Part 5 (1/2)
And he said, yes, there were charms, but no one believed in them except the villagers. He did not, nor did men of education. Of course, the ignorant people believed in them. There were several sorts of charms.
You could be tattooed with certain mystic letters that were said to insure you against being hit, and there were certain medicines you could drink. There were also charms made out of stone, such as a little tortoise he had once seen that was said to protect its wearer. There were mysterious writings on palm-leaves. There were men, he said vaguely, who knew how to make these things. For himself, he did not believe in them.
I tried to learn from him then, and I have tried from others since, whether these charms have any connection with Buddhism. I cannot find that they have. They are never in the form of images of the Buddha, or of extracts from the sacred writings. There is not, so far as I can make out, any religious significance in these charms; mostly they are simply mysterious. I never heard that the people connect them with their religion. Indeed, all forms of enchantment and of charms are most strictly prohibited. One of the vows that monks take is never to have any dealings with charms or with the supernatural, and so Buddhism cannot even give such little a.s.sistance to its believers as to furnish them with charms. If they have charms, it is against their faith; it is a falling away from the purity of their teachings; it is simply the innate yearning of man to the supernatural, to the mysterious. Man's pa.s.sions are very strong, and if he must fight, he must also have a charm to protect him in fight. If his religion cannot give it him, he must find it elsewhere. You see that, as the teachings of the Buddha have never been able to be twisted so as to permit war directly, neither have they been able to a.s.sist indirectly by furnis.h.i.+ng charms, by making the fighter bullet-proof. And I thought then of the little prayer and the cross that were so certain a defence against hurt.
We talked for a long time in the waning moonlight by the ruddy fire, and at last we broke up to go to bed. As we rose a voice called to us across the water from the little promontory. In the still night every word was as clear as the note of a gong.
'Sleep well,' it cried--'sleep well--sle-e-ep we-l-l.'
We all stood astonished--those who did not know Burmese wondering at the voice; those who did, wondering at the meaning. The sentries peered keenly towards the sound.
'Sleep well,' the voice cried again; 'eat well. It will not be for long.
Sleep well while you may.'
And then, after a pause, it called the governor's son's name, and 'Traitor, traitor!' till the hills were full of sound.
The Burman turned away.
'You see,' he said, 'how they hate me. What would be the good of charms?'
The voice was quiet, and the camp sank into stillness, and ere long the moon set, and it was quite dark.
He was a brave man, and, indeed, there are many brave men amongst the Burmese. They kill leopards with sticks and stones very often, and even tigers. They take their frail little canoes across the Irrawaddy in flood in a most daring way. They in no way want for physical courage, but they have never made a cult of bravery; it has never been a necessity to them; it has never occurred to them that it is the prime virtue of a man. You will hear them confess in the calmest way, 'I was afraid.' We would not do that; we should be much more afraid to say it.
And the teaching of Buddhism is all in favour of this. Nowhere is courage--I mean aggressive courage--praised. No soldier could be a fervent Buddhist; no nation of Buddhists could be good soldiers; for not only does Buddhism not inculcate bravery, but it does not inculcate obedience. Each man is the ruler of his life, but the very essence of good fighting is discipline, and discipline, subjection, is unknown to Buddhism. Therefore the inherent courage of the Burmans could have no a.s.sistance from their faith in any way, but the very contrary: it fought against them.
There is no flexibility in Buddhism. It is a law, and nothing can change it. Laws are for ever and for ever, and there are no exceptions to them.
The law of the Buddha is against war--war of any kind at all--and there can be no exception. And so every Burman who fought against us knew that he was sinning. He did it with his eyes open; he could never imagine any exception in his favour. Never could he in his bivouac look at the stars, and imagine that any power looked down in approbation of his deeds. No one fought for him. Our bayonets and lances were no keys to open to him the gates of paradise; no monks could come and close his dying eyes with promises of rewards to come. He was sinning, and he must suffer long and terribly for this breach of the laws of righteousness.
If such be the faith of the people, and if they believe their faith, it is a terrible handicap to them in any fight; it delivers them bound into the hands of the enemy. Such is Buddhism.
But it must never be forgotten that, if this faith does not a.s.sist the believer in defence, neither does it in offence. What is so terrible as a war of religion? There can never be a war of Buddhism.
No ravished country has ever borne witness to the prowess of the followers of the Buddha; no murdered men have poured out their blood on their hearthstones, killed in his name; no ruined women have cursed his name to high Heaven. He and his faith are clean of the stain of blood.
He was the preacher of the Great Peace, of love, of charity, of compa.s.sion, and so clear is his teaching that it can never be misunderstood. Wars of invasion the Burmese have waged, that is true, in Siam, in a.s.sam, and in Pegu. They are but men, and men will fight. If they were perfect in their faith, the race would have died out long ago.
They have fought, but they have never fought in the name of their faith.
They have never been able to prost.i.tute its teachings to their own wants. Whatever the Burmans have done, they have kept their faith pure.
When they have offended against the laws of the Buddha they have done so openly. Their souls are guiltless of hypocrisy--for whatever that may avail them. They have known the difference between good and evil, even if they have not always followed the good.
CHAPTER VII
GOVERNMENT
'Fire, water, storms, robbers, rulers--these are the five great evils.'--_Burmese saying._
It would be difficult, I think, to imagine anything worse than the government of Upper Burma in its later days. I mean by 'government' the king and his counsellors and the greater officials of the empire. The management of foreign affairs, of the army, the suppression of greater crimes, the care of the means of communication, all those duties which fall to the central government, were badly done, if done at all. It must be remembered that there was one difficulty in the way--the absence of any n.o.ble or leisured cla.s.s to be entrusted with the greater offices. As I have shown in another chapter, there was no one between the king and the villager--no n.o.ble, no landowner, no wealthy or educated cla.s.s at all. The king had to seek for his ministers among the ordinary people, consequently the men who were called upon to fill great offices of state were as often as not men who had no experience beyond the narrow limits of a village.
The breadth of view, the knowledge of other countries, of other thoughts, that comes to those who have wealth and leisure, were wanting to these ministers of the king. Natural capacity many of them had, but that is not of much value until it is cultivated. You cannot learn in the narrow precincts of a village the knowledge necessary to the management of great affairs; and therefore in affairs of state this want of any n.o.ble or leisured cla.s.s was a very serious loss to the government of Burma. It had great and countervailing advantages, of which I will speak when I come to local government, but that it was a heavy loss as far as the central government goes no one can doubt. There was none of that check upon the power of the king which a powerful n.o.bility will give; there was no trained talent at his disposal. The king remained absolutely supreme, with no one near his throne, and the ministers were mere puppets, here to-day and gone to-morrow. They lived by the breath of the king and court, and when they lost favour there was none to help them. They had no faction behind them to uphold them against the king.