VI.] THE SOUTHERN MONGOLS. 



for a few months or weeks or days. But for the time being they 

 must renounce " the world, the flesh and the devil," and must 

 play the mendicant, make the round of the village at least once 

 with the begging-bowl hung round their neck in company with 

 the regular members of the community. They thus become 

 initiated, and it becomes no longer possible for the confraternity 

 to impose either on the rulers or on the ruled. " Teaching is all 

 that the brethren of the order do for the people. They have no 

 spiritual powers whatever. They simply become members of a 

 holy society that they may observe the precepts of the Master 

 more perfectly, and all they do for the alms lavished on them by 

 the pious laity is to instruct the children in reading, writing, and 

 the rudiments of religion 1 ." 



How purely formal are the ceremonial rites, and how empty 

 the devotion, prayers, and offerings even at the most venerated 

 shrines appears from the fact that the so-called fabulous treasures 

 of the renowned temple of Mingtin were found on inquiry to be 

 almost worthless and their " gold and silver " images of base 

 metal. 



Nor is the personal freedom here spoken of confined to 

 the men. In no other part of the world do the Position of 

 women enjoy a larger measure of independent 

 action than in Burma, with the result that they are acknowledged 

 to be far more virtuous, thrifty, and intelligent than those of all 

 the surrounding lands. Their capacity for business and petty 

 dealings is rivalled only by their Gallic sisters; and Mr H. S. 

 Hallett tells us that in every town and village " you will see 

 damsels squatted on- the floor of the verandah with diminutive, or 

 sometimes large, stalls in front of them, covered with vegetables, 

 fruit, betel-nut, cigars and other articles. However numerous 

 they may be, the price of everything is known to them ; and such 

 is their idea of probity, that pilfering is quite unknown amongst 

 them. They are entirely trusted by their parents from their 

 earliest years ; even when they blossom into young women, 

 chaperons are never a necessity ; yet immorality is far less 

 customary amongst them, I am led to believe, than in any 

 country in Europe' 2 ." 



1 Op. cit. p. uS. - Amongst the Shans, etc., 1885, p. 233. 



