THE SHWEDAGON PAGODA 95 



the whole immemorial drama of the unchanging East : 

 Lazarus with his bowl, and the dogs licking his 

 sores : Dives, with fair, round belly lined with ghee : 

 Mary Magdalene tripping along unabashed, with a 

 rose for her favourite shrine : John the Baptist and 

 Elijah the Tishbite, with matted hair and hollow eye 

 and scanty raiment, straight from preaching and fast- 

 ing in the wilderness : besides all the seven stages of 

 the ordinary man. At last you reach the sacred 

 acropolis, in the centre of which, towering above a 

 splendid chaos of little shrines, is the great pagoda 

 itself — a solid pinnacle of more than 300 feet, part 

 pyramid part spire in idea, glittering with a coat of 

 gold, and crowned by a jewelled hti or pontifical 

 umbrella : all round the hti are bells, so that when 

 the wind blows it makes a mysterious music. Eight 

 of Gautama Buddha's hairs are said to be embedded 

 in this pagoda. 



More interesting than the great pagoda are the 

 little pagodas that cluster in scores round its base. 

 Their roofs are a perfect wonder of the woodcarver's 

 art, and their inner colouring of crimson and gold has 

 a very majestic effect. Most of them contain colossal 

 images, in rows and phalanxes, of the Enlightened One 

 sitting cross-legged in a mysterious brown study. One 

 gazes spellbound at these bland, monotonous embodi- 

 ments of the supreme indifference — ra aSia(popa, Some 

 of these little pagodas are filled by gigantic bells, 



