594 



NATURE 



{Oct. 19, 1882 



decay in the sophistry by which 1 hey are kept in form 

 while violate! in reality. Buddhists who lead the ascetic 

 life are bound to support themselves by carrying round 

 the almsbowl from house to house, not asking for any- 

 thing, nor going to the doors of the rich rather than the 

 poor, but taking what is given, and eating with loathing 

 so much as is necessary to prevent death. The alms- 

 bowl is still the sign of the holy man, and he carries it 

 round, but it is only in the severest monasteries that he 

 really eats the indiscriminate bits of fish and flesh and 

 hand fuls of rice and mango. The mess generally goes 

 to the little boy-scholars, and after them to the crows 

 and pariah dogs, while the monks set to on a comfortable 

 hot breakfast in the monastery. With like ingenuity the 

 ascetic will sit with his back to the sun, so that he does 

 not know when it is afternoon, and can take another meal 

 without breaking the law ; while some, mindful of the law 

 not to touch money, will wrap their hands in a cloth and 

 then take it. Among the casuistic points which the student 

 of morals finds most curious in theoretical and practical 

 Buddhism is that alluded to already, how in a religion 

 where the taking of life is one of the five great sins, evn 

 the monks receive fish and meat in their almsbowls, and 

 every village is pervaded by the smell of nga-pee, which 

 seems to go far beyond that of anchovy sauce, its nearest 

 English correlative. The answer is, that if necessity 

 drives a man to the wicked life of killing animals, he will 

 pay the penalty in ages of misery in future states, but he 

 who eats the meat is no way responsible. Even the 

 fisherman finds his way out of the loose-meshed moral 

 net : — 



" Fishermen are promised terrible punishments in a 

 future life for the number of lives they take, but popular 

 sympathy finds a loophole of escape for them. They do 

 not actually kill the fish. These are merely put out on 

 the bank to dry after their long soaking in the river, and 

 if they are foolish and ill-judged enough to die while 

 undergoing the process, it is their own fault." 



The passage of which this is part (vol. i. p. 341) may 

 be recognised as coming from Prof. Adolf Bastian's 

 '' Reisen in Bimia," which forms the second volume of 

 his " Voelker des Oestlichen Asien."' Cf this important 

 book, which has not been translated into English, the 

 present author has in several places made use. 



It is not only through Buddhism that Hindu influence 

 has acted on Burma; indeed in one way or another, three- 

 fourths of its civilisation seems to have been borrowed 

 from India. This accounts for various popular supersti- 

 tions, familiar in Europe as belonging to the Aryan 

 nations, re-appearing among this Mongoloid race of 

 South-Eastern Asia. Thus as the ordeal by water has in 

 India the authority of the Code of Manu, it is not sur- 

 prising that ducking witches is a mode of trial familiar 

 to the Burmese ; our officials now prohibit it in British 

 territory, possibly not telling the natives how lately we 

 did it ourselves. Another superstition here noticed, is 

 that a Burmese prizes a child's caul as much as an English 

 sailor does. The one may expect by its means to gain the 

 favour of some great man, while the other carries it to 

 save him from drowning ; but these are only particular 

 ways in which the mysterious envelope exerts its general 

 power of giving protection or luck. It would be interesting 

 to learn whether the Burmese have the idea of its being 

 the abode of the child's soul or guardian spirit, which 



may be the source of the whole group of beliefs. The 

 system of magic, mostly astrology, which stultifies so 

 much of the life of the Burmese, seems almost entirely 

 Hindu, in fart the court astrologers are a caste of 

 Brahmans. One of their chief proceedings is to connect 

 the days of the week in all sorts of wajs with men's lives 

 The Hindus learnt the week and its seven planet-named 

 days through the Greek-Roman astrologers, perhaps not 

 much earlier than our ancestors did, but « hile among us its 

 astrological significance only survives in such folklore 

 rhymes as " Monday's child is fair of face,'' &c, in Burma 

 it regulates even the children's names. The letters of the 

 alphabet are grouped in connection with the planets and 

 thtir days, so that for instance a child born on Sunday 

 must have a name beginning with a vowel, as Moung 

 Ohn (Mr. Cocoanut), Ma Eh (Miss Cold), or Oo Oh (Old 

 Pot). Thus people's names not only give the magician 

 information as to their planets, characters, and fates, but 

 they even determine what couples may not marry, for 

 instance, a Fridays daughter must not marry a Monday's 

 son, for their life would be short. Thus, too, their names 

 will direct the doctor how to diet them «hen sick, as for 

 example the Sunday-born persons whose names are given 

 above would have to avoid food beginning with a vowel, 

 as eggs (00) or cocoa-nuts {oh it). 



It is not our province to discuss the chapters relating 

 to practical politics, such as the rice-trade, the annexation- 

 question, or even the great shoe-question which weighs 

 so heavily on the local diplomatic mind. But two more 

 subjects may be mentioned as interesting from the 

 anthropologic 1 point of view. Ore is the recognition of 

 dancing as a direct expression of emotion (vol. ii. chap. i.). 



" If a great man wants dancing he hires people to do it 

 for him. If indeed he becomes greatly excited at a boat 

 race, a buffalo fight, or a religious procession on its way 

 through the town to the pagoda, he may tuck up his pasoh 

 tightly round his thighs and caper away till his bare legs 

 lire, but he does c o ordinarily with a ludicrously solemn 

 aspect, as if the performance were a part of his official 

 duties, and to be got through with as much stately dignity 

 as the dispensing of justice from the magisterial bench. 

 It is a concession to the excitability of his nature, and he 

 would be very much offended if next day, when he had 

 calmed down to his ordinary composed demeanour, an 

 Englishman were to compliment him on the agility he 

 displayed, or the complexity of his evolutions on the 

 previous day." 



The other subject to be referred to is tattooing, which 

 is a fine art in Burma as elsewhere in this part of Asia. 

 A lad does not consider himself a man till he has been 

 tattooed from waist to knees with what looks like a pair 

 of drawers embroidered blue with elephants, apes, and 

 tigers. The operation is so painful that opium is usually 

 taken to deaden the pain. The instrument is a steel 

 point, split to hold the lampblack, this pricker being fitted 

 in a weighted holder two feet long. Besides these figures 

 done for decoration, charm figures and magic squares are 

 pricked in for love-charms, or to preserve from snake-bite 

 or drowning. It is the more interesting to read these 

 details, as there has for some time been an extraordinary 

 specimen of Burmese tattooing to be seen in England, 

 namely, the "Tattooed Man," who was some while 

 since exhibited at the Westminster Aquarium, and who is 

 an Albanian Suliot named Georgios Konstantinos. Setting 

 aside his mostly fictitious story of having been tattooed 



