A people at school

Preface

Some years ago I wrote The Soul of a People. It was an attempt to understand the Burmese, to see them as they do themselves, to describe their religion and its effect on them.

This book is also concerned with the Burmese. But it is from another point of view. That was of feelings and emotions and ideals, of the inner life as they understand it. It was individual, of man and woman. This is of the outer life, of success and failure, of progress and retrogression judged as nations judge each other. It is of the Burmese as a race, or nation. Both are, I think, true points of view. And although in this book it may seem that there is much that is not in accord with the former one, that is not I think really so. For life is complex. It has many sides, it must have many ideals. And though one ideal be opposed to another, they may yet both be good and both be true. We can never get far enough away, get high enough up to see life whole. If we could do so, all these lesser truths, all these lesser ideals would blend into the great Truth. Meanwhile vi A PEOPLE AT SCHOOL

we but see what we can. I hope, therefore, that this book may be found no less true than the other, that it may be accepted as in a way its complement and companion. It may read, I fear, somewhat disconnectedly, without due rhythm and sequence. But if that is so, I can only urge in apology that it was written bit by bit. A chapter was begun one day, and finished may be two months later. For a busy life leaves but short times of leisure with long spaces in between.

Contents

PART

I

CHAP

PAGE

I. The True Burma

TWENTY YEARS AGO

II In The Nursery

SUSPENSE

THE GREAT RIVER

MANDALAY

WAR ? .

WUNTHO

ON A FRONTIER

A HAPPY MONTH

II.

ANOTHER FRONTIER

PEACE AT LAST

PART

II

13. OUR RULE IN INDIA

14. GOVERNOR AND GOVERNED

15. THE ORIENTAL MIND

vii

143 170

Vlll

A PEOPLE AT SCHOOL

CHAP.

1 6. THE VILLAGE COMMUNITY

17. MATERIAL PROSPERITY .

18. CRIMINAL LAW .

19. COURTS AND PEOPLE

20. CIVIL LAW

21. HONESTY AND TRUTH . 2 2. BUDDHISM

23. WOMEN .

24. BURMESE AND IMMIGRANTS

25. CONCLUSION

Chapter I The True Burma

The people of whom this book is written are the Burmese people, and their land is that which formed the kingdom of the last kings, and which was annexed \J in 1885.

It is true that British Burma, or, as it is now called, Lower Burma, was annexed in 1825 and 1852, but these districts are not really Burma at all.

The home of the-Burman is in the dry zone that lies about the old capitals of Pagan, Sagaing, Shwebo, Ava, Amarapura, and Mandalay. It was the people of these districts who founded the various kingdoms of Burma, and who alone are rightly called Burmese. The people of the delta and Tenasserim districts were Karens, and Peguans or Talaings. They are races very closely allied to the Burmese, but they are distinct. They differ in their dialect, in their appearance, and in their capacity. When the Burmese kings extended their empire to the sea and overran Lower Burma they did not recognise the people they found as of their own race or their equals. They conquered them, and ruled them, and despised them, and at the same time some emigration occurred from the congested districts above to the lower country. When we invaded the delta in 1825 the natives arose in revolt against their Burmese conquerors and assisted us.

After 1825, when we returned these provinces to the King of Burma, the immigration of Burmese from Burma proper to the delta increased. The dry districts of Upper Burma were practically full, and the surplus population drifted down to Lower Burma to the vast swamps which their energy made into rice fields. The administration also became Burmanised, so that when war again broke out in 1852 we found Lower Burma more Burmese than before. The local institutions had been broken up by the Burmese Government, and the villages invaded by immigrants from the Upper province. But nothing stable had been established, and the Lower Burma we annexed in 1852 was really a chaos. It was in a state of transition. It bore to Upper Burma much the same relation as the western States of America did to the eastern States fifty years ago.

After our annexation of the delta the tide again turned ; the Burmese cultivators, who, following their armies, had come to Lower Burma to settle, returned. They did not like our rule, and they went back to Upper Burma in large numbers. Many parts of the delta were left without population, and the want was very thinly supplied by an increase in the immigration from India, which had been going on for centuries.

CH. I THE TRUE BURMA 5

This state of affairs, however, did not last very long. The Upper kingdom was not fertile enough to support all its people, and the immigrants returned. But the process was slow, and it was not till after 1885 that it became fast. Since then the movement has been very large, and Lower Burma is now become entirely Burmese. The Talaing has disappeared, absorbed in the stronger race. Even the Karens in the west are now calling themselves Burmese. The Indian immigration is mostly of coolies to the mills and is but temporary, and in any case trifling compared to that of the Burmese. Every day new Lower Burma becomes more of a unit with Upper Burma. There is a strong tendency to cohesion and assimilation. But although in wealth and population the Lower districts now surpass the old kingdom, the essential differences remain. Lower Burma when annexed was simply a large tract of country thinly populated with differing races, with no central authority, no recognised customs, no cohesion. But Upper Burma was a nation with the traditions, the customs, and authority of many centuries. In annexing Upper Burma we took over a nation which, though primitive perhaps, was nevertheless a complete organism with an old-established system of government, both local and central, and an organised religious church.

Upper Burma was a nation in a way that neither Lower Burma nor any part of India was. It contained a compact nationality differing from its neighbours all round, with an individuality, a universal religion, an identity, and a history which had lasted already for many centuries. It had never been seriously invaded, never conquered, never received any large number of aliens. The kings may have often changed, the governments been at times weak and evanescent, but with all this the nation always remained as a nation. You can write a history of Burma for eight hundred years, and by Burma you will mean always Upper Burma. In Lower Burma there was never any unity, never any solidarity. Little local kingdoms formed, and broke, and reformed again in different shape. The great bulk of the country was waste land occupied thinly by many differing races, and for a hundred years it had been held by the Burmese kings as a conquered country.

If these facts are borne in mind, they will furnish the clue to the following pages. It is because they are usually either unknown or ignored by writers on the subject that so many fallacies are current on the subject of Burma and the Burmese.

Burma in this book means Upper Burma, the kingdom we annexed in 1885.

The Burmese people mean the people who inhabit that area.

And therefore when I speak of Burmese customs, Burmese beliefs, Burmese traditions, I mean the customs, beliefs, and traditions of the people of Upper Burma.

In Lower Burma the immigrants, like all immigrants, as they came down, to a considerable extent forgot these traditions. Mixed up with other races, far from

CH. I THE TRUE BURMA 7

their home influences, they became freer, both in a good and bad sense. The village communities have less coherence, the religion less influence, the restraints of tradition and customs less authority than in the old country. Before the annexation the Burman in Lower Burma, even if settled there for two or three generations, always considered the Mandalay king to be his king, the Mandalay archmonk to be the head of his religion. He took his fashions and his customs from above.

In Upper Burma you can study the Burman as an individual and as part of an old and organised community, which in ways still exists in full strength and vigour. In Lower Burma the community is yet to make, and the individual still somewhat dipaysi. But of course Lower Burma cannot be passed over : the existence of such a large area of rich land near to the home of the Burmese has inevitably greatly influenced even those who have not emigrated. It attracted them in the past. It attracts their surplus people in the present. In the future, by its wealth and its greater susceptibility to outside influence, it will probably become in some ways the more important of the two.

But whatever happens, Burma proper can only be Upper Burma, and the real Burman people can only be the inhabitants of that country.

America may or may not be a greater country than England, and an American may or may not be superior to an Englishman. But however this be, America is not England, nor is a New Englander or Californian an Englishman, though he be of English descent. And although you may study Englishmen and the descendants of Englishmen in America and Australia, you cannot study the English people anywhere out of England.

I do not know if this will seem a self-evident proposition unnecessary to have explained. It seems perhaps of the very essence of the self-evident. But if so, it is evidence that is quite commonly disregarded out here. Because when the provinces of Pegu and Tenasserim were annexed they were officially called Burma, and because the people now all call themselves Burmese, everything else is assumed. The Burman of the delta is supposed to be the natural Burman, and the circumstances under which he lives now, to be his natural and traditional environment.

It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that the most astonishing theories are currently received as true.

I hope that this book may dissipate some of them.

I have divided the book into two parts. In the first part I have tried to show what Burma was like before the war, what was the nature of its people and institutions, and the course the war took. I think it is necessary to the understanding of the second part to know by what methods the Burmese people were conquered and the country pacified. It explains much, both of them and their temperament and of us and our ways, that would be otherwise difficult to convey.

In the second part I have tried to indicate what

CH. I THE TRUE BURMA 9

our rule is, how it affects them, and the changes that have come upon them in consequence.

There is nothing that England is prouder of than her empire, her ability to rule eastern nations, and she is glad to think that they benefit by that rule. She knows the Pax Britannica that she has made and the trade she has created. These are things that leap to the eye. But, after all, in themselves they mean but little. Peace may be good but only as a means to greater ends. The dry rot of peace may be worse than the friction of war. A peace that is only a diminution of vitality, a submission to a weight above, is no desirable thing. We have made a peace, what are the forces that are at work in this peace ? If we have banished war, that is often the cleanser and corrector of peoples, what have we put to take its place ?

Trade is good, wealth is good if it be not too concentrated, if all share in it, if it be not accompanied by evils greater than the benefits. Is this true here?

And of all the things besides, what of them ? There is so much that goes to the making of a man or a people besides just peace and plenty. There is happiness, there is character, there is honesty, there is justice, there is courage, there is religion. What of all these things? What do we teach in our school, and how far are the lessons learnt ?

Never before have we taken over a complete people * like we did in Upper Burma, never before have we had lo A PEOPLE AT SCHOOL pt. i

to subdue a country as we had i t. What h as it me ant to_the_ Burmesg^?

Nations and governments and men exist and are strong so long only as they carry out the tasks that Providence has set them. But Providence has her own ways, she acts but never tells you what she intends. She launches men and nations forth, and then she waits and watches. If you do well, then is it well with you. If you do ill, then is it ill. Her rewards and punishments are great. But she is dumb. She never preaches nor prophesies. She acts. While you are useful to her, she uses you. And when your task is finished, then she will let you go.

We know that we are strong, and we are sure, therefore, that in some way we are of use. If Providence has put us here to rule Burma, it is because she wants us to do some of her work.

What is that work ?

She never tells us.

What are we doing ?

That, perhaps, we can see. And if we can know that, we may be able to guess, though ever so dimly, what our mission is. For that we are fulfilling our mission we may be sure, or all would not be well with us as it is.

Chapter II Twenty Years Ago

To the traveller going to Upper Burma the road now is easy. In eighteen hours you may go by rail from Rangoon to Mandalay. In another day you may go, still by rail, to the uttermost frontiers on the north or east. You can take a steamer and go up the Chindwin.

And the journey, whatever it may contain of beauty or novelty of scenery, will be without incident. Nothing will happen to you. The country through which you pass is as quiet and dull as any other part of our welladministered empire. You need never carry a revolver or even a stick, and you will find the Union Jack waving metaphorically on every telegraph post, on every steamer, on every tree and rock. The country is swathed in it, and the substratum never peeps through. You will go the length and breadth of the land and know as little of the Burmans when you return as when you started. The atmosphere of British rule . and British trade surrounds you like a guard-rail. You never get beyond it. The Burman world exists for you only as a panorama outside your carriage windows. But twenty years ago it was different.

It was late afternoon when my companion and I crossed the frontier. Behind us lay the long straight road along which we had come. It reached from us back to a garrison town. Behind the town there was the railway, beyond the railway was the sea. This road was as the last tentacle of a great organism whose heart lay five thousand miles away. It was the fingertip of England and civilisation and the West.

Beside us as we stopped was a white pillar. There the road ended. Beyond us was the forest. And as we came to this frontier post we stopped and looked. The rain came down unceasingly. The road was a sea of mud through which our ponies had splashed with difficulty. It was straight and ugly and forlorn. But we could see far along it. It was purposeful and direct, evidently knowing its own object. We knew whence we had come. Whither we were about to go we could not tell. This was the end of civilised rule and government — so we were told. Beyond us lay the wastes and woods of a retarded barbarism. We sat upon our ponies in the wet and waited. Our bullock carts were struggling yet across the mud. We wanted them to close up ere we crossed the frontier. We wanted all to be together.

When they came up we went on.

The woods in front were dense. The broad, cut road had ended. But there continued from its end some narrow tracks that passed into the forest. Our guide chose one of these, and we went on.

Directly the pillar passed, our Burmese with us

CH. II TWENTY YEARS AGO 13

laughed ; a cart-man shouted ; a man on foot leaped into the air and sang ; another clapped himself upon the chest and breathed full breaths.

They looked at us and laughed again.

' They say,' explained our guide, ' that now they come into a free country. They are glad.'

We rode forward.

The cart-track wound in and out among the trees. ■ Where an obstruction rose the road went round. If a tree fell, it lay, no one removed it, the track made a detour. If a mud hole formed, the track sought higher : ground. There were a maze of tracks sometimes that crossed and re-crossed. They were the tracks of last year, of the year before, of hundreds of years ago. Sometimes the rub of wheels had, in a narrow place, worn the rock into ruts so deep at last that the cart body stranded in the ridge between. There was never fifty yards straight. Yet was the going pleasanter than on the broad road that we had left. The mud was less deep, there was more variety and interest.

A mile of this wandering brought us to the frontier station.

That was a small hamlet of grass -thatched huts surrounded by a high thorn fence. The gateway lay in a pool of mud and filth. The houses were poor and mean, built on piles, the floors five feet above the ground. Our guide halted before a hut in the centre of the village, and we stopped. He called out something. Presently into a little verandah came out a stout old man. He was dressed simply in a blue cotton longyi and a soiled white jacket, and he smiled upon us amiably.

' Who are you ? ' he asked.

Our guide explained.

' Where are you going ? '

' To Ningyan.'

' Are you armed ? '

We opened our coats and showed a revolver in the belt of each.

The old man nodded.

' He says,' explained our guide, ' that there have been robberies recently, and it is as well to go about armed.'

Then our guide took twenty rupees from us which he paid to a ragged-looking follower who held a flintlock gun and smoked under the shelter of the eaves. The old man beamed upon us from aloft. He was the commander of the post and the customs agent He did not take his duties very seriously. I met him again later, in somewhat more unfortunate circumstances for him. He was running then, but was still good-tempered.

Then, getting a light from the sentry, we went on.

We had crossed the frontier and were now in Independent Burma, where King Thibaw ruled. Beyond the village the road got worse. The woods had ended, and we came on huge flats covered with rank grasses, where rice is planted later in the year. The water stood upon the fields, and the wheels sank sometimes up to their axles. The little ponies tripped and slipped

CH. 11 TWENTY YEARS AGO 15

and waded courageously. But our progress was slow and the night came fast.

Presently it was quite dark. The rain fell more persistently than ever. It seemed to block us in within walls of wet. We could not see. Sometimes a cart got stuck and a halt had to be made to extricate it. Sometimes a pony fell and the rider slipped into the mud. The tall wet grasses brushed against us, and sometimes we stumbled against a tree-stem or a mound.

Still we went on.

Some three hours after dark we found the earth beneath us growing firmer. A light appeared at a distance. Then another. We had come at length to our camping-place.

It was outside the village. There were two buildings without walls, a roof, a floor of teak some twenty feet square, the usual resting-places built for travellers. We took one of them, and our men the other.

Out of the village we borrowed a few mats to wall one side. Our boys lit a fire upon some earth in a corner and made us some cocoa, which with biscuits and cold tinned meat formed our dinner. Then we changed into dry clothes.

Luckily, the night was hot.

So I passed my first night in Upper Burma twenty years ago. The rain poured all night long in torrents, and I lay awake wondering whether the robbers would think it worth while to come out in such wet, wondering if this was a fair sample of what life here was tobe, wondering that men find pleasure in leaving the trodden ways of civilisation, wondering how soon I could get back. That was twenty years ago, and I am here still.

Next morning we woke to undiminished gloom. The rain clouds lay upon the fields. They drifted past in sad procession as of mourners to a grave. Their dripping skirts trailed over all our world. The water in the fields had deepened. The mud was more persistent, the grasses taller. Still there was no road. The cart-tracks wandered to and fro across the plain. We could not see. But the Burmans have the instinct of direction. They might be walking compasses. They always reckon by the compass. They do not say ' turn to the right,' but ' turn to the west.' They do not speak of the ' table near the window,' but ' the table in the east of the room.' They speak of the north and south side of a street, not the shady or sunny side. Of two tumblers on a table one will be the east tumbler, the other the west. Thus, even in this rain and mist, they knew at once. ' That is north,' they said, 'and that is east. Our way lies about north-east.' Then they drove on.

The distance was seven miles. We had some bullion in the carts and dared not leave them and ride on. So we plodded along in front of them. As on the previous evening, we sometimes fell, and the carts very often stuck.

At last the weather lightened. A little breeze came sweeping down the fields breaking the clouds.

CH. II TWENTY YEARS AGO 17

The dense wall parted, and now and then we caught long vistas of the distance. Sometimes we saw a clump of palms, a distant hill, a long reach of plain. Then the clouds would shut again and re-open. At last we saw some spires. The mist closed upon them quickly, but when it cleared again we saw we were approaching a town. A high stockade of great teak logs fenced it about, and above it rose the roofs of houses, the spires of monasteries, and groves of palms. A little watery sunshine flickered over like a smile. The clouds drew up, and we found ourselves in a broad swampy plain. The town was a mile away, and beyond it lay the hills.

The road became better, the tracks united, and we were evidently on a highway once again. Another sign showed us that we had come upon a frequented way. It was two crosses, and on the crosses were two bodies. Vultures sat by them, and crows pecked at them. Our guide told us they were two of four robbers recently arrested and executed. They were hung there to be a warning. So we did in England a hundred years ago.

Then we went on and gained the town. That was at the end of May, in 1885, and here I lived till the war broke out in November.

It was a strange life.

There were eight of us there, and we lived in houses near the centre of the town. The manager had a house to himself, we seven chummed in a large building near. Our houses were all within a fence, and we

C had gates which were closed at night. I remember the watchmen were natives of India.

Our business was that of the firm which held the monopoly of the great teak forests of Upper Burma. We lived mostly out in camp, supervising the ringing of the living trees ; the felling of the timber three years later, when it was seasoned ; its draught to the water-courses, where it lay till the freshets swept it down to the main river.

There it was caught and rafted for Rangoon.

We travelled about a great deal up and down these streams and in the forests. Sometimes we rode on ponies, sometimes on elephants. We put up in rest-houses like that I have already described, or in native houses. We lived principally on tins. At headquarters we got bread and soda-water sent up from Toungu, and we could usually buy fowls. But in camp there was nothing but rice and vegetables to be had. Cattle might not be killed, and the villagers would seldom sell us fowls. Milk could never be obtained ; although the country was full of fat cattle the cows were never milked. The Burmese hate milk. They regard it with disgust. And so amid a bounty of beef and of milk we almost starved for animal food. We ate tinned meat till our souls abhorred it.

Our only amusement was lawn -tennis at headquarters. Once one of us went to shoot snipe in a marsh, but the soldiers turned out, fearing it was an invasion, and we received a serious warning not to do so again. When we were on tour we travelled

CH. II TWENTY YEARS AGO 19

generally every day ; when we were at Ningyan we rarely went outside our fence. The town was, like any other Burmese town except Mandalay, built anyhow. The streets were narrow, dirty, never mended, never cleaned, scavenged by pigs and dogs. In the rains there were numerous mud-holes and pools, with sometimes a sidewalk of planks for pedestrians built by private effort as a work of merit. European _ villages were little different two hundred years ago. There was nowhere to walk, nowhere to ride. The dogs barked and snapped behind you, and the people jostled you. If you met an official, you had to kneel down or get out of the way.

As to this last, I do not complain. I do not think foreigners have a right to claim to be exempt from the usual respect due to the government of the country they live in. And as regards the former, matters are not much changed now. No European can walk through an ordinary village now with any comfort.

But though there was a feeling of restriction, of confinement, there was, at first, no sense of danger. We travelled about quite freely and met with hospitality-' everywhere. There was never any difficulty in finding a roof of sorts and the country food. There was very rarely any discourtesy or insult. The people were always glad to see us. As to robbers, the only ones I saw or heard of, were those on the crosses beyond the town. We learned to laugh at the exaggerated stories current in English Burma about the insecurity of life and property in Upper Burma, and about the discontent of the people. The people were content as far as we saw. They governed themselves in little village communities, and the central government, whether good or bad, affected them very little. They lived happy, careless, open lives, never wanting the necessities of life ; pleased to be alive, pleased with themselves and all about them. They seemed gay children of a younger world not yet come out to the troubles of school life.

Their amusements were many, their laughter was free and cheery, they had no ambitions, save the highest of all, to take the hour as it came and make the best of it. They were in their daily life honest and truthful. They troubled the courts but little, and settled their disputes at home.

We were friendly with them all. The officials often came to see us. The governor would come and dine with our manager, furtively drawing his feet up to the seat of the chair, for he preferred to sit cross-legged.

The revenue official came, the forest official, the captain of the Shan regiment.

They asked us to get them guns from England.

They drank our whisky, and they sold us ponies.

They were cheerful and friendly, and we liked them.

I fear we had little opinion of their ability. They

seemed to be playing at government.

What has become of all of them save the head

revenue official, I do not know. He was killed after

long fighting against us, years later. He was, I

CH. II TWENTY YEARS AGO 21

remember, a pleasant little fellow. They say he was a brave and energetic leader.