Odds and ends from Pagoda land

Introduction

The man who attempts to study the Oriental finds himself face to face with a very difficult, albeit a very interesting problem. The OrientaPs idea and ideals ; his ways of looking at men and things and his valuation of them are so different from those of his Western brother, that the latter oftentimes finds it impossible to understand him. As Kipling has truly said, ** For East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet." In fact, I have sometimes thought that the longer one lives in the East the less confidence has he that he understands his dark-skinned neighbors.

It is for this reason that I have refrained in this little volume from considering abstract questions, which I leave to the savant ; besides, the busy medical missionary has little time to spend in such study. Instead I have tried to show what the common, everyday life of the native of Burma is, so far as I have been able to judge it after a twelve-year residence in his country. For iii

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some years I have been in the habit of jotting down any interesting or humorous incident it has been my fortune to meet, and this little book is the result. "Odds and Ends " it is true, but I hope they will prove both interesting and instructive, and give a faint idea of the Burman, the Shan, and the beautiful country they live in.

Philadelphia, 1906. ^^ Q^ Q^

IV

Content0

PAGE

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PEOPLE .... 7

II EVERYDAY SIGHTS AND SOUNDS .... 61

III ODDS AND ENDS OF TRAVEL 103

IV A FEW MISTAKES 157

V

MEDICAL MISSIONARY WORK 173

VI

" NATS," " HPEAS," AND CHARMS . . . 2II

VII THE RELIGION OF THE PEOPLE 251

GLOSSARY • • • • 275

V

Cbaracterietice of tbe people

OMEBODY has said that if one wishes to see the city in which the greatest number of different nationalities dwell together in peace he must go to Singapore. I think, however, that he is wrong, and that there are more different kinds of people living in the large cities of Burma, especially in Upper Burma, than in Singapore.

First and foremost, of course, comes the Burman, for years the conquering race, and now, although conquered by the superiority of British arms and valor, still proud of his history. He looks upon his neighbors, the Shans, Kachins, and natives of India, as men of inferior races, and only bows before the all-conquering Anglo-Saxon because he has to.

The Burman makes his home on the rich plains, close beside the rivers, for he is a great waterman, while the Karen, the Kachin, the Chin, and other races live upon the hills, and the Shan, the tribe most nearly related to the Burman, builds his villages in 9

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the valleys between the mountains in what he picturesquely calls the " hill and water country."

Lured by high wages and plenty of work, multitudes of natives of India have crossed the Bay of Bengal and landed in Burma, which has been overspread by them like locusts on a field. In the cities one meets with them in crowds, huddled together, usually in the poorest quarters of the town, the ** ghettos '* of Burma, in fact. Along the railroads, upon steamships, and at any place where coolie work is to be had, the native of India is very much in evidence. Then too, the Chinaman has poured in from the north, till the Burman, good-natured, easy-going, and improvident, runs the risk of being crushed between the upper and nether millstones. The native of India, the kallah as the Burman calls him, does not care anything for the country. All he wants is to make money, which he hopes to take to his home and live upon in comfort during the rest of his days. To do this he is willing to live in a shack or a hovel; eat but just enough to keep soul and body together ; will beg in the most unblushing manner, and never give out a single copper piece more than he is obliged to. It is im-

lO

Cbaractecistics ot tbc ipcople

possible to imagine a greater contrast than that existing between the low-caste native of India and the Burman in whose land he has made his temporary home.

The Burman is a cheerful, careless fellow, who follows at least one Christian precept, for he ** takes no thought for the morrow," and is content if he has sufficient to last through the day in hand. His habit has grown to a great extent, I think, from the ease with which he can make a living. The country is so fertile that he has merely to scratch the ground to get a harvest ; his wants are few, and he prefers to live from hand to mouth in an easy, slipshod way, than to heap up treasures and know not who shall enjoy them. He spends as he gets and depends upon his children to support him during his old age. ** Why should I work any harder,'* he asks, ** when I have enough to eat and to wear and a family to look after me when I am old ? " Well, why should he ?

He is very tolerant of others' religious beliefs and does not bother himself with what they believe in or worship. In this he again differs greatly from his neighbors across the seas, the intolerant followers of the prophet, who would to-day, if they II

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dared, raise the crescent flag and offer the Koran or death to their conquered enemies, and the Hindu who hates the Mohammedan as cordially as the Mohammedan hates him.

The Burman is well-made physically and, although not so tall as some of the natives of India who have emigrated into his land, is much better built and stronger. He is rather dark, with jet black, straight hair ; eyes of the same color, and but very little hair upon his face. He does not shave these few hairs, but pulls them out with a pair of tweezers, and it is a common sight to see a man with his face screwed up — for it must hurt — sitting with a small mirror in his left hand and his right armed with the tweezers busily engaged in pulling out the whiskers from his chin.

The Burman is nothing if not polite and his language allows a great scope in using polite phrases. In Shan, for instance, there are half a dozen ways of saying " I,*' graded according to the rank of the speaker and the person spoken to, running all the way from a very arrogant ** I " down to **the slave of our lord's head."

A patient coming to the dispensary always asks for ** just a little ' ' medicine. A funny thing happened awhile ago. A woman

Cbaracteri0tlc0 ot tbe People

came from a village quite a long distance up the river and she wanted enough medicine to last for several days. She wished to be polite, of course, and it would not be polite to say, ** Please give me a lot of medicine, as I have come from a distant village," so she asked for ''myan myan ga /^," literally, ** a great little." Myan me2iX\s a large amount, doubling the word intensifies its meaning, and ga le means a little amount.

Titles are given in great profusion, and to call a man your lordship or **our lord " is the proper way to address a superior. The wife of a man living in a jungle village up the river was very sick — dying, they feared — and she assuredly would have died had I not been able to step in in time to save her life. The husband evidently wished to give me a unique title when he came later on to pay his respects and thank me for my ** act of grace and compassion," as he termed it. He had called me *'payah " (lord) before and that did not satisfy him, so now he said, ** You are a Jesus Christ payah from heaven." This sounds blasphemous, of course, to Western ears, but it was not to him. There is a great difference between lord and Lord and be- 13

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tween god and God. It goes without saying that I told him that I could not allow him to say such a thing as that and tried to make him understand that there is but one Lord and God and that all others are gods in name only.

In the "old Burman days," as the time before the British occupation is called, this custom of giving of titles was carried to a great excess, especially when addressing the king. I really do not know — I doubt whether anybody does — just how many titles he had, but some of them were strange, even ludicrous. The word ** golden" was attached to almost everything he used. Thus, **to approach the golden foot" meant to be honored by receiving an audience by the king. In Shan the very word king means, **the lord of the golden palace.''

The insignia of royalty was a white umbrella, nobody but the king and the immediate members of the royal family being allowed to carry an umbrella of that color, so one of the king's titles was *' Lord of the White Umbrella." He reveled in the distinction of being "King of Kings, Lord of the Universe, Son of the Sun, Lord of the Moon and Planets, Owner of Innumerable 14

Cbaractecietics of tbe people

Herds of White Elephants, Beloved of the Nats (fairies)," and so forth.

I think, however, the strangest title was given to my pony. The wife of the man who looked after it came to me one day and told me that *' his lordship " had been given so much to eat that he had kicked a hole in **his lordship's" door! Even the pony became noble by carrying a white man.

One title among the Shans always strikes a new-comer as odd. One of the most respectful terms of addressing an elderly female is **old woman," so if you were to say, ** If this old woman will do so and so I shall be much obliged," you would not, as at home, have been guilty of offering an insult, but, on the contrary, would have been most polite.

Without doubt the most marked characteristic in the native of Burma, of whatever race he may be, is his love of *' following custom." The ** customs of the fathers " must be followed whether they are good or bad. **We have a custom" is a phrase heard upon every hand. You ask why is this or that done in this or that way, *' It is custom," you are told. Everything must be done according to custom, and should a Westerner, knowing that a certain thing 15

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could be done better or more easily in another way, try to make a native do it according to his (the Westerner's) idea, he is sure to arouse all the stubbornness which lies in an Oriental's make-up, and the grumblings would more than counterbalance the benefits.

I once had occasion, if ever man did, of finding out the truth of this. Upon starting work at Mongnai, in the Southern Shan States, in 1891, it was necessary, of course, to build a house. We lived several months in a zayat or rest-place built in a monastery compound, but this was very unpleasant, to say the least. But the building of that house ! What a weary, weary work it was I A person writing home afterward said he had never seen such a house in America — I should hope not I A Western farmer would be ashamed to run up such a shack to cover his cows with, he said, and while this was quite true, if the gentleman had known the amount of brain fag, not to mention the strain upon a Christian temper, that ramshackle house had cost, he would have modified his statements somewhat.

I found it was customary to plant a post in the ground and measure it afterward and, if it proved too long, to cut off a part 16

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of it with a mallet and chisel instead of sawing it with a saw. I discovered also that it was custom to build the roof with eaves that would come within a few feet of the ground, and when I objected to this the head carpenter gravely informed me that a house could not be built in any other way — the eaves must come down to within the proper length. It was custom — that settled it — and, besides, whoever heard of building a house, except the saubwa^s, in any other way > So, while I was away in the jungle the large beams which support the eaves — I do not know what the technical name for them is — were actually cut ** according to custom '* and nailed in place. I was quite nettled when I saw what the carpenters had done during my absence, but I told them that it simply meant more work for them because I had made up my mind to have the house built as I wanted it, Shan custom or no Shan custom. So early next morning I stood by till the head carpenter had cut off the end of one of the beams to the length I desired ; then, congratulating myself upon my success, I went home to breakfast. But I had not gauged the resources of that head carpenter correctly, for while I was eating my breakfast B 17

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he took the piece of wood I had seen cut off and nailed it into place again, so that when I returned I found the eaves were once more ** according to custom."

The head carpenter saw that I had lost all patience and was as mad as the traditional wet hen, and so he asked me what difference it made how the eaves were built. Why did I wish to have them short ? I told him that one reason was the low eaves would shut out the view of the beautiful mountains around us. The man had been sitting upon the ground chewing betel-nut, evidently congratulating himself upon the fact that he had circumvented the new teacher, but he was so surprised at my reply that he rose to his feet and looked at the mountains as earnestly as though he had never seen them before in all his life. ** Beautiful mountains ! " he said. " Beautiful mountains ! Wants his house built in such a strange manner because he wants to see the beautiful mountains I" It was so funny he laughed and even called his fellow-workmen to tell them the joke. Who ever heard of beautiful mountains, anyway ? The idea was far beyond his comprehension. He could not understand why any sane person should wish to look at i8

Cbaractecistics ot tbe IPeople

common, everyday mountains. He could do nothing but laugh.

He grew grave again, however, when I ordered him to cut off that offending beam once more, and flatly refused to do so. Finally he said he would quit working rather than build a house not according to custom. He was as good as his word too, for after a little further talk he gathered up his tools. His fellow-workmen followed his example and they all left the compound for their homes.

I was now in a dilemma. If these men would rather go on strike than transgress the canons of their traditions, I knew no other carpenters in the city would take up the work. There was but one thing to do, and that was to go and see the native prince and ask him to order the men back. This he did, saying he would punish them if they gave me any more trouble.

Sometimes, however, the saupa^ himself cannot compel a person to act contrary to custom. A man in Mongnai once called me hurriedly to come and see his boy, who had wounded himself severely by falling upon the point of a knife which he carried without any sheath in his bag under his

1 Sau pa (Shan), sau bwa (Burmese), a native prince. 19

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arm. I then found that numbers of small boys in the city carried similar knives in their bags, so the next time I visited the "palace" I told the prince about it and said I thought it would be a good thing if he were to issue an order forbidding small boys to carry such knives, but although he acknowledged that the custom was a bad one, yet because it was custom he could not change it. *'Our fathers and grandfathers carried such knives when they were children," he said, and it was therefore custom. There was no getting around that.

The Shans carry swords with handles half as long as the blade. These swords prove very useful during journeys in the jungle, one of their uses being to chop down firewood for making fires at night. The handles of these laps, as they are called, are usually made of bamboo wound around with plaited strands of rattan. They are very poor, however, for the blade-shank is merely stuck in and so imperfectly fastened that a good blow will often make the blade and the handle part company.

A friend of mine once asked a Shan why

he did not make the handle of his sword

shorter, and put a button at the end which

would keep it firm and secure, but the man

Cbaractetistic0 of tbe People

shook his head and gave the usual reply that it was custom to make them thus. ** What was good enough for our ancestors is good enough for us/* he replied, quite satisfied that the last word possible upon the subject had been said.

The women are even greater sticklers for custom than the men ; they are also harder to reach. This is true even among the ** purdah " women, wives of natives of India. Although these women are kept prisoners within their homes, yet in spite even of this they cling to their old traditions more strenuously than their sons and husbands. The men go out into the world, rub shoulders with men of other faiths and customs ; more important still, they meet Western civilization and its leveling influences at every turn, and are influenced, sometimes unconsciously, it is true, but influenced they are without doubt, and if it were not for the counter-influence exerted along the old lines by their women at home they would drift even farther than they do. Thus we see the strange phenomenon that the greatest supporters of caste and the old heathen customs among the natives of India are the greatest sufferers from these oppressive customs. Fortu-

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nately there is no caste system among the natives of Burma ; the Burmese women are as free as the men.

Not only are the Burmese women free, but they are great traders, driving better bargains and possessing better business heads often than the men. I know many women who will go several days' journey up the river in a boat, buying all the rice that is to be had, bring it down to their homes and hold it for a rise in price, in fact, "engineer a corner," while their husbands remain at home, look after the babies, and keep the little store in the front of the house.

Burma should be, in fact, a veritable paradise for the " women's rights " woman. One can see a score of Burmese women, any day in the week or any hour of the morning pass along the road in front of the mission house, carrying a paddle upon their shoulders with a big basket of rice at either end. These women have risen long before daylight, loaded their boat with rice, paddled it down the river for miles; have carried their heavy loads over sand-banks, up the steep river-bank, into bazaar ; have bargained for the best price possible and later in the day will pole their boat, loaded

Cbaractcristics ot tbe ipeople

down with bazaar goods, up the river to their village in the jungle. They had already helped to plant, to transplant, to reap, husk, and sift this rice too.

Women very often act as brokers, especially in the sale of jewelry. In Burma banks, except in the great cities and among foreigners, are practically unknown. The government conducts a savings bank in connection with the post-office, but the vast majority of Burmans do not use it or even know anything about it. Instead, if a man has any large amount of money he wishes to hold, he either buries it or buys jewelry, usually bracelets, rings, or precious stones. If he wishes to use any money he sells a ring, a ruby, or a diamond, as the case may be, exactly as a business man in America draws a check upon his bank account. This way of holding his wealth not only feeds his vanity and love for display but makes it easy to hold it in comparative safety, much easier than in hard cash. There is one bad feature, however, about it, and that is in case he needs money he sometimes has to dispose of his jewelry at a loss ; people, knowing his needs, take advantage of his position and refuse to buy except at a price much below the real value, 23

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These transactions make a broker or gobetween necessary, and this broker is usually a woman. I have often seen one of these women with several hundred rupees' worth of rings, gold, or rubies upon her hands and arms. They visit the homes of would-be buyers, conduct the bartering and chaffering, and sell the jewels, taking as their share of the bargain a small brokerage fee. !n spite of this freedom, however, the men sometimes find it necessary to assert their authority over their wives by means of a stick or the sole of a shoe.

A very funny story was told me by one of the earlier missionaries to the Shans. During the hot season all the missionaries in a certain station went to the hills to escape the terrible heat of a summer on the plains, and upon returning to their work at the beginning of the rains it began to be whispered around that one of the chief pillars of the Shan church, a deacon and a preacher, in fact, had been guilty of beating his wife during a family quarrel.

The deacon was thereupon haled before the missionary, who labored with the man, laying stress upon the fact that his being a deacon made his misbehavior all the worse ; he ought to set a good example, etc., and 24

Cbaracteri0tic0 ot tbe people

wound up by saying that he would have to be disciplined by the church.

This was, of course, a terrible thing, but the case became simply alarming when the deacon asked who would try him for his offense. **Why the church, of course," he was told. " Good," he replied, ** but I might as well tell you now as later that I am not the only church-member that beat his wife while you were upon the hills, in fact, every one that has a wife did it ; the only ones who did not were boys who have none ! "

So the case against the deacon was dropped, but not before one of the younger men came to the missionary and said, *' Teacher, you tell us we must not beat our wives ; now, soya, if I tell my wife to do a certain thing and she will not do it, if I am not allowed by the church rules to give her a whipping, will you please tell me what I am to do 7 " Query.

Doctor Henderson, of Mongnai, also tells a funny story of one of his people. This man declared the Bible said it was right and proper for a man to beat his wife, and when asked to produce chapter and verse said, " Does not the Bible say, ' A rod for a fool's back ' .? "

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The Burman is, of course, superstitious ; every ignorant person is, of whatever rank or race he may be. It is because of this that schools and Western education are such levers for uprooting superstitions, old almost as the race. Burmans, keen as they are at bargaining and trade, and in many other ways, can along certain lines be easily imposed upon. For example : A few miles above Bhamo is a large village in which is a pagoda badly in need of repairing, but the necessary money not being forthcoming, a priest suddenly discovered that a miracle had happened or rather was happening each day at a certain hour. Every idol was sweating daily ! Of course the news was hastily brought to the city and forthwith hundreds went out to see the perspiring god, and to tell their friends upon their return that it was really a fact. There was no denying it. Hundreds saw the sweat run down the idols, marveled, prayed, and incidentally made offerings, which greatly aided the priests in their design in renovating the pagoda, monastery, and compound. Of course the solution of the mystery was easy. The idols were seated in niches, it was toward the close of the cold season, the nights were still very chilly and the 26

Cbaracterl0tiC6 ot tbc ipeople

idols, of course, became very cold indeed. Along by eleven or twelve o'clock, however, the sun gained great power and water was condensed upon the smooth, shining faces of the idols. It was useless, however, to offer such an explanation to the great mass of people ; it was laughed to scorn and practically the whole city was thoroughly convinced that a wonderful miracle had been wrought in the village and that great merit could be gained by visiting the pagoda and praying before the idols there.

Some years ago news came from Lower Burma that an idol had spoken to a very holy priest and had prophesied that the British were about to leave the country and the king of Burma would " receive his own again." The rumor was so persistent that it was investigated by a government official and, it is needless to say, was proved false, but almost every Burman that heard it took it for truth and believed it implicitly.

The jungle people, especially the Shans upon the hills, are suspicious and not given to trust strangers. I have heard men belonging to the government public works department, engaged in building roads, say that when they first entered a district they had to pay the wages of the coolies night 2^

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by night directly the day's work was done, otherwise every coolie, thinking he would receive nothing for his work, would quit and return to his village. Poor fellows ! they had for years been accustomed to be cheated by their own rulers so that it is no wonder they expected the white men to act in the same way and that at least some of the money ** would stick to the palm " of the officials.

Among the jungle people especially everything out of the common or difficult to understand is looked upon as supernatural and therefore worthy of suspicion. Soon after we arrived at Mongnai in the Southern Shan States, several native chiefs came to visit us. Among the wonderful things in our house was a sewing-machine and my wife spent quite a long time in exhibiting its marvels. She commenced by simply sewing two pieces of muslin together, and loud were the praises bestowed upon the machine. It sewed so fast, and so smoothly, and so evenly ! A thing good to marvel at ! Wonderful, was the universal opinion, but when my wife put on the tucker, the friller, and the fandangle-maker their wonder knew no bounds. One chief especially — he was a Tounthu and not a Shan, by the way — was 28

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so much impressed that after looking at it for a while he edged further and further away and finally jumped up and left the house.

As he did so he exclaimed, ** Teacher, you must excuse my leaving in such a hurry, but this machine is such a wonderful thing, it does so many strange things, each one stranger and more wonderful than the last, that I am not sure what it cannot do ; it might hurt me, and so as I have some business — I'll leave now," and he did, neither would he afterward enter our house.

Of course it must be distinctly understood that this happened upon the Shan hills, far away from the railroad, and more than a dozen years ago. The sewing-machine is a very common sight in the cities ; in fact the Singer Sewing Machine Company has agencies in a number of large towns both in Upper and Lower Burma.