The Soul of a People Part 10

FESTIVALS

'The law is sweet, filling the soul with joy.'

_Saying of the Buddha._

The three months of the rains, from the full moon of July to the full moon of October, is the Buddhist Lent. It was during these months that the Buddha would retire to some monastery and cease from travelling and teaching for a time. The custom was far older even than that--so old that we do not know how it arose. Its origin is lost in the mists of far-away time. But whatever the beginning may have been, it fits in very well with the habits of the people; for in the rains travelling is not easy. The roads are very bad, covered even with water, often deep in mud; and the rest-houses, with open sides, are not very comfortable with the rain drifting in. Even if there were no custom of Lent, there would be but little travelling then. People would stay at home, both because of the discomfort of moving, and because there is much work then at the village. For this is the time to plough, this is the time to sow; on the villagers' exertions in these months depends all their maintenance for the rest of the year. Every man, every woman, every child, has hard work of some kind or another.

What with the difficulties of travelling, what with the work there is to do, and what with the custom of Lent, everyone stays at home. It is the time for prayer, for fasting, for improving the soul. Many men during these months will live even as the monks live, will eat but before mid-day, will abstain from tobacco. There are no plays during Lent, and there are no marriages. It is the time for preparing the land for the crop; it is the time for preparing the soul for eternity. The congregations on the Sundays will be far greater at this time than at any other; there will be more thought of the serious things of life.

It is a very long Lent--three months; but with the full moon of October comes the end. The rains then are over; the great black bank of clouds that walled up all the south so long is gone. The south wind has died away, and the light, fresh north wind is coming down the river. The roads are drying up, the work in the fields is over for a time, awaiting the ripening of the grain. The damp has gone out of the air, and it is very clear. You can see once more the purple mountains that you have missed so long; there is a new feeling in the wind, a laughter in the sunshine, a flush of blossom along the fields like the awakening of a new joy. The rains are gone and the cool weather is coming; Lent is over and gladness is returned; the crop has been sown, and soon will come the reaping. And so at this full moon of October is the great feast of the year. There are other festivals: of the New Year, in March, with its water-throwing; of each great paG.o.da at its appointed time; but of all, the festival at the end of Lent is the greatest.

Wherever there are great paG.o.das the people will come in from far and near for the feast. There are many great paG.o.das in Burma; there is the Arakan paG.o.da in Mandalay, and there was the Incomparable paG.o.da, which has been burnt; there are great paG.o.das at Pegu, at Prome, at many other places; but perhaps the greatest of all is the Shwe Dagon at Rangoon.

You see it from far away as you come up the river, steaming in from the open sea, a great tongue of flame before you. It stands on a small conical hill just behind the city of Rangoon, about two miles away from the wharves and shipping in the busy river. The hill has been levelled on the top and paved into a wide platform, to which you ascend by a flight of many steps from the gate below, where stand the dragons. This entrance-way is all roofed over, and the pillars and the ceiling are red and painted. Here it was that much fighting took place in the early wars, in 1852 especially, and many men, English and Burmese, were killed in storming and defending this strong place. For it had been made a very strong place, this holy place of him who taught that peace was the only good, and the defences round about it are standing still. Upon the top of this hill, the flat paved top, stands the paG.o.da, a great solid tapering cone over three hundred feet high, ending in an iron fretwork spire that glitters with gold and jewels; and the whole paG.o.da is covered with gold--pure leaf-gold. Down below it is being always renewed by the pious offerings of those who come to pray and spread a little gold-leaf on it; but every now and then it is all regilt, from the top, far away above you, to the golden lions that guard its base. It is a most wonderful sight, this great golden cone, in that marvellous sunlight that bathes its sides like a golden sea. It seems to shake and tremble in the light like a fire. And all about the platform, edging it ere it falls away below, are little shrines, marvels of carven woodwork and red lacquer. They have tapering roofs, one above another, till they, too, end in a golden spire full of little bells with tongues. As the wind blows the tongues move to and fro, and the air is full of music, so faint, so clear, like 'silver stir of strings in hollow sh.e.l.ls.'

In most of these shrines there are statues of the great teacher, cut in white alabaster, glimmering whitely in the l.u.s.trous shadows there within; and in one shrine is the great bell. Long ago we tried to take this great bell; we tried to send it home as a war trophy, this bell stolen from their sacred place, but we failed. As it was being put on board a ship, it slipped and fell into the river into the mud, where the fierce tides are ever coming and going. And when all the efforts of our engineers to raise it had failed, the Burmese asked: 'The bell, our bell, is there in the water. You cannot get it up. You have tried and you have failed. If we can get it up, may we have it back to hang in our paG.o.da as our own again?' And they were told, with a laugh, perhaps, that they might; and so they raised it up again, the river giving back to them what it had refused to us, and they took and hung it where it used to be. There it is now, and you may hear it when you go, giving out a long, deep note, the beat of the paG.o.da's heart.

There are many trees, too, about the paG.o.da platform--so many, that seen far off you can only see the trees and the paG.o.da towering above them.

Have not trees been always sacred things? Have not all religions been glad to give their fanes the glory and majesty of great trees?

You may look from the paG.o.da platform over the whole country, over the city and the river and the straight streets; and on the other side you may see the long white lakes and little hills covered with trees. It is a very beautiful place, this paG.o.da, and it is steeped in an odour of holiness, the perfume of the thousand thousand prayers that have been prayed there, of the thousand thousand holy thoughts that have been thought there.

The paG.o.da platform is always full of people kneeling, saying over and over the great precepts of their faith, trying to bring into their hearts the meaning of the teaching of him of whom this wonderful paG.o.da represents the tomb. There are always monks there pa.s.sing to and fro, or standing leaning on the pillars of the shrines; there are always a crowd of people climbing up and down the long steps that lead from the road below. It is a place I always go to when I am in Rangoon; for, besides its beauty, there are the people; and if you go and stand near where the stairway reaches the platform you will see the people come up. They come up singly, in twos, in groups. First a nun, perhaps, walking very softly, clad in her white dress with her beads about her neck, and there in a corner by a little shrine she will spread a cloth upon the hard stones and kneel and bow her face to the great paG.o.da. Then she will repeat, 'Sorrow, misery, trouble,' over and over again, running her beads through her fingers, repeating the words in the hope that in the end she may understand whither they should lead her. 'Sorrow, misery, trouble'--ah! surely she must know what they mean, or she would not be a nun. And then comes a young man, and after a reverence to the paG.o.da he goes wandering round, looking for someone, maybe; and then comes an old man with his son. They stop at the little stalls on the stairs, and they have bought there each a candle. The old man has a plain taper, but the little lad must have one with his emblem on it. Each day has its own sign, a tiger for Monday, and so on, and the lad buys a candle like a little rat, for his birthday is Friday, and the father and son go on to the platform. There they kneel down side by side, the old man and the little chubby lad, and they, too, say that all is misery and delusion.

Presently they rise and advance to the paG.o.da's golden base, and put their candles thereon and light them. This side of the paG.o.da is in shadow now, and so you can see the lights of the candles as little stars.

And then come three girls, sisters, perhaps, all so prettily dressed, with meek eyes, and they, too, buy candles; they, too, kneel and make their devotions, for long, so long, that you wonder if anything has happened, if there has been any trouble that has brought them thus in the sunset to the remembrance of religion. But at last they rise, and they light their little candles near by where the old man and the boy have lit theirs, and then they go away. They are so sad, they keep their faces so turned upon the ground, that you fear there has been something, some trouble come upon them. You feel so sorry for them, you would like to ask them what it all is; you would like to help them if you could.

But you can do nothing. They go away down the steps, and you hear the nun repeating always, 'Sorrow, misery, trouble.'

So they come and go.

But on the festival days at the end of Lent it is far more wonderful.

Then for units there are tens, for tens there are hundreds--all come to do reverence to the great teacher at this his great holy place. There is no especial ceremony, no great service, such as we are accustomed to on our festivals. Only there will be many offerings; there will be a procession, maybe, with offerings to the paG.o.da, with offerings to the monks; there will be much gold-leaf spread upon the paG.o.da sides; there will be many people kneeling there--that is all. For, you see, Buddhism is not an affair of a community, but of each man's own heart.

To see the great paG.o.da on the festival days is one of the sights of the world. There are a great crowd of people coming and going, climbing up the steps. There are all sorts of people, rich and poor, old and young.

Old men there are, climbing wearily up these steps that are so steep, steps that lead towards the Great Peace; and there are old women, too--many of them.

Young men will be there, walking briskly up, laughing and talking to each other, very happy, very merry, glad to see each other, to see so many people, calling pleasant greetings to their friends as they pa.s.s.

They are all so gaily dressed, with beautiful silks and white jackets and gay satin head-cloths, tied with a little end sticking up as a plume.

And the girls, how shall I describe them, so sweet they are, so pretty in their fresh dresses, with downcast eyes of modesty, tempered with little side-glances. They laugh, too, as they go, and they talk, never forgetting the sacredness of the place, never forgetting the reverences due, kneeling always first as they come up to the great paG.o.da, but being of good courage, happy and contented. There are children, too, numbers and numbers of them, walking along, with their little hands clasping so tightly some bigger ones, very fearful lest they should be lost. They are as gay as b.u.t.terflies in their dress, but their looks are very solemn. There is no solemnity like that of a little child; it takes all the world so very, very seriously, walking along with great eyes of wonder at all it sees about it.

They are all well dressed who come here; on a festival day even the poor can be dressed well. Pinks and reds are the prevailing colours, in checks, in stripes, mixed usually with white. These colours go best with their brown skins, and they are fondest of them. But there are other colours, too: there is silver and green embroidery, and there are shot-silks in purple and orange, and there is dark blue. All the jackets, or nearly all the jackets, are white with wide sleeves, showing the arm nearly up to the elbow. Each man has his turban very gay, while each girl has a bright handkerchief which she drapes as she likes upon her arm, or carries in her hand. Such a blaze of colour would not look well with us. Under our dull skies and with our sober lights it would be too bright; but here it is not so. Everything is tempered by the sun; it is so brilliant, this sunlight, such a golden flood pouring down and bathing the whole world, that these colours are only in keeping. Before them is the gold paG.o.da, and about them the red lacquer and dark-brown carving of the shrines.

You hear voices like the murmur of a summer sea, rising and falling, full of laughter low and sweet, and above is the music of the fairy bells.

Everything is in keeping--the shining paG.o.da and the gaily-dressed people, their voices and the bells, even the great bell far beyond, and all are so happy.

The feast lasts for seven days; but of these there are three that are greater, and of these, one, the day of the full moon, is the greatest of all. On that day the offerings will be most numerous, the crowd densest.

Down below the paG.o.da are many temporary stalls built, where you can buy all sorts of fairings, from a baby's jointed doll to a new silk dress; and there are restaurants where you may obtain refreshments; for the paG.o.da is some way from the streets of the city, and on festival days refreshments are much wanted.

These stalls are always crowded with people buying and selling, or looking anxiously at the many pretty wares, unable, perhaps, to buy. The refreshments are usually very simple--rice and curry for supper, and for little refreshments between whiles there are sugar-cakes and vermicelli, and other little cates.

The crowd going up and down the steps is like a gorgeous-coloured flood, crested with white foam, flowing between the dragons of the gate; and on the platform the crowd is thicker than ever. All day the festival goes on--the praying, the offering of gifts, the burning of little candles before the shrines--until the sun sets across the open country far beyond in gold and crimson glory. But even then there is no pause, no darkness, for hardly has the sun's last bright shaft faded from the paG.o.da spire far above, while his streamers are still bright across the west, than there comes in the east a new radiance, so soft, so wonderful, it seems more beautiful than the dying day. Across the misty fields the moon is rising; first a crimson globe hung low among the trees, but rising fast, and as it rises growing whiter. Its light comes flooding down upon the earth, pure silver with very black shadows. Then the night breeze begins to blow, very softly, very gently, and the trees give out their odour to the night, which woos them so much more sweetly than the day, till the air is heavy with incense.

Behold, the paG.o.da has started into a new glory, for it is all hung about with little lamps, myriads of tiny cressets, and the facades of the shrines are lit up, too. The lamps are put in long rows or in circles, to fit the places they adorn. They are little earthenware jars full of cocoanut-oil, with a lip where is the wick. They burn very redly, and throw a red light about the platform, breaking the shadows that the moonlight throws and staining its whiteness.

In the streets, too, there are lamps--the houses are lined with them--and there are little paG.o.das and ships curiously designed in flame.

All the people come out to see the illuminations, just as they do with us at Christmas to see the shop-windows, and the streets are crowded with people going to and fro, laughing and talking. And there are dramatic entertainments going on, dances and marionette shows, all in the open air. The people are all so happy, they take their pleasure so pleasantly, that it is a delight to see them. You cannot help but be happy, too. The men joke and laugh, and you laugh, too; the children smile at you as they pa.s.s, and you must smile, too; can you help it? And to see the girls makes the heart glad within you. There is an infection from the good temper and the gaiety about you that is irresistible, even if you should want to resist it.

The festival goes on till very late. The moon is so bright that you forget how late it is, and only remember how beautiful it is all around.

You are very loath to leave it, and so it is not till the moon itself is falling low down in the same path whither the sun went before her, it is not till the lamps are dying one by one and the children are yawning very sleepily, that the crowd disperses and the paG.o.da is at rest.

Such is a great feast at a great paG.o.da.

But whenever I think of a great feast, whenever the growing autumn moon tells me that the end of Lent is drawing nigh, it is not the great feast of the Shwe Dagon, nor of any other famous paG.o.da that comes into my mind, but something far different.

It was on a frontier long ago that there was the festival that I remember so well. The country there was very far away from all the big towns; the people were not civilized as those of Mandalay or of Rangoon; the paG.o.da was a very small one. There was no gilding upon it at all, and no shrines were about it; it stood alone, just a little white plastered paG.o.da, with a few trees near it, on a bare rice-field. There were a few villages about, dotted here and there in the swamp, and the people of these were all that came to our festival.

For long before the villages were preparing for it, saving a little money here, doing a little extra work there, so that they might be able to have presents ready for the monks, so that they might be able to subscribe to the lights, so that they would have a good dress in which they might appear.

The men did a little more work at the fields, bamboo-cutting in the forest, making baskets in the evening, and the women wove. All had to work very hard to have even a little margin; for there, although food--plain rice--was very cheap, all other things were very expensive.

It was so far to bring them, and the roads were so bad. I remember that the only European things to be bought there then were matches and tinned milk, and copper money was not known. You paid a rupee, and took the change in rice or other commodities.

The excitement of the great day of the full moon began in the morning, about ten o'clock, with the offerings to the monks. Outside the village gate there was a piece of straight road, dry and open, and on each side of this, in rows, were the people with their gifts; mostly they were eatables. You see that it is very difficult to find any variety of things to give a monk; he is very strictly limited in the things he is allowed to receive. Garments, yellow garments, curtains to part.i.tion off corners of the monasteries and keep away the draughts, sacred books and eatables--that is nearly all. But eatables allow a very wide range. A monk may accept and eat any food--not drink, of course--provided he eat but the one big meal a day before noon; and so most of the offerings were eatables. Each donor knelt there upon the road with his or her offerings in a tray in front. There was rice cooked in all sorts of shapes, ordinary rice for eating with curry, and the sweet purple rice, cooked in bamboos and coming out in sticks. There were vegetables, too, of very many kinds, and sugar and cakes and oil and honey, and many other such things. There were a few, very few, books, for they are very hard to get, being all in ma.n.u.script; and there were one or two tapestry curtains; but there were heaps of flowers. I remember there was one girl whose whole offering was a few orchid sprays, and a little, very little, heap of common rice. She was so poor; her father and mother were dead, and she was not married. It was all she could give. She sat behind her little offering, as did all the donors. And my gift? Well, although an English official, I was not then very much richer than the people about me, so my gift must be small, too--a tin of biscuits, a tin or two of jam, a new pair of scissors. I did not sit behind them myself, but gave them to the headman to put with his offerings; for the monks were old friends of mine. Did I not live in one of their monasteries for over two months when we first came and camped there with a cavalry squadron?

And if there is any merit in such little charity, as the Burmese say there is, why should I not gain it, too? The monks said my present was best of all, because it was so uncommon; and the biscuits, they said, though they did not taste of much while you were eating them, had a very pleasant after-taste that lasted a long time. They were like charity, maybe: that has a pleasant after-taste, too, they tell me.

When all the presents, with the donors behind them, dressed all in their best, were ready, the monks came. There were four monasteries near by, and the monks, perhaps in all thirty, old and young, monks and novices, came in one long procession, walking very slowly, with downcast eyes, between the rows of gifts and givers. They did not look at them at all.

It is not proper for a monk to notice the gifts he receives; but schoolboys who came along behind attending on them, they saw and made remarks. Perhaps they saw the chance of some overflow of these good things coming their way. 'See,' one nudged the other; 'honey--what a lot! I can smell it, can't you?' And, '_My mother!_ what a lot of sweet rice. Who gave that? Oh, I see, old U Hman.' 'I wonder what's in that tin box?' remarked one as he pa.s.sed my biscuits. 'I hope it's coming to our monastery, any way.'

Thus the monks pa.s.sed, paying no sort of attention, while the people knelt to them; and when the procession reached the end of the line of offerings, it went on without stopping, across the fields, the monks of each monastery going to their own place; and the givers of presents rose up and followed them, each carrying his or her gifts. And so they went across the fields till each little procession was lost to sight.

That was all the ceremony for the day, but at dusk the illuminations began. The little paG.o.da in the fields was lighted up nearly to its top with concentric rings of lamps till it blazed like a pyramid of flame, seen far across the night. All the people came there, and placed little offerings of flowers at the foot of the paG.o.da, or added each his candle to the big illumination.

The house of the headman of the village was lit up with a few rows of lamps, and all the monasteries, too, were lit. There were no restaurants--everyone was at home, you see--but there were one or two little stalls, at which you could buy a cheroot, or even perhaps a cup of vermicelli; and there was a dance. It was only the village girls who had been taught, partly by their own mothers, partly by an old man, who knew something of the business. They did not dance very well, perhaps; they were none of them very beautiful; but what matter? We knew them all; they were our neighbours, the kinswomen of half the village; everyone liked to see them dance, to hear them sing; they were all young, and are not all young girls pretty? And amongst the audience were there not the girls' relations, their sisters, their lovers? would not that alone make the girls dance well, make the audience enthusiastic?

And so, what with the illuminations, and the chat and laughter of friends, and the dance, we kept it up till very late; and we all went to bed happy and well pleased with each other, well pleased with ourselves.

Can you imagine a more successful end than that?

To write about these festivals is so pleasant, it brings back so many delightful memories, that I could go on writing for long and long. But there is no use in doing so, as they are all very much alike, with little local differences depending on the enterprise of the inhabitants and the situation of the place. There might be boat-races, perhaps, on a festival day, or pony-races, or boxing. I have seen all these, if not at the festival at the end of Lent, at other festivals. I remember once I was going up the river on a festival night by the full moon, and we saw point after point crowned with lights upon the paG.o.das; and as we came near the great city we saw a new glory; for there was a boat anch.o.r.ed in mid-stream, and from this boat there dropped a stream of fire; myriads of little lamps burned on tiny rafts that drifted down the river in a golden band. There were every now and then bigger rafts, with figures made in light--boats and paG.o.das and monasteries. The lights heaved with the long swell of the great river, and bent to and fro like a great snake following the tides, until at length they died far away into the night.

I do not know what is the meaning of all these lights; I do not know that they have any inner meaning, only that the people are very glad, only that they greatly honour the great teacher who died so long ago, only that they are very fond of light and colour and laughter and all beautiful things.

But although these festivals often become also fairs, although they are the great centres for amus.e.m.e.nt, although the people look to them as their great pleasure of the year, it must not be forgotten that they are essentially religious feasts, holy days. Though there be no great ceremony of prayer, or of thanksgiving, no public joining in any religious ceremony, save, perhaps, the giving of alms to the monks, yet religion is the heart and soul of them. Their centre is the paG.o.da, their meaning is a religious meaning.

What if the people make merry, too, if they make their holy days into holidays, is that any harm? For their pleasures are very simple, very innocent; there is nothing that the moon, even the cold and distant moon, would blush to look upon. The people make merry because they are merry, because their religion is to them a very beautiful thing, not to be shunned or feared, but to be exalted to the eye of day, to be rejoiced in.