CHAPTER XIII.THE BURMANS.

Of the forty or more different races and tribes dwelling in Burma and on its frontiers, the Burmans are the leading race: first, in point of numbers, for they far exceed any of the others; also as regards position and advantages, for they naturally, as the leading race, have come to occupy all the best and most fertile soil, all the tracts of country lying between the great mountain ranges, the valleys of the Irrawaddy and the Chindwin rivers; and still more in respect of their prestige, for they have long been the ruling race of this region, and their language is far more widely diffused than any other. Most of the other indigenous races of Burma, as we have seen, are demon worshippers, uncivilised, without a written language, and with many and wide diversities from the Burmans. The Burmans, however, have an ancient civilisation, an elaborate religious system, a philosophy and a literature, and with regard to the arts, handicrafts and conveniences of ordinary life, are quite on a par with the Hindus. The present chapter applies to the Burman race.

The Burmans are of Mongolian origin, in common with the Chinese, Siamese and other inhabitants of the Indo-Chinese peninsula. Their features plainly show this, especially the almond-shaped eye, the slightly flattened nose and the almost entire absence of hair on the faces of the men. They are lighter in complexion than the majority of the natives of India, and slightly browner than the Chinese.

They show a marked contrast in many respects to the races ofIndia, especially in the entire absence of caste. The king was the fountain of all position in the country. He made and unmade nobles at his sole will and pleasure, so that there is no hereditary rank or nobility. There is also no priestly caste like the Brahmins of India; the Buddhist monks are recruited from all classes, from the royal family downwards. Except the pagoda slaves, a class doomed to hereditary servitude in connection with the more important sacred shrines, and with a few other trifling exceptions, the Burmans as a people have all the avenues of native life and privilege open to them. This renders them less fastidious and more approachable than the people of India, and does away with the withering, blighting effects of caste. It renders them less conservative also, and makes them more ready to take up new ideas.

The Burmese language, in common with the Mongolian languages generally, is monosyllabic, each word consisting of one syllable. Of course the progress of all languages tends to unite words, and in the majority of languages this tendency has resulted in the original monosyllables becoming so united and changed as to be not easily capable of separation. But in Burmese and other monosyllabic languages very many names and words are still of one syllable, and even where they are of two or three, each syllable seems to show a sturdy vigour of its own, and a determination to preserve its individuality complete, and not sink into the position of a mere servant of its neighbours. In pronunciation or reading of Burmese this appears in a marked degree; and in writing Burmese names one always feels inclined to follow the pronunciation, and insert the hyphen between the syllables. Even where there is any disposition of the syllables to cleave together in the formation of words, in anything like a permanent form, they readily fall asunder the moment they are touched for the purpose of critical examination.

SPECIMEN OF BURMESE TYPE.

To compensate for the convenience of expression afforded in most languages by inflections, much is made in the Burmese of particles. Indeed, the grammar of the language, which is very simple, consists largely of the classification of the monosyllables that serve as particles, and a great deal of variety of meaningis expressed by tones. The alphabet is derived from the ancient Nagari, the common source of the alphabets of many of the Indian languages, but the characters themselves belong exclusively to the Burmese tongue, except that they have been adopted for the Shan and Karen languages. The alphabet is called thethem-bon-gyeeor great basket of learning, and it well deserves thename; for what with the 10 vowels, the 32 consonants, the vowel-consonants to the number of 10 Ã— 32, and a very numerous series of characters to express many combinations of letters, it really is a very great basketful indeed, and occupies 28 pages of a closely printed pamphlet with the characters alone.

One of the difficulties to a foreigner in picking up the spoken language is the Burmese custom of dropping the sound of the final consonants of syllables. This is not, as it is with some English people, a bad habit, but is sanctioned by the usage of the language. In the grammar of the language some interesting features appear. Thus in many verbs the intransitive is changed into the transitive by the mere aspiration of an initial consonant: askya-thee, to fall;khya-thee, to throw down, or cause to fall;loht-thee, to be free;hloht-thee, to set free. The adjective does not precede but follows the noun it qualifies. The accusative is followed by the verb that governs it.

Burmese abounds with honorific expressions. First of all is the ever-recurring ordinary honorific formdaw, placed after nouns and verbs, to indicate that the thing or action named has to do with some person out of the common order. The first personal pronoun has three distinct forms, so that a speaker is able, by choosing one or other of these three, in a word, as it were, to place himself on an eminence above, on an equality with, or in a position beneath the person he is addressing; a great convenience, surely. What could the framers of our own poor language have been thinking about, to neglect to secure for us such an obvious advantage as that?

The second personal pronoun is even richer, for it counts no less than six well-defined gradations of expression, not to mention several more supernumerary forms, that may be employed if the regular forms of the pronoun are not enough. By means of these the person addressed may be treated with veneration, gently flattered, addressed with easy familiarity, made to feel his relative littleness, scolded, or abused, as occasion may require. And all this variety of expression in the mere choice of the pronoun in the second person! What a language it must be in the mouth of a competent person!

Again, with regard to â€œYes,â€ our affirmative of assent, the Burmese can vary its form, by means of well-sanctioned idioms in constant use, from something equivalent to the American â€œThatâ€™s so,â€ through several more and more polite affirmatives, up to â€œWhat you say is appropriate, my Lord,â€ an expression reserved of course for the king, the monks, some respectable European, or Burman of distinction. Where such various expressions would sound very stilted in English, the Burmese idiom can give them as ordinary forms of politeness. Thus again, the ordinary man is said to â€œeatâ€; the monk â€œnourishes his body with the alms of the piousâ€; but the king tops them all, for he â€œascends to the lordly board.â€ It is asserted of a man when he dies merely that he has â€œchanged the bawÃ¢,â€i.e., left one state of existence and gone into another; but in the case of a monk we may safely go further and say, as the idiom does, that he has â€œreturned to the blissful seatsâ€; the king, when he dies, is politely said to have â€œascended to the village of thenatsâ€ (beings superior to men). These Oriental peculiarities of language and idiom are interesting and amusing, and the frequent discovery of them, in the course of his studies, does much to compensate the foreigner for the drudgery involved in learning the language thoroughly, provided he is not devoid of the sense of humour, and can appreciate them when he finds them.

But perhaps the chief oddity of the Burmese language to the foreigner is the use of numeral auxiliaries. In using numbers you make quite a business of it, by adding in the case of each of the things mentioned, a special term descriptive of the class of things to which they belong. It is on this wise: first, you name the things spoken of, then the number, and finally the appropriate numeral auxiliary. Thus if you wish to say â€œsix dogsâ€ you must put it in this form to be idiomatic, â€œdogs sixliving creatures.â€

Always to have to supply, on the spur of the moment, whilst speaking, the correct classification of the objects named in makinguse of numbers, seems to the foreigner a very needless and arbitrary demand, and so new to him that, until he gets accustomed to it, he is constantly liable to overlook it. The classification of things made in this way does not extend, however, beyond some twenty-one categories. In addition to those named there are things in a line, things in a circle, things long and straight, things nearly round or cubical, things which are used as tools, trees and plants (which class includes hair!), and some others. But the classification of things provided for by the use of these numeral auxiliaries is neither very scientific nor very complete, for the list is soon exhausted; and when you come to such things as chairs, bedsteads and a multitude of other things which come under none of the recognised classes of things, they are all slumped under the head of â€œindividual things,â€ which is disappointing after the hopes raised of a complete classification of all things.

Burmese literature is largely devoted to Buddhism. Of popular works the most common are theZats, stories of embryo Buddhas, and what they did in their different births, before they arrived at that state. Here is obviously much scope for fancy in tracing the buddings of their wisdom and glory, and all their miraculous adventures and deliverances, together with much about thenatsor spirits supposed to haunt the universe. Christian literature is miserably meagre as yet, and there is much scope and need for more. All Christian workers, and indeed all foreigners who aim at learning Burmese, are deeply indebted to Dr. Judson, the first missionary of the American Baptist Mission, for his excellent translation of the whole Bible, and for his English-Burmese and Burmese-English dictionaries, his Burmese grammar, and other minor works. To multitudes in England and America Dr. Judson is famous for what he suffered; but amongst those who know and can appreciate his literary work, that alone is sufficient to entitle him to an imperishable fame.

â€œTHE BUDDHIST MONASTERIES ARE FINE, SUBSTANTIAL ERECTIONS, MASSIVE, SPACIOUS AND VERY RICH IN DECORATION.â€

Although there are in Burma so many pagodas, monasteries and other religious buildings, which are fine, substantial erections, massive, spacious and very rich in decoration, the dwellings of the people are, as a rule, very poor in accommodation, and are of bamboo, the flimsiest of material, and specially liable to destructionby fire. The posts of the house are of teak, the floor is of bamboos, and raised from two to six feet from the ground, the walls are of bamboo matting not much thicker than stout brown paper, and the roof is of bamboo thatch. These houses, though so slightly made, are warm enough for the climate. The floor especially seems very frail to a stranger, made of half bamboos, round side upwards, and lashed together with strips of cane. It gives and sways under your feet as you walk over it in an alarming manner, but the bamboos, though they bend, do not easily break. The Burmans like that kind of a house. It is cool and airy. The floor shows a space between each bamboo, and those spaces are particularly convenient for an easy-going people. All kinds of miscellaneous things not required, including scraps and remnants of food, can be dropped through the floor, so that it requires no sweeping. The mighty host of ownerless, homeless, starving dogs that roam over the town can be safely trusted to find anything there is to eat, and they are not of dainty appetite. All cooking has to be done outside the house, either in a separate building, or more commonly in a little square hole dug in the ground for the purpose, to prevent, if possible, sparks being blown about by the high winds that prevail at certain seasons of the year.

Owing to the extremely inflammable nature of the buildings in Burma, fires are of frequent occurrence, and are exceedingly destructive. In addition to the ordinary risk from cooking fires and paraffin oil lamps, the people are exceedingly careless in handling fire, and they are all smokers. They smoke a kind of cigar made of chopped tobacco mixed with some light woody substance, and enclosed in the outer leaf of the maize cob, or some other leaf used for the same purpose, and these cigars drop sparks in all directions. The end of the hot, dry season, in April and May, when everything is like tinder, and when the high winds prevail, is the most destructive time for fires, and every year at that time they are of daily occurrence in Mandalay, and sometimes scores and sometimes hundreds of bamboo houses are swept away. During the four years I have lived in Mandalay I have known many large portions of the town destroyed time after time.

The most destructive fires that have occurred since the annexation took place on March 31st, 1892, and the following day. The first of these fires originated in 27th Street, near the centre of the town. Exceptionally high winds from the south carried the flames in a northerly direction. All the wooden and bamboo buildings in front of the fire were consumed in an incredibly short space of time. Very soon the flames reached the central telegraph office, a new Government building that cost about Â£2,000. The flames leaped across a very wide street, and destroyed the office. The fire burnt its way through the town due north for two miles, and ceased only when it had burnt itself out. There is a good fire-engine establishment since the British rule, but fire-engines are of no avail in a case like that.

The first great fire was still smouldering when, on the following day, another broke out in the eastern town. It spread in the same way from south to north about two miles. In the line of this fire, and extending the whole way, were a series of remarkably fine monastery buildings, including some of the finest in Burma, all built of teak, and covered with decorative carving, and two of them covered with gold leaf within and without. One of these monasteries was built by King Mindohn at a cost of 16 lakhs of rupees; the entire loss caused by this one fire alone is roughly estimated at 100 lakhs (say Â£600,000). The same day a third fire broke out in the north end of the town, and destroyed several hundreds of Burmese houses. This fire was caused by gross negligence, the sparks from a Burmese cigar igniting some Indian corn. When these fires occur the Burmans do not seem to concern themselves. They remove their household goods if they have time, but make no real efforts to stem the progress of the flames. Much valuable property is destroyed, but it is seldom any lives are lost.

All Eastern nations pay great attention to the rules relating to the degree of state and dignity such and such classes of the people may assume. Amongst the Hindus the pariahs and other low castes are most rigidly kept down, and the least sign of alteration for the better in their dress, houses, or circumstances renders them liable to the persecution of the higher castes. Ihave known in Ceylon amongst the Hindus prolonged struggles between certain castes, involving serious breaches of the peace, the point at issue being only thisâ€”whether a certain caste of people ought or ought not to be allowed to carry umbrellas at their weddings and on other special occasions. In the native kingdom of Travancore, a few years ago, serious riots took place because the women of a certain class of people known as the â€œslave caste,â€ having come under the influence of the Gospel, desired to dress themselves with something like decency, whereas the inexorable rule was that neither man nor woman of that caste was to clothe the body above the waist or below the knee.

In Burma, though there is no caste, the sumptuary laws were stringently carried out. The title â€œThootayâ€ (rich man) was enjoyed only under royal edict. For funerals five different degrees of rank were all minutely laid down, and the state and show must be accordingly. The umbrella question was regarded as a most vital and important one. In the matter of the use of that great emblem of dignity minute directions were issued and observed. Gilt umbrellas especially were only for the chosen few. The white umbrella no one must assume but the king and the Lord White Elephant. Under Burmese rule any one appearing in public under a white umbrella would have had to answer for it. Where in English we should say â€œthe throne,â€ or â€œthe crown,â€ as the emblem of royalty, in Burmese literature it would be â€œthe white umbrella and the palace.â€

I remember on one occasion unwittingly making what, in Burmese times, would have been a serious breach in my manners, and it shows how easy it is to do that in an Eastern country. It was at PagÃ¢n, a town on the Irrawaddy. Happening to be there one day when the Chief Commissioner of Burma, the representative of our Queen-Empress, was expected, I went down to the river bank, where many Burmans were assembled to see him, and do him honour as he landed from the steamer. The day was bright and the sun very hot, and as usual I put up an umbrella I always carried with me, of the ordinary English alpaca, but witha white cover, for additional protection from the sunâ€™s rays. I saw the Burmans looking and making remarks, but being inblissful forgetfulness that I was holding an umbrella at the time, I never thought it referred to me, until suddenly I remembered that there was I, in the presence of the representative of royalty, assuming the white umbrella, and, according to Burmese etiquette, guilty of something approaching to high treason! I hauled down my flagat once.

The royal titles of the King of Burma were perhaps the most pompous and pretentious of any monarchâ€”â€œHis most glorious and excellent Majesty, Lord of the Tshaddau, King of Elephants, Master of many White Elephants, Lord of the Mines of gold, silver, rubies, amber, and the noble serpentine, Sovereign of the empires of Thuna-paranta and Tampadipa, and other great empires and countries, and of all the Umbrella-wearing Chiefs, the Supporter of Religion, the Sun-descended Monarch, Arbiter of Life, and great King of Righteousness, King of Kings, and Possessor of Boundless Dominion and Supreme Wisdom.â€

As may be surmised from this lengthy and extravagant title that ancient doctrine known as the divine right of kings was held in Burma out and out, without the slightest qualification or limit. Every subject was the kingâ€™s born slave, with no legal right to any property. The king was the absolute master of the lives, the liberties, the property, and the very labour of his subjects. There was little or no private ownership of land; the land belonged to the king. The cultivators were merely the kingâ€™s tenants, raising produce for his benefit, he graciously allowing them to have some of the produce for their own support.

But there is a principle of compensation running through all human affairs, and even absolute monarchs cannot have things all their own way; and a throne is not always a bed of roses. The more grinding the despotism the greater the danger of revolution. Hence the only real limit to the power of the king was his dread of assassination, and this was a very real and well-grounded fear, especially in the case of a ruler like King Theebaw, with a faulty title and with no natural ability for wielding power. The King of Burma was little better than a prisoner in his own spacious palace and grounds, for he could scarcely ever leave them, for fear of the palace, and the arsenal close by, being seizedin his absence by some pretender to the throne. If that should happen there was small chance of his recovering them. The chief cause of the kingâ€™s insecurity was the unbridled polygamy of the Burmese court. This resulted in crowds of queens, princes and princesses, all possible claimants to the throne, and it sometimes happened, as in the case of King Theebaw, that there was no rest for him till most of them were put to death.

The Burmese Government was throughout characterised by oppression and misrule. No fixed salaries were paid to officials, but princes, ministers, queens, concubines and favourites were supported by the grant of a province, and known by the title of â€œMyo-tsaâ€ (province-eater), a title which only too aptly indicated its own meaning. It was the policy of the Myo-tsa to squeeze as much revenue as he could out of the people, in order to pay the required amount at Mandalay andto pay himself. Subordinate to the province-eater came the functionaries in charge of circles of villages, and then of the individual villages; and in each case it was the same thing, all intent on making as much as they could out of it. This was with regard to the tax levied on each family or house. The same primitive and essentially vicious methods applied to the other items of taxationâ€”viz., that on produce, fees on law cases, and occasionally, extraordinary contributions to Government for special needsâ€”gave rise to the same kind of fleecing of the people. Towards the end of King Theebawâ€™s reign things grew worse and worse. The sale of monopolies became very common, and state lotteries for the benefit of the revenue did great harm amongst a people naturally fond of gambling. When at last Burmese rule came to an end it was a clearing away of much that was rotten and hopelessly out of date, and on the whole it was a great blessing to the people to substitute for it British rule.

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