10 The Remains at Pagan. [No. 1. 



inese of a very neat and uniform type, as indeed most of the 

 Burmese inscriptions are, and very much superior in execution to 

 what our lapidary inscriptions were a century ago. 



In the precincts of the Ananda we entered a large group of 

 monastic buildings, forming a street of some length. These in 

 beauty of detail and combination, were admirable. The wood 

 carving was rich and effective beyond description ; photography 

 only could do it justice. 



Great fancy was displayed in the fantastic figures of warriors, 

 dancers, Nats (spirits) and Bilus (ogres,) in high relief, that filled 

 the angles and nuclei of the sculptured surfaces. The fretted 

 pinnacles of the ridge ornaments were topped with birds cut in 

 profile, in every attitude of sleeping, pecking, stalking, or taking 

 wing. With the permission of a venerable and toothless poongyee we 

 looked into a chamber which was a perfect museum of quaint and 

 rich gilt carving, in small shrines, book chests, &c, not unlike the 

 omnium gatherum of a Chinese Josshouse. One chamber contain- 

 ed, among other things, a neat model of a wooden monastery with 

 its appropriate carving. 



The most elaborate of these religious buildings is stated to have 

 been built only a few years ago by a man of Te-nan-gyoung ; 

 probably some millionnaire of the oil trade.* 



In the same monastic street a brick building, in the external 

 form of a Kyoung, contains a corridor entirely covered with rude 

 paintings on the plaster. These are all, Major Phayre informs me, 

 representations of Jats or passages in the life of Gautama in various 

 periods of pre-existence. The greater part of the scenes appeared 

 to depict the amusements and employments of ordinary life, such 

 as feasting, hunting, weaving, looking at plays, being shampooed, 

 and the like. The persons represented, like the marionnettes in 

 the puppet plays, w T ere all exhibited with pure white complexions. 

 By a curious self-delusion, the Burmans would seem to claim that 



Indian alphabets, is a necessary result of the practice of writing on palm leaves 

 with a style. Certain of the sacred books which, are written in the square cha- 

 racter are inscribed with a black gum (the thit-see) used as ink, 

 * Photographed by Capt. Tripe. 



