W. R. Winston

“ So deep-rooted is the habit of dacoity in Burma that it easily breaks out afresh whenever disorder spreads, or whenever any daring fellow thinks fit to try his luck as a boh or leader. The people are easily deluded with his boast and swagger; and having implicit faith in the special tattooing and charms which are warranted to render them bullet and sword proof, they readily follow his standard. Hundreds of bohs have had their day during the last five years, and pursued a successful course of robbery, murder and rebellion for months together, eluding the police and the military. ”

“ THE HOME FOR LEPERS AT MANDALAY.
One of the painful sights which specially attracts the notice of the European in Burma is the large number of lepers to be seen in all the public places. As you walk along the streets you see them, sitting in the dust, holding out their mutilated limbs, from which sometimes all traces of hands and feet have ulcerated away. If you go into the great bazaar, they are seen mingling with the crowds of buyers and sellers. ”

“ Men have been known to make a regular trade of snaring little birds in the jungle, and bringing them to the bazaar to sell to the merit seekers, who buy them merely to set them free.
Many works of merit involve great expense, such as the digging of a well, the erection of a bridge, a zayat or rest-house, a monastery, a pagoda. Judging by the enormous number of these sacred buildings in Upper Burma, it would appear that this is a favourite way of seeking merit. The builder of a pagoda is honoured with a special title attached to his name, and he is understood to be in a fair way for Nirvana. ”

“ The National Congress in India is the natural sequence of all this. It is the feeling after some arrangement or institution that shall give effect to the will of the people, on many more matters than they are at present consulted upon. It may be silly sometimes, and selfish, and reactionary, and stupidly conservative, and childish, but whatever its faults, its follies, and its weaknesses, it is at all events our own bantling, the child of our own careful nurture and instruction. ”

“ The boys, instead of keeping to one school, are fond of attending school after school, changing from one to another, until they have gone the round of all within their reach, when they will start to go the round again. One might almost suppose they thought there was a school where they could learn by magic, and that they were in search of that school. Such a crying evil has this become in Burma, that stringent rules have had to be framed by the Department of Public Instruction to check this incessant migration. ”

“ The Indian Government is disposed to make the rich province of Burma an outlet for the congested populations of some of the provinces of India, and the great steamer companies are accomplishing this by conveying many hundreds of natives every week from the Indian ports to Rangoon, thereby enriching themselves, enriching Burma, and giving to these people a sphere and a chance in life, where their humble energies may receive their due reward. It is in manifold ways like this that civilisation and a firm and enlightened rule bestow such blessings on these teeming Oriental populations. ”

“ In studying Burmese, I found it necessary not only to spend as many hours as I could daily with my munshee and my books, but to go out amongst the people for the sake of learning the spoken language. Every language has some difference between its literary and its colloquial style; and it is quite possible for the foreigner to know a good deal that he reads in the books, and yet to be quite nonplussed with the ordinary talk of the people. ”

“ One peculiar and sadly interesting feature of mission work in a new country is the duty of seeking the lost. Whenever a new country is opened, it not only offers a sphere for steady young men seeking one, but it always attracts also many adventurers, wanderers and prodigals from the more settled communities, and they come in considerable numbers. The annexation of Upper Burma was a case of this kind, and the hope of employment brought over persons, some of whom were to be found serving in positions very different from what they or their friends ever expected them to occupy. ”

“ Let me ask the reader to divest his mind for a moment of every sacred association surrounding that hymn, and calmly consider the words just as they stand, and try to imagine what sense, if any, they would convey to the mind of a pious Buddhist, whose ideas of sin are totally different from ours, who has no conception of the nature or need of a sacrifice or atonement, and to whom the shedding of blood, and the taking of all life, even the killing of an insect, is utterly abhorrent, as a deadly sin. ”

“ It is self-evident to the experienced eye that so long as the youth of Burma remain in the hands of the monks, in connection with the monastery schools, to learn idleness, and to have all the springs of life and thought saturated with Buddhism from their youth, the downfall of that religion will be indefinitely postponed. We must enter into friendly competition with the monastery schools, must take hold of the awakening desire for Western learning, and we must give an education so undeniably better than the monks can give that we shall thus win our way to success. ”

“ We make our way up the Irrawaddy by one of the splendid steamers of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, and in due time we land at Mandalay, and climb the steep bank of the river, and there we are with our few boxes, strangers in a strange land, knowing nobody belonging to the place, not a word of the Burmese language, with no mission house to turn into, no native Christians, and, worst of all, no native helpers. ”

“ Not only is there a need for more knowledge of the countries and races we govern, there is also a demand for it. The events of recent years, especially those resulting from the annexation of King Theebaw’s country, have drawn Burma into much closer touch with England; and many people, by no means ignorant of Burma before, now feel a much deeper interest than formerly in all that pertains to that interesting country, whose destinies are henceforth so intimately bound up with our own. ”

“ In seeking to raise the condition of a heathen people no remedy can be regarded as a substitute for the Gospel. We value civilisation very highly, with all that it implies in our case—in the way of good government, material prosperity, the amelioration of the conditions of life amongst the people, the progress of knowledge, and the introduction of the arts and conveniences of life—but the only true basis for the highest type of civilisation is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. ”

“ As a beginning in the way of much-needed reform, our paternal Government has framed for their guidance a few simple rules for the administration of criminal justice, and supplied them to each chieftain, as a sort of alphabet of government for them to learn. I wonder what they think of our notions of justice. They must appear to them unaccountably and unnecessarily lenient towards the prisoner. How it must puzzle them, for instance, to be told that an accused person must be presumed to be innocent until he is proved to be guilty! ”

“ From time immemorial the palace of the Burman rulers, chiefly owing to the general practice of polygamy on the part of the kings, and the consequent troops of queens and princes and princesses, has been the scene of much intrigue and corruption, and occasional bloodshed and revolution. Absolute monarchy is almost inseparable from occasional acts of cruelty and tyranny, even if just and kind in the main. But a weak ruler with an insecure title, like the last of the Burmese kings, cannot afford to be lenient, and is more likely to be cruel than a stronger man would be. ”

“ Pickled tea is handed round among the guests on these occasions as a kind of dessert, mixed with salt, garlic, assafœtida and a few grains of millet seed. It has an anti-soporific effect, and so serves to keep them awake, to listen to the drama.
The Burman is a firm believer in amusement, in relaxation, in holidays. He sees no good in a too strenuous and incessant application to the serious business of life. He likes to take life easily, and to see plenty of change. Even his religious duties usually blend amusement with the seeking after merit. ”

“ A road, or still better a railway, always means increased traffic and [245] commerce, better markets for produce, and better means of getting about, and is itself, therefore, a pacifier and civiliser of no mean account; and it soon tends, under British law and insistence on good behaviour, to demonstrate that honesty is the best policy. Good government should always make it pay better to lead an honest, industrious, orderly life, than to pursue a career of robbery and violence—should, in fact, make it hard to do wrong and easy to do right. ”

“ Never under any Indian or Burmese rule was there a vestige of representative government, but we think it well to train them up to it.
The schoolboy in India has the History of England put into his hands, and there he learns what Englishmen think of liberty and self-government; and he finds that the ruling power has broadened down in the course of ages from the one to the few, from the few to the many, and from the many to the whole population, who now really govern themselves. Our British policy is to organise municipalities in every considerable town. ”

“ The territory over which King Theebaw ruled, or professed to rule, was of immense extent, and very sparsely populated, and the vast tracts of jungle with hilly, broken country afforded ample cover for the numerous bands of dacoits. Dacoity is the word used in India for gang robbery, and it is usually accompanied with murder and various forms of cruelty. It had always flourished in Upper Burma, and was unfortunately regarded not as a cruel, brutal and detestable crime, to be put down by the united efforts of the government and the people, but more as an acknowledged and unavoidable institution. ”

“ The southern end of Mandalay touches the northern limit of Amarapoora, which was the capital up to 1860. Here are to be seen the remains of a great royal city nearly as large as that at Mandalay, and after the same model exactly,—square; set so as to face the four cardinal points; the ruins of a great wall around; a deep moat outside, now dry; the palace in the centre; pagodas and other sacred buildings here and there, scattered over the place; and everywhere broken bricks strewn about; some of the ground now cultivated, and the rest covered with dense tangled jungle ”

“ If men will be brutal, will set all law, human and divine, at defiance, will make human life cheap and property unsafe, and keep the whole country in terror and confusion, to the detriment of all peace and progress, if, in short, they will come to no terms, but deliberately elect to assume the character of wild beasts preying on society, then all reasonable men will feel constrained sorrowfully to admit that a civilised Government has no alternative but to treat them as such, and hunt them down ”

“ Work to be productive of good in the mission fields of India must be lifelong. The short service system is both imbecile and expensive. The languages and habits of the varied peoples of this vast empire cannot be familiarised sufficiently for effective work in a few years. But to enjoy good health and to protect the lives of missionary workers, it is the bounden duty of the great religious societies of England and America to make a full and ample provision for the support and comfort of their representatives in India. ”

“ But in the case of races like the Karens of Burma, the Pariahs and other low castes of India, and the negro slaves of the West Indies, Christianity finds human beings suffering from special disabilities, a lowly people, shut out, by the selfishness of those above them, from all the ordinary chances of bettering their lot, ill-used, oppressed, enslaved, kept in unlettered ignorance, deprived of all that makes life worth living. ”

“ Educational work gives a backbone of intelligence and solidity to the mission, and to the converts; it introduces us to the most intelligent and influential classes of the people, and gives us a powerful influence we could acquire in no other way, and it leads directly to hopeful conversions. So long as we are merely the preachers of another religion amongst them, our influence is circumscribed within that condition. ”

“ The monk muses on this in his monastery. The pious Buddhist repeats it to himself as he spends his spare time smoking and meditating on the bench at his door, or strolling idly about, telling off the beads of his rosary the while.
Seeing that life is necessarily a misery, and existence an evil, the problem of life would seem to be how to bring existence to an end. The Christian would say wait for the release of death, but two formidable difficulties stand in the way, to prevent death [113] proving any release—namely, Transmigration and Karma (Burmese Kan) . ”