CHAPTER VI.Ancient history—Pegue—Character of the Burmese—Concluding reflections.
Ancient history—Pegue—Character of the Burmese—Concluding reflections.
The ancient history of Burmah differs in one remarkable particular from that of almost every other Oriental nation. The historiographers, except where they have been led into speaking of Gaudama and his wondrous career, in effect, present a more coherent chronology than is offered by any other Eastern historians. The simple, almost ungarnished tale of their doings in the country, present self-evident proofs of its truthfulness. The reigns of the kings none of them exceed the limits of probability, and what is more, they are shorter than usual, which shows in every way that there was no desire to magnify the doings of their sovereigns. We find the kings of this early period doing just what the kings of the present dynasty have been doing, and there is no undue disguise of facts; though now and then (as in the narrative of the two blind princes of Sagaing) there is a dash of the marvellous; yet one cannot help wondering at the extraordinary simplicity that pervades the whole narrative given by the Burmese historians.
All that the Burmese know of their emigration from India, and of the founding and history of the ancient city of Tagoung, is to be found in the third volume of the Chronicles of the Kings of Ava. Here is an abstract of the tale.[189]
Many years before the appearance of Gaudama, a king of Kanthalatt (Oude) and Pínjalarít (a kingdom in the Punjab), being desirous of a connection by marriage with the king of Kauliya, sent to him to demand a daughter; but receiving a refusal on the grounds of inferiority of caste, he declared war, and destroyed several cities governed by the Tháki family. These cities were afterwards rebuilt, andthe Tháki line re-established; but one of the Tháki race of kings, Abhírájá, the king of Kappilawot, emigrated with his troops and followers from Central India, and came and built Tagoung, which was then also styled Thengat-the-ratha, and Thengat-the-nago. The place had been inhabited before, during the period of the three preceding Buddhas. In the time of Kekkuthan it was called Thanthaya-púra; in that of Gounágoun, Ratha-púra; and in that of Katthaba, Thendwé. On the death of King Abhírájá, his two sons, Kan Yázágyee and Kan Yázangay, disputed the throne, but agreed by the advice of their respective officers to let the question be decided in this way; that each should construct a large building on the same night, and he whose building should be found completed by the morning, should take the throne. The younger brother used planks and bamboos only, and covered the whole with cloth, to which, by a coat of whitewash, he gave the appearance of a finished building. At dawn of day, Kan Yázágyee, the elder brother, seeing the other’s being completed, collected his troops and followers, and came down the Irawadi. He then ascended the Khyendwen, and established himself for six months at Kule[190]Toungnyo, calling it Yázágyo, and sent his son, Moodootseitta, to be king over the Thoonaparan Pyoos, Kanyan, and Thet, who then occupied the territory between Pegu, Arakhan, and Pagan, and had applied to him for a prince. Kan Yázágyee then built the city Kyoukpadoung to the east of the Guttshapanadee, and resided there for twenty-four years. From thence he went and took possession of the city of Diniawadee, or Arakhan, which had originally been founded by a King Mayayoo, and having constructed fortifications, a palace, &c., took up his residence there.
The younger brother, Kan Yázangay, took possession of his father’s throne at Tagoung, and was followed successively by thirty-three kings, the last of whom was Bheinnaka Yázá. During this monarch’s reign, the Chinese and Tartars, from the country of Tsein, in the empire of Gandalareet, attacked and burnt Tagoung. The king and his followers retired up the Malí river, and shortly afterwards died. His people then divided themselves into three portions, one of which established thenineteen Shan states. A second portion allied themselves with the Thunaparanta kingdom, composed of the people of Ranyan and Thet, who were governed by Múdutseitta and other kings of the Tháki race. The last remained near the Malí river, under the command of Nága Zein, the last king’s principal wife.
About this time Gaudama appeared in Central India. In that part of Hindustan, also, a dispute arose between King Pethanadí Kauthala of Thawotta[191]and Maha Nansa of Kappílawot. The dispute originated in a matter of marriage again. Pathanadí had sent an embassy to Maha Nama for one of his daughters. Nama, however, sent him the daughter of a slave girl instead. She was received, and had a son, Prince Wit’hat’hoopa. When he had grown, he went to see his relations in Kappílawot, and then first learned the indignity which had been put upon his father. Gaudama stopped his army three times in its passage to Kappílawot, but let him do as he pleased the fourth time, when he took ample vengeance on the perfidious Maha Nama, and he destroyed Kappílawot and two other cities in the country of Thekka, which, not improbably, is the present Dekkan.
This caused another dispersion of the Tháki race, and we find that Daza Yázá[192]established himself at Tagoung, carrying with him the name of his city, Pínjalárit; he assumed the title of Thado Zaboodipa Daza Yázá, which may be translated Emperor Daza, king of Zaboodipa, the name, as we have seen,[193]of the southern island in the Burmese cosmography. Thus he aspired to the government of the world, for Zaboodipa was to the Burmese the whole world. He founded, also, the city of Pagan. Seventeen kings of his race reigned over Tagoung. “None of these kings,” says Colonel Burney, “reigned long, the country having been much molested by evil spirits, monsters, and serpents.... In the fortieth year after Gaudama’s death, whilst Thado Maha Yázá, the seventeenth king of Tagoung, was reigning, an immense wild boar appeared, and committed great destruction in his country. The crown prince went forth against the animal, and pursued it for several days, until he overtook and killed it near Prome, and then finding himself so far from home,he determined on remaining where he was as a hermit.... Through the recommendation of the hermit prince of Tagoung, the Queen Nan Khan married one of his nephews, Maha Thavibawa, who became king of the Pyús, and established the Prome or Thare Khettara empire, sixty years after Gaudama’s death, 484B.C.”
A curious account of the origin of the name Thare Khettara is given by Symes,[194]in whose words I shall relate the legend. “It is related, that a favourite female slave of Tutebongmangee, or the Mighty Sovereign with three eyes, importuned her lord for a gift of some ground; and being asked of what extent, replied in similar terms with the crafty and amorous Elisa, when she projected the site of ancient Carthage. Her request was granted, and she used the same artifice. The resemblance of the stories is curious.” It is, however, met with in many parts of the world. Thare Khettara signifies single skin. Symes is mistaken, however, in the town; it is Issay Mew, six leagues from Prome.
Upon the fall of the empire of Prome, Thamauddarit transferred the government to Pagahm, then an inconsiderable place. A young man named Tsaudí destroyed the wild animals of the neighbourhood, and in recompense for this important service he was offered the succession by the king. This, however, he refused, making his former instructor king in his stead; but on the old man’s decease he assumed the sovereignty, in the year 89 of the Pagan æra,A.D.167. This youth, however, was of the royal race of Tagoung.
In the sixth volume of the Chronicles of Ava, further mention is made of Tagoung. We there find it granted to Yahula by Theehapade,aliasMenbyouk. Yahula assumed the title of Thado-Men-bya; he was afterwards driven from his government by the invading Shan tribes, in the Burmese year 725,A.D.1363. However, he subsequently retrieved his fortunes, and in 726 (A.D.1364), he founded the city of Ava, and established the line of the kings of Ava which has lasted to our times.
“The great point,” concludes Burney,[195]“with the Burmese historians is to show that their sovereigns are lineally descended from the Thakí race of kings, and are‘Children of the Sun;’[196]and for this purpose the genealogy of even Alompra, the founder of the present dynasty, is ingeniously traced up to the king of Pagan, Prome, and Tagoung.”
The internal history of Burmah, up to the sixteenth century, is not illustrated by any other documents than the native;[197]but about this time Fitch visited the country, and his descriptions show that the state was on much the same footing as at present. At this period the Burmans first conquered the Peguans, and had almost subdued Siam. But at the close of the seventeenth century the Peguans rose, and inA.D.1753 carried the Burman king captive to Pegu. But, like the Persians under the Mede governments, the proud Burmans rose, and Alompra, whose adventures will be discussed in the next chapter, beat the Peguans, and restored the Burmans to their ancient supremacy.
Of modern Pegu, or Pegue, the following account by Symes may be interesting:—
“The extent of ancient Pegue may still be accurately traced by the ruins of the ditch and walls that surrounded it; from these it appears to have been a quadrangle, each side measuring nearly a mile and a half; in several places the ditch is choked up by rubbish that has been cast into it, and the falling of its own banks; sufficient, however, still remains to show that it was once no contemptible defence; the breadth I judged to be about sixty yards, and the depth ten or twelve feet; in some parts of it there is water, but in no considerable quantity. I was informed, that when the ditch was in repair, the water seldom, in the hottest season, sunk below the depth of four feet. An injudiciousfausse-braie, thirty feet wide, did not add to the security of the fortress.
“The fragments of the wall likewise evince that this was a work of magnitude and labour; it is not easy to ascertain precisely what was its height, but we conjectured it at least thirty feet, and in breadth, at the base, not less than forty. It is composed of brick, badly cemented with clay mortar. Small equidistant bastions, about three hundred yards asunder, are still discoverable; and therehad been a parapet of masonry; but the whole is in a state so ruinous, and so covered with weeds and briars, as to leave very imperfect vestiges of its former strength.
“In the centre of each face of the fort there is a gateway about thirty feet wide, and these gateways were the principal entrances. The passage across the ditch is over a causeway raised on a mound of earth, that serves as a bridge, and was formerly defended by a retrenchment, of which there are now no traces.
“It is impossible to conceive a more striking picture of fallen grandeur and the desolating hand of war, than the inside of these walls displays.... The temples, or praws, which are very numerous, were the only buildings that escaped the fury of the conqueror; and of these the great pyramid of Shoemadoo has alone been reverenced and kept in repair.”[198]
About the time when Symes visited Pegu, active exertions were being made to conciliate the Peguers, or Taliens, as the Burmans always called them; and we may well agree with the energetic traveller, that “no act of the Burman government is more likely to reconcile the Peguers to the Burman yoke than the restoration of their ancient place of abode, and the preservation and embellishment of the temple of Shoemadoo.”[199]The government were fully sensible of this, and the commands of his Burman majesty went forth, that the governor of Rangoon should transfer the provincial seat of government to the imperial city of Pegu. Notwithstanding these commands, the superior position of Rangoon will ever cause it to remain the more considerable of the two. Even to this day, as it was at the period of Symes’s visit in 1795, the city of Pegu is chiefly inhabited by Râhwans, or priests,attachésof the provincial government, and poor Peguese families, who greedily availed themselves of the king’s permission to colonise their deserted, though once magnificent metropolis. Symes estimates the population as not exceeding seven thousand. Melancholy fate of the once proud and glorious capital!
Modern Pegu is built on the ruins of the ancient city, and occupies about half its area. “It is fenced round by a stockade from ten to twelve feet high; on the north and east side it borders on the old wall. The plane of thetown is not yet filled with houses, but a number of new ones are building. There is one main street running east and west, crossed at right angles by two smaller streets not yet finished. At each extremity of the principal street there is a gate in the stockade, which is shut early in the evening; and after that time, entrance during the night is confined to a wicket. Each of these gates is defended by a wretched piece of ordnance, and a few musketeers, who never post sentinels, and are usually asleep in an adjoining shed. There are two inferior gates on the north and south sides of the stockade.”[200]
The character of the Burmese, on which we must here say a few words, has its good points as well as its bad. “It differs,” according to the testimony of one who knew them well,[201]“in many points from that of the Hindus and other East-Indians. They are more lively, active, and industrious, and though fond of repose, are seldom idle when there is an inducement for exertion. When such inducement offers, they exhibit not only great strength, but courage and perseverance, and often accomplish what we should think scarcely possible. But these valuable traits are rendered nearly useless by the want of a higher grade of civilisation. The poorest classes, furnished by a happy climate with all necessaries, at the price of only occasional labour, and the few who are above that necessity, find no proper pursuits to fill up their leisure. Books are too scarce to enable them to improve by reading, and games grow wearisome.... Folly and sensuality find gratification almost without effort, and without expenditure. Sloth, then, must be the repose of the poor, and the business of the rich.... Thus, life is wasted in the profitless alternation of sensual ease, rude drudgery, and native sport. No elements exist for the improvement of posterity, and successive generations pass like the crops upon their fields. Were there but a disposition to improve the mind, and distribute benefits, what majesty of piety might we not hope to see in a country so favoured with the means of subsistence, and so cheap in its modes of living! Instead of the many objects of an American’s ambition, and the unceasing anxiety to amass property, the Burman sets a limit to his desires, and when that is reached, gives himself to reposeand enjoyment. Instead of wearing himself out in endeavours to equal or surpass his neighbour in dress, food, furniture, or house, he easily attains the customary standard, beyond which he seldom desires to go.”
One hardly knows whether to call this “incorrigible idleness”[202]or no. It is certainly the same fatal constitution of character, or force of circumstances, which has ever conspired to prevent the Irish from rising in the scale of nations. But these are not the only similarities between the dispositions of the two nations. It is perfectly fair to call the Burmese the Irish of the East.
Yet they go beyond that nation in many of its worst characteristics. Servility, the inevitable consequence of despotism, prevails amongst them to a frightful extent, overcoming, in many instances, the sense of right implanted in their bosoms as men. “Indeed,” says an excellent authority,[203]“every Burman considers himself a slave, not merely before the emperor and the mandarins, but before any one who is his superior, either in age or possessions. Hence he never speaks of himself to them in the first person, but always makes use of the word Chiundò, that is, your slave. While asking for a favour from the emperor, the mandarins, or any respectable person, he will go through so many humiliations and adorations, that one would imagine he was in the presence of a god. Even if he is desirous of obtaining something from one who is his equal, he will bow, and go on his knees, and adore him, and raise up his hands, &c.” Yet gratitude is a virtue of great rarity. There is no such phrase in the language as, “I thank you.” The statements of Sangermano contrast strangely with those, I think, of Crawfurd, whose remarks tend to the conclusion, that they never ask a favour. They consider that it is a favour to you to be allowed to gain merit by giving them something. This is not improbable. We learn, however, from others, that they will occasionally acknowledge an obligation by observing, “It is a favour.”
Slavishness naturally leads to the remainder of the catalogue of mean vices. One of their principal precepts forbids lying; but there is no ordinance so universally disregarded. A person who tells the truth is considered a good sort of person, but a fool, and incapableof managing his own affairs.[204]Inseparable from untruthfulness is dissimulation and deceit. They practise these, also, to perfection.
“But, as every rule will have its exceptions,” says the Jesuit, “it is not to be supposed that the Burmese have not some good qualities, and that estimable persons may not be found amongst them. Indeed, there are some persons, whose affability, courtesy and benevolence, gratitude, and other virtues, contrast strongly with the vices of their countrymen. There are instances on record of shipwrecks on their coasts, when the sufferers have been relieved in the villages, and treated with a generous hospitality, which they would probably not have experienced in many Christian countries.”[205]
Yes, let the faults of the Burmese be as they will! let them be bad in every respect! we cannot, will not, imagine these faults to be so deeply rooted, that a moderate and equitable government could not tear them up and destroy them. It is the corrupt administration, the merciless never-ending chancery-like avarice of the officials, that turns their hearts to stone, and makes them callous, and servile, and tyrannical. When the British army were at Prome, in 1825, when the Burmese tasted the blessings of Anglo-Indian justice, they showed as kindly a spirit as any could have done. It was shameful that the kindly Peguers should have been so deserted at the critical time, and that they should have borne what the English army could not be made to feel. Wemustliberate these people, we must wrest the sceptre from the palsied grasp of the cruel Burman kings, even though we retain it ourselves. Then will the blessings of civilisation, and the peaceful arts that elevate man, extend a gentle sway over this misguided and persecuted nation.