232 BULLETIN 139^ UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



The Burmese common lamp is shallow black clay chatty. This 

 lamp plays an important part in the prettiest of the numerous Bur- 

 mese feasts, the "Feast of Lights." The feast occurs at the close of 

 Burmese Lent and commemorates the time when Gautama was en- 

 lightened. Hundreds of thousands of these little chatties are filled 

 with coconut oil and bits of wick are placed in them. They are then 

 aiTanged in rows on every veranda, railing, and every place where 

 one can be set. Even the pagodas are outlined and their spirals out- 

 lined by the unrivaled whiteness of these little lights. They far 

 excel in beauty the electrical displays of which we are so proud. ^^ 



In the Shan States the ordinary lamp is a glazed pottery saucer 

 not modified for a wick. They are notched on the edge for orna- 

 ment, and the foot is usually unglazed. 



In Laos a flat vessel or saucer for holding the pork fat or oil, hav- 

 ing a bit of cotton wick, furnishes the only artifical light. ^^ "The 

 reception room of the prince is brilliantly illuminated with innumer- 

 able little coconut-oil lamps." 



TIBET 



The Tibetan butter lamp is a brass saucer forming part of a stand. 

 It is essentially the simple Chinese common lamp, without a definite 

 place for the wick. Other elaborate metal lamps with wick grooves 

 and evidently of Indian extraction are found in the temples, and 

 many have been brought out of the country in recent years. 



CHINA 



Mr. Rockhill says: "A few miles beyond Pin Chou we passed 

 through a small village at the foot of a high sandstone cliff, far up 

 in the face of which a number of little temples had been excavated; 

 access is gained to them by ladders hanging down the rock. All 

 around the temples little niches have been cut in the cliff, and in 

 these the people light small lamps so numerous that the whole sur- 

 face of the rock has become blackened by the smoke.^*' 



The lamp in general use in China is a shallow saucer of pottery or 

 metal in which nut or bean or other oil is burnt. The wick is some- 

 times coiled, as in the candle, and more frequently laid straight. 

 Sometimes the wick is drawn through a hole in the bottom of a tube 

 formed in the bottom of an earthenware saucer. The simple saucer 

 lamp is installed in many ways, in lanterns, on stands, in pierced 

 jars, etc. Mounted on a curious bamboo frame it did service as a 

 street lamp. A lamp consisting of a metal tube on a rod like a sky- 

 rocket is a Chinese illuminating device. Newer lamps, evidently 

 accultural, have long curving spouts, and the opium-smoker's lamp 



» Infonnation by Mrs. U. B. White. 



" Siam and Laos. Presbyterian Board Philadelphia, 1884, p. 440, 30. 



so W. W. Eockhill. The Land of the Lamas, New York, 1891, p. 26. 



