Soo Thah : a tale of the making of the Karen nation

Front matter

i' Xf

.Jit mtmp.i.

CORNELL

Preface

THIS is a true story. While its narration is not always chronological, yet all the incidents herein told are facts which occurred in the experience of the writer, or within his knowledge. All the characters are true to name and life, except Soo Thah, whose real name was Soo Yah. This change has been made in order that certain incidents in the story might be added to his life to complete a true picture.

The aim of the story is to give a photographic view of the daily life of the heathen Hillmen of Burma; of the entrance of the Gospel among them ; and of its triumphant results as a transforming and uplifting power.

My hearty thanks are due to my friend. Rev. N. J. Wheeler, for wise counsel and help in the composition of the story. I am also indebted to Dr. J. B. Vinton for some translations of the traditions of the elders ; and also to the author of " In the Shadow of the Pagoda," for incidents in the story of Boh Hline, retold from his book.

A. B.

TouNGOo, Burma.

Contents

I. Soo Thah Makes His Bow II. Early Sports and Labours .

III. Soo Thah's First Hunt

IV. Toils and Perils .

Introduction

THE work of evangelizing the Karens of Burma has now gone on for two generations. Its successes have constituted a miracle in modem missions. The God-given men and women who have laboured in it have been intense in character, and the work has been absorbing and all-consuming. Accordingly, those who have known it best, have found little time to weigh the achievements, or to write them up, as they deserve to be. Perhaps this would not yet be done at all if, in the providence of God, the active participants in the work, through physical disablement, were not driven home, where, coming face to face with the supporters of the Mission, endless catechizings compel the tired missionary to take an inventory of stock. From long familiarity with the work abroad, the missionary can scarcely realize how little the people at home know of the process going on in the lives of disciples just emerging from the long night of paganism.

14 Introduction

The church should, therefore, felicitate itself that as incidental to Dr. Bunker's last well-earned furlough in America, he was led to present to us the following story of Soo Thah, the Karen convert. Such a book has long been greatly needed. The story is indeed a composite, it is called a romance, but it is true to the life, painted in most realistic colours of feature and setting. It was the privilege of the present writer in the year 1890 to spend several days with Dr. Bunker and his excellent associate workers in the Toungoo field, Burma, from which the story draws its materials. It is a field in which nearly one hundred Karen churches now exist, numbering about four thousand members. In this field may be seen mission work in every stage of its rise, growth, and increasing power, — the raw, uncouth heathen, the awakened convert begging to be taught, the village and station schools filled with cleanly, bright-eyed pupils, tlie training classes of young preachers, the veteran pastors, and the associational meetings, with thousands of radiant, praiseful Christians gathered from the mountain sides of a vast district, absorbed in their new relations to the Kingdom of God.

The reading of this book has brought it all up

Introduction 15

with vividness, tenderness and power. Dr. Bunker has used a graphic pen. He has caught the luxuriance of the forests, the grandeur of the mountains, and the soft tints of the oriental sunsets, and made his disciple " live, move and have his being " in a world of reality and charm.

The lands of heathendom are far from being the dismal places which many conceive them to be. There " only man is vile," and, thank God, through the labours of such men as he who tells the story, man also is being reclaimed to be the fit denizen of such scenes as the author so glowingly depicts.

Better still, this well-told story sets before us in realistic touches the making of the disciple himself, recovered from the havoc which sin and demon-worship had wrought. In the story of Soo Thah, we see the child of superstition step by step emerge, develop, expand, and rise to such moral altitude as moves us with new appreciation of the glorious Gospel of the blessed God.

Then to crown all, in this faithful, concrete presentation of mission work, we see the elements of the process whereby a nation is being new-bom in a day; redeemed unto God, and commended even to world-powers, because of the virile results

1 6 Introduction

realized through the union of a divine gospel with human nature in the simple, such as is afforded in the Asiatic hill-tribe men. There is in Burma to-day among the Karens alone, a community of at least one hundred thousand souls pervaded by Christian sentiment. It is the best appreciated and most loyal element of the native citizenship in British India. Such a citizenship is not only a tribute to the Gospel, but also to the benignity of the one colonizing, government of Europe which has given fair play to Christian missions. It is " a spectacle unto the world, and to angels and to men," the promise and prophecy of an ultimate transformed humanity.

Henry C. Mabie.

Boston, May 2, 1902.

SOO THAH MAKES HIS BOW

THEY named the new baby Soo Thah, which means " Pure Fruit." He was a little brown boy with bright, black eyes and black hair, like the other babies in the village. He was put in an oblong, bamboo basket, swung from the rafters of the house by ropes made from the bark of a tree. This house was in a village in far away Burma, Asia. The rude village was perched on a mountain top overlooking a distant plain ; and as far as the eye could reach in every direction were unbroken forests of luxuriant foliage.

The house was like a great nest, made of bamboo and jungle wood tied together with rattan, while the roof was covered with woven grass. There was not a nail in the whole structure. It was built on poles, the floor being quite eight feet above the ground. Under the house were hencoops and pig-pens, made of logs as a protection against leopards and other wild beasts which abounded in the neighbouring forests. 17

The new baby had no beautiful dress in which to be presented to admiring relatives. A few dirty rags were his only clothing; and yet he looked as contented and cunning as do most babies. And though born in the jungles among a wild people, he began to speak the same language babies use in more favoured lands.

His parents were very fond of him; yet this might not have been true had the baby been a girl instead of a boy ; for heathen people do not often set a high value on girl-babies.

Why they named him " Pure Fruit " is doubtful. Perhaps it was because he " looked good enough to eat." Any way, that was his name even when he became a famous preacher of the " glad tidings," and a missionary to his own people.

When Soo Thah was only a few days old his grandmother came to see him. She was bent and shrivelled, looking very much as witches have been pictured ; but she thought she knew all about taking care of children. " This is a pretty child," said she. " He must be kept out of the way of nats, or they will surely seize his Kala, and then he will sicken and die."

These nats remind one of the wicked spirits m

o

w

I— I

Soo Thah Makes His Bow 19

which our Lord called demons, and in heathen belief they seem to answer to the latter. Both the Hillmen and the worshippers of idols on the plains of Burma believe in the existence of nats, the former calling them nahs. They also believe that everything, animate and inanimate, has a spirit, which they call Kala, or La, and that these spirits, when separated from the body, live in the spirit country. But we shall hear more of these later.

Now the Kala is the food which the nats most crave. Accordingly they go about " seeking whom they may devour," — the Kala of things, or of persons. When they succeed in seizing it, they bear it away from its body, and its owner at once becomes ill, and will surely die if the Kala is not enticed back again. Thus the elders teach. Therefore when the grandmother saw such a winsome child, she was alarmed, lest nats should seize its Kala, and so cause the baby's death.

She accordingly prepared an offering for the nats of the house, and placed it on the altar in the corner devoted to these evil spirits. Then taking the child in her arms she offered her prayers and pronounced her blessing, after which she tied scarlet strings around its little wrists, neck and ao Soo Thah

loins. The offering was to satisfy the hunger of the nats, so that they would not pry about the house and discover the baby. If, however, this proved unavailing, the scarlet strings were intended to dazzle the nat's eyes, and so prevent him from seizing Soo Thah's Kala. In like manner travellers in the jungles, where tigers abound, are wont to weave bamboo strips into a square, with large holes in it, and hang this on the lower limbs of a tree near their camp, believing that the tiger's eyes will be dazzled when seeing this device, and so be frightened away.

When the old woman had done all this, she called the father and told him he must never leave the house early in the morning or late at night, as the nats were then abroad in greater numbers than at other times, and they might follow him when he returned home, and so find Soo Thah. Besides, when any one came up into the house, he must not go near the baby for some time, lest a nat might be following him.

The grandmother then had the father make a new ladder by which to enter and leave the house, and new water-buckets and mats of bamboo. He must also obtain new chatties, or cooking-pots, and buy a new knife for preparing their food —

Soo Thah Makes His Bow ai

all of which was done by way of precaution. For the same reason when a person dies, the children of the family must have their faces blackened, or the Kala of the deceased may entice those of the children away, with the inevitable result.

When Soo Thah was a few weeks old, his father made a feast, to which he called all the neighbours. During the feast he produced with some ceremony a small hoe, and, placing the baby's tiny hand on its handle, struck the ground three times with it, to show that the child was devoted to the tilling of the soil, and to insure his growing up to be a diligent and thrifty man.

His mother in her constant fear, remembering what the grandmother had said about the nats, had secured at some trouble and expense a tiger's tooth and a few hairs from the tiger's tail, and a bear's claw. These, together with some magic roots and nuts, she had woven into a necklace for him to wear as a talisman. In fact both father and mother had very little rest from anxiety about their children while they were growing up. Any sickness from lack of proper clothing, or suitable food, was at once charged to the presence of nats ; and instead of caring for the child's body the parents in their ignorance did all in their power to conciliate the dreaded enemy. Without any knowledge of the laws of health, of sickness or medicine on the part of the parents and being slaves to their miserable superstition concerning the nats, what wonder that most of the little folk die very young!