Burma: Literature, Historiography, Scholarship, Language, Life, and Buddhism 9789814377904

Citation preview

BURMA Literature, Historiography, Scholarship, Language, Life, and Buddhism

Institute of Southeast Asian Studies The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies was established as an autonomous organization in May 1968. It is a regional research centre for scholars and other specialists concerned with modern Southeast Asia, particularly the multi-faceted problems of stability and security, economic development, and political and social change. The Institute is governed by a twenty-one-member Board of Trustees comprising nominees from the Singapore Government, the National University of Singapore, the various Chambers of Commerce, and professional and civic organizations. A ten-man Executive Committee oversees day-to-day operations; it is chaired by the Director, the Institute's chief academic and administrative officer.

BURMA Literature, Historiography, Scholarship, Language, Life, and Buddhism

Hla Pe

I5EA5

INSTITUTE OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN STUDIES

Published by Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Heng Mui Keng Terrace Pasir Panjang Singapore 0511 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

©

1985 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies

ISBN 99 71 ·988·00·3

CONTENTS

Page FOREWORD by Professor Stuart Simmonds NOTE ON ROMANIZATION by John Okell ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS PART A:

ON LITERATURE

Burmese Poetry, 1450-1885:

2

The Beginnings of Modern Popular Burmese Literature, 1870-1940

3 4

Its· Scope and Nature

3 20

ON HISTORIOGRAPHY

Observations on Some of the Indigenous Sources for Burmese History Down to 1886

35

Burmese Historiography: The Source, Nature and Development of Burmese Chronicle~

52

PART C: 5

ix X

1

PART B:

vii

ON SCHOLARSHIP

From Peasant to Professor

71

Page Contributing to the Advancement of Knowledge: Reminiscences on the Birth of an Article Fifteen Years After Its Conception, 1935-50

75

7

Collecting Burmese Proverbs

84

8

The Burmese-English Dictionary

93

6

PART 0:

ON LANGUAGE

9

Burmese Royal Language

105

10

Officials' Titles in Burmese

118

11

Sanskrit and Pali Derivatives in the Language of Burmese Government and Politics

130

PART E:

ON LIFE

12

Riddles

141

13

Hospitality

155

14

Family and Other Aspects of Life in Burma

164

15

A Shin-byu-bwe in Burma

178

PART F:

ON BUDDHISM

16

Buddhism in Burma:

Supporters

189

17

Buddhism in Burma:

Disseminators

200

MAJOR PUBLISHED WORKS BY HLA PE

211

FOREWORD Professor Stuart Simmonds

Professor Hla Pe, when he retired from The School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in 1979, could lay claim to being the longest-serving member of The Department of South East Asia and the Islands. Formally associated with the department since 1948 when he took up his duties as Lecturer in Burmese, he had worked closely with Professor J.A. Stewart and others in the preparation of the Burmese-English Dictionary since 1942. The dictionary was the centrepiece of his scholarly work, but he published widely in the fields of Burmese language and literature, and cultural studies. Every scholar is known and remembered by his publications. This is certainly true of Hla Pe, but his friends may reflect that in them he has expressed only a part of himself. To say so does not in any way reduce the value of the works he has published but rather it is to highlight the good fortune that this volume has brought to notice an aspect of scholarship that often disappears forever as the sound of a speaker's syllables fade upon the air. This is the justification for the publishing of this book of lectures, edited by his friends. The ephemeral has been made permanent. Not that there is anything ephemeral, in another sense, about Hl a Pe' s lectures. The reader will soon see that they deal with important subjects with great seriousness of purpose and that they were structured with scholarly care. However, he will also discover that the informality of the lecture can provide a deeper insight into the nature of the man who delivered it. In this, Hla Pe has been particularly helpful because he tells us so much, so simply about his personal life, and relates it at every turn to the development of an academic career in a foreign land.

Now that he has returned to Burma in retirement it is important to know how his Buddhist beliefs came into being and matured to sustain him through the problems that everyone must face and brought him safely home again. From the same source is derived his attitudes to learning and to teaching. As he said, he inquired without shame or humiliation from all who could teach him. Then, in turn, he taught without pomposity or a sense of superiority; though that he did not say. He knew that the subject of study is greater and more permanent than the man or woman who professes it. In this knowledge he taught his students, created disciples to carry on his work, and advised the great number of men and women who came to him to seek his wisdom over their scholarly and human problems. I believe also that Hla Pe had a more particular motive. He grew up in a colonial country, in an age of nationalism when young people desired urgently to make themselves aware of the values of their own society and culture. This was a prerequisite for the sense of national pride which had to be acquired by serious nationalists in order to sustain them in the struggle for independence. Hla Pe's scholarly endeavour was a dedication and its fruits, now that independence has long been achieved, remain of permanent value. In the fourteenth lecture in this book, Hla Pe writes of a Burmese astrologer who predicted that he would become a great man or a monk. In the Buddhist context that is perhaps not a startlingly original prophesy. More moving to me was his insistence that he was inspired by the knowledge that his family supporters expected that he would become a man of consequence. That he was, and if confirmation is necessary then all his friends confirm it.

l'IOTE Ol'I ROMAl'IlZATIOl'I John Okell

The problem of representing Burmese words and names in roman script has never had a single widely accepted solution. Different writers use different methods. The papers in this collection were written at different stages in Professor Hla Pe' s career, and he used different systems of romanization at different times. For this edition, romanized Burmese words and names have been rewritten so as to conform with a single system, namely that entitled "Standard conventional transcription (with accented tones)" in John Okell' s A Guide to the Romanization of Burmese (RAS and Luzac, 1971), pp. 66-67. Where the actual form of a word in Burmese script is important it has been romanized to match "standard transliteration" (p. 65 of the same booklet). Wellknown names, such as Rangoon, Mandalay, Ava, and so forth, have been left in their traditional form.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Robert H. Taylor, Chairman, Centre of South East Asian Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

When Professor Hla Pe retired from the Chair of Burmese in the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, several of his colleagues in the Department of South East Asia and the Islands felt that it would be a areat loss to students of Southeast Asia, and in particular students of Burma, if the body of his unpublished lectures and talks were to become lost. Therefore, my predecessor as Chairman of the Centre of South East Asian Studies, Mr P.A. Stott, encouraged the collection of the best and most important of the papers to be published in one volume. The initial selection was made by Professor Hla Pe' s long-time colleague, Mr J.W.A. Okell, who also standardized the system of transcription of Burmese into roman script. At this stage I requested two former members of the Indian Civil Service who had served in Burma and know Burmese to review the manuscript for us. The advice of Mr F.S.V. -Donnison, CBE, and Mr W.I.J. Wallace, CMG, OBE, greatly assisted us in preparing the manuscript for publication. Professor H.L. Shorto also kindly reviewed the manuscript. Finally, we are very pleased, as we know Professor Hla Pe would be, that this volume is being published under the auspices of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore.

PART A

OH LITERATURE

POETRY, 1450-1885 Its Scope and Nature1 1 BURMESE Lecture delivered to the Ostasiatisches Seminar, University of Frankfurt, July 1965

It was with both pride and humi 1ity that I accepted the kind invitation extended to me by the Director of the Ostasiatisches Seminar, University of Frankfurt, to come and deliver a lecture on any aspect of Burmese literature. I was especially proud when I learnt that this was to inaugurate a course in Burmese language and literature at the University: this, I believe, is the only course of its kind outs ide Burma. At the same time I was filled with humility at the thought of having to do justice to this momentous occasion. With such mixed feelings, I shall now read the paper "Burmese Poetry, AD 1450-1885: Its Scope and Nature". The Burmese have a vast store of literature on stone, on palm leaf, and in printed book form from the twelfth century to modern times. Today, however, I will address myself to only a few representative kinds of Burmese imaginative literature, all drawn from the poetry which dominated the scene from AD 1450 to 1885, before the West had made its impact on Burmese culture: in other words, the poetry that made its debut in what is usually referred to as the Golden Age of Burmese l.iterature, and ended with the downfall of the Burmese monarchy. This poetry was written on palm leaf with a stylus, as printing was not widely used in Burma before the end of the nineteenth century. The two major contributory factors in the birth and development of this imaginative literature are Buddhism and the Burmese kings. The establishment of Theravada, or conservative, Buddhism long before the eleventh century in Burma, and its dissemination of education not only in the religious language, Pali, but also in the language of the country, gave the Burmese a script of their own, produced numerous poets, and provided themes for the poetry. The patronage given by the kings, supporters of 3

the Faith as well as sponsors of culture, was an incentive to the growth of this poetry. It flourished in its many ramifications from the fifteenth century until the downfall of the Burmese The authors were Buddhist monks in secluded monarchy in 1885. monasteries, courtiers who had spent long years of study in the monastery, and also some talented court ladies, all of whom deliberately strove after courtly refinement of language. The themes were religion, royalty, nature and love, though poems on the life and amusements of the ordinary people became fairly popular from the eighteenth century onwards. One of the terms for poetry in Burmese is kabya 1i n-ga, derived from the two Sanskrit words kavya, a name for a certain kind of poetry, and alamkara, an ornament of the sound or of the sense. Burmese poetry tried to live up to the meaning of alamkara, and I would like to say a few words about these two kinds of ornamentation or embellishment. l n early Burmese verse, the primary device used to achieve melody, the embellishment of the sound, in which the basic number of words or syllables in the line is four, is rhyme. Vowel length and stress play virtually no part in its structure. Burmese is a tonal language; syllables are differentia ted from one another not only by the consonantal and vocalic elements of which they are composed, but also by pitch and voice quality; and the language is largely monosyllabic -- that is, broadly speaking, each syllable has a "meaning" and can be used as a "word". These two features -- the rhyme and the number of syllables in a group -- are disposed in many different arrangements, but the basic scheme is to have a rhyme in the fourth syllable of one line, the third syllable of the next, and the second of the next, while the fourth syllable of the last line will be the rhyme for the following two lines, and so on. To give an example of this "climbing" rhyme:

za-t1 pon-nya/gon-ma-na-hpy{n/than-~-hon-son/ hpet-me kybn-tha/a-thon-htaung-hta/z --To have this 4/3/2 scheme monotonous, and to break this some other schemes which may be and 3/2. The last line of a syllables.3

throughout the stanza would be monotony Burmese poets introduced expressed as 4/3/1, 4/3, 4/2, 4/1, stanza usually has 5, 7, 9, or 11

This system of "four-syllable lines" with its rhyme schemes was characteristic of compositions until new genres and songs appeared on the scene in the eighteenth century. In the latter, the number of syllables in a line varies, and, though the "climbing" principle persists, the rhyme schemes are less rigid

4

and sometimes more elaborate -- especially in drama, which made its debut later than the other new genres, in the "mixed style" of prose and poetry. In performance, all forms of verse are usually chanted, though occasionally they are recited in a normal speaking voice; songs are sung, and dramas declaimed. Embellishments of the sense are chiefly literary devices such These as simi 1es, metaphors, tropes, allusions, and synonyms. will be illustrated in the translations later on, but here I will just say a word about synonyms which cannot be illustrated without quoting a long poem. It is a feature of one poem, which lists a long succession of kings, that different words are used for the accession and death of each king. Besides these two kinds of embellishments, there are several I will types of poets' "manipulations" of the form of verse. mention only the few well-known devices: the "wheel-composition" in which every line begins with the same syllable (like spokes radiating from the hub), or the "pearl-threading composition" in which every line begins with the same letter. Other displays of ingenuity involve the use of metathesis and spoonerism. These embellishments and ingenious devices have made Burmese poetry what it is. The strict requirements of the "four syllable line", and the extreme flexibility of the Burmese language with its immense vocabulary of monosyllables, often entail distorting words, phrases, and syntax. To accommodate a rhyme, the poet had often to alter a tone, or truncate polysyllabic words from Pal i and Sanskrit; to cut down grammatical suffixes to an inadequate minimum, or add extra ones which in prose would be superfluous; or to place words in an unconventional order. All of these contrivances, together with figures of speech, erudite allusions and verbal gymnastics are part of the esoteric character of the verse, much of which is completely intelligible only to the small number of the initiated. More than fifty forms of verse can be distinguished; but, as I have said, I will deal only with a few representative kinds, under two periods, namely 1450-1750, and 1751-1885.

Burmese Poetry, 1450-1750 It has been mentioned earlier that the chief motifs of early Burmese poetry were religion, royalty, nature, and love. It may be said that each of the five major genres in this period took one of these motifs as its predominant though not necessarily 5

exc 1 us i ve theme. and yadu.

,

' \ \ These genres were pyo, maw-gun, e1-gy1n, taw-la \

\

PYO. Pyo are verse renderings of Buddhist stories and teachings which transferred the Pali originals to a Burmese setting and made them more vivid by adding small imaginative details and homilies. In the case of those py6 which are based on Buddha's Birth Stories, the narrative parts, though not devoid of embellishments, are usually in fairly simple verse. The real literary merits, however, lie in the poet's treatment of the gatha (Pali verse) in Burmese and of certain conventional topics such as the Buddha, the king, the city, and addresses to persons. Here is a translation of a literary composition on the Buddha taken from a pyo based on Birth Story or Jataka 509. He who has the might to topp 1e and crush, 1ike a violent storm, that vaunting banner, the inflated arrogance of the four castes; the banner they have set up on the three boasted qualities of birth, virtue and honour, which are extolled with noise and bombast as without eq ua 1 ; He whose renown re-echoes far and wide, as descended from a line of virtuous kings going back for one hundred and sixty thousand generations; Humbly revered by all creatures, denizens of earth and sky; He whose virtues are incomparable, towering like Mount Meru; supreme head of all holy monks; lord of the beings of the Three Worlds; While dwelling in dignity at Jetavana -- the noble monastery [witness of numerous scenes of release] not far from the wealthy and populous city of Savatthi -here he set forth the beginning of the stanza cirassarhvata passama, and told this story about the excellent Renunciation, which made him sternly reject, without qualms, the tranquil and happy life with his father Suddhodana, his dear wife Bimba, his beloved son Rahula, and all his companions and followers, a life of perfect bliss, as if in the palace of Sakka, with all the felicity of kings.4 (translated by J. Okell) Again, this illustration "on the city of Benares": 6

Take for example a forest glade, remote and lovely, where fragrant flowers abound; where sweet and tasty fruits, unbidden and unsought, ripe and firm, lie within reach, so plentiful they cannot all be plucked, overburdening the boughs in great abundance; where leaf and sturdy branch, latticed and intertwined, jutting out make pleasant shade; and where every delight is found. To men from distant parts, who have never been there, it beckons and calls; and once they come, they feel fast bound and cannot leave. Just so is the great city of Benares, with its marks of honour; with pleasant sights in plenty on land and water; calm and peaceful in the eight directions, without robbery, crime or war; blossoming brightly all around; and acclaimed by men from far and near who shelter in the expansive hollow of its precincts.5 (translated by J. Okell) One of the most admired passages in the same py6 is that in which the miseries of continually repeated birth are described as like a reel spinning round as the thread is wound off it.

Kogan Py6 tathan-dei-dei/tabei-ly~n-ly~n/tahny~n-hso-zo/tahnyo­

lya-lya/tada-lwan-lwan/tathan-he-he/tadwe-ta-da/tahahlaik-hlaik/tashaik-ngin-ngin/tabin-pan-ban/tawan-lyalya/yahat-cha-tho/ Birth after birth, over and again, with dirt and besmirching, oppression and evil, fading and withering, longing and craving, crying and groaning, clutching and clinging, panting and gasping, sobbing and weeping, toil and weariness, all pervading, round and round like a spinning reel.6 (translated by J. Okell) The other pya, which may be called didactic py6, consist entirely of homilies and sage advice. Here is a short extract from one of the best known, called "The Essence of the World". Learn to read the scriptures and master them. Be not frivolous. Follow good examples, esteem good works, strive to be good, and let good results be established in you J (translated by Hla Pe) 7

Before we go on to the next genre there are one or two more things I would like to say about the py6. It is composed in stanzas of varying lengths, and there are usually about 200-300 such stanzas in the entire poem. The subject matter is religious; non-religious py6, which appeared later, are exceptional. The authors in the first one hundred years were all monks, often writing at the request of the king. It is very tempting to assume that the Burmese borrowed the idea from the Sinhalese Jataka kavya. 8 Contact between the Buddhists of Burma and Ceylon was very close during the fifteenth century and the monk who seems to have been the first to write a Jataka story in Burmese verse in 1484 had a teacher who had been to Ceylon.9

MAW-GUN. Maw-gun are records of notable events in the public life of the king. They are written on such subjects as the completion of a canal, the building of pagodas and monasteries, the successful outcome of a military campaign, the coronation of the king, the arrival of forei~n ambassadors, or the acquisition by the king of a white elephant. 0 Like py6, the maw-gun have all the embellishments. Those written in this period range from 10 to 25 pages long, while longer ones were written later on. But unlike pya, which were written at this time only by monks, and e1-gy1n, which were written only by lay courtiers, maw-gun were written by monks and laymen alike. The monks, however, generally confined the subject of their maw-gun to the building of religious edifices and other events of religious significance, while the laymen wrote on secular subjects. The poets often used the notable event as the warp and the power and glory of the king as the ~~eft, and wove them into grandiose patterns. Thus, in the poem about a holy lake called Sh1-sha, which the king comes to repair, the following words were put into the mouth of the king and the fisherman whom he met there. The entire forest is reverberating with the sound of drums. An innumerable endless host, contro11ed, marsha11ed and led by proud and glorious command, With spearmen to right and to left, With horsemen encompassing round about, A mighty invading host, on some strange new enterprise -Thus I see before me. Whither will my lord go? With a redoubtable host that are too numerous to calculate, millions that you see, Together with hundreds of ministers, I, the exalted monarch, have come in person 8

To invest and besiege the ci_tr of Sh{ -sha Th'in-gyi I propose to widen my empires.l (translated by Hla Pe)

EI-GYIN. E1-gy~n were v1ritten only by courtiers. Their chief distinguishing characteristic is that they are cast in the form of an address to a royal child, informing him of the great achievements of his or her royal ancestors, tracing the line as far back as the semi-divine beings who were accepted as the progenitors ot the family. As in the case of the maw-gun, the subject offers many opportunities for panegyrics on the king and for displaying the poet's skill in the use of "embellishments". An e1-gyh may be as long as 20 to 40 pages. The following passage is an example of the way the subject was treated: In times long gone by, and in a distant country, Duttabaung, the great-grandfather of your grandfather, by the power of Sakka from the heavens above and of Naga and Garuda [mythical beasts], enslaved all who dwell on earth, in \'later and in the sky. Men of this generation, who see it not, cherish the memory and repeat the story. But 0 how your father surpasses this! For him the Lord of the Raksa, the celestial ogre, came gliding down with rushing and roaring, and said, 'If you need help to fight, I am your Lordship's slave, bold and defiant'. Both spirits and men have seen this, and his renown reverberates 1vith wondrous clamour far and wide over the entire face of the earth. And you little (Princess) Htwe1, great and noble blessing -- sleep, softly, sleep.l2 (translated by J. Okell)

TAW-LA. The taw-la, which literally means "forest journey", is a comparatively short poem, in which the poet describes the thoughts stimulated by scenes in the forest. One of the most famous taw-la was written by a monk in about 1491. His description of the forest as he travelled on a pilgrimage to the two sacred footprints of Buddha in Upper Burma -- of the trees, the colours, and the light and shade, of the different birds and their calls, and of the sound of the v1ind -- is moving in itself; but the beauty of the poem lies in its evocation of the mood of wistful sadness to which these sights and sounds gave rise, and of the doubts that came into the poet's mind v1hether he should stay within the strict rules of the Order or return to the natural 9

carefree 1ife of the world 1ike the birds he saw pairing in the Many poems in the yadu form, which we are going to forest. consider next, were also written around this theme. Here is an excerpt from this taw-la. As the footprints will surely lead to the attainment of Nirvana, follow the route with fixed Indeed, promptly intention on the journey. I climb up mountains and go down banks, through hills, valleys, brooks, and ravines. Among the diverse trees seen dimly to the north and south The flowering in-gyin trees display their trunks, While their leaves fanning together sound like the harmonious strings of a harp; How sad and mournful! Yet, all about the woods and hills, As if to awaken lovelorn thought in some rural swain Many kinds of birds are singing in honey-sweet song And are greeting and questioning one another, as if to say 'Dear lad, are you there? Dear maiden, are you there?' The night heron flies through the forest, the ring-dove calls monotonously; The roller descends to the ground, the pied harrier and daring kites are on the tree tops; The nightjar runs a-near; The hoopoe flies gracefully high and low over the ground; The jungle crow, along with its mate, plies its incessant tongue with chattering voice and lively beak in loud caw-caws; The partridge calls, the squirrel chirrups; And the crow-pheasant cries. The depths of the forest ring a-trilling and pulsating with the chorus of voices. The wild cock crows and rejoices.l3 (translated by Hla Pe)

YADU. The yadu, like the taw-la, is short -- about a page or two of a small book. The common yadu has three stanzas, but there are also one-stanza yadu. It was the practice to link together the three stanzas not only by making the final lines echo each other, as is done in the py6, but also by making all the syllables of the first lines rhyme exactly. For example, 10

Last Line

First Line m~-za-taung-gyei

the-tha-thaung-myei pwe-hka-nyaung-yei

shwei-pyi-hta-na we~-thaw-gyaung lei-byi-la-ga e'-thaw-gyaung nei-gyji-hpya-hma nwe~-thaw-gyaung14

The subject matter of the yadu is not as clearly defined as that of the py6, maw-gun, and e)-gy~n. There are yadu giving edifying advice, and others in praise of the king; but most yadu, and the greatest of them, express the author's feelings of sadness and longing, aroused through separation from a lover or being away from home, and sometimes through contemplation of the changing seasons and the beauties of nature in the forest, as in the t~w-la. Some are "Parrot Messenger" or "Minah Messenger" yadu, but many begin with a laudatory reference to the king or the Buddha or some other "respectable" subject. The following example has this feature and a brief mention of the changing seasons as v1ell as the characteristic tone of sadness and longing. It was written by Prince Nat-shin-naung (1578-1610). In it, he tells of his feelings on first seeing the princess with whom he has fallen in love, of her beauty, and of his misery at not knowing her attitude towards him. On the day went to the palace with its world-ruling monarch's spire (surely none other but a king could dwell here), where the eight white umbrellas of royalty are unfurled like lotus leaves -to pay homage and revere the king, my mind and my heart were utterly carried away. I ached with longing, I knew not good from evil in my anguish. From that day I beheld her, allowing my eyes to rest where they would, I cannot for get. Stricken 1vi th an immense and uncontainable tenfold misery, I only wish to make her mistress of my life. Should even Sakka, King of Gods, seeking her peer in the Second Heaven, set beside her one chosen to compete, then would people say that my mistress shines like the bright moon beside a little star. In trying to tell of her glowing brown smooth beauty, her fresh tender grace, her pure nature, he who sees her becomes bewildered and dizzy, he gropes for words, and tries to speak but cannot describe her. Again and again I gaze on her loveliness, surpassing all rivals, and wherever I look I only have eyes for her face. I shall seek a way of less than my life as will come forward to unhappiness cannot be

telling her that I offer nothing a gift to gain her love, but who help me with a cunning plan? My assuaged unless I hear word from 11

that paragon of beauty, before (the sky) is streaked about with the dark colours (of the rainy season), that she returns my love. I know not clearly what she feels and it is now the flower-bank season of summer; my passion grows without ceasing for a single moment, and I see only wretched days.l5 (translated by J. Okell) The prince wrote many yadu in this strain. The princess returned his love, but she was forcibly taken in marriage by the heir-apparent to the throne, and when she later became a widow he wrote impassioned yadu to her for ten years, until she eventually married him and, in the same year, died! The yadu is usually chanted, but in modern times is often sung. Towards the end of this period, there arose an outstanding literary figure called Padei-tha-ya-za. He was most unorthodox in his treatment of Burmese poetry. Among other pieces, he wrote delightful py6 based on non-Buddhist subjects, a play about a magic horse, and four short songs, in a form called tya, which describe realistically the joys of the simple life of the village peasant through the changing seasons. Set against the background of centuries of elevated, elegant, scholarly works, dealing solely with royalty, these songs, which have less rigid rhyme schemes, are very refreshing. The following is a translation of his tya on the "Ploughman". In the wet season, when the rain falls, wife and dear husband go happily holding hands. The clothes on their bodies, both shirt and sarong, are torn and tattered, but they have a head-cloth of bright red cotton. Their little sons and daughters they carry in their arms, naked and drenched by the rain. His pipe's a span long, and he bites on it as he works, hauling the plough over all the field, while the water trickles down through the crab-holes. Long-legged frogs in baskets slung from the shoulder; water-snails and Jew's Mallow, tossed in pell-mell, with tenderest leaves for curry -- Pond-side Cress, Rot-thorn, Coccinia, and all sorts -- all mixed up in rich confusion. It's sweeter than sweet, with plenty of juice. They add Moonf lower leaves, and leaves of the Mouse-ear,

12

and mix them all up. When they reach home it's cooked up quickly-- the rice is so hot, and the curry's so hot, and the fierce Shan chillies make them go 'Shoo', 'Shoo'. With almighty fistfuls, they bend well over and gobble it down; and their children and grand-children, as fit as can be, are all about them in tangled confusion.l6 (translated by J. Okell)

Burmese Poetry, 1750-1885 These dates correspond with the beginning and the end of the last Burmese dynasty)? The Mons had been crushed by the founder of this dynasty and one of his successors conquered Manipur and Assam in the northwest and Thailand in the east. The literary circle seems to have widened both in number and outlook. The old classical verse forms were still written with great success, but new forms were also developed, and some of these were derived from Thailand after the Burmese conquest of its capital in 1767. The subjects in many of the new forms are secular, and the rhyme schemes are freed from the restriction of the four-syllable line. The style too is less allusive and esoteric. I shall take four genres to illustrate the new poetry of this period: yagan, folk song, baw-le, and drama.

YAGAN. The yagan, like the py6, is a poem which tells a story; but here the similarity ends, for whereas the purpose of the pyo is religious exposition, the essence of the yagan is its bite and satire. Some yagan are based on Jataka stories, but most, and among them the best, were based on Mon or Indian legends. The rhyme scheme is less strict than the "four syllable line" -- there are lines of mor~ or less than four syllables -- but it is not so freely varied as in the songs. Parts of it may be chanted, and parts sung. The poet's skill and the content of the poem are, however, often of subordinate interest to the wittily abusive references to other writers and contemporary figures. The following passage is characteristic. There are another -talking of north what comes from

some women nowadays who -- some way or posing as scholars, as authors, as savants, 'Her works' and 'My works', put in the comes from the south, put on the right what the left -- to get the rhyme right -- and 13

With their move the bow's cargo to the stern. innuendoes and condemnations, with their loud-mouthed gabble, what a frighteningly learned lot they are -not quite clever, and not quite skilled. But still, it's woman's nature to swank; they swank because We vmn' t take they're women, so let them swank. offence. Ladies, dames, maids and virgins -- one is bound to spare such a collection of gems, so we'll just have to spare them. But the bullock-cart drivers -- the lowest of the low who, when they've slipped the yoke off their panting bullocks, take pad and pencil in hand and keep on producing their Kelasa yagans, Manoha yagans, Me Sita yagans -- none fit for the court -- they're not only pretentious, but with their boasting and swanking, their lauding and praising, they're like a cross between a bullock and a buffalo -- is it an ear teeth or a crow or a crow-pheasant? or a horn? palate? -- when you step down on one end the other see-saws up -- the_y really should head the list of assorted lunatics.l8 (translated by J. Okell)

FOLK SONG. There are a great variety of folk songs as opposed to literary songs, written by court poets, and musical songs, written chiefly by a minister and a prince soon after the conquest of Thailand. It is probably an accident of history that a group of folk songs, mostly from this period, has been recorded. Some of these are "songs of the paddy planting girls", "big drum songs" There are also many which have no and "lamenting songs". recognized name; the following exemplifies this group. For a new form of enjoyment, my love since youth, come with me. To please you in our village There are sky-high tari-palms whose leaves adorn the houses. There is a rug to wrap you and a cow-hide carpet, And at night with a famous flute I will delight you. From the rows where it sprouts and buds The red roselle in its season, And crabs in their shells In rural manner, And roasted field-mice and pumpkins from our garden Shall be cooked sweet to taste.

14

Curry of so many ingredients, fit for a king's majesty, Will I lay before my beloved, as the morning sun appears, And as the season enters the empire of winter I will intoxicate you with well-being and sate you with fat And make you drowsy.l9 (translated by Hla Pe)

BAW-LE. The baw-le, a "plaintive song", is one of the several forms of the "literary song" type. Baw-le are not subject to compositional rules, but they are all sung to more or less the same tune -- unlike the musical songs, each of which has its own tune. The Princess of Hlaing (1833-75)20 is the best known writer of the baw-l e songs. Her husband, the heir-apparent to the throne, was a pleasure-loving prince. In one of her baw-le, she depicts her loneliness as she waits for his return at three o'clock in the morning and contrasts his fond words in their courting days to his callous behaviour in their married life. A resplendent couch, carved with lotus and twining flov1ers -- the moon shines bright; and from a golden window of purest glass your love keeps anxious watch. Three strokes of the royal drum are struck, in solemn tone: soon dawn will break. On fine coverings, fragrant with the scent of orchids, your love lies waiting your coming. All alone, my thoughts run back and forth. My golden hand on my brow, my heart trembles as I think over all that has passed. "May my oath strike me down (you began by saying) -- I love you, my dear one, and not for this life alone: never in time to come shall I stray away from you. Believe me my love. You shall be the exalted Queen of the Right Hand, on the great Bee Throne set about with lions. "Though even a goddess should tempt me, I'll not leave you for another. And when the Eight Brahmins in tone the words beginning with 'Success and Victory', you shall be consecrated Chief Queen by the ceremonial sprinkling of water in the midst of all the courtiers, who shall bow to you, their palms together at their heads in reverence.

15

Such were the high-flown words you spoke to me, and my love for you was strong. But in different heart now, and with a changed manner, you use me cruelly, and your looks are dark with hatred. Quite without love, my royal master, a stranger to rne now, your mind is filled with impenetrable darkness. Trusting your love, I put myself entirely in your hands. But you take your pleasure elsewhere, avoiding me, and your face is troubled, clouded with anger. Why should this be so?21 (translated by J. Okell) DRAMA. Drama, like the yagan, seems to have come from the cultural contact with Thailand. The romances and plays which were brought thence to Burma in 1767 increased the interest of the court in secular literature. The earliest plays were "within-the-palace" plays, probably named after the Thai lakhon nai, which has a similar meaning. These were followed by Court dramas or stage plays, written primarily to be performed before the king or provincial governors. Most of the plots were taken from the Jataka stories. The plays are written for the most part in free flowing rhymed prose or "mixed style", which is an ideal medium for declaiming. I v.ould like to give an example from a play written as a satire on the behaviour of certain ladies of the palace: a princess while wandering in the forest meets a limbless criminal and at once falls in love with him. She gets rid of her husband by pushing him down the hillside and lives with Stumpy in the forest. But the man soon wishes to return to civilization and expresses his desire.22 0 you she-snake, ever ready to rear up at any man's call: you vchief of the Shan States, feudal (system) >>feudalistic; see padesaraj sanit under section IV below

2.

Titles:

sQ (P. jeyya-sQra) > as above (1948-62)

ca~~

valiant

victor

maha (P.) = oreat >as above-(1948-62) sare, sir1 (P.) =splendour, majesty, auspicousness > as above (1948-62) sudhamma (P.) = righteous justice > as above (1948-62) 3.

Epithets:

adhipati (P., Skt.) =ruler, master >as above (1942-45) nayaka (P.) =leader, guide, lord >patron (of a society, etc.) » as above sammata (P.) =elected leader, king in very early times >president of a political organization (1930s) >president of the state (1948-62) ukkattha (P. exalted, high) chief, master >chairman of legislative body (1932-48) Speaker of Parliament (1948-62) chairman of official board, association or assembly 135

>>chairman of the Revolutionary Council, chairman of official board, association or assembly 4..-

Official:

amat (Skt. am~tya) companion of a king, minister >member of legislative body (1932-48); see mfn-taing-bin amat, upade-byu amat under section IV below. Member of Parliament (1948-62); see pa-li-man amat under section IV below.

5.

Quality:

aDa (P.) =authority, power > as above; see aoa-baing, aoa lu, aoa-shin under section IV below » as above; see arya theTn under section IV below.

6.

Instruments and articles of government:

thana (P. place) = department >as above, subject (in Government of Burma Act, 1935). » department dhammasat (Skt. dharma-sastra) = law book, code of law > as above rajasat (Skt. > penal code

raja-sastra)

royal

edict

upade (P. upadesa = instruction, advice) = rule, law, statute > as above; see upade-byu aphwe amat under section IV below. II

Derivatives introduced during the first post-monarchic period 1886-1948. 1.

chanda (P.) =wish, desire; see me chanda, me Chanda pe~, me chanda-shin under section IV below.

2.

guio:, gaDa (P. garya =group, sect)= party, faction; see guiD:, gaoa, pa-ti, aphwe under section IV below.

3.

sabhapati (Skt. lord of an assembly) = chairman of a meeting » as above

4.

sammaga

(P.)

union;

see 136

alok-thama sammaga,

le-thama

sammaga under section IV below. » as above 5.

vada (P. doctrine, theory put forward) = creed, -ism, policy; see dhana-shin vada, hso-she-lit vada, kun-myu-nit vada, vada hpyan under section IV below. » as above

6.

preserving the lineage)= vamsar;JU (P. varilsal)u-rakkhita nationalist, patriot; see vamsai)U rakkhita taya, under section IV below. III

Derivatives period 1962-68.

introduced

during

the

second

post-monarchic

immortality, imperishable) = nucleus,

1.

amrute (Skt. arprita cadre.

2.

anna-manna (P. each other, mutually, reciprocally) correlation; cf. The System of Correlation of Man and His Environment, issued by the Revolutionary Council.

3.

visesa lakkhal)a (P.) = specific characteristics; cf. "The Specific Characteristics of the Burmese Way to Socialism", issued by the Revolutionary Council. IV

The terms below are arranged in alphabetical order; Bur. = Burmese, Eng. = English. 1.

am at

m1n-taing-bin amat (Bur., Skt.) ruler-consulting minister, member of legislative body (British Administration) pa-li-man amat (Eng., Skt.) Member of Parliament (1948-62)

upade-byu aphwe amat (P., Bur., Bur., Skt.) member of a body that makes law, member of legislative body (British Administration)

2.

one who possesses authority or aQa baing power, the au thor ity, the powers that be ( P., Bur.)

137

ana lu = try to wrest authority or power (P., Bur.) aoa- shin = master of authority, dictator (P., Bur.) aoa the'n =take over power, stage a coup d'etat (P., Bur.) (1962) 3.

chanda

me Chanda= vote-inclination, vote (Bur., P.) me chanda pe) =give vote (Bur., P., Bur.)

me

chanda-shin (Bur., P., Bur.)

vote-possessor,

electorate

4.

guiiJ, gaQa:

guiQ, gaiJa pa-ti, aphwe =party (P., P., Eng., Bur.)

5.

padesaraj

padesaraj san it = feudal system (P., Bur.)

6.

sammagga

alok-thama sammagga =Workers' Union (Bur., P.) le-thama sammagga, Farmers' Union (Bur., P.)

7.

upade

upade-byu aphwe = legislative body; see under amat above

8.

vada

dhana-shin vada wealth-possessor capitalism (P., Bur., P.)

creed,

hso-she-lit vada =Socialism (Eng., P.) kun-myu-nit vada: Communism (Eng., P.) pa-ti aphwe vada =party's policy (Eng., Bur., P.) vada hpyan =spread propaganda (P., Bur.) 9

vamsaou rakkhita taya law of preserving nation, nationalism, patriotism (P., Bur.)

138

PARTE

ON LIFE

12 RIDDLES Presented to a seminar at the School of Oriental and African Studies, 1978

Obscurity, which is the hallmark of riddles, will intrude insidiously into our discussion unless we first define what we mean by a riddle. This is particularly necessary because of the different cultural backgrounds of the Burmese and English languages. It is therefore prudent to state at the outset the Burmese conception of a riddle. The Burmese equivalent is sagahta, literally meaning "sense of the word", which, it should be understood, 1s only a constituent part of the expression sagahta hpwet-te, meaning "sense of the word is concealed". This term corresponds semantically to "riddle" only in the first of the two definitions given in the Oxford English Dictionary: 1) question, statement, description designed or serving to test the ingenuity of hearers in divining its answer or meaning or reference; and 2) puzzling or mysterious fact, thing or person. In this paper, the word "riddle" will be used only in the sense of the first definition in the Oxford English Dictionary. There are many features in Burmese covered by the second or derivative definition. They include enigma, logogriph, rebus, chronogram and mnemonic, to mention only a few. For the sake of convenience, they may all be categorized as cryptograms.1 These will be excluded here, and a brief disquisition on them will explain the reasons for their exclusion. Cryptograms and riddles share one common area of mental activity: they are instruments for the cultivation of wit and of intellectual capacities. They do not, however, share a common field in subject matter or direction of purpose. 141

The subjects of cryptograms are concerned with the attainment of power, and are based on works on astrology, alchemy, medicine, necromancy and kindred sciences. They range from learned medical or alchemical treatises to the dating of a serious book of poetry; from the composition of a chronicle recording the dates of accession, regnal years, and the death of a king, and the founding of a city to important royal messages -- one of which unfortunately led to the Burmese invasion of Thailand;2 and from prophetic sayings (like oracles) to auspicious and inauspicious dates for marriage, and so on. There is also a poetical work in cryptogram, about a journey made by its author.3 The purposes in writing the cryptograms were as varied as their subjects. The authors were learned monks and lay scholars. Their first intention was edification: they wanted to disseminate knowledge in the tradition of the ancient Indian savants, to whom valuable knowledge was meant only for those with great intellectual capacities. To them, too, power derived from a knowledge of such subjects as alchemy and astrology which should not become public property, since some unscrupulous persons might abuse it. Many of these cryptograms are esoteric and are intelligible only to the initiated. There are, of course, other reasons, such as the desire to raise some of the subjects to the plane of mysticism, and to show off the extent of one's learning. As regards the riddles, they occupy the lower rank in the hierarchy of such branches of knowledge. Burmese monk scholars in the monarchical period, 1044-1886, were not supposed to direct their talents to making and solving riddles,4 which were looked upon as trivial, as pastimes -- perhaps comparable to crossword puzzles in modern times. Tradition has it that riddles were used by courting couples in olden days, and probably many fair ladies and handsome beaux were won and lost in these vital tests of wit and ingenuity. The subject matter of the riddles, unlike that of the cryptograms, is on the whole less complicated. It may be a familiar object or a simple concept or phenomenon. These will be illustrated in the riddles below. We have now a fairly clear conception of the distinction between a cryptogram and a riddle. But there still remains the problem of deciding whether certain enigmatic forms of writing and gesture language should be classed as cryptograms or riddles. The first concerns the manipulation of words, and the second, cryptic gestures conveying a message. The manipulation of words as a type of writing can be found 142

in sophisticated forms of poetry5 as well as in school-children's word-games for intellectual exercise. Two simple examples will suffice: I give them here in translation. 1.

Ingenuity your exercise; front to back sentence this written have I. (For the solution, read it from back to front).

2.

Read you every make other sense word out then of only this will. (Read every other word: then only will you make sense out of this).

Gesture language is more complicated, and it is therefore discussed with riddles. Riddles will be dealt with under three headings: or sophisticated, the popular, and the multi-tier.

the formal

The Formal or the Sophisticated Riddles These riddles have been known to the Burmese since the introduction of Buddhism to Burma some time in the tenth century AD. Several of them occur in one of the best known Buddha's Birth Stories. The embryo Buddha was a wise minister at the court of a powerful king. One morning he went out in search of a compatible helpmate. He saw a beautiful young woman taking rice-gruel to her father, who was ploughing somewhere near a cemetery -- an area that was occasionally cut off by floods on the only road leading to it. The out her his out

future Buddha, called Mahosadha, wanted to find whether she was married or single. So he asked by hand-gesture. Standing afar off, he clenched fist. The girl understood the meaning, and spread her hand (meaning she was free).

Mahosadha went up to her and asked her name, and she replied: "My name is that which is not, nor was, nor ever shall be" (meaning "immortal", which in Pal i, a classical Indian language, is Amara). He then put to her several questions, which the girl answered. 143

M: A: M: A: M: A: M: A:

For whom, madam, do you carry that gruel? For the god of old times (meaning "father"). . What does your father do? He makes two out of one (meaning "ploughing") Where is your father ploughing? The place where those who go come not again (that is, the cemetery). Will you come again to-day, madam? If one comes, I will not; if one comes not, I will (that is, if the flood comes, I will not come; if it comes not, I will).6

Needless to say, they married happily thereafter.

and

lived

together

In this Birth Story there are many other incidents, questions and even objects that may be classed as riddles or cryptic writings or puzzling things.? Before proceeding to some of the riddles in Burmese literature, another gesture-riddle is v10rth mentioning, since it saved Burma from a disaster. The authenticity of the story is, however, dubious. A colossal Chinese army besieged the capital city of Burma in Fortunately for Burma, the Chinese the sixteenth century. suggested, in order to avoid bloodshed, a contest of intellectual power instead of one of physical might. They accordingly produced their wise man as the candidate. The Burmese could not find one to match him in his wisdom, so in desperation they put forward a drunkard as a rival. The contest may be summarized as follows: The Chinese wise man put up his hand, showing the five fingers -- meaning "Does your king keep the Five Precepts?" The Burmese drunkard thought that he had been asked whether he could drink five bottles of liquor; and so he put up both his hands, indicating that he could finish ten bottles, which was, however, interpreted by the Chinese as meaning that the king observed the Ten Precepts. The Chinese wise man then rubbed his chest with both hands meaning "Does your king regard only 'the children of his chest' as his own children?" The drunkard took the gesture to mean whether the ten bottles of liquor gave him pain in the chest. So he replied by rubbing both his chest and his back -- meaning that the liquor gave him pain in his chest as well as in his back. This was, however, construed by the Chinese as meaning that the king treated "the 144

children of his chest" (his own children) and "the children of his back" (the people of the kingdom) alike. The Chinese conceded defeat and returned to China. With regard to riddles proper from Burmese literature, three will suffice. The first is from a sixteenth century lyrical poem;B the second is in Pali, the solution to which is given in a nineteenth century work;9 and the third is from a Burmese legend.10 a.

A golden monk, A one-tusker, A Shan hat, A Chinese saddle, A parakeet.

b.

An elephant's tusk, but not a tusk. Body of a monk, but not a monk. Head of a crow, but not a crow.

The answer to both riddles is the flower of the Butea frondosa tree, popularly known as the "flame of the forest". The flower consists of five petals and has the colour of a monk's robe (orange hue). It has one prominent stamen; hence "one-tusker" or "a tusk". The form of the petals is likened to a The keel (beak-shape) suggests the Shan hat or Chinese saddle. beak of a parakeet. The dark calyx is described as the "head of a crow" in the second riddle. c.

' The story of Pauk Kya1ng

This riddle is part of a story, which I summarize here to indicate the background of the riddle, and also to illustrate in passing the different functions and purposes of a proverb and a riddle. A young student, Pauk Kya~ng, studied at the feet of his professor for three years. He was not an academic, but was full of common sense. On leaving the Academy, the professor gave him an adage to learn by heart. It is: Keep awake, you'll live a long life; Keep asking, you'll get the answer; Keep going, you'll reach your destination.

145

Pauk Kyaing travelled on and on, and reached a kingdom ruled by a princess in the absence of a king. He enquired persistently and learned that six of the princess's consorts had died in the middle of the night, and that whoever married her and survived the night would be crowned as king the next day. He offered himself for this perilous undertaking. That night he did not sleep in his bed, but he placed on it the stem of a banana tree instead, covered it up with a blanket, and waited in the ante-chamber with a sword in hand. At midnight a serpent entered the room and struck with all his mj ght at the banana stem, and got its fangs stuck to it. Pauk Kyaing came in and killed the serpent. The conqueror of the serpent was duly crowned. But the princess would not forgive him for killing the serpent, who had been her consort for the past few years: it used to come at midnight and get rid of the would-be king, then transform itself into a prince and spend the night with her. She, however, told Pauk Kyaing that she would accept him as her lord if he could answer the following riddle. For one hundred pieces (of silver), it was torn, For one thousand pieces, it was sewn; And a hair-pin was made from the beloved bone. Pauk Kya~ng answered it correctly. He said: "The princess has the skin peeled off from the serpent by offering one hundred pieces of silver, and has it sewn into a dress at a cost of one thousand pieces of silver; and she also has a bone from the serpent made into a hair-pin".

Popular or folk riddlesll Riddles are still remembered by many elderly Burmans and many of these people retail their knowledge of them to their children and grandchildren. It is among the schoolboys and schoolgirls that the riddles flourish today. The riddles that follow are arranged in groups according to the nature of the answer.

Flora a.

Cut open the brushwood, brick v1ill appear. Cut open the brick, 146

cowry will appear Cut open the cowry, nectar appears. What fruit is this? b.

A fairy well, enclosed within three walls.

c.

White without being washed, the fairy garment. Full without being filled, the fairy water-pot.

The solution to all these three riddles is a coconut. The fruit is made up of a thick external rind of a fibrous structure that covers the hard woody shell, which in turn encloses the flesh containing coconut milk. Hence the brushwood, the brick, the cowry and the nectar in the first riddle; and the three walls and a fairy well in the second. The white fairy garment in the third riddle is the flesh, and the fairy water-pot, the milk. d.

Plant on a fruit, Fruit on a leg.

This is a pineapple, growing on a stem with a tuft of leaves on its top. e.

Grasp it, it stings, Smell it, it chokes, Eat it, it maddens.

The answer is a datura fruit, popularly called the thorn-apple. Its capsules are prickly, and it contains Daturin, an alkaloid, in both the seeds and the leaves. If used in poisonous quantities, it causes delirium, coma and death. f.

Wrapped up well -How meticulous! Tasselled at the top How lovely! With her rows of gems -How neat!

A corn-cob, ingeniously portrayed as a coy maid, with its husk replete with dangling silken threads. g.

Once a year I crop up the pretender with a white umbrella.

147

This is a mushroom. It grows wild in Burma, and appears annually at the beginning of the rainy season. Its shape is not unlike that of a royal white umbrella.

Fauna a.

Black-robed and short-naped, this lonely anchorite lives in a cell. He prays all the time and drinks wine.

It is a perceptive description of the This is a bumble-bee. The riddle is cast in shape, colour and habit of the bee. literary style. b.

Big head, Narrow neck , Tapering waist, Tiny loins, Flies in the sky. Is he a god or King of gods?

The answer is a dragon-fly. c.

All wrapped in spotted gown, the kettle-drummer grasps with his feet and eats with his mouth. Good people all, please solve it.

This is a graphic account of a woodpecker, and of how, by grasping crevices of the bark, it drums on the tree with its pick-axe bill (and extracts the larvae of wood-boring insects from the bark). d.

He lives in a tree-palace -the wizard who can tell wind or rain.

This is a tuctoo or a house-lizard. There is a belief among the Burmese people, especially in rural regions, that its weird cry tells the coming of the wind or the rain. In between each of its successive cries, Burmese children can be heard asking it: Rain or wind? (or are you single or married?). e.

Four oars row hard. 148

Her ladyship sits under the canopy. The answer is a turtle.

Domestic Articles a.

Twins! All day parted each from other, All night once more they come together.

A pair of door flaps or leaves. Many Burmese houses have front doors with two leaves, which are left open during the day and closed at night. b.

In among the reeds and rushes A little canoe pushes.

A weaver's shuttle, that is pushed backward and forward in between the gaps of the warp on a loom. c.

The fairy house-post no insect can bore. When it is bored at all there is only cne hole.

The answer is a needle. d.

His brain's not acute, His learning is small; But when men dispute He takes seat before all. If justice is done, He lets well alone; But if aught goes wrong, He sticks out his tongue.

An old-fashioned balance. e.

A king of kings, who reigns Over sixteen domains; But "reions" - hard Fate has said -"Sans legs, sans arms, sans head.

There is a pun in this riddle on the A rice-measuring basket. word pyi, which means a kingdom, sixteen of which constitute the ancient Buddhist India; or a measure of rice, sixteen of which make a basket or bushel. 149

f.

The tiny channel's curved; The tiny effluent turbid.

g.

Water-grit islet, where is the home of all the fairies.

The answer to the above two riddles is a circular flat stone, with a groove around it. It is used by Burmese ladies for preparing their cosmetic paste. They rub a special kind of bark on the surface of the stone, adding water to get the consistency they require. The thin paste, produced by this process, flows into the surrounding groove, and is gently applied to the face.

Musical Instrument No foot on earth; but not a swallow. Nursed in the lap; but not a babe. Bearded; but not an Indian wallah. Curly-tailed; but not an ape. Mellifluous; but not a prima donna. A Burmese bow-harp. It rests on a stand, but when played it is kept in the lap. It has several tassels, and is shaped like a bow.

Anatomy a.

Two saw a mango. Five picked it. Thirty ate it. Only one relished it.

The solution is: tongue. b.

two eyes, five fingers, thirty teeth, and the

Five bring him. Thirty crush him. The big mat rolls him up And pushes him down into the gorge.

The numbers refer to the five fingers and thirty teeth respectively; and the big mat stands for the tongue, and the gorge is the throat. It illustrates the normal sequence of transmitting food from a plate to the stomach. These two are favourite riddles with children. 150

The Physical World a.

It rests on a green tripod, Has two eyes at the hips, Wings on four sides and six heads. But it is not a bird. Oh, big wit, guess it.

Mt. Meru, the mountain that stands in the centre of the Buddhist Universe. It rests on three prominences, has the sun and the moon along its waist, is surrounded by four great islands, and has the six celestial abodes on its top. b.

The Mighty Drum will roar. The Dark Face pour Its fears; the Dead Wi 11 live; the Hid Will come to light.

This riddle sounds like an oracle or a prophetic saying; but the solution is not so mystifying to the Burmese people. It signifies the coming of the rain: first the roaring drum-like thunder, then the pouring down of rain from the dark clouds. Consequently, the grass and other plants that look dead come alive, and the frogs and the toads emerge from their hiding places. c.

In the big house there are twelve rooms. In each room thirty young men sleep. Around each room, there are four doors.

The answer is the Burmese year, with its twelve months of thirty days each, and four weeks to a month. d.

Three eggs are laid, Twelve hatch out. Three hundred and sixty fly away, Solve it if you can.

The solution is again the year, which has three seasons and twelve months, or 360 days. e.

A drop of fairy spittle, the hen cannot pick up. A spot of sun ray that comes through an aperture.

151

f.

A cup of cow's milk floods the whole country.

The moon and its light flooding the whole world.

Multi-tier Riddles Five of the six riddles illustrated here are taken from a Burmese book.l2 They are alleged to have been invented by one or the other of two famous monk scholars and poets in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. But this assertion can be discounted since, as stated at the beginning of this paper, monks were not supposed to exercise their talents in inventing and solving riddles. Besides, these riddles which are not of very high quality would be an insult to their intelligence. Someone with a very fertile mind created these, and then attributed them to the two monks, who were rivals at the court of the Burmese king of the time. The fifth riddle is often heard on the Burmese stage from the mouth of a clown. The effect of one or more tiers is often resorting to "spoonerism" or to Pali words or both.

achieved

by

Two-tier Riddles a.

Hawkers, husband and wife.

The husband carries the merchandise on his shoulder -- for which the term in Burmese is htan; and the wife carries the merchandise on her head -- for which the term in Burmese is ywet. htan-ywet =a palm-leaf (a pun on the words). b.

(Burmese) tabin hnapin -- one plant, two plants. than-bin = three plants

To get the answer to this riddle, we have to spoonerize Burmese spoonerisms do not exchange the initial than-bin. consonants as in English, but exchange the rhymes; so than-bin spoonerized gives thin-bon, a slate.

152

c.

(Pali) maD9huka jokaQi , mandhuka = a frog (Bur. hpa) jokaQi = a witch (Bur. son)

The spoonerism of hpa-son is hpon-sa, a mendicant. d.

(Pali) velu-okka, byaggha-okka, and dasa-okka --one inscription on each of three food containers. (P.) velu-okka = Bur. wa-thet (below-bamboo) (P.) byaggha-okka =Bur. kya-thet (below-tiger) (P.) dasa-okka = Bur. kyun-thet (below-slave)

Spoonerized, the Burmese words yield the answer wet-tha, kyet-tha, kyet-thun, that is, "pork", "chicken", "onion", respectively. e.

A boy goes and sees his girl friend at her house one evening. An occasion arises for him to use the spittoon. So he asks the girl: "May I have a taw-gil-thi-da (jungle cool)?" The girl replies: "I am so sorry. (stone-flower)?"

Please will you see the mani-ma-la

1)

(Burmese) taw-gy) = a great jungle, needs clearing -that is, htwin; thi-da (Pali) (sita) be cool = (Burmese) e'i. Spooneri ze htwin-ei and it becomes htwe1-in, a spittoon.

2)

(Pal i) mani-ma-1 a, gem flower = (Burmese) kyauk-pan. Spooneri ze' kyauk-pan, and it becomes kyim-bauk, a gap between two floor-boards.

Three-tier Riddles

The spoonerism of (lu) tagyauk-eik is (lu) tagyeik-auk, below ten (men) -- that is, nine men= ko-yauk. The spoonerism of this is kauk-yo = straw.

153

NOTES See Hla Pe, "Abbreviations, Cryptograms and Chronograms in Burmese", Journal of the Burma Research Society (hereafter cited as JBRS) 47, no. 2 (1964): 385-96. 2

Ibid., p. 390.

3

Thi-lawun-tha, Taung-dwln-la Py6, Poem on the journey from Taung-dwln-(gyl) to (Ava) (Rangoon, 1899).

4

Ek-ga-thama-d{, 1527, Thu-wun-nashan Thahtel-g~ Py6 (Rangoon, 1900), stanza 100.

5

Hsaya Theln Gyl, 1896, Paw-ra-n& Di-pani Kyan (Rangoon, 1900), p. 201 passim.

6

E.B. Cowell, ed. "The Maha-Ummagga Jataka", The Jitaka, or the stories of the Buddha's former birth (Cambridge, 1895-1907), vol. 6, pp. 182-83 (slightly amended).

7

Ibid., for example, p. 160, and passim.

8

Nawadel the First, A collection of yadu (poems) (Mandalay, 1929), p. 225.

9

Maung Wun, "Burmese Riddles", JBRS 40, no. 1 (1957): 6.

10

Maung Htin Aung, "Burmese Folk Tales" (Calcutta, 1948); pp. 85-90.

11

See Maung Wun, op. cit., pp. 1-13.

12

Shin Thi-lawun-tha Shin Ra-ht8-tha-ra Amel Ahpyei (Rangoon, 1924).

154

13 HOSPITALITY Presented to a seminar series on "Prouerbs and Traditional Sayings", at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Centre of South East Asian Studies, 1975

This Hospitality is a common quality of the Burmese people. statement is applicable particularly, though not exclusively, to those in rural areas where the inhabitants are less sophisticated and· more open-hearted, as well as more open-handed, than urban Guests, visitors and even strangers who arrive at a dwellers. house at any hour, unannounced and often uninvited, are wont to have a roof over their heads, and such fare as the host can concoct by exercising his talents on whatever is available in such unexpected situations. Burma is a country where Buddhism has been established for One of its ten principal the last nine hundred years or so. tenets is charity, meaning giving away the necessities of life This such as money, food and clothes to those who need them. tradition, which is still very strong, pervades the fabric of the Burmese Buddhists' life. It may be assumed from these observations that there would be no paucity of Burmese proverbs on hospitality, but the number, The contrary to one's expectations, is comparatively small. dearth of such sayings may perhaps be ascribed to the fact that Burmese proverbs generally do not deal with the obvious: they are cast in the form of aphorisms or principles of conduct, which reflect the ethos and, to a certain extent, the wisdom of the community as a whole. To give as wide a spectrum as possible to the proverbs the subject will be treated under two categories: content and form.

155

Content

Hospitality and Generosity Many Burmese Buddhists are hospitable and generous by nature, and others through nurture. In both cases they seem to derive more pleasure out of giving than receiving. There are, however, always exceptions -- people who practise these two virtues with ulterior motives. Some proverbs on hospitality and generosity are: o-thun hkwet-hmauk eik-thun hpa-hmauk Empty out pots and Empty out bags and

k.YY~e) \.

pe1 bowls to feed; boxes to give.

sa-thaw atan; pel-thaw alun Moderation in eating, liberality in qiving. da-na-hma Wei-than-daya; pyin-nya-hma Mahaw-thahta In generosity, Vessantara, and in wisdom Mahosadha (Note: Vessantara and Mahosadha are the names of the embryo Buddha in two of his existences. Vessantara was the acme of generosity and Mahosadha of wisdom.) shin-go hlu, lu-go hmya: da-na shwei-b Make offerings to the monks, give to the laity and this generous deed is a veritable jar of gold. pe)-kan-ya aung-myin Generosity brings success. ' ' kywe1: '1. thu-go pelmyet-c h"1t- hse1' Giving a treat to a person is like a piece of love potion.

Host There is a widespread belief among the Burmese people that a home with a serene and pleasant atmosphere attracts guests and visitors, whose impending arrival is often heralded by certain recognizable signs or omens: the initial boiling of the rice-pot in the centre, or the cawing of a crow on a nearby perch. In dispensing his hospitality, the host has to observe a certain code in his speech and action. Be affable, and be sincere 156

or else his generosity (in the Buddhist sense) may come to nought. Moreover, the host shall not cut corners which may in the end prove to be "penny wise, pound foolish". As already stated, some proverbs concerning hospitality (and for that matter concerning other topics) are also often generalized to apply to other activities. Such proverbs are usually placed last in their group, and are indicated by an asterisk against each of them. ein tha-hma e-la Only a pleasant home attracts visitors. hnok-cho: sho-taba Cordiality is a winning quality. nyaung-th~-lauk hlu: nyaung-bie-lauk ya; nyaung-bin-lauk hlu: nyaung-th1-lauk ya Make offerings as small as a banyan fruit, and the reward may bi as large as a banyan tree; Make offerings as large as a banyan tree, and the reward may be as small as a banyan fruit.

*tayauk-mA-go myin: tao-dan pyet With an eye for a spoonful, the whole pot is spoilt. *myet-hna ky~-ya hln-bat-pa Pieces of curry-meat go to the man of high position. (The poor get only the gravy.) Guest and Visitor As with the host, so also those who enjoy hospitality are circumscribed by a certain code. They accept and relish what is put before them. They also have to accommodate themselves to the convenience of their host. As in other sections a few of the proverbs in this section are used as moral maxims. mein-ya h)n-gaung; hkin-ya hswei-myb A dish you like is a feast, a real friend is a relative. ' " / / t hd a a- 1o, pe1: t h. e1-ze1-daung myo-cha-ya Offered in good will, you have to gulp down even a poison.

e-the ny{n-net: aeik hket An overstayed guest delays the host's bedtime. *let-th{n-ya sadaw hkaw He helps himself from the dishes at hand. favouritism or nepotism.) 157

(To practise

Behaviour at the Table Good manners at the table, and moderation in eating, which stem from the Buddha's teaching to follow the middle way in life, are two hallmarks of the proverbs in this group. A well-brought-up person, from his fear of shame, would exercise moderation and even restraint at the table. And excess in any sphere of life leads to disaster and even to death. This point is amply illustrated in many of the Buddha's Birth Stories. sa-gy)n let-tahsit One finger-joint in eating. (The Burmese people eat with their fingers, and in handling the food on their plate, it is bad manners to let their fingers go into it further than one finger-joint.) ngat-16 mathei: shet-16 thei One does not die of hunger, one dies of shame. asa twet: ashet ya Eating brings shame on oneself. \ "' myet-s1-hma ~ " wun-hma ach1n; aky1n With the stomach, it is a matter of discretion (in eating) and with the eyes, a matter of training.

asa-hma Zu-zaka; maya-hma Than-b~-1a In oluttony it is JITjaka, in wife Sambhula. (JITjaka died of surfeit and Sambhula was one of the four exemplary wives.) asa ky~-thaw tha-nauk kya A glutton takes the last place. asa lun-thaw baya Over-eating spells danger. *asa mataw talok; athwa mataw tahlan One mouthful of unsuitable food, one imprudent step (may lead to peril.)

Reciprocity The exhortation "be ever mindful of the kind deed of another person" or in other words "one good turn deserves another" has enshrined itself in the hearts of many Burmese people for centuries; and it has formed the basis of reciprocity. The 158

Buddhist Scriptures sentiments.

too

are

full

of

stories expressing such

Reciprocal hospitality, in most cases, is given on a more e 1aborate s ca 1e than what one has received. Many Burmese peop 1e generally feel uneasy until they can fulfil the obligation. There are, of course, exceptions as there are with other peoples: some enjoy a pound of hospitality and reciprocate with an ounce of generosity. Katin-nyu-ta kata-wei-df-ta Be mindful of the favours of others (One good turn deserves another). mwe1-d6n mwe~-hle Feeding is reciprocated by feeding, tending by tending.

kywe~-don kywe~-hle;

ala shf; athwa shf Where there is going, there is a returning. *hpon-gy~-ha kya, pe~-1a kan-la; daga-ha kya, m~-d1n pe-d~n The lay supporter is generous with the monk's property, he is parsimonious with his own possessions.

*tathet-lon sa-thahmya than-baya tachan-hnin chei He pays half a lime for the food he has eaten during a 1i fet ime.

Gratitude and Ingratitude As already pointed out, the sense of gratitude and, to a certain extent, of obligation is deeply ingrained in the hearts of the Incidentally, this strong feeling often turns Burmese people. these virtues into a double-edged sword in the hand of an The Burmese conversely hold an act of incautious person. ingratitude in abhorrence. An ungrateful person to them is as Worse base as an animal white bites the hand that feeds it. still, ingratitude is one of the four offences that consign the offender to hell. talok sa-bu; thu kye~-zu To him one is indebted for a morsel of food one has had. talok-htam1n talok-h~n hlya-nu thon-hsaung-bu-ga kye~-zu hle-pyaing mahsat-naing For the morsel of rice and curry one has partaken of

wun-dw~n

159

with relish and satisfaction, one can never reciprocate or pay back in full. ayeik hko-go; ahket cho-gyo Taking shelter in the shade, breaking off the branches. sa-b) hkwet-hmauk Overturning the plate after eating from it. wet-lo sagy1n ' hlan Overturning the trough as a pig does. thayei-baw eik: thayei-na sa He sleeps on leather and gnaws the edges.

Form Two aspects will be discussed briefly under this heading to complete the whole dimension of the proverbs. These are rhyme and "rhythm", which is used in a special sense. One is at a disadvantage in trying to describe these two traits, for the form has changed considerably in the course of the development of the proverbs since their birth, and they are still undergoing metamorphoses. The proverbs are taken from several books on the subject, including The two thousand proverbs, 1910; The three thousand proverbs, 1955; and The proverbs of the Union of Burma, 1967. There are often different versions of some of the proverbs given The difference is usually in the number of in these works. syllables in a line. This variant obviously presents us with some difficulties in considering rhyme and "rhythm". Rhyme has been a main distinguishing feature of Burmese verse, which has been employed as a medium for expressing memorable sayings since the emergence of Burmese literature some time in the thirteenth century. "Rhythm", as a feature in proverbs, has never been recognized by Burmese scholars. It is included here since many a proverb is expressed in epigrammatic form with or without rhyme. To be terse and cogent, it needs, if it is without a rhyme, some device, and that device may be "rhythm".

160

One primary device used to achieve verbal melody in early Burmese verse, in which the basic number of words or syllables in the line is four, is rhyme. Unlike English verse, vowel length and stress play virtually no part in the structure of Burmese verse. Burmese is a tonal language: syllables are differentiated from one another not only by the consonantal and vocalic elements of which they are composed, but also by pitch and voice quality; and it is largely monosyllabic, that is, broadly speaking, each syllable has a "meaning", and can be used as a word. These two features -- rhyme and the number of syllables in a group -- are used in several different arrangements, which may be in a series of three or two lines in each group. Perhaps the basic rhyme scheme is that which has a rhyme in the fourth syllable of one line, the third syllable of the next, and the second syllable of the following line. The fourth syllable of the third line will be the rhyme for the following two lines and so on. This scheme, which operates in series of three lines, may be expressed as 4/3/2. It should be noted that most of the proverbs are not in four-syllable lines; but in theory they were, since one or more syllables may have been added to, or subtracted from, a line for metrical convenience. 4/3/2

talok-htam~n/talok-h~n/

wun-dw~n hlya-nY/th~hsaung-bu-ga/ kye~-zu hle-pyafng/mahsat-naing

It may be seen that the rhyme "climbs" from the end of the line towards the beginning. The next is a variation of the scheme and may be called 4/3/1.

4/3/1

gadin shwei-nan/htaing-myi san/kyan-ga mash1'! \

'

'

I

Besides these two schemes there are five other variations, which are in series of two lines. These may be conveniently taken as contractions of the basic rhyme scheme. They are 4/3, 4/2, 4/1; 3/2 and 3/1. 4/3

kamy'n-gyaw hswe/ashet kwe-ya

4/2

ko seik-hn{n hna~ng/maya~ng

4/1

hta-ya manei/sei-ya mathwa

3/2

dawe yo-hlyin/kyet-hko-baw ya 161

3/1 (Note:

kyei-za chei-g n the vast corpus of the Scriptures in Pali, a classical Indian lc=:a_nguage; the Scriptures have been translated into Burmese and on many portions commentaries have been written in English as well a:__ s in Burmese. about the three concepts which have vital A few words bearings on the b~haviour of the people in general and the relationship among ~ he members of the family in particular. These are reincarnation, k arma, and Nirvana. Reincarnation, that is rebirth after death (either as a man or as some other form of being), is accepted by the average Burmese Buddhist wi -th resignation as a process he will have to undergo on the rounc=j of life, which consists of thirty-one planes of existence: th ~ human world, the four states of misery including hell belo...._., and the twenty-six celestial abodes above, comprising the six worlds of deva and the twenty worlds of the Brahma. He has a gener -==:tl idea that karma, literally meaning "deeds", is a law of causali ~Y. or a doctrine of "as you sow, so shall you reap". His present lot, be it good, bad or indifferent, is the result of his past ~ eeds; and the deeds of the present and some of the past will be the==:- cause of reward or punishment in the future. This is the inexora:.__ ble law which also determines the quality of his rebirth. In th e interim period of his preparatory stages to salvation that may last myriads of lives, he has to reconcile

167

himself to transmigrating, according to his deserts, from one level of existence to another on the round of life until by virtue of his spiritual maturity he attains Nirvana. He vaguely conceives Nirvana, meaning "the going out of the lamp", as the final extinction of consciousness. There are many and varied expositions of this abstruse term. The consensus conception of the ordinary Buddhist is that it is a "cessation of sufferings or woes". This is the emancipation from the round of existence and the ultimate qoal to every Theravadin. Being sharply aware of the fact that the way to Nirvana may last myriads of lives, the Burmese Buddhist tries to fulfil the three primary duties as a start to attain it. These are dana, making religious offerings, sila, observing the moral precepts, and bhavana, practising meditation. This moral trinity, together with the three concepts above, concern themselves mainly, though not exclusively, with the world hereafter. There are also numerous tenets, however, that deal with this world or on the secular side of life, such as to support one's relatives, to give aid and succour to the old, and to have regard for others. Buddhism in Burma, as in other Theravada countries, is syncretic. Behind the fa~ade of this faith lie many non-Buddhist practices and -isms, such as Hinduism, from which it developed, and animism, surviving from an earlier phase of Burmese history. It is a logical sequence for a Burmese Buddhist, while practising piety for the world herafter, to propitiate the terrestrial and celestial deities of this world and to have faith in astrology, alchemy and kindred sciences for various worldly reasons. In the light of this rough sketch of the country and people and their attitudes, beliefs and practices, I shall unfold, as promised in the beginning, other aspects of life, giving the biography of one of the members of a family, as were, from the cradle to the grave. This will be done spotlighting his birth, marriage and death.

its now by it

by

Now the biography of a member of the family: a family that is closely knit by respect, humility, thoughtfulness and, above all, by the concept that the law of karma has allowed the individual to attain its membership by various means, such as birth, marriage, and even adoption. was born in a small village of about three hundred dwellings. Ours was a fairly well-to-do family. Soon after my birth, an astrologer was called in. He was furnished with data, such as the year, the month, the date and the day of the week I was born. He cast my horoscope, and predicted that I would become a great man or a monk. As I was a Wednesday child he gave me the 168

name "Hla Pe", with due reference to the day of my birth (to each day of the week, a group of letters of the Burmese alphabet is You can infer from My name means "Handsome Boy". allocated). this that it is most unusual for the Burmese people to have a surname. My father was called Mr "Silver", a Monday child, and my two younger brothers, both born on Thursday, are name Masters "Father's Image" and "Superior to One Hundred Thousand". To make the confusion worse, my mother whose maiden name was Miss "Love" was never called Mrs Silver. The law of karma is a contributory factor to the coalescence The only element that appears to be out of of a family. perspective in this picture is the names of the members of the Burmese family, which stemmed originally from the Buddhists' faith in astrology. Buddhism, nevertheless, pervades the fabric of life of the Burmese Buddhist, in whose thought, speech and deed are reflected I was brought up in an environment the teachings of the Buddha. that, I believe, has influenced my thought, determined my action, formed my habits, and moulded my character within the context of The environment in which a Burmese the law of my past karma. Buddhist child is nurtured is somewhat different from that in the I noticed, or was made to notice, that age was given West. precedence in everyday life, and that household life revolved Respect for old aqe, and obedience to round the oldest member. elders were the rule rather than the exceptio~. Long before I went to the village school, I was initiated into some points of etiquette in dealing with the elders. Some of I was told, among them, of course, I had learned for myself. other things, to avoid the use of the pronouns such as "I" or "you", but to use instead "your humble servant" for "I", and "Uncle" or "Auntie So-and-so", or "Elder brother or elder sister So-and-so" for "you", according to the age and sex of the person I was addressing. In the These instructions concern the realm of speech. domain of deed, a few examples will show that the three elements In of respect, humility and thoughtfulness are also noticeable. the presence of my elders, I had to stand with my head bowed, And in offering walk in a stooping attitude, and sit neatly. something to such a person, I had to hold it with both hands; if one hand was engaged, the ritual must be performed by my right hand: it is rather hard on a left-handed child. Manners are also important among well-brought-up people. At meal times we all sat round the table, with a plate of rice in There were four or six or more dishes of front of each of us. curry on the table. No one made a move until my grandmother had

169

helped herself from some of the dishes. Before helping oneself, one always took a spoonful from the dishP.s she had not touched and served her first. The process of inculcating ideas continued at the village school I went to at the age of five. There I learnt the three R's. In those days the curriculum did not include the fourth R, which stands for Rebellion or Rioting -- that would have gone against the grain of the Buddha's teaching. We were taught as we grew older many homilies, many of which are based on, or taken from the Buddhist Scriptures. "Take refuge in the Three Gems; pay homage to the Five Worthy Objects, that is, the Three Gems, parents and teachers; and show respect to one older, or higher in status or more learned than you". Stories from the Buddhist Scriptures with morals -- reward for the good and punishment for the bad -- were also introduced. And we had to commit to memory several pentads, or sets of five, duties: those of a pupil and of a teacher, of a child and of parents, and of a husband and of a wife. One of the duties we had to perform before 4 p.m. on schooldays, somewhat similar to saying morning prayers in schools in Britain, was repeating doxologies usually after a leader, either a senior boy or girl. In those sessions we made obeisance to the Three Gems and then undertook to observe the Five Precepts: 1) not to kill; 2) not to steal; 3) not to tell lies; 4) not to commit sexual offences; and 5) not to drink alcohol. A schoolboy, needless to say, can refrain from the last two, but at some time or another he breaks one or all of the first three precepts. Nevertheless, some remnants of the code are bound to remain in his mind as he grows up, and they wi 11 act as deterrents to him on subsequent occasions. Speaking of deterrents always reminds me of a personal exper1ence. When I was quite young, we had a boy staying with us. He and I got along well until we fell out one day. That evening we had our bath in the river, and I came up first and hid his clean shirts out of spite: it is necessary in Burma, as some of you may know, to change one's clothes every day because of the heat and the sweat. However, as soon as I put on my shirt I was stung by a scorpion that must have been hiding in the pocket or under the collar. I still remember telling the other boy between my shrieks of pain where to find his shirts. Since then, retribution always stares at me whenever I want to put someone down! At the age of ten I left the village school to attend an English High School at Moulmein. It was a fairly expensive school. My aunts, who brought me up, sent me there primarily to 170

give me a decent education. There were, however, some other reasons. I was a promising scholar: my aunts probably remembered the astrologer's prediction about me; and they also felt that by investing some capital in my education they might get a return in their old age, when I would be a man of consequence. We had then school holidays much like those in England. It was during one of these vacations that my aunts and grandmother decided to hold a ceremony of Buddhist initiation to junior monkhood. I was then about fourteen years old. My grandmother was getting on in years, and she expressed her wish to see me and my two younger brothers as novices - junior monks. It is a cherished aspiration of all Buddhist parents to see their sons either being ordained as a monk after the age of twenty, or initiated as a junior monk before that age. Depending upon the financial resources available, the ceremony ranaes from a simple affair held at a monastery in the presence of a handful of people to one of pomp and splendour. My grandmother and aunts naturally desired to make as great an occasion of it as they could afford. After all , this was once in a lifetime, and they were moreover sowing the seeds of merit which would fructify in their future life. The date of the ceremony was fixed by consulting an astrologer, who gave the auspicious time and day for it. Invitation cards were sent out to relatives and friends livinq outside our village. All the householders in the village were invited by word of mouth. A large and elaborately decorated marquee was put up a few days before the ceremony. In the meanwhile, my brothers and I were not allowed to do anything that might damage our 1imbs or imperi 1 our 1ives, such as climbing trees and swimming in the river. The elders, I believe, had in their minds an incident between Mara, the counterpart of Satan, and the future Buddha, Prince Siddhattha. After he had seen the Four Signs -- an old man, a sick man, a dead man, and a monk -- the prince abandoned material comfort and renounced the world. Mara tried to persuade him from the renunciation -- of which the initiation ceremony is a recapitulation -- but he failed and finally made an unsuccessful attempt to kill the future Buddha. The day came without mishap. The ceremony began with the invocation of well-known local deities so that we, the probationers, could be presented to them. Clad like the princes of the Burmese court, we toured round the locality on horseback to commemorate Prince Siddhattha's renunciation of the world. Many other forms of transport may be used for this ceremony; motor cars, elephant, palanquin, and even a man carrying the candidate

171

on his shoulders. In some cases, the candidates have no form of transport except Shanks's pony. We had a gold umbrella held over We went in a procession. each of us, and a few men dressed like deities as our retinue, apparently representing those who had helped the prince to get away from the palace. The procession was made more lively by the presence of a band and dancers. The ceremony lasted three days, and all the people who came to help or to attend it were fed. Such a deed is called dana, making religious offerings. On the evening of the 1ast day we had our heads shaved, put on white cloth, requested the yellow robes -- one nether, one upper and one outer robe -- from the Abbot, and went with him to the monastery as five novices. All the religious ceremonies have an established pattern for the ending. The whole congregation undertakes in the presence of a monk or monks to observe the Five Precepts, and then listen to the Abbot citing chapter and verse from some portions of the Scriptures appropriate to the occasion. The discourse concludes with the customary water-pouring ritual, the purpose of which is to invoke the Guardian Spirit of the Earth to bear witness to the The Abbot recites the standard text. work of merit. Simultaneously with the recitation, the donor or the head of the household pours water from a jug into a basin or on to the ground. As soon as the recitation ends he shouts three times: "Share this merit with me", to which the audience responds three times: "Well done!" My grandmother performed this ritual. As novices, we went round the village with alms bowls for food every morning. We ate our meals only before noon; we told our beads at least four times a day; we observed the Ten Precepts, that is five more than the five I mentioned earlier; and said prayers at night, apart from carrying out odd jobs. We stayed there for seven days, the conventional period for novicehood. A novice can, however, leave the monastery whenever he wishes, as can an ordained monk who does not want to spend the rest of his 1 ife in the monastery: he seldom leaves, as a rule, unti 1 he has kept at least one Buddhist Lent which lasts three months, approximately from the full-moon day of July to that of October. It is a usual practice in Burma for well-to-do parents who have a young daughter to hold an ear-boring ceremony in conjuncThere are two tion with this initiation to monkhood ceremony. main reasons for this. One is economic: it is less expensive to combine these two ceremonies than to have two separate ones. The second is personal: parents do not wish to give the impression to their daughter that she has been left out of the limelight, which her brothers are getting at the initiation ceremony.

172

On the appointed day fixed by the astrologer, the girl, usually dressed as a princess of the Burmese court, and flanked by two elderly ladies, takes her seat on a cushion in the presence of the invited guests. The astrologer pronounces the auspicious time, and the professional ear-borer moves up to the girl and passes a gold needle through the lobe of each ear and th~n between two of his finqers. The needle is bent round and left in the wound. It take-s a few days before the ears are ready to receive ear-rings or ear-studs. The girl often shrieks or yells, sometimes through nerves and sometimes through pain. Nowadays, a medical doctor gives the girl a local anaesthetic just before the ritual to deaden the pain. Having left behind the formative years and the stage of adolescence, the Burmese Buddhist enters into matrimony and a life of dome.sticity. Just as there is no "Buddhening Service" at the birth of a child, there is no sanctifying ceremony at the Burmese wedding either. Buddhism looks upon marriage, which is brought about by the karma of two people, as a means of prolonging the existence in the cycle of transmigration. The stability of marriage, however, is uppermost in the mind of almost every family in Burma. Marriage is a social contract. It can be contracted by 1) direct contact between the parents of the two parties; 2) employing a go-between; and 3) elopement or living together and reporting the matter to the village headman or announcing it to the neighbours or in a newspaper; or, in a town, by putting the two parties' signatures on a legal document in the presence of a magistrate. Every arranged marriage, except between the children of two friends, entails a lot of research work. The pedigree of each party is examined to find out if there is lunacy or leprosy in the family; and the character as well as the intellectual quality and status of the young man and the domestic capabilities of the girl are scrutinized. When the results of these preliminary enquiries turn out to be satisfactory, an astrologer is usually consulted to find out whether the proposed union would be all that is desired. If his findings are unfavourable, but if the parents have already made up their minds, certain rituals are performed to surmount the obstacles. Marriages in Burma on the whole, I believe, are more lasting than those in the West. Firstly, social upbringing revolves around the twin pillars of respect and love; secondly, there are fewer temptations; thirdly, unlike in the West, couples court and woo after marriage and adjust themselves to each other; and fourthly, they have an implicit faith in karma, which they believe

173

brought them into union through the effect of their previous existences. Conversely, divorce in Burma is less frequent than in Britain (as a proportion to the population of the two countries). There are many reasons. A few will suffice. Firstly, the wife strives to observe a strict code of decorum, propriety and chastity as she fears that she will be 'IIOrse off as a divorcee. The husband, although polygamy is legal, dare not have an affair for fear of bringing disgrace to his family and being censured or even os tr ac i zed by the community. In the last resort, where the marriage is found to be irredeemable, they may blame their karma and part from each other, dividing the property in equal shares. Any critical and independent-minded modern Burman -- there are quite a few-- who is esentially a Buddhist, is often assailed by mental conflict as he goes through life. As a student, he has to balance the moral teaching of holding his teacher in awe against his intellectual training for finding out the truth; and as a householder, his choice of profession against the ever-looming background of the three fundamental concepts and the Five Precepts. Be that as it may, as a householder, he takes up in earnest the three primary duties: dana, s~la and bhavana. have briefly dealt with the first duty in my short account of the initiation ceremony. Now I shall give you just an outline of the other duties in the context of my experience. Burmese Buddhists of all ages go to the monastery on the day of the full moon, the new moon, and the eighth day in between -that is, four times a month, rather like going to church on Sunday in Britain, except that in Burma it is not always on the same day of the week (the Burmese use a lunar calendar). The people in our village usually went in a body, taking with them a trayful of gifts for the Abbot, such as bananas, coconuts and maybe a tin of biscuits and packets of candles. The congregation at the monastery often consisted of two groups -- adults and the young at the back, and the old and ageing in the front. We did obeisance to the Three Gems by reciting a prayer, and then undertook to observe the Five Precepts, at the end of which the first group left the monastery while the others who were going to keep the sabbath stayed behind to undertake the Eight Precepts, that is, three precepts more than the Five -- namely, not to have a meal after noon, not to amuse oneself with entertainment of any kind, and not to sleep on a comfortable bed. Besides observing the Eight Precepts they told their beads and meditated on the Three Signs of Being -- the impermanence of 174

life, the sufferings of this existence, actual denial of the individual soul).

and the non-self

(the

The person who keeps sabbath usually spends the night in one of the rest-houses near the monastery, breaks sabbath at dawn the next day, and returns home in the morning. Meditation is the most difficult religious practice of the three. There are many varieties of subject, ranging from compassion to unpleasant things. The majority of ordinary Burmese Buddhists previously did not devote themselves to meditation. It was confined to the monks and some devout Buddhists, as it requires constant application of mind to the subject, quietude and a suitable atmosphere. Since the end of World War II, however, meditation as a religious practice has gained more popular support due to the example set by the devout ex-premier, U Nu. In Burma, one often hears from a complete stranger that he is over fifty and is old. The Burmese in the main wear their heart on their sleeve and will not hesitate to ask anyone about his income, his age, or whether he is single or married. However, the Burmese Buddhist as a rule not only feels old, but is also made by others to feel old, at the age of 55. Religion, attitude, ethos and climate have contributed to this notion. This is generally the age when many, especially in the Civil Service, used to retire; and also when most of the sons and daughters begin to contribute towards the upkeep of their parents. Some of these retired people, educated and still alert mentally and physically, feel frustrated and continue to do some useful jobs; but others double their efforts in making provision for the next life. Some of the Buddha's teachings, such as that everyone is subject to the chain of causality -- birth, old age, sickness and death, and rebirth -- become more poignant and apparent to them. Their interest in worldly affairs wanes in proportion to the growing concern for the life hereafter. Two of the euphemistic terms for "to die" in Burmese are "karma comes to an end" and "to reach the state of impermanence". At someone' s death there is generally a procession and a burial service, followed by a religious offering on the seventh day after the death. The procession is usually well attended. People either walk or use some form of transport provided for them. Most Burmans believe that in joining the procession they gain merit which is said to be ten times greater than that gained from going to a monastery. Hence the saying "Going to the monastery ten times, going to a funeral once". Whoever started this proverb must have had in mind the sobering effect through meditation that the solemn occasion has on the people participating in it.

175

The burial service held as a sort of last rite on this earth for the departed is performed, I believe, mainly for the sake of the bereaved family, and not to ensure that the dead person shall have a happy life in the next existence: whatever the people do, the dead person will not escape the inexorable outcome of karma. He is bound to fare in the next life according to his deeds in his past existences. The ceremony held on the seventh day follows a pattern similar to those of other religious offerings: feeding the monks and the people attending; undertaking to observe the Five Precepts; the religious discourse appropriate to the occasion; the water-pouring ritual; and finally the sharing of merit with all, including the dead. I had the misfortune to witness the death of the eldest of my four foster-aunts and to go through all these rituals and ceremonies when I visited Burma a few years ago. You have seen family life in Burma through the spectrum presented by a person who stands astride two generations. You may well ask whether the tableau of one generation is a carbon copy of the previous generation. The answer is "no". The war and its aftermath, and the introduction of free education in the post-war period have generated many changes in the attitudes, values and standards of the young. Nevertheless, the fundamental beliefs and practices still remain almost unchanged. This then is a thumb-nail sketch of the Burmese Buddhist family, covering the three stages in life from birth to death youth, maturity and old age. I now await your reaction to it.

APPENDIX The Five Duties 1

Parents 1) 2) 3) 4) 5)

2

To To To To To

guide their children away from evil lead them to what is good educate them set them up financially see that they are suitably married

Children 1)

To reciprocate their parents' favours 176

2) 3) 4) 5)

3

2) 3) 4) 5)

2) 3) 4) 5)

love and adore his wife esteem her commit no adultery endow her with worldly possessions provide her with ornaments

To To To To To

manage efficiently all domestic obligations look after the relatives commit no adultery protect the property be industrious

Teacher 1)

2) 3) 4) 5)

6)

To To To To To

Wife 1)

5)

take responsibility for their parents' affairs perpetuate the family be worthy of one's inheritance perform works of merit on the parents' behalf

Husband 1)

4)

To To To To

To To To To To

endow his pupils with knowledge withhold no knowledge from them send them to other teachers (to be better equipped) admonish and exhort them protect them from danger

To To To To To

be assiduous listen to the teacher's advice learn what he teaches greet them when he comes administer to him by his side

Pupil 1)

2) 3) 4) 5)

177

15 A SHIN-BYrl-BwE IN BURMA A talk given probably in 1966 or 1967

"I know what a shin-byu-bwe is. It's a ceremony of initiating a Burmese Buddhist boy into the monkhood as a novice. I myself have taken part in it, and have also seen many of them in several parts of Burma. There would be no difficulty in tackling this problem." So ran my thoughts when I undertook to give this talk. I was, however, soon disillusioned. I found myself in the position of a man who had married in haste and regretted at leisure. As with many things in this world, this subject is not as simple as it appears: there is more to it than meets the eye. I will approach the subject by dividing it into two parts: an introductory statement to throw light on the meaning and purpose of shin-byu-bwe; and a description of a shin-byu-bwe itself in which I was one of the candidates for novicehood -shin-laung in Burmese. Different suggestions have been put forward as to the or1g1n of the initiation ceremony. One which I am inclined to accept is that it is a re-enactment of the future Buddha's renunciation of the world. Prince Siddhattha, who later became a Buddha, lived for twenty-nine years, in the Indian city of Kapilavatthu, a life of great luxury and ease, with all imaginable comfort. At the age of sixteen, he married a beautiful princess, and had a son. Thirteen years later, he saw the Four Signs: an old man, a sick man, a dead man, and a monk; and realizing the futility of life on earth, he renounced the world. He left the palace on his horse, accompanied by his faithful servant, in the middle of the night. Helped by the deities, he managed to get out of the walled city unheard and unnoticed. On the way, Mara, the counterpart of Satan, intervened and told him 178

to return to the city as he was to become a universal mo~arch in seven days' time. Unlike Dick Whittington he did not turn back. He crossed the river Anoma, and on the other side of it he cut off his hair and threw it into the air. Sakka, the king of the second of the six celestial abodes, received it. After practising austerity for six years he attained enlightenment on a golden throne. Mara, the devil, again appeared on his savage elephant together with hosts of his accomplices, to lay claim to the throne. The Buddha invoked the inanimate Earth to attest to his declaration that the throne was his by virtue of the works of merit done in his previous existences. The Earth confirmed it with a mighty roar that made the elephant kneel and pay obeisance to the Buddha and made Mara's army flee. There are several similarities between the renunciation and a conventional shin-byu ceremony, although the shin-byu has other features superimposed to suit local tradition, beliefs and circumstances, including the financial resources of the individual sponsors. Besides, Buddhism in Burma, as in most other Buddhist countries, is syncretic. One cannot help noticing in this ceremony animistic elements such as worshipping the deities, as well as Hindu influences such as paying attention to astrology. The main purpose in holding a shin-byu ceremony is to gain merit. It is the most cherished aspiration of all Buddhist parents to see their sons initiated into novicehood. They also derive an added pleasure from the feeling of being a junior monk's parents. Many Burmese Buddhists often adopt other people's sons as theirs in order to hold an initiation ceremony. Depending upon the financial resources available, it ranges from a simple affair carried out in the presence of a handful of people to one of great pomp and splendour. Many parents naturally would like to make as great an occasion of it as they can afford, and not a few get carried away and exceed this limit. After all, this is once in a lifetime, and they are investing in merit for their future life. There have been warnings by monks to parents to cut their coat according to their cloth. Here is one warning, taken from a sermon by a famous monk. It is adapted to suit this occasion. A man has three sons ready for the initiation ceremony. But he has no ready money to hold it. Persuaded by a friend of his, he decides to go ahead with it against his better judgment. The result is disastrous. Friend:

Your three sons are growing up. made novices.

Man

I haven't enough ready money. am planning to make them novices in two years' time. 179

It's time they were

Friend:

Don't get wrong ideas. Life is impermanent. If you were to die between now and then, wouldn't you suffer for it? Go ahead with it. Don't be apprehensive.

Man

I am afraid of getting into debt.

Friend:

You won't, you know. If you sell three of the four bullocks of yours, you will have enough money for the ceremony. And as you have many friends, if they help by contributions, these will more than recoup the price of the bullocks.

Man

All right. I'll do it. (A marquee for the ceremony is erected. Invitations are sent out: but nobody comes. And the lone bullock lows: moo, moo.)

Man

(To the bullock) You are mooing, I suppose, with a sad heart, because you have been separated from your companions. (He then explodes.) There is still a bullock left. Come and goad me again into doing it -- you son of a bitch.

Apart from the genuine desire to gain merit, there are other reasons for staging the ceremony: the desire to meet the wish of the head of the household, a grandmother or a grandfather, who is getting on in years; or the belief that this act would shut the gates of hell on the sponsors; or that a boy who has never been a novice will not make headway in life. The ages of the candidates vary from 5 to 20 years. However, unless dictated by financial circumstances or by a desire to please the head of the household, the normal age of the candidates is generally between 13 and 16. This also seems to have been the case in olden days. We find such evidence in old songs, most of which indicate that the boys had already acquired girl friends. Here are two of these songs, both sung by girl friends: the first is about her boy friend on the eve of his entering the novitiate, and the second, while waiting for him to leave it. 1.

As I walk to the east And gaze west over my shoulder, I see the pagoda with its gold pennons and streamers. Holding in your arms a bamboo wrapperful of writings 180

You are getting ready to enter the monastery. What are you going to study, How manY Lents will you be spending, Please tell your beloved in your own sweet voice. 2.

In front of this girl's house There are one or two clumps of hsat-thahpu flowers. The parrots are swarming around them. Oh, my precious parrots, please spare them. They are intended to adorn his ears, When mY beloved leaves his novicehood.

The most populor time for shin-byu-bwe is after the harvest. The weather is dry, the people are in a mood to enjoy it after their long toil in the paddy fields, and above all, there is ready money for it. I will now tell you about the initiation ceremony in which I myself was a candidote. I was born in a small village near Moulmein. In my fifth year at the Government High School, Moulmein, the four aunts who brought me up decided to hold an initiation ceremony for me and my two younger brothers, during my summer vacation in April and May. They had saved up enough money from the sale of paddy, and my grandmother was advonced in years. I was then 14, but I hasten to add that, unlike the boys in the songs, I didn't have a girl friend. The respective ages of my brothers were 12 and 8 years. In the meanwhile, ar1 uncle of mine and his wife had also decided to have their eldest son, an 11-year-old boy, initiated together with us. Their decision was influenced partly by economic reasons, but chieflY by their desire to make my grandmother happy. This, however, caused a rather perplexing situation. There is a prevalent belief, at least in our part of the world, that no shin-byu-bwe should be held with an even number of candidates. But my aunts overca~e this problem by a stroke of ingenuity. They adopted for the occasion a village boy of 13, of course with his parents' consent. 181

The date of the ceremony was fixed by consulting an astrologer who gave the auspicious time and day for it. Invitation cards were sent out to relatives and friends living outside our village. All the householders in the village were invited by word of mouth. My grandmother, beloved and respected by the villagers, talked to all those who were going to play vital roles in the ceremony. The village elders, who were steeped in tradition, put their old heads together to make arrangements for the ceremonial side of it. The youth leader had a meeting with his young men for the assignment of certain tasks such as fetching water from the wells, gathering fuel, cooking huge pots of rice and the like. The women's leader consulted with her lieutenants over things that needed a woman's touch, for example, the culinary and aesthetic sides of the ceremony. The middle-aged people, who were well experienced in ceremonies of all kinds took on themselves the job each was qualified to do. Even people between 65 and 75 years old volunteered to help in the preparation of betel boxes and trays of cigars, cheroots and cigarettes, which are the necessary appurtenances of every religious ceremony. This is one of those occasions in which one can see the altruistic instincts of the Burmese Buddhists at their best. A large and elaborately decorated marquee was put up a few days before the ceremony. Meanwhile, we, the candidates, were not allowed to do anything that might damage our limbs or jeopardize our lives, such as climbing trees and swimming in the river. The elders explained vaguely that evil spirits might try to put us out of action to spoil the ceremony. They were, I believe, subconsciously thinking of the incident between Mara and the future Buddha. The day came without any mishap. The ceremony began with making offerings to the noble saint, Shin Upagutta, the vanquisher of Mara, and the invocation of well-known local deities so that we could be presented to them. Clad in princely attire, in the manner of the princes of the Burmese court, we took part in these rites. After these preliminaries, we started our tour round the locality on horseback (known in Burmese as shin-laung hle-de). This was done to commemorate Prince Siddhattha's leaving the city. Many other forms of transport have also been used for this ceremony: motor-cars, e 1ephants and even a man carrying the candidate on his shoulders. In some cases the candidates have no other form of transport than Shanks's pony. We went in a procession. We had a golden umbrella held over each of us, and a few men dressed like deities as our retinue, apparently representing those who had helped Prince Siddhattha to get away from the palace. The procession was made more lively by the presence of a seemingly endless number of dancers and an orchestra led by two oboe players and three drummers. The horses, 182

well caparisoned and highly trained, also joined in the festivity. They pranced, and shook and nodded their heads to the beat of the drums. We first made for the monastery, paid our respects to the Abbot and monks, and returned to the village. Here we stopped at every house, and did obeisance to the Buddha's images on the shelf in the front room. In return, the householder contributed according to his means -- from two pence to ten shillings. We managed to visit only about 150 out of the more than 300 houses in the village on the first day. The next day, the procession started earlier. Some of the villagers decided to share the transport duty with the horses, chiefly to acquire merit and partly to enjoy themselves. One of my carriers held my two hands as I sat on his shoulders with my legs dangling on either side, and waltzed around in between 1eapi ng up and down to the beat of the drums. I suffered some discomfort, but on the whole I enjoyed it as much as he did. On the third and final day of the procession, we went by boat At the second village, called to two neighbouring villages. Kyon-do, about seven miles away from ours, we were taken round in three cars -- a Ford, a Chevrolet, and an Overland -- while the orchestra and dancers followed us in an open bus. We returned to the village at about 3.30 p.m. To my surprise, my cousin and I were kept under guard in a house while the villagers took my two brothers and the village boy back to our house. They asked my aunts for ransom for our release and they got 15 rupees or kyats, or about one pound in English currency. There was, however, an amusing sequel to this. About twenty of these villagers spent a few rupees on liquor and had it with some food at our house. Five of them had no head for alcohol; and soon after this convivial party, they became very merry, and sang and danced in the marquee, until the headman arrived. He told them to go home and sleep it off and come and see him the next day. When they came back, he ticked them off for making fools of themselves in front of other people, and ordered them to clear all the weeds from the monastery precincts. At 5 p.m. the head-shaving ritual began. My grandmother, my father, my four aunts and the parents of my cousin and the village boy held in pairs a square piece of white cloth under each of our heads to receive the hair as it fell from each stroke of the razor blade. I saw that my four aunts and the two mothers as well as some elderly ladies among the spectators were crying. Then our heads were thoroughly washed in a decoction of soap, acacia fruits, and other ingredients. Finally, we donned white robes and took our positions in front of the monks, about twenty in number, who were already seated in the marquee for the ceremony of "requesting the robes". First, the congregation made obeisance to 183

the Three Precious Gems -- Buddha, the Law, and the Order of the Monks -- and undertook to observe the Five Precepts. Then came our turn. We recited a formula in Pali, a classical Indian language, requesting the robes from the Abbot -- one nether, one upper and one outer robe. The village elders helped us to put on our robes, and we followed the monks to the monastery. The next morning we, the five novices, came back to the marquee in a procession behind the monks, for the concluding ceremony of "listening to the sermon and pouring water". All the religious offerings have this concluding sequence. First, the congregation, as on the previous evening, paid obeisance to the Three Pr:ecious Gems, undertook to observe the Five Precepts, and then listened to the discourse by a celebrated monk from Moulmein. His theme was the initiation ceremony and the merit gained from holding it. He illustrated his talk with stories, citing chapter and verse from some appropriate portions of the Buddhist Scriptures. The discourse ended with the customary water-pouring ritual, the purpose of which was to invoke the Guardian Deity of the Earth to bear witness to the work of merit. It was reminiscent of what Buddha did when Mara came to claim the throne. All the monks recited in unison a set prayer, the substance of which is: "Firm in my faith in the Three Precious Gems, I make this offering that I may be free from all present and future miseries. May all creatures suffering torment in the Four States of misery reach the happy abodes of celestial beings. May all my r-elatives, friends, and all inhabiting the earth and other worlds share the benefit of this work of merit. 0 Earth, and ye deities, guardians of this place, bear witness to the piety of this gift". Simultaneously with the recitation, my grandmother, as the head of the family, poured water from a jug on to the ground. As soon as the recitation ended, she shouted three times: "Share this merit with me", to which the congregation replied three times: "Well done". The initiation ceremony was over. Feasting for the last time began. The monks, the novices, and the monastery boys had their meals, at the end of which we returned to the monastery, followed by a cart-load of gifts for the monks. And all those who had come to attend the ceremony as well as those who had come to help were given food. It was said, perhaps in a rather exaggerated way, that no smoke could be seen issuing from a single house in our village for four days: that is, no cooking was done in any home. As a climax to this deed, my grandmother provided an open-air A dramatic performance for the entertainment of the people. festivity as a sign of rejoicing at a work of merit was, and still is, common in all the southern Buddhist countries -- Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, and Cambodia. We, the novices, were not allowed 184

to participate in this festivity. It was most tantalisinq to have to be contented with watching from a distance the huge crowd milling round the stalls and the stage while the music from the orchestra seemed to be signalling us to come. We, like the monks, had to practise austerity. We observed the Ten Precepts, told our beads at least four times a day, said prayers at night and had only a mat and a pillow between the body and the floor boards as we slept. We also had to lead the life of Every morning, accompanied by monastery boys, we a mendicant. went round the neighbourhood, each holding an alms bowl to receive food. We had meals only before noon. On the eighth day of our stay, we paid our respects to the Abbot and monks and left the monastery, to enter what is said to be the world of manhood.

185

PARTF

ON BUDDHISM

16

BUDDHISM IN BURMA Supporters Lecture delivered to the British Mahabodhi Society, 24 November 1974

It is with humility and pride that I have accepted the invitation from the Mahabodhi Society to give a series of two talks on Buddhism in Burma -- humility at the realization of my inadequate knowledge on this vast subject; and pride at the thought of having the opportunity to tell my fellow Buddhists from many countries what little I know. I propose to present to you the whole spectrum of Buddhism in Burma from the eleventh century AD to the present time. My plan is to divide this subject -- Buddhism in Burma -- into two complementary components, namely, 1) its supporters, and 2) its disseminators, and to allot one talk to each. The supporters of Buddhism, sasana-dayaka, in Burma up to 1886 were kings, some of whom occasionally became Defenders of the Faith, and thereafter people of high status. This first talk will revolve chiefly around those royal and non-royal dignitaries and relate their patronage and their actions to the development of Buddhism since its emergence in Burma as the predominant faith. To make the picture clearer the story wi 11 be unfolded in the context of the six major periods in Burmese history. These are 1) the Pagan period, 1044-1354; 2) the Ava period, 1364-1555; 3) the Toungoo period, 1486-1752; 4) the Kon-baung period, 1752-1885; 5) the British period, 1885-1948; and finally 6) the independence period, 1948 up to the present day. It is generally accepted that Buddhism must have reached Burma from India very early in the Christian era, but we do not have much knowledge of its strength or quality until the eleventh In that century King Anaw-rahta, 1044-74, obtained century AD. copies of the Scriptures in Pali, said to have been derived from

189

Ceylon. Thenceforth, Burma was commit ted to the Southern School of Buddhism, believed to be the Doctrine of the Elders, Theravada, as settled at the Third Council, held during the reign of King Asoka. Long before Anaw-rahta there had been a one-way cultural traffic between India and Burma. Indians both from the north and the south had been visiting or migrating to Burma. They brought their religious cults with them. In Pagan, the capital city of upper Burma, the general trend of archaeological evidence shows a medley of religious cults, among which Mahayanism was certainly prominent. The existence of Mahayana and Theravad a Buddhism, Vishnuism and the cult of the Arian amalgamation of Tantric Buddhism with indigenous snake and spirit worship is amply attested. The inscriptions of the period indicate that the Ceylon Pali canon was in the ascendant, but several inscriptions contain Mahayanist aspirations or prayers for Buddhahood; and the decoration of a Buddhist temple might picture scenes of a Theravada character, the Bodhi-sattva and Tara (female helpers) of Mahayana, incidents from the life of Vishnu and the obscenities of Tantrism. In lower Burma, in the capital city of Thaton, the centre of the Mon kingdom, while there are traces of both schools of Buddhism, it seems clear that Theravada Buddhism predominated. It may in the first instance have been derived from South India. This city, according to the Burmese chronicles, had sets of the Ceylon Scriptures, which were acquired by Anaw-rahta in AD 1057. Anaw-rahta was confronted with a muddle of religions and he probably checked the degeneration of Buddhism by the dissemination of authentic scriptures, with the help of his Primate, Shin Arahan, a Mon monk from Thaton. It took some time for Anaw-rahta and his successors to eradicate all cults other than Theravada. However, they weakened these cults by patronizing their newly found faith. Having command of the sea coast of Burma after the conquest of the Mon kingdom, they were able to keep in touch with the king of Ceylon, to check their list of Pal i books with his, and to receive and give help in religious matters. In the latter half of the twelfth century, the monks of Pagan seem to have become doubtful about the validity of their orders and a deputation was sent to Ceylon to receive ordination at the Mahavihara, Anuradhapura. The year was 1180. One of the monks in the deputation was Chapata, a Mon. He stayed in Ceylon for ten years, and when he returned to Burma in 1190, he brought with him four learned monks to form a chapter, pancavaggaf)a, which would be able to perform valid ordination, upasampada, and other rites. Chapata regarded the ordination of 190

the Burmese c 1ergy as i nv a1i d, saying it was not in accordance with canon law, Vinaya. He and his companions refused to perform the duties of the Order with the Burmese clergy, and in 1192 set up a schism. The original Burmese monks who derived their succession from Thaton were called purima-sangha, the Former Order; while those, who derived from the newcomers and Ceylon, were called pacchima-sangha, the Latter Order. King Nar~-pat{-si-thu, 1173-1210, was impressed by these pi 1gr ims and he encouraged their ordinations. Such intercourse led to the establishment of Ceylon as the chief foreign influence on the Burmese faith. Thaton Buddhism, probably from Conjeveram in South India, was overshadowed and eventually displaced by that of Ceylon about one and one-third centuries after its introduction to upper Burma. The kings of the Pagan dynasty, other members of the roy a1 family and officials expressed in concrete form their observance of the three primary Buddhist duties -- charity, dana; morality, si'la; and meditation, bhavana. They built pagodas, monasteries and ordination halls. Dedicatory inscriptions on stone in Burmese -- transcribed to writing at the beginning of the twelfth century -- were set up alongside these sacred edifices. Many of these buildings contain paintings depicting scenes from well-known Buddhist works. All these magnificent buildings, such as the Shwei-z1-gon, by Anaw-rahta, A-nan-da by Kyan-zit-tha, and That-pyin-nyo by Alaung-si-thu, together with the inscriptions and paintings, evoked and inspired religious sentiments in the people. A legend has it that there were 4,446,733 pagodas in the city of Pagan, which is just over 16 square miles in area. By the end of the thirteenth century, Theravada Buddhism had been firmly established. Even after the fall of the Pagan dynasty in 1287 to the invading Tartars, its lustre did not diminish, but glowed steadily throughout the country. As under the Pagan dynasty, so under the subsequent dynasties, the pattern continued. The sasana-dayaka built religious edifices -- a practice that led to the naming of many a king as the Builder of the X or Y pagoda, and they also supported the sangha with the four requisites. The kingdom of Ava was founded in 1364. All the rulers were either Shans or their descendants. Nevertheless, they were all Buddhists except one. They held sway only over upper Burma. In spite of a prolonged period of anarchy these rulers managed to sustain and nourish the Faith, which will be dealt with more fully in my second talk. As a1ready stated, one of the kings was a non-Buddhist. 191

He

was a heretic named Tho-han-bwa, 1527-43. He regarded the Burmese pagodas as treasure chambers, and proceeded to pill age all those that were within reach. He regarded the monks with their followers as potential rebels, and invited them to a place near Ava. When they were all there he set his savage braves on them and succeeded in killing over 300 out of a total of 1,300. The rest fled to Toungoo, then a growing Burmese state. He then made bonfires of the manuscripts in the monasteries. Eventually Tho-han-bwa, a thorn in the side of Buddhism, was removed by one of his own Burmese ministers. In the meantime, however, in lower Burma there arose a stable kingdom in the Mon country, with its capital at Pegu. One notable king merited all the Buddhists' attention for his evangelical zeal. He was Dama-zei-di, 1460-92. Previously a monk, he reigned during a peaceful period and was able to devote himself to the reform of the religion. Reform was, it would seem, badly needed. The rank and file of monks must have been behaving rather improperly. It is worth quoting some of his criticisms of them from his great Kalyani inscriptions: There were monks who practised medicine and astrology; monks who made a living by embroidering the borders of women's skirts, or by carpentry and by ivory carving; monks who visited the harvest field and extracted offerings by loud voiced recitation of the law; monks who owned male and female slaves, cattle and buffaloes; monks who associated with gamesters and dissolute servants of the king. Apart from these evils of the Order, it was divided into a number of sects, which refused to join with one another in ecclesiastical ceremonies. King Dama-zei-di's scheme of reform was masterly. He professed doubts as to the validity of the Orders of the monks in his kingdom on the ground that the sfma (ordination places) at which they had been ordained had not been properly consecrated according to the Vinaya rules. He therefore sent a mission of twenty-two monks to Ceylon in 1476, and on their return he had a number of sima consecrated in due form. At these sima, 15,666 reputable monks were re-ordained. The others were compelled to leave the Order, and hole-and-corner ordinations were prohibited in the future. Dama-zei-di had healed all schisms, at least for another couple of centuries, and attained the ideal of a unified sangha with the king as Protector of the Religion. These events were recorded on ten inscribed stones at the Kalyani sima, near Pegu, so called because the original monks were ordained on the banks of the Kalyani (Kelani) river in Ceylon. 192

Dama-zei-di's reforms may close one chapter in the history of Buddhism, but they open a new one. They constituted an important precedent for state control of the Religion -- a fact that will become apparent as later events unfold themselves. The early kings of the Toungoo dynasty, 1486-1752, with its capital first at Pegu, were too busy with conquests to give much attention to internal organization. Be that as it may, as Buddhist monarchs they at least tried to sustain the Religion as much as opportunities permitted. Bay{n-naung, 1551-81, unified both upper and lower Burma into one empire. As a conqueror he acted in the capacity of a missionary or perhaps of a Protector of the Faith. He prohibited animal sacrifices in the Shan States, distributed copies of the Scriptures, and built pagodas. He suppressed the sacrifice of white animals to the Mahagiri spirit at the Pok-pa Hill in central Burma. He prohibited and punished drunkenness with death. He enforced the command against taking life, even to the extent of abolishing the Bakrid among Mohammedan settlers. Bay{n-naung thus imposed throughout his realm, on all his subjects -- Burman, Mon, Shan, Muslim, Portuguese-- the Faith he himself professed. He at least enforced an outward profession of Buddhism by all. The good start made by Bay{n-naung in maintaining the religion was nullified by his son King Nan-da Bayin, 1581-99. Compared to his father, Nan-da Bayin was a weakling and his policies brought about unfortunate consequences for Buddhism and for the country. These were the deterioration in relations between the Burmans and the Mons, the emergence of another heretical ruler and his profane acts, and finally the downfall of the dynasty itself. Nan-da Bayin lived in and ruled Burma from the Mon country with its capital at Pegu; and yet he had a phobia about the Mons. He conscripted them into his army to launch unsuccessful invasions against Thailand, and branded them on their right hands with their names, rank and locality. He did not trust the old and venerable Mon monks, whom he got rid of by banishing them to Ava and the Shan States. It was not an atmosphere that was conducive to the growth of the Religion. He lost his throne in 1599, ushering in a period of lawlessness and turbulence. I

It was left to one of his nephews and a grandson of Baylnnaung to salvage the empire. This saviour was King Anauk-hpet-lun, 1605-28. It was during this period that another heretic, in the person of Philip de Brito, came into prominence. He was a Portuguese adventurer of obscure origin, who had worked his way up to the powerful rulership of Syriam, near Rangoon. He, 193

like Tho-han-bwa in the sixteenth century, pillaged the pagodas and monasteries to add to his personal fortune. Monks too did not fare well at his hands. King Anauk-hpet-1 un, as the Defender of the Faith, in the mould of his grandfather, removed him from the scene before he could commit more sacrilegious acts. An auk- hpet- l un' s brother, King Tha- l un, 1628-48, moved his capital from Pegu in 1635 to Ava in upper Burma, the homeland of the Burmans. Until the end of the Burmese monarchy in 1885, upper Burma was the centre of Buddhism from which it radiated to all parts of the country. Tha-lun was personally interested in the welfare of the Religion. He built pagodas -- one of them of Sinhalese pattern -and monasteries for learned monks. He was on very good terms with the monks and the extent to which they cherished his esteem may be related briefly here. In 1647 one of his sons revolted and drove him out of the palace. He took refuge in a neighbouring monastery, and hundreds of monks defended him with sticks until his other sons brought up armed men and crushed the rebellion. Mention has been made of the state control of the Religion as It probably began during a result of Dama-zei-di's reforms. Tha-lun's reign. He instituted an Inquest in 1638, one of the objects of which was to ascertain the lands held by monasteries or dedicated to pagodas. He appointed a civil official called the Maha-dan wun (Pali, Maheldana, plus Burmese wun, minister), with jurisdiction in such matters. The minister was given the power to decide whether land belonged to a pagoda or monastery, or to the State, and, in consultation with the clerks of the monasteries, to prepare lists of persons cultivating religious lands. The State began to get more involved with religious matters thenceforth. Samet imes the kings were compelled by the Order itself to interfere in matters of ecclesiastical discipline. A case in point is the great controversy that occupied the attention of the ecclesiastics and the kings for one hundred years or so. About the year 1700, a thera, GuQabhilankara, introduced the wearing of the upper robe in such a way as to leave his one shoulder uncovered. Others followed suit and soon the size of this sect swelled, and the members came to be known as Ekamsika (one shoulder covered). The orthodox sections of the Order, who constituted the majority, continued to cover both their shoulders, and thus came to be known as Parupana. The Parupana had the sanction of their practice, so they say, in their sacred texts, whereas the Ek arhs i k a had no such authoritative backing. The controversy reached such a point as to cause the king, 194

Tan~n-ganwei,

1714-33, to intervene.

But the question remained

unsettled. During the reign of Dama-ya-za-d{-patf, 1733-52, the internal strife of the sangha was overshadowed by a more sinister event -- the Mon invasion of Ava, led by a Mon ex-monk. The Mons wanted to avenge the indignities wrought on them during the past centuries. But they were crushed by King Alaung-hpaya, 1752-60. The Parupana-Ekamsika controversy reared its head again during the Kon-baung period, 1752-1885. Al aung-hpaya as well as his next three successors were appealed to, but avoided giving a decision which might antagonize part of the Order. Finally, it was resolved by King Bo-daw-hpaya, 1789-1819. The regnal years of Bo-daw-hpaya, a good Buddhist though full of eccentricities, witnessed many significant happenings in the Buddhist world. Only a few of these can be recounted here for lack of time. Two years after his accession to the throne he instituted an Inquest, more elaborate than that of King Tha-lun in 1638. Not satisfied with merely taking statements from individuals, he had inscriptions on stone brought to the then capital city, Amara-pu-ra, from all over Burma, to investigate titles and limits to religious land. He also imposed on the Order, Episcopal Government. The hierarchy he set up consisted of a Tha-thana-baing (Primate) with a Council of Sudhamma Hsaya-daw (abbots), which officiated when there was no Primate, and three subordinate grades of church dignitaries -- the galng-gyok (chief of the sect), galng-ok (superintendent of the sect), and ga,ng-dauk (assistant superintendent). These had territorial jurisdiction. There were also two civil officials-- the Maha-dan wun, now a disciplinary officer, and the Wut-myei wun (minister of religious land), whose duties resembled those of the Maha-dan wun under the previous dynasty. There was the emergence of a powerful sect known as the Gama-vasi (the village dwellers). Bo-daw-hpaya's reign saw a great increase of secular knowledge with the acquisition of Sanskrit works from India and widespread contacts with neighbouring countries. The Order became interested in these new ideas. Monasteries began to teach astronomy and astrology, medicine, massage, divination, horsemanship, swordmanship, archery, arts and crafts, boxing, wrestling, music and dancing. The king at first looked on with a tolerant eye. But later, he became apprehensive that rebellion might be hatched in these gama-vasi monasteries, and he suppressed them. 195

Bb-daw-hpaya also announced his approval of a method of entering the Order by declaration of reliance on the Three Refuges. Great consternation was caused among the monks. They reacted in various ways. Some took Orders in the new way and left for the forest; some awaited developments; and others attempted rebellion. The king summoned the Primate and the abbots and charged them with sanctioning schism. He forced them to become laymen, and recalcitrant monks were unfrocked and clad in white by the Maha-dan wun and his clerks. In the end, however, he had to recant and decree that the monastic life and the ordination should be according to the ancient custom. It was during this period too that the lonq drawn-out Parupana-Ekamsika controversy was settled for good. The one-shoulder party betrayed itself by putting forward in support of its cause an alleged ancient treatise, which was easily disproved by the other party. Bo-da1~-hpaya decreed accordingly. One of the most historic events during B6-daw-hpaya' s time was Burma's reciprocal gifts to Ceylon. Towards the end of the eighteenth century a royal order was issued in Ceylon, presumably with the approval of the sangha, that only members of the highest caste could receive the upasampada ordination. This aroused considerable indignation among the samaoera of the lower castes, and some decided to go to Burma. So a delegation of them, headed by a thera named Ambagahapati, came to the Burmese capital, Amara-pu-ra, in 1800. The king received them and presented them to R~Qabhiva~sa, the Primate, and a most famous authority on Vinaya, who gave them the ordination. These Sinhalese monks returned to Ceylon in 1802 with a full chapter of five Burmese monks, a letter from the Primate to the Sinhalese Sangha-raja, and a 1arge number of Pal i sacred texts. They then proceeded to ordain many more novices who sought it and eventually came to establish what is known to this day in Ceylon as the "Amarapura sangha". This was a return gift from Burma to Ceylon; you may recall the founding of the Sinhala sangha in 1192 by a Burmese monk, Chapata, who had gone as a sama~era to Ceylon and received his ordination there. , Another zealous supporter and protector of the Faith was King Min-don, 1853-78. He moved his capital from Ava to Mandalay in 1857, five years after the occupation of 1ower Burma by the British. Naturally pious, he made liberal offerings to the monks in the capital; and he consulted and souqht the advice and co-operation of the Primate and the Sudhamma Council on important episcopal matters, and in the exercise of power by civil authorities with regard to their ecclesiastical disciplinary duties. 196

The relations between th~ State and the Order reached their zenith of amicability during M1n-don's reign. Perhaps it was his desire to retain such a relationship that caused a cleavage in the Order which still persists in Burma. M~n-don wished to The King's old Primate died in 1865. one of a Puritan sect, known in Burmese as Shwei-gyin But the Chief Ga1ng, started by the Abbot of Shwei-gyin town. Queen wished the appointment to be given to one of the Sudhamma His successor, The king left the appointment vacant. abbots. Thi -baw, 1878-85, appointed two Primates -- one from each sect. There has been no rapprochement and the Order in Burma is today dividied into two major sects -- Sudhamma and Shwei-gyin. ap~oint

Pious and gentle in nature as M~n-don was, as the Protector of the Faith he was impelled to take drastic action against a blasphemer. An erudite physician, called U Po, publicly declared that Buddhaghosa's statement of the Religion lasting 5,000 years was without foundation, and that genuine Buddhist monks were almost impossible to find. He refused to recant and died at the M'in-don had his corpse hands of the over-zealous ministers. crucified as a lesson to would-be blasphemers. M~n-don's name will always be cherished in the memory of the Theravadin for his three monumental acts of merit as a Preserver of the Faith.

In 1856, the year before he moved his capital, the king was inspired to conceive a magnificent scheme that was to serve as a foundation to his subsequent acts. He was seized by a desire to The Scriptures acquire a revised version of the Pitaka texts. that had been transcribed on palm leaf after the Fourth Buddhist Council in the first century BC, he pondered, had been copied and recopied, and in the process errors were bound to have crept in. He therefore consulted his preceptors and with their approval, and under the editorship of eighteen learned sangha and one lay scholar, he had the Pitaka texts written down on three varieties of material, in gold, in ink and by stylus. In 1860, however, he began to consider the feasibility of transferring the Scriptures onto a more durable material for Gold and silver plates came to his mind, but he posterity. rejected these on the ground that they might be tempting to evil pilferers and looters. He hit upon stone slabs, of which he knew He decided upon white marble limestone and marble. two kinds: and had many slabs quarried from a hill nearby. The king then entrusted three of his most distinguished preceptors with the task of collating and editing the Pitaka Thereafter, under the vigilant supervision of five texts. 197

prominent courtiers, the revised texts were engraved by skilful craftsmen on 729 monoliths of white marble. Of these, the Vinaya occupies 111, the Abhidhamma 208, and the Sutta 410 slabs apiece. Finally, the king had these set up, each slab with a temple over it in the shape of the casket of the Buddha's Tooth near Kandy, around the pagoda in Mandalay called Ku-tho-daw (the Royal Merit) that he had built in 1862. The whole undertaking was completed in 1868. Any pilgrim to this pagoda is struck by the imposing array of these marble pillars on three tiers of the walls -- in tiers of 42, 168 and 519 pillars. The third memorable act of merit was the holding of the Buddhist Council. In 1871 as Preserver of the Faith, he was seized by a desire to emulate the achievements of the former convenors of the four Buddhist Councils. He accordingly made the arrangements to reach his goal, and held the Fifth Council in Mandalay. Under the auspices of eight pre-eminent preceptors, 2, 400 monks recited and re-established the au thor i zed version of the Pitaka in five months and three days. May I put in a correction here? Many accounts of Min-don have asserted that the au thor i zed version, as approved by the Fifth Council, was inscribed on the marble pillars around the Ku-tho-daw pagoda. I myself repeated it in my talk given at this Vihara on the 16 May 1973. But the facts are these: the Council was held three years after the setting up of these inscriptions! Changes brought about by the British annexation in 1885 affected the Buddhist religion and the Order very little. Instead of the monarchs, the sangha had the devout and the rich as their supporters. The British government's attitude to the religion was that of neutrality. It recognized the Primate of the Sudhamma sect, appointed by King Thi-baw, till his death in, 1895. After an interregnum, the Hsaya-daw or Abbot of Taung-dwi n was recognized in 1902 until his death in 1938. The government also continued to perpetuate the practice of holding the ecclesiastical examination, started during the reign of King Tha-lun of the Toungoo dynasty and sti 11 in vogue up to the downfall of the monarchy. Moreover, it annually conferred the title of Agga Maha-pa~gita on two or three learned abbots. The sangha was also active in its own way. With a view to protecting t_)le religion, it founded an association called Sangha-samaggi in 1920.

198

With the regaining of independence, Buddhism was reinvigorated officially soon after 1948. The Religion also regained its dayaka or supporter in the government. Events are still fresh in our minds, and I shall briefly deal with only two vital aspects: 1) the Sixth Buddhist Council, and 2) an attempt to make Buddhism the state religion. The Sixth Buddhist Council was held in 1956 in Rangoon, the modern capital of Burma, to commemorate the 2,500th year of the Buddha's religion. Many learned monks, 2,500 in number, from Ceylon and Southeast Asia took part. They edited and codified the Pitaka texts in the great cave, M~ha PasaDa, modelled on the Satta Parli:Ja Cave at Rajagaha, where the first Council was held. The event las ted two years. The presiding member of the Council was the Venerable Hsaya-daw of Nyaung-yan, an outstanding scholar in Burma. The new authorized version, unlike that of M1n-don's time, was put in print. It is gratifying to Burmese Buddhists to note that Burma can lay claim to having two Buddhist Councils in succession within a span of ninety years -- an achievement of which many Buddhists will say approvingly, sadhu (Well done!). Former Prime Minister U Nu, a devout Buddhist, who built the World Peace Pagoda near the centre of the Buddhist Council, tried to make Buddhism the state religion in the early 1960s. He met with strong opposition, however, from both non-Buddhist and Buddhist Cabinet ministers. Nevertheless, Buddhism is today the de facto state religion and as such is still growing in vigour. This then is a short history of Buddhism in Burma. It is a story of the advent and development of Buddhism in the climate created by the rulers of the state or supporters of this faith. Against this background I shall endeavour to spotlight in my second talk the activities of the disseminators that will supplement your knowledge of Buddhism in Burma.

199

BUDDHISM IN BURMA

17 Disseminators

Lecture deliuered to the British Mahabodhi Society, 1 December 19 71J.

My previous paper has afforded you a bird's-eye view of the history of Theravada Buddhism in Burma that covers a time-span of over 900 years. It has highlighted the actions and patron age of its supporters which have determined the direction and growth of the Faith. In this second and final instalment, the focus is on the disseminators of the Faith. Their contributions, which are complementary to those of the supporters, have had far-reaching repercussions in the Dhamma world. The disseminators or propagators may be divided into two main categories: 1) authors, and 2) preachers. There are, of course, other media of propagation of religious knowledge to the laity, such as professional story-tellers, dramatic performers, monastic schools, and paintings and sculptures illustrating scriptural stories. Time, however, does not permit me to do justice to them. These two categories will be presented so as to give a proper perspective in the context of the historical periods mentioned in my previous paper. These are the monarchical period embracing the four dynasties, the British period and the independence period. The author category comprises both the members of the Order and lay scholars who appeared on the scene, quite understandably, fairly late. The acquisition of the sets of the Pitaka, together with Man and perhaps some Sinhalese monks from Thaton, the capital of the Mon kingdom in lower Burma, in the middle of the eleventh century AD, laid the foundation stone for the pariyatti-sasana complex that is in Burma today. The texts were studied assiduously and, as already mentioned, were edited by collating them with those 200

sent later from Ceylon. Learned Mon monks who had been in upper Burma before the arrival of the Pitaka sets, probably co-operated in this new task. Many of the· monks applied themselves so diligently that some of them were already composing scholarly treatises in Pali only thirty years or so after the introduction of the Pitaka texts. One of these, it is claimed, was Karika, a grammatical work by the preceptor of King Kyan-z it- th 1084-1113. The first authenticated work, however, was the Saddaniti, written in 1154, by the monk Aggavamsa. It is a grammar of the Tipitaka, described as "the most comprehensive in existence". Many grammatical treatises followed throughout the ages. Pali students were eager not only to understand the ancient texts thoroughly, but also to master the classic language in order to compose in it.

a,

It was the Saddaniti that the thera Uttarajfva took with him to Ceylon as a return gift. If may be recalled that this thera's visit took place in 1180 and that he was accompanied by his pupil, the novice Chapata who returned in 1190 to Burma to set up the Sihal a sect in Pa.gan. Chapata' s stay of ten years in Ceylon must have enriched his knowledge of the Scriptures and widened his vision of scholarship by making him acquainted with the works of famous monk-scholars such as Buddhaghosa, Dhammapala, Buddhadatta, NaQagambh'ira, Kassapa and iinanda of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries AD. Chapata set out to utilize his talents to diffuse his learning. At least eight learned treatises and commentaries have been attributed to him. These are, to cite some examples, on grammar, Suttaniddesa; on Abhidhamma, Sankhepavaooana, a commentary on Abhidhammatthasangaha by Anuruddha; on Vinaya Vinayagulhattha-dipani, an exposition of difficult passages in the Vinaya-pitaka, and a treatise on boundaries and sites for religious"ceremonies, Simalankara. Chapata's tradition was followed by many more authors even after the fall of Pagan in 1287. Among these, a few who made their name after 1330 may be mentioned: Sirimangala, a most diligent scholar, and two Sinhalese monks, Nava-vimalabuddhi, commentator on the Abhidhammatthasangaha, and Vimalabuddhi, author of a grammatical treatise. It is curious to note that, of the triad of the Pitaka, scholars had so far devoted themselves mainly to the Abhidhamma and the Vinaya. The third, Sutta, though featured prominently on the walls of famous pagodas in Pagan such as the Ananda, does not seem to have come to the fore until the authors of the Ava period, 1364-1555, took it up.

201

Side by side with monastic scholarship, on the secular front, dedicatory inscriptions on stone were being set up alongside the sacred edifices by their donors, as has already been mentioned in my previous paper. The earliest ones were in Mon by King Kyan-zit-tha in the eleventh century, and thereafter in Burmese which was probably transcribed to writing towards the end of his reign, and also in Pali and in Pyu, now a dead language. Burmese was to play a vital role in the propagation of the Dhamma when the language reached maturity in the fifteenth century. The birth of Burmese with its own script, perhaps borrowed from the Mon, can be attributed to two religious causes: the dissemination of education and dedication. Theravada Buddhism has always had to its credit, wherever it has been established, the dissemination of education not only in the sacred language, Pali, but also in the language of the country. The prime object of this education was to inculcate an accurate knowledge of Buddhism and to preserve its purity. Moreover, by the beginning of the twelfth century the Burmese kings, whose imaginations were fired by the examples of Asoka and the Sinhalese kings, were desirous of leaving memorials for posterity. These inscriptions have references to many sacred texts, mainly from the Sutta, which also is well represented in the paintings and sculptures in many religious edifices. These representations depict scenes from well-known works such as the Jataka (Buddha's Birth Stories) or the Buddhavamsa (Chronicles of the Buddhas) together with captions in Mon or Burmese. All these are an indication of the range of the laity's knowledge of the Dhamma, which they must have learnt from their mentors and preceptors, and the exegeses that had been written by them. The tradition of Pal i scholarship was well rooted by the fourteenth century. Many more treatises were compiled in this period and, although hardly any of the works in these early stages are extant because they were written on perishable palm leaf that had no chance of survival against ruinous insects, the inclement climate and destructive wars, it is evident that the contributions must have been great. An inscription set up in AD 1442, some eighty years after the founding of the Ava dynasty, bears testimony to the vitality of this tradition. The inscription is in Burmese. It commemorates the bestowal of various offerings on the Order by a minister and his wife. Together with a monastery, garden, paddy lands, and workmen, the pious donors offered a collection of texts, numbering 295. Glancing through this impressive list one cannot help noticing with some astonishment, firstly, the arrangement Vinaya, Abhidhamma, Sutta, followed by works on grammar, medicine and astrology; and secondly, the considerable number of texts, alone 202

or with expositions thereon, from the three Pitaka, roughly in the ratio of Vinaya, 20; Abhidhamma, 17; and Sutta, 70. The Ava period witnessed the burgeoning of the Dhamma as a result of the increase in the number, quality and variety of its contributors. For the first time too, many aspects of the Dhamma reached a wider circle of people not only through the preachings of the monks, but also through the writings of the scholars. Some of these authors began to use Burmese in place of Pali as the medium of composition, which opened up the opportunity for the propagation of religious teachings, especially from the Sutta-pitaka, by lay authors in the eighteenth century. The Ava period, it may be remembered, was constantly disturbed by the turbu 1ence of wars. Neverthe 1ess, the monk scholars residing in secluded monasteries plodded on with their study, teaching and writing. Their studious practice was continued by many like-minded monks in the subsequent periods. From then onwards, the path of the Dhamma was truly prepared and its steady progress ensured. Many monk-scholars of profound learning produced voluminous works in this as well as in the successive centuries. It would be tedious to give a cat a1ogue of these authors and their books. A few may be selected from the list to convey an idea of the quality and trend of the literature. These contributors may be dealt with under three main categories: those in Pali, in Pali and Burmese, and in Burmese, supplemented by those in English in the post-monarchical period. The venerable Ari yav ams a s toad head and shou 1ders above the other scholars of the Ava period. He was learned and assiduous in his quest for knowledge, and above all, he was full of humility. He composed in the old scholarly tradition, in Pali, many commentaries or tika on famous works such as Maoisara-manjusa, a tika on the Abhidhammattha-vibhavani, and MaQidipa, another tika, on the Atthasalini of Buddhaghosa; and he was a pioneer in breaking into two new areas: he made a study of the Jataka, called the Jataka-visodhana, dealing with a section of the Sutta-pitaka, and he wrote a treatise in the vernacular which will be discussed below. The Toungoo period was comparatively peaceful. There were severa 1 monarchs such as Anauk-hpet-1 un, 1605-28, and Tha-1 un, 1628-48, who were generous in honouring learned monks by bestowing upon them majestic monasteries and impressive titles. Three of They are Tipitakal ankara, these thera deserve our attention. Tilokaguru, and Saradassi. They exercised their talents chiefly in the sphere of the Abhidhamma and the Vinaya. 203

Tipitakalarikara, according to the Sasanavamsa, composed at the age of 15 a Pal i poetical version of the Vessantara-jataka (Birth Story 547), though Burmese scholars maintain that it is in Burmese. He was essentially an Abhidhamma scholar, but he also wrote, as tradition demanded of thera of high authority, the Vinayalankara-tika. Tilokaguru toiled for many years at commentaries and sub-commentaries or anu-tika on various texts. He then composed tika on the Dhatukatha: the Yamaka and, to cap these, the Patthana, the most important book of the Abhidhamma-pitaka. Saradassi was the author of some works equally characteristic of the time. His Gu1hatthadipan1, explaining difficult passages in the books of the Abhidhamma, is a case in point. In the Kon-baung period, though some monk-scholars were still occupied with Abhidhamma studies, many others turned their attention and ability to the other two sides of the Tipitaka. Nanabhivamsa, the Preceptor of King Bo-daw-hpaya, in whose reign the Sinhalese mission came to Amara-pu-ra, directed the studies of the Order in the two Vibhanga and wrote, among others, commentaries on the Digha-nikaya and the Jataka. M1n-don's Preceptor, Neyyadhamma and his successor, Paiinasami, the author of the famous Sasanavamsa, also composed commentaries on the Majjhima-nikaya and Vivadavinicchaya respectively. The nineteenth century disseminators of the Dhamma, it is evident, were continuing the ancient tradition as faithfully as possible. Several scholars started expounding portions of the Pitaka in Pal i and Burmese, probably some time in the fourteenth century. This method is called nissaya (sannaya in Ceylon), word-for-word translation of the Pali text with the Burmese translation. A few nissaya are mentioned in the inscription of 1442. These nissaya were written primarily for students and for those who were not conversant with Pal i . They are on the texts themselves, on commentaries, sub-commentaries and sub-sub-commentaries. The nissaya are composed in three main styles: verbatim translation (with or without interpolated notes), free translation, and ornate translation with rhymes. In general, the first two methods are adopted for works from any of the three groups of the Tipitaka, but the ornate style is often resorted to in treating works from the Sutta, both in treatises and, later on, in sermons.

204

The store of literature is vast. My searchlight will focus only on three significant features: 1) texts that attracted the nissaya writers' attention; 2) some notable authors; and 3) the impact made on the Dhamma world. In the Abhidhamma sphere, the earliest nissaya or atthayojana so far discovered is, as has been mentioned, one on the Aput1ka, a commentary on the Abhidhamma by Ariyavamsa. The books that captivated the hearts of the writers, however, are the Matika with seven nissaya, Dhatukatha with five, and the Yamaka and the Patthana with six apiece. The scholars to whom the students of the Abhidhamma owe an unrepayable debt are Tipitakalankara, Anantadhaja, Nandamedha and, to a certain extent, Jambudhaja. Every one, except Jambudhaja, composed nissaya on all these books. Of the Sutta books, many works from the five nikaya have been cast in the nissaya form by dedicated monk soholars. Among these may be included the now famous books such as the Ohammapada, Sutta-nipata, and Peta-vatthu. Jambudhaja, of Abhidhamma fame, translated six of the Vinaya books in the Tounqoo period. Each of these was reproduced in a new nissaya versio-n in the Kon-baung period. Nandamedha, another Abhidhamma scholar, was also responsible for the nissaya on two other books. These two scholars have demonstrated their versatility and catholicity. But the nissaya that have made a great impact on the ordinary Burmese Buddhists are those on the nipata-atthakatha by Ma~isaradhaja, and on the Maha-nipata by Gu~alankara in the Kon-baung period. One is tempted to say that these works may have led to the translation into Burmese of these nipata at a later date. The Jataka stories are intricately intertwined with the literature, serious or popular, of Burma. Contributions in Burmese are either based on, or translations from, the Scriptures and commentaries thereon. These may be subdivided under two headings: 1) those in prose, and 2) those in verse form. The earliest extant form in prose is the Parayana-vatthu, by Silavamsa, 1511. This is a text of moral instruction based on stories in the Dhammapada and Anutika commentaries. The author, who had written a nissaya on the NettipakaraQa, was a contemporary of Ariyavamsa, the first monk-scholar to venture to compose in the nissaya form a metaphysical work in the Ava period. S1lavamsa, who also made his name in verse literature, had many successors. Tipitakal ankara, the great Pal i scholar, produced the Yassava9~hana-vatthu in 1619; Varabhisangha-natha 205

followed suit with his Manikundala-vatthu, in 1680. These authors belonged to the Toungoo 'peri"o'd, but their vatthu have a common denominator with that of Silavamsa. Among the works that contributed to the growth and development of the Dhamma and that gave non-Pali scholars access to it, no other works of translation were more valuable to the ordinary Burmese people than those of the 547 Jataka stories, which appeared on the scene in the middle of the Kon-baung period. The Venerable Obhasa was responsible for translating eight of the ten major Birth Stories, and two other monks rendered into Burmese the two rema1n1ng stories, one apiece. Obhasa' s translation is free and often verges on the flowery style. At least one of his books, the Vessantara-jataka, is a classic which still lingers in the memory of many a Burmese Buddhist. The Venerable Hsaya-daw of Nyaung-gan, one of the most industrious and devoted Man-scholars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries gave to the man-in-the-street a key to what hitherto had been a closed book to him. The Hsaya-daw faithfully translated the 537 minor Birth Stories. Two outstanding works were also written on the life of the Buddha and the propagation of his doctrine. One is the by Kavivamsabhidhaja in 1798 and the other, the Maliilarikara Jinatthapakasani, a more modern and enlarged version of it, by the Hsaya-daw of Ky'l-the Le1-dat during the British period. These give the followers of the Faith a comprehensive picture of their teacher. The introduction of the printing press to lower Burma some time in the early nineteenth century contributed to the spreading of the Dhamma to a wider circle of the reading public. Several of the works that have been dealt with were printed, and many new books, several of which are original works, were published. The corpus of this literature is immense, and the number of authors, a few laymen among them, is very large. By far the most prolific writer was the Hsaya-daw of Le-di, 1846-1923. This Hsaya-daw was a Pali scholar, but most of his books are in Burmese, intended primarily for the ordinary Burmese Buddhist. His subjects, which are abstruse, range from reflections on the causes of rebirth, Paticca-samuppada, to the Eight-fold Path; yet he could come down to the level of the lowest common denominator of his readers and explain metaphysical and philosophical terms in simple Burmese. He was a master of his subject and of his language. In recognition of his scholarship, the government of Burma conferred upon him the title of Agga-mahapal)