviction that after death he will be re-born as an animal, a human being, or a spirit, according to the amount of merit or demerit which he has acquired during his present existence — seeks to make his future secure by spending his money on acts t 2

of merit. He will build a monastery, or a pagoda, or perhaps dig a well ; utilitarian scruples trouble him but little. There may be already more than sufficient pagodas to meet the requirements of the neighbourhood ; his object is not to bestow a benefit upon others, but to acquire merit for himself.

Birth and adolescence. — After the birth of a child the mother is “ roasted ” before a slow fire for about seven days to prevent the dreaded mi yat (“ stopping of the fire ”), the name given to all the complications which may arise after childbirth. Hot bricks are applied to; the mother’s body and she is painted with turmeric./ The treatment is so drastic that Burmese women very early show signs of age.

A Burman never remembers the year in which he was born or the date of the month, but he always remembers the day of the week. The reason for this is that there are certain letters assigned to each day of the week : and the child may only be called by a name beginning with the letters assigned to the day on which he was born : thus if a child’s name begins with a vowel he knows that he must have been born on a Sunday. At the pagoda there are usually seven stations, one for each day of the week, and when a Burman goes to pray or make an offering, he does it at the station assigned to the day of the week on which he was born. As each day has its own particular planet the seven stations round the pagoda are designated by the sign of the corresponding planets. There are no surnames amongst the Burmese, and there is nothing in a Burman’s name which indicates his family ; so when i3 one of them receives Christian baptism his old name is usually coupled with a new Biblical name.

Burmese boys are all tattooed, with the exception of those who live in the large towns and have grown up under European influence. The absence of tattoo marks, up till quite recently, was thought to indicate the coward who ran away when the professional tattooer came on his rounds. The tattoo pattern usually covers the whole body from the waist to the knee, and gives the boy when naked the appearance of wearing breeches. The operation sometimes takes several days, and the patient is drugged with opium whilst it is going on, to help him to bear the pain.

Every Burmese boy knows how to read and write ; he has learnt to do so at the monastic school, and with this modicum of secular knowledge, he has also learnt to say his prayers in Pali, the sacred language of Buddhism. The education of girls has been hitherto neglected, but there has recently been a change for the better in this respect as a result of Christian missionary activity. The number of illiterates amongst men in Burma is less in proportion to the population than the number in Italy.

Every Burmese boy, when he is about 14 years of age, enters the Buddhist monastic order as a novice ; perhaps he may only remain in the order for a day, but until he has entered the order by having his head shaven and putting on the yellow robe, he is not really a Buddhist, and, according to the Burmese, hardly a human being at all. The boys wear their hair long until they enter the monastery, and when it is cut off

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it is given to a sister or a girl friend, who interweaves it with her own : all the Burmese women wear false hair, and are not ashamed of doing so.

The monastic is the only religious life, according to Buddhism. There is no holy matrimony, for marriage is essentially unholy ; there are in consequence a great number of monks in the country, but their number is steadily decreasing. In 1891 there were 91,000 inmates of the monasteries of Burma, and as the population in that year was only 7,605,560 we conclude that one person in about eighty belonged to the monastic order. Ten years later the number of monks had fallen to 75,000.

Marriage in Burma is simply concubinage, which may terminate at the desire of either party. There is no religious ceremony, but as on the occasion of a funeral, the monks may be invited, and a general feast given.

Betel-nut chewing is a universal practice. Betel is not really a nut at all, but a leaf : the nut used is areca. A piece of this is pinched off with a cutter and wrapped up in a betel leaf ; the whole is then smeared with lime paste and the quid thus prepared is popped into the mouth. So inveterate is the practice that on a journey, and in the fields, the men carry a little box in the fold of their skirts, and distance is occasionally measured by the number of betel-nut quids that have been chewed on the journey.

Everybody smokes in Burma, and it is not uncommon to see a mother take her cheroot — a foot long and half an inch in diameter — out of her own mouth

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and put it into that of her baby to quiet its crying. The common practice is to smoke the home-made cigar, but the cigarette habit has increased of late years. The educational department has tried to check the habit amongst schoolboys, and all well-wishers of the Burmese must hope that its efforts will meet with success.

Dress. — Both the men and women wear skirts ( paso ). The men hitch theirs up in front, and the women at the side, without the aid of buttons or pins. The hitch in front is used by the men as a pocket, and it is here that they carry their betel boxes. When travelling, men and women wear two pasos at once, a cotton one on top and a silk one below, and, when nearing the town, the cotton one is slipped off and put on again underneath the silk one.

Food. — The Burmese only have two real meals : one in the morning at about 9 a.m,, and another in the evening at about 6 p.m. ; but almost the whole of the interim is filled up with tea drinking, betel chewing, and smoking. Both morning and evening meals consist of curry and rice, and they are never considered to be complete unless accompanied by an evil-smelling concoction of putrid fish called nga pi. The food is eaten with the hands, which are moistened before the meal in order to make the rice adhere more readily. The people squat on the floor round a circular table a foot high, and do not talk during the meal ; they drink after eating, but only water. The Burmese are fond of meat and especially of pork : no festival is considered complete unless a curry of pork is provided, i6

So invariable is this practice that a Burman will frequently reply to a question about the number of people present at a certain festival by stating the number of pounds of pork that was consumed.

It is characteristic of the inconsequential Burman that while as a Buddhist he zealously tries to observe the commandment “ Thou shalt take no life,” he eats, for an Eastern, a great deal of meat, and he will employ any amount of sophistry to palliate the breaches of the commandment which are committed, to meet the requirements of the market. The fisherman and hunter are looked upon as outcasts, yet most of the members of these professions are zealous Buddhists. The fisherman will explain that he does not kill the fish ; all that he does is to pull the fish out of the water, when it dies of itself!

A Buddhist may not kill a tiger, a snake, or a mad dog. He will see an animal die a slow lingering death, and will not release it from misery lest he break the commandment, “ Thou shalt take no life ”. The Burmese are generally kind to animals, except when they give way to fits of passion ; then there is nothing too cruel for them to do.

The Burman who drinks is rightly regarded as a bad character, for no native ever seems to be able to take such things in moderation. One of the five obligatory commandments of Buddhism is “Thou shalt drink no intoxicants,” and a habitual drunkard would certainly be described as bane sa (literally opium eater), which is the general expression of contempt. A Burman who intends to commit a violent crime usually makes himself drunk (ye hs£ tike te, literally he takes courage medicine'). Unfortunately drunkenness is on the increase, especially in the large towns.

Opium is not smoked, but chewed, in Burma. The immediate effect of it when eaten is apparently the exact opposite of its effect when smoked : instead of being a soporific, it is a stimulant. An exhausted sampan man, immediately after eating a pill of opium, will be able to row his boat against the current with redoubled energy. After a time, however, the drug emaciates the body and degrades the mind of the consumer.

Opium is a Government monopoly in Burma, and only licensed consumers are allowed to buy it. The price of opium is its weight in rupees. A great deal of smuggling is carried on despite the vigilance of the excise officials.

The cocaine habit is also on the increase, and women are said to be especially addicted to it. They take it in the form of a powder by rubbing it on the lips.

Medicine and disease. — A Burman who has failed at everything else usually falls back on the medical profession as a means of livelihood. Every Burman is acquainted with the fact that there are exactly ninety-six diseases, and all that the would-be doctor has to do, is to learn the various methods of treatment by drugs, diet, massage, charms, and mantras. Drugs are given in enormous doses, and the doctor usually prescribes a diet at the same time as he administers the medicine : the patient is told to avoid food of bitter, sweet, or some other flavour, which sounds to the European quite arbitrary. Massage is a universal i8 remedy, and whilst every Burman knows something about it, the professional masseurs are wonderfully expert. It is a common sight on a steamer — where all the passengers lie on deck — or in a train, to see a person walking up and down the prostrate body of his friend massaging him with his feet and relieving him of the cramp ( nyaung de ) from which the Burmese suffer greatly. Unfortunately this treatment is resorted to in quite unsuitable cases — sometimes with fatal results.

Charms consisting of pieces of string tied round the wrist or neck, over which mantras, spells, have been chanted, are believed to be more efficacious than medicine and are universally resorted to.

Consumption is becoming more common owing to the growing practice of using mosquito curtains : the curtains used are almost opaque, and exclude not only the light but the air. Two or more people lie under one of these curtains and the air must have been breathed over and over again before the morning.

A curious phenomenon of Burmese sickness is a sort of convulsion or spasm ( tet de) which is generally followed by fatal results. Dyspepsia in many forms is rife, and is probably due to the practice of chewing betel. The people like English pills — except the cathartics, which they are very suspicious of, — but until recently they have been afraid of the Government hospitals. One reason for this is that all the police cases of assault are taken to these hospitals, so they are regarded as a sort of annex to the jail and police court, which it is hardly respectable for the quiet law-abiding citizen to frequent. Another reason is that

BURMESE BULLOCK CART the Burman has a great horror of the surgeon’s knife, and in most cases will die rather than face it. This suspicion is gradually dying away, however, owing to the kindness which is shown by the doctors and nurses in the hospitals, and the wonderful cures that take place there.