Topic: Indo Chinese Mythology

[Prometheus]

https://archive.org/details/mythologyofallra12gray/page/246

INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

BY
SIR JAMES GEORGE SCOTT



AUTHOR'S PREFACE

THE mythology of Burma, Siam, and Indo-China needs
no special discussion. It has been borrowed almost en-
tirely from India and is only slightly modified by aboriginal
characteristics. A great deal, however, has been grafted on
from the serpent-, tree-, and spirit-worship of the native tribes,
or (in the case of the Burmese) from the tribal beliefs held
before the Indo-Chinese peoples came to settle in their present
abodes. Research has thus far been insufficient to show whence
the Burmese came, whether they received their religion first
from the north or from the south, or whether they originally
had a script of their own. There Is hope that, with further
investigation, enough data may be found to determine the
Pyu character, but the few examples hitherto found have not
enabled Mr. Blagden to go very far.

For the coloured plates In this study I am Indebted to the
courtesy of Sir Richard Carnac Temple and to his publishers,
Messrs. W. Griggs and Sons, Ltd., London, who have placed
at my disposal the Illustrations of his Thirty-Seven Nats of
Burma.

J. GEORGE SCOTT.

London, May 21, 1917.



TRANSCRIPTION AND PRONUNCIATION

THE system of transliteration and pronunciation here fol-
lowed is the one prescribed by the Government of India
for the Indian languages generally. The vowels, on the whole,
are pronounced as in Italian; e has the sound of e in French
mere or of e in terror^ and e oi e in French verite, while e has a
similar value, though less accentuated. The vowels of the
diphthongs generally coalesce. Thus ai is pronounced as in
aisle; ao and au are sounded as in Latin aurum or English
how, with greater stress in the case of ao than in that of au\
aw is pronounced as in saw, ei as in feign, eo as in Eothen, oi
as in soil; a and o are pronounced as in German, and the pe-
culiar Shan diphthongs au and 6u have the u sound added, the
former almost resembling the miauling of a cat.

In Burmese and Shan the aspirate is sounded before other
consonants, such as t, p, k, I, s, and w, and is therefore prefixed,
as in ht, hp, hk, hi, hs, and hw; it amounts to a rough breathing.
In such words as gyi and kya, gy and ky are nearly equivalent
toj, but have a lighter sound, almost like dyi or tya pronounced
as one syllable. The sound of kzv is approximately that of
qua in quantity; my, ny, and py with a following vowel are
always pronounced as one syllable, the y being little more than
a slight breathing; ng is decidedly nasal, the n predominating
and whittling the g to a mere shadow. The pronunciation of
hnget ("bird") is taken as the test of correct Burmese vocahz-
ing; it begins with a guttural h, blends into a nasal n, all but
ignores the g, and ends on a staccato e, with the t eliminated.



INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY



CHAPTER I

THE PEOPLES AND RELIGIONS OF
INDO-CHINA

SOME ethnologists maintain that at one time a common
language was spoken all over Farther India from the Irra-
waddy River to the Gulf of Tongking. Whether this was
Mon, the language of the Talaings, who for a thousand years
held the south of Burma and warred with the Burmese, or
whether it was Hkmer (or Khmer), the language of the founders
of Champa and of the builders of the great Angkor Temple in
Cambodia, has not been determined and is not likely to be
ascertained. Down to the present day the Munda languages
are spoken in a belt which extends right across Continental
India from Murshidabad on the east to Nimar on the west,
Munda being the name given by F. Max Miiller to the whole
family of languages. The early philologists, Hodgson and
Logan, called this Munda group the Kol family, but Sir
George Campbell altered this to Kolarian, to the great indigna-
tion of those who thought it might lead the unlearned to imag-
ine a connexion with the Aryans, which would be quite wrong,
though he meant only to suggest Kolar in Southern India as
a sort of nucleus. There are resemblances between the Munda
languages and the Mon-Hkmer which have long been pointed
out, and the theory is that there may have been at one time a
common tongue which was spoken from the Indian Ocean to
the China Sea, across the Indian Continent, over the whole



254 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

of Indo-China, and even In the East Indian Archipelago and
Australia.^ There Is certainly a substratum In common, and
there are links In the Nancaorl dialects of the Nicobars and
In the vocabularies of the Malacca neighbourhood. But the
Dravldlans, who Inhabit the southern half of India, also fused
with the Negritos from Malaysia, and It Is quite certain that
the Dravldlans are fundamentally distinct from the Munda.

It might be thought that the mythology of the various races
should help In this puzzle, but It gives no assistance, and there
are as great differences in the myths as there are in the lan-
guages, which are as distinct from one another as French Is
from German. There are general resemblances just as there are
resemblances between the flint arrow-heads found in all con-
tinents and Islands. The celts found In the graves of Algon-
quian chiefs are not easily distinguished from those used
at the present day by the Papuans of the Snowy Range in
New Guinea, and those found near the tumulus on the Plain
of Marathon could be fitted to the reed shafts of the Sam-
oyeds without looking singular. It Is the same with the super-
stitions and the myths which are found among primitive tribes
all over the world. They are very vague In their religious con-
ceptions, but they all agree in believing that this world Is the
home of a shadowy host of powerful and malevolent beings
who usually have a local habitation In a hill, stream, or patch
of primeval forest, and interest themselves in the affairs of
men. As often as not they are dead ancestors, the originators
of the tribe or caste, with a vague following of distinguished
or insignificant descendants. Indeed, some scholars are con-
vinced that the worship of death is the basis and root of all
religions, and Grant Allen, In his History of Religion, main-
tained that all the sacred objects of the world are either dead
men themselves, as corpses, mummies, ghosts, or gods; or
else the tomb where such men are buried; or else the temple,
shrine, or hut which covers the tomb; or else the tombstone,
altar, Image, or statue standing over it and representing the



PLATE IV

Shrine of the Tree-Spirit

This spirit-shrine is shaded by a pipal-tree {Ficus
religiosa), which is associated with spirits in India
as well. The sheds of the bazaar may be seen just
behind the shrine, which is about fifteen miles north
of Loilem, one of the district head-quarters of the
Southern Shan States. Cf. Plate VIII.



PEOPLES AND RELIGIONS OF INDO-CHINA 255

ghost; or else the statue, idol, or household god which is
fashioned as the deputy of the dead; or else the tree which
grows above the barrow; or else the well, or tank, or spring,
natural or artificial, by whose side the dead man has been laid
to rest. Families worshipped their first and subsequent an-
cestors; villagers worshipped the man who founded the village,
and from whom they all claimed descent. In similar fashion
Herbert Spencer was persuaded that "the rudimentary form
of all religion is the propitiation of dead ancestors." Myths
are woven round the history of their lives; illness and mis-
fortunes of all kinds are attributed to their influence; there is
a general belief in magic and witchcraft, and a ritual is devised
which elaborates the legend. Wizards are employed to deter-
mine the cause of trouble and to remove it, either by incanta-
tions and exorcism, or by placating the offended ghostly being
by a suitable sacrifice; their services are also requisitioned when
it is desired to secure good crops, to cause an injury to an enemy,
or to ascertain the omens relating to some proposed course of
action.

However important the cult of the dead may be in primitive
religion, it is not the only factor. Natural forces long familiar-
ized to the popular mind are transformed into actual beings
with human passions and prejudices, and thus we get per-
sonifications of Thanatos (Death), the brother of Sleep; Bel-
Merodach, the light of the sun; Surya, Zeus, the Sun itself;
Indra, the god of the atmosphere; and Balder, the summer god.
The dwarfish races of America, Scotland, and the Deccan are
believed by many to have become hobgoblins ; and the personi-
fications of fire, wind, and war are obvious symbols. These are
all features of animism — the belief which attributes human
intelligence and action to every phenomenon and object of
nature, and which sees in them all a human anima, or prin-
ciple of life. The people of Burma, Siam, and Annam were all
animists in the earliest days, and there are strong traces of
the belief among the Buddhists they now claim to be. These



256 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

universal features are sometimes coupled with belief in a
supreme god, who usually interests himself very little in earthly
affairs, and with belief in metempsychosis, or transincorpora-
tion of souls; and the shadowy beings are sometimes Invested
with definite powers and functions, and provided with a
genealogy and bodily form. But all these primitive deities —
wherever they are found — bear a close resemblance to one
another. Spiritually they are as much alike as, physically, are
the arrow-heads that are discovered everywhere, or the early
pottery which is very much of the same style no matter where
it has been produced.

There might be some hope of consistence In the mythological
beliefs If we could be at all certain that a considerable pro-
portion of the original Inhabitants of Indo-China might still
be found In Burma, Slam, and Annam, There is not even an
agreement as to who the aborigines were, whether Negrito, or
Malaysian, or Mongolian, and it is practically certain that they
are as extinct as the Iroquois in Chicago or the Trinobantes
in Middlesex, except for a few baffling, isolated groups which
remain like boulders carved far back In the Glacial Age, or
peaks that rise out of the ocean as the last vestige of submerged
continents. Students of ethnology dispute relentlessly with
one another as to whether certain tribes are autochthonous,
like ridges worn by the Ice-streams of glaciers, or are erratic
boulders, ground moraine, or boulder clay, stranded in alien
countries, like round masses of Ailsa Craig granite carried down
to South Wales, the Midlands, and even the north of Ireland,
The ice-sheet always moving south changed the face of the
land, just as the waves of humanity which poured south from
Central Asia altered the populations. They followed one on
the other, set in motion by some natural or social upheaval,
and they drove their forerunners before them, or followed the
example of the Israelites, who "warred against the Midianltes,
. . . and they slew all the males . . , and they burnt all their
cities wherein they dwelt."



PEOPLES AND RELIGIONS OF INDO-CHINA 257

The history of these old days is a series of paroxysms. Its
keynote was bloodshed and famine and the merciless oblitera-
tion of countless innocents. The slaughter of Orientals by
Orientals has none of the characteristics of religious or political
hatred. It is simple blood-lust and it goes on still where it is
possible. When the Manchus marched south, early in the
seventeenth century, to destroy the fugitive Ming Court at Nan-
king, they massacred eight hundred thousand of the population
(estimated at a million) of Yang-chou-fu. In 191 1 the Chinese
Republicans sacked the Tatar city of Si-ngan-fu and butchered
every Manchu man, woman, and child. Pestilences spare a
few here and there; savage man does not. But there was one
saving point about the genuine savages of two thousand or
more years ago which distinguishes them from the civilized
savages. They seldom brought their women with them, or
only a few, and so they took to wife the daughters of the land.
As a consequence, the only races that are not composite are
those who are settled in inaccessible mountains which tempted
no one to conquer.

The result of this is that there is no general Indo-Chinese,
or even separate Burmese, Siamese, or Annamese mythology,
as there is an Eddie, a Semitic, Egyptian, Graeco-Roman, or
Indian mythology. The Mundas and Dravidians may have
brought some of their traditional beliefs or myths with them
when they were driven from India to Indo-China by the con-
quering Aryans, but when Kublai Khan broke up the Lao-tai
(Shan) Kingdom in Yiin-nan in the thirteenth century, a
flood of Tibeto-Burman and Siamese-Chinese legends must
have submerged or diluted the old traditions. The mythology
of all three countries, therefore, is a mixture of hero-worship
and distorted history — national and individual — each of them
mixed with the worship of intangible natural forces. Conse-
quently the mythological beliefs of the three countries are as
heterogeneous as their populations. The vast majority of the
inhabitants of Annam, not less than of Burma and Siam, are



258 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

nominally Buddhist; but there are deities of Brahmanic origin,
alongside of demons with human passions and prejudices, and
abundance of obvious nature-myths.

As a matter of fact, Indo-China seems to have been the com-
mon refuge for fugitive tribes from both India and China.
The expansion of the Chinese Empire (which for centuries did
not exist south of the Yang-tse-kiang), and the inroads of
Scythian tribes on the confines of the Indian empires of Chan-
dragupta and Asoka, whose reigns ended in 297 and 232 (or
231) B. c. respectively, combined to drive out the aborigines,
both to the north-east and to the north-west; and these met
and struggled with one another, not for supremacy, but for
mere existence, in the lands which we call Indo-China. It is
only some such theory which will account for the extraordi-
nary variety and marked dissimilarity of races to be found in the
sheltered valleys or in the high ranges of the Shan States, the
Lao country, and Tongking and Annam.

There is a general similarity of myths and traditions among
all the races and tribes of Eastern Asia. In some of them this
resemblance exists as it has been handed down for many
generations; in others it is to be inferred only from practices
and superstitions which remain In essence despite profound
outward changes. It is not possible to say which tribe or people
can claim to be the originator, and which merely the taught.
There Is a common deposit, and all the beliefs, rites, and cus-
toms may have found their way from north to south, or from
east to west; or they may have been universal and simulta-
neous; and the modifications may be due only to the individual
character and habits of each separate tribe. It is not possible
to say that there is any noticeable uniformity in customs even
among the same clan or settlement, to say nothing of the family
or sub-family. All of them believe in witchcraft, and there are
striking resem.blances and differences. The resemblances may
be due to a sort of logical process following on common Ideas,
or the similar practices may be due to the Kachins borrowing



PEOPLES AND RELIGIONS OF INDO-CHINA 259

from the Burmese, or perhaps from the Shans, or the Do
mimicking the practices of the Tongkingese, or vice versa. All
of them, English-speaking Burmans or French-speaking Anna-
mese, have, deep-seated in their being, a primitive belief in
spirits, demons, Nats, Hpis, Dewas, or whatever they may be
called. The great ethnic religions of Asia have never been able
to eradicate the firm belief among the mass of the people that
ghosts, spirits, demons, angels, or devils are able to interfere
in the affairs of man.

Perhaps ninety per cent of the population of the three Indo-
Chinese countries are, and believe themselves to be, Buddhist;
but their Buddhism is not the abstruse philosophy which
Gotama taught, any more than it is the practical popular
religion set forth in the edicts of Asoka in the third century
before Christ. The Buddha did not teach the existence of any
supreme being; he made no attempt to solve the mystery of
the beginning of human existence; and he had very little to
say of the end, or of Nirvana. King Asoka was not concerned
to do more than to give a simple version of a pure religion, urg-
ing mankind to the performance of good deeds and promising a
reward, which the least educated could understand, in the
happy, semi-human existence of the Lower Heavens round about
Mount Meru (supposed to form the centre of the inhabited
world), the mythical height which the Burmese call Myimmo
Taung, and the Siamese Phra Men. Superstition and love of
the marvellous are, however, inborn in mankind. Legends and
myths seem to be necessary to the masses, and the consequence
has been the practical deification of the Buddha Gotama and
of some imagined predecessors, the acknowledgement of a celes-
tial hierarchy, and the introduction of complicated ceremonies
and of a ritual of which the Teacher of the Law or his devout
interpreters never dreamed. Buddhism was in the beginning
a reformed Brahmanism, induced by the arrogance of the
priesthood and the system of caste. In India, the astute Brah-
mans enticed dissenters back by representing Gotama to be

[Prometheus]

26o INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

an Incarnation of VIsnu, and so Buddhism vanished from the
land of its birth, except for a small colony in Orissa,^

Before Buddhism left India, however, it had developed two
forms, the Northern and the Southern, the Great Vehicle" and
the Little," and both these forms came into Burma and Siam:
the Mahayana, or Northern, from wandering Lao-Tai tribes
and across the Patkoi Range from Assam; and the HInayana, or
Southern, from Ceylon; while China imposed its version of
Buddhism on Annam. At first the religion was a strange mix-
ture of downright witchcraft with its attendant phallos-, tree-,
and serpent-worship; Brahmanism with its elaborate mythology
and its Imposing ceremonies; and Buddhism with its Four
Great Truths and its admirable precepts. It was for a time
very like the debased Lamaism of Tibet, but there have been re-
forms. The Northern Vehicle" has been practically displaced
In both Burma and Siam by the Southern. The Annamese,
like their teachers, the Chinese, are more ancestor-worship-
pers than they are Buddhists. In all three countries there are
monasteries and even districts which fairly well conform to
Buddhist precepts and Ideals, but the mass of the people cling
to the old Inherited superstitions, and they are confirmed in
the habit by their neighbours In the hills, who frankly cherish
nature-myths and believe In spirits, some of which are dis-
embodied and some of which exist independently of all cor-
poreal ties and have never been permanently united to a body
of any kind, but haunt the air, the earth, and the heavens.
Added to these are supernatural beings who have their origi-
nals In real people, like Tsen Yii-ying, the Miaotzu (or Hmeng)
Viceroy of Yiin-kuei, who suppressed the Panthe rebellion
in Yiin-nan, died within living memory, and is worshipped as
a deity In a temple in Yiin-nan-fu, which is professedly a
Buddhist shrine. A similar demonstration is to be seen In the
spirit shrines which are constantly found near religious build-
ings, sometimes even in the courtyard of pagodas to the
Buddha. It may even be said that the Buddha Gotama is a



PLATE V

TSEN Yij-YING

This image of the Military Governor and Vice-
roy of Yiin-kuei, who suppressed a Panthe (Chinese
Muhammadan) rebellion last century, is erected in
the temple of the Goddess of Mercy (see pp. 261-62)
which stands a few miles south of Ta-li-fu, in the
Chinese Province of Yun-nan.



PUl>LiC LiBIURY



ASTOR, LENOX AND

TILDEN FOU-NDATIONS

B I.



PEOPLES AND RELIGIONS OF INDO-CHINA 261

deified man of the same kind, for though in theory his image,
which appears in countless shrines, temples, and monasteries,
is not regarded as an idol to be worshipped, but as a model
to be followed, he was yet a mere man, and his death was
ascribed by early tradition to an over-heavy meal of pork.
This is still more apparent in the Amitabha of China, who has
been transplanted to Tongking and Annam. He has not yet
become a Buddha, but reigns in unending glory in Ching-tu,
the Pure Land, the Western Paradise, where those who attain
salvation will live in unalloyed happiness. Amitabha is the
Omito-fu, the name which, as a simple invocation, is inscribed
on tablets and walls of multitudes of temples, and carved on
the rocks and cliifs of a hundred caverned hills. Amitabha,
we are told, was like Prince Siddhartha (the royal name of the
Buddha), only that, instead of being merely a prince, he was a
rich and powerful monarch, who abdicated, and becoming an
ascetic under the name of Fa-tsang, attained the state of a
Bodhisattva, or one destined hereafter to become a Buddha.
When he attains Buddhahood he will establish a heavenly
kingdom of perfect blessedness. In which all living creatures
will enjoy an age-long existence in a state of supreme happi-
ness, sinlessness, and wisdom.^

This Paradise of Amitabha is very different from the eternal
happiness to which the Buddhists of Slam and Burma, like the
old orthodox Theravadin ("Doctrine of the Elders") school,
look forward. But there is another difference which Is still
more curious. Orthodox Buddhism, the LIttleVehlcle" school,
knows only the Buddha Gotama, who was an historic per-
sonage; and the Buddhism of the North, the "Great Vehicle,"
has only male Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. In the popular
Buddhism of China, Japan, and (to a lesser extent) Annam,
there is the curious figure of a female Bodhisattva, named
Kuan-yin.^ Kuan-yin is the divine person known to foreigners
in China and Japan as the "Goddess of Mercy." The change
of sex suggests Dravldlan influence, for Kuan-yin is said to



262 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

correspond with the Avalokitesvara of Northern Indian Bud-
dhism,^ but this has never been properly explained. Yet Kuan-
yin is not only a Bodhisattva, but stands on the left, the
honourable side, of Amitabha, and probably receives a greater
amount of voluntary reverence in China than any other figure
in Buddhist worship. The real truth seems to be that Kuan-
yin is looked upon as sexless, and might better be called the
Pusa, or Spirit, of Love and Pity; and in some ways she cor-
responds to the Queen of Heaven in popular Taoism. Chinese
Buddhists, and with them those of Annam, believe that the
original seat of Kuan-yin's worship was a rocky hill near the
harbour of Cape Comorin in Southern India. If this is so, she
was probably non-Buddhist in source. Her original hill-site
was called Putaloka, and her cult spread also to Tibet, where a
second Putaloka, or Potala, was built on a rock, and it is here
that the Dalai Lama lives, he who is regarded as an incarna-
tion of the divine Bodhisattva.^ The Chinese, who doubtless
got the myth by way of Tibet, have shortened the name to
Puto, which is given to the famous island off the Che-kiang
coast, where Kuan-yin takes precedence over every other deity.
It is explained that all Bodhisattvas may, in the course of their
age-long careers as saviours of the world, appear on earth in
female form. The true Kuan-yin has by nature neither sex
nor form, but is capable of assuming, or appearing to assume,
all forms. A Bodhisattva has risen above the distinction of sex.
Kuan-yin is the solitary example in Indo-Chinese mythology
of a female myth to correspond to the goddesses of Classical,
Indian, and Eddie mythology. Female spirits appear, but they
are never separate and are accepted as a necessary adjunct in
any ordinary. system.



CHAPTER II
INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS

WHEN we turn to the myths of the Indo-Chinese peoples,
we naturally think first of their traditions which en-
deavour to explain the creation of the world. We may perhaps
begin with the Kachins, who inhabit the north of the Province
of Burma and dwell between it and Tibet, or the Tibetan
border-tribes. They are believed by ethnologists to consti-
tute a branch of the Tibeto-Burman sub-family and to have
formed the rear-guard of the Burmese invasion of the land
previously held by the Mon, or Takings, so that they would
be nearer to the original type of the race who may be taken
to have devised the first myths. The Kachin idea is that there
were three stages in the creation of the world. First there
were floating masses of vapour, and out of these was gradually
fashioned the "Middle Kingdom," which they take to be the
vault of heaven. Finally there came the crust of the earth,
which solidified after aeons of time and was the work of
Nphan Wa, Ning Sang, the All-Supreme Being. The word
Nphan Wa has a Burmese appearance, but it is really archaic
Kachin and occurs in the esoteric language of the jaiwas, or
priests. In its early stages of existence the earth was inhabited
by all manner of spirits and monsters. These disappeared after
long years and were followed by the spirits known as Sik Sawp
and Hkrip Hkrawp. Sik Sawp, the female, represented heaven,
and Hkrip Hkrawp, the male, represented earth. These two
gave birth to Chanum and Woi-shun, from whom were born
all things in heaven and on earth. Afterward they made a
being called Ngawn-wa Magam, who got himself a hammer.



264 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

and giving shape and beauty to the earth, made it habitable
for human beings. His home was in the mountain called Majoi
Shingra Pum, and from it he dispensed his blessings upon
mankind. From Chanum and Wol-shun are descended the
various spirits of the earth, air, water, households, crops, and
diseases, whose names we need not record. The Kachins have,
in fact, a sort of polytheism, or even pantheism, and distort
each and every myth to fit into this system, as, indeed, all the
other races of Indo-China do, even those who profess the phil-
osophical tenets of Buddhism and have a written character,
which serves to perpetuate both the myths and the doctrine.
This the Kachins lack, like the other hill tribes, who may be
taken to represent the earlier stages of the more developed
peoples. As a consequence, the legends vary in different parts,
and on the southern fringe of the Kachin race a certain Ship-
pawn Ayawng is usually taken to be the first ancestor. All,
however, are agreed that Majoi (or Majaw) Shingra Pum, the
lofty mountain, was the original home of the Kachins, parallel,
in a way, to our Eden.

A tale is told which gives the folk-myth of the introduction
of death Into the world. There was an old man called Apauk-
kyit Lok, who lived on Majoi Shingra Pum. He had grown
old nine times, lost his teeth, and become grey-headed, and
nine times he renewed his youth, as every one else did in that
golden age, when nobody could die. One day, however, Apauk-
kylt Lok went out to fish, and In the water he found a squirrel,
or a monkey, or some such animal, which had fallen asleep on
the branch of a tree and slipped off into the water. This sug-
gested a joke to him, and he put the beast in a large bamboo
basket, covered It with cloths, and then hid himself. The
neighbours were credulous enough to be taken in by this primi-
tive device, and it was announced that the old man had passed
away. In the sun lives the spirit of man, called sumri, which
Is the all-pervading soul of life, without which man must die.
The Lord of the Sun heard of Apauk-kylt Lok's supposed death



INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 265

and summoned the sumri, but found the essence still un-
changed. Sumri Is regarded as a sort of nerve-centre from which
the threads of life stretch out to each separate individual, and
until these are severed life goes on. The Lord of the Sun saw-
that the old man's life-line was still intact, so he sent mes-
sengers to find out what was the matter. They came in the
guise of those who dance at funerals and proceeded to dance
round the bamboo basket; and since they were not allowed to
take off the cere-cloths, they managed to move them by an
artifice. They covered their feet with honey so that they were
sticky, and in the movements of the death-dance they gradu-
ally disarranged the cloths and revealed the fraud. When the
Lord of the Sun was told, he severed Apauk-kyit Lok's con-
nexion with the sumri as a punishment for the pleasantry, and
Apauk-kyit Lok fell ill. Not only was he very ill, but, in spite
of sacrifices and all else, he died; and so, the door to Death
being opened, people have gone on dying ever since.

Another singular belief among some of the Kachin tribes is
that the souls of the dead have to crawl over a slender bamboo
bridge under which are rows and rows of boiling cauldrons,
which bubble up and engulf the wicked, while others, after
safely crossing the bridge, slip off the steep mountain slope on
the far side, and others still mistake the right road which is
strait and narrow, while a broad and inviting path leads to
destruction.^

There are suggestions of the forbidden fruit In the Burmese
legend of the beginning of the world. Although the general
cosmographlcal system is taken from India and the Brahmans,
it is believed that the first nine inhabitants who had descended
from the skies were sinless and sexless, and lived on a kind of
flavoured earth. Gradually, however, their appetites grew,
and when they took to eating a particular sort of huskless rice
which cooked itself, they became gross and heavy, and being
unable to return to their blissful abodes, developed sex, and,
after it, crime, because they had to work for their living.



266 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

The most singular example of a far-travelled tale is that of
a Tower of Babel among the Chins, who are near relations of
the Naga head-hunters. In their mountainous country, where
village is separated from village by deep valleys and sky-
piercing hills, they are very conscious of the "jangling noise
of words unknown." Other hill tribes live under the same con-
ditions, but the Chins alone seem to have invented a legend to
account for diversity of language. Their story is that once
upon a time all the people lived in one large village and spoke
one tongue. At a great council, however, having determined
that the phases of the moon were an inconvenience, they
resolved to capture that heavenly body and make it shine
permanently. This would prevent cattle-raiding and render
it easier to guard against sudden assaults from unneighbourly
peoples, so they set about building a tower to reach the moon.
After years of labour the tower rose so high that it meant days
of hard descent for the people working on the top to come down
to the village to get supplies of food. Since this was a serious
waste of time, they fell upon the plan of settling the builders
at various intervals in the tower, and food and other necessaries
were passed up from one floor to another. The people of the
different storeys came into very little contact with one an-
other, and thus they gradually acquired different manners,
customs, and ways of speech, for the passing up of the food
was such hard work, and had to be carried on so continuously,
that there was no time for stopping to have a talk. At last,
when the tower was almost completed, the Spirit in the moon,
enraged at the audacity of the Chins, raised a fearful storm
which wrecked it. It fell from north to south, and the people
inhabiting the various storeys being scattered all over the
land, built themselves villages where they fell. Hence the
different tribes and sects varying in language and customs.
The stones which formed the huge tower were the beginning
of the abrupt mass of mountains which separate the plain of
Burma from the Bay of Bengal.



INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 267

Another Chin tale which accounts for the variety of Chin
dialects is found among the tribesmen who have migrated into
Manipur and settled there. The Manipiirls call them Kukis
or Khongjais. They are persuaded that the first of their race
came out of the bowels of the earth, and at that time they all
spoke one language. One day, however, a father told his sons
to catch a rat. The rat appears to have been an extremely
lively one, for the sons got so excited with the chase that they
were stricken with a confusion of tongues and never after-
ward were able to understand one another. Moreover, they
did not catch the rat. This may be an allusion to the swarms
of rats which, down to the present day, appear in the hills
periodically when the bamboos are flowering, and destroy all
the crops. We are, however, specifically told that the eldest
son spoke the Lamyang, the second the Thado, and the
third either the Vaipe or the Manipuri language. This would
seem to suggest that the Lamyang were the inventors of the
story, for primitive tribes are not given to depreciating them-
selves or admitting superiority in others.

The Tawyan have a variant of the tower legend. They set
about building a tower to capture the sun, but there was a
village quarrel, and one half cut the ladder while the other
half were on it. They fell uninjured and took possession of the
lands on which they were thus cast.

The Tashons (the Burmanized form of the native name
Klashun) declare that they had to abandon their old capital
because a siren sat on the high rocks above the village, and
every man on whom she looked pined away and died. It ap-
pears more probable, however, that it was no siren, but a dis-
agreeable, raiding sept — the Hakkas — who turned them out
by rude force of arms.

These legends are quite different from the traditions of a
deluge which are found everywhere over Indo-China, among
the Kachins, the Karens, and the Shan races on the east, to
the north of Siam and Cochin-China. The myths seem to be



268 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

based on a vague reminiscence of some natural phenomena
which brought on the land great and devastating floods. Very
likely the origin of the legends was that mountain lakes burst
through their barriers and carried such death and destruction
in their course to the low-lying lands that only a few of the
dwellers in the plains escaped. If this was actually the case —
and much speaks In its favour — the traditions of a deluge,
which are found in the most unlikely places, have nothing
especially significant about them.

The Siamese have no myths essentially their own. As a
separate nation they are only about six hundred years old,
and such traditions as they have are a mixture of Brahmano-
Buddhlst imaginings or traditions, possibly grafted on faint
memories of the legends which they brought with them from
Ta-li-fu, the old capital of the Nan-chao Kingdom of the Shans,
and mingled with the myths belonging to the much older
Kingdom of the Chams, or Hkmer, of Cambodia, which have
still to be unravelled from their tangle of Brahmanism, Bud-
dhism, and animistic beliefs. They were also, no doubt, greatly
influenced by the Mon, or Talaings, on the Burma side, who
at one time were supposed to have come from Telingana on
the eastern coast of India, but seem more probably to be an
Independent branch of the Austro-Asiatics, and are possibly
at least as much allied to the Wa and Palaungs as to the Kols
of Chutia Nagpur. Unfortunately, not much Is known of the
Mon language or mythology, for the language was bitterly
proscribed after the final conquest of the coastwise Yamanya
country by the Burmese under Alaung-paya, or Alompra, about
the middle of the eighteenth century. The struggle between
the M5n and the Burmese had gone on for a thousand years,
and the Burmese were merciless when they finally triumphed.
The language has the Intonations common to the Chinese,
but this may have come from the Interspersing of the Karens
among them.

The Karens came peacefully Into Indo-China, not, like the



PLATE M

Shrine of the Stream-Spirit

This elaborate shrine to the spirit of the flood and
fall of the water stands outside Hsataw, a village
of Shan timber-traders in the country of the Red
Karens.

[Prometheus]

PUDLIC LlBPtAEY



ASTOR, LENOX AH»

TILDBN FOU-NDAHONfl

B 1.



J



INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 269

Mon, the Burmese, and the Shans, as a conquering horde.
They migrated along the lines of least resistance and settled
where they could do so without savage fighting, as is borne
out by the fact that they have no distinctive name for them-
selves, but are content with a great number of tribal appella-
tions. Most of the tribes deny all relationship with one an-
other, but they are convicted of error out of their own mouths.
Their traditions speak of a "river of running sand," which
distinctly points to the Desert of Gobi, between inner and
outer Mongolia, stretching from Dzungaria to the Khingan
Mountains which lie north of Manchuria, though it appears
more probable that they came from Central China. This
seems to be confirmed by their legends, which suggest an ac-
quaintance with the Jewish colonies in China or even with the
Nestorian pillar at Si-ngan-fu.^ Further evidence of this con-
tact with Jews or Christians is apparently given by the fol-
lowing stanzas translated by the American missionary, Mason,
in his book on Burma:

"Anciently God commanded, but Satan appeared bringing de-
struction.
Formerly God commanded, but Satan appeared deceiving unto

death.
The woman E-u and the man Thanai pleased not the eye of the

dragon.
The woman E-u and the man Thanai pleased not the mind of the

dragon.
The dragon looked on them — the dragon beguiled the woman and

Thanai.
How is this said to have happened?

The great dragon succeeded in deceiving — deceiving unto death.
How do they say it was done.''
A yellow fruit took the great dragon, and gave to the children of

God.
A white fruit took the great dragon, and gave to the daughter and

son of God.
They transgressed the commands of God, and God turned His

face from them.
They transgressed the commands of God, and God turned away

from them.



270 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

They kept not all the words of God — were deceived, deceived

unto sickness.
They kept not all the law of God — were deceived, deceived unto

death."

It is also asserted that the Red Karens have very similar
traditions. Some of them, at any rate, are supposed to believe
in a Supreme Deity whom they call Ea-pe, and they have a
sort of creed which runs:

"The earth at its origin Ea-pe created.
The heavens at their origin Ea-pe created.
Man at his origin Ea-pe created.
The moon at its origin Ea-pe created.
The trees at their origin Ea-pe created.
The bamboos at their origin Ea-pe created.
The grass at its origin Ea-pe created.
The cattle at their origin Ea-pe created."

The suggestion is that E-u is Eve; Thanai, Adam; and Ea-pe,
Jehovah. There are those who believe that St. Thomas came
to India ^ and Central Asia and is known in China as Ta-mo
(usually pronounced Dah-mah). There is certainly a picture
of Ta-mo in the famous Pei-ling (the Monument Grove) at
Si-ngan-fu, as well as in the Confucian Temple. This portrait
represents a man having an abundance of curly hair, a markedly
Semitic nose, thick eyebrows, moustache, and beard which is
very different from the Mongolian type. This teacher of a
"new religion" came about the beginning of the Christian
era and, therefore, long before the existence of the Nestorian
tablet, which dates only from 781 a. d. The Karen legend is at
least as interesting as the Ta-mo myth and may show both
where the race had their original home and how they fell
away from Nestorianism, if they ever followed it.

The tradition of the creation and fall of man is, however,
not nearly so well remembered among the Karens as the myth
of the dragon. Dragon- or serpent-worship certainly existed
at one time almost all over India and beyond. The mythical
genealogy of the Raja of Chiatia Nagpur claims Pundarika



INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 271

Naga ("Lotus Serpent") as ancestor of the house. This "Lotus
Serpent" married ParvatI, the beautiful daughter of a Brah-
man, and in memory of their snake ancestor the crest of the
house is a hooded serpent with a human face. It need not be
taken too Hterally that serpent-worship was the actual religion,
though it is one of the earliest known forms of animistic behef .
The traces of serpent-worship in Burma are very strong in
the literature of the country, though they are not so evident
in direct worship. There Is scarcely a legend in which a Naga
does not appear in some form or other, most commonly in
female guise. ^° In many stories she weds the comely and de-
vours the less well-favoured. Often she meets a tragic fate
which moves us to pity, no matter what logical justification
there may have been for It. Quite frequently the legend tells
of the appearance of the King of the Dragons In some such
fashion as Jupiter Ammon manifested himself to Olympla and
became the father of Alexander the Great;" or as Jupiter Capl-
tolinus is fabled to have had Sclpio Afrlcanus for a son. The
constant appearance of the story may, at any rate, be another
link In the claim of the earliest Burmese kings to be connected
with the Sakya clans of Upper India.

There are, as we have just said, abundant traces of former
serpent-worship In Burma. At the Shwe Zigon Pagoda, near
Pagan, on the Irrawaddy, not far from the shrine of the
Thirty-seven Nats, or Spirits, of Burma Is a rude stone Image
of a serpent, which stands between the two huge leogryphs
that form the propylaea of the Pagoda; and legends assert
that a Naga raised from the river-bed the hillock on which
the Pagoda stands. Elsewhere among the Pagan pagodas, nota-
bly at the Ananda, there are numerous terra-cotta placques,
tiles of red-burnt clay, covered with snake designs, side by
side with others showing ordinary Buddhist avatars and myths.
There Is abundance of evidence to show that when King
Anawra-hta Introduced the Southern School of Buddhism
into Burma nine hundred years ago, the Ari (the priests of



272 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

that time), though they may not have been acknowledged
ministers of serpent-worship, at any rate did not disavow it,
and signs of the myth are still to be seen in even the most
modern pagodas. One of the commonest devices of the stair-
cases or approaches to a shrine is the dragon balustrade, and
here and there small pagodas may be seen with a serpent coiled
round them from base to pinnacle.

There is no lack of direct dragon-myths, after the fashion
of the Chutia Nagpur tradition. Thus the chronicle of Hsen-
wi, one of the Northern Shan States of Burma, gives the fol-
lowing account of the ancestry of the first kings of the Mong
Mao country. There was an old couple who lived at Man Se,
on the banks of Lake Nawng Put, and they had a son Hkun
Ai, who used to go out every day to watch the cattle on the
grazing-ground. When Hkun Ai was sixteen, a Naga Princess,
in the guise of a human being, came out of the lake and began
to talk with him. The conversation led to love, and they went
off together to the country of the Nagas, where Hkun Ai had
to wait outside till the Princess had gone to explain the situa-
tion to her father, the King of the dragons. He proved to be
an indulgent parent and in consideration for the feelings of
his son-in-law ordered all the Nagas to assume human form.
The Princess and her husband lived together very happily
in the palace that was assigned to them, but in eight or nine
months' time the annual Water Festival of the Nagas came,
and the King bade his daughter tell Hkun Ai that the Nagas
must then assume their dragon form and disport themselves
in the lakes of the country. The Princess told her husband
to stay at home during the festival, while she herself joined
the rest of the Nagas in their gambols in the guise of the mer-
maid she was. Hkun Ai, however, overwhelmed with curiosity,
climbed to the roof of the palace and was very much dis-
mayed to find the whole of the country and the lakes round
about filled with gigantic writhing dragons. In the evening all
of them assumed human form and returned home. The Princess



^ffoo ?rff rrJ ftbo^JftfT ?ifnrfv'



wj 2bnoq8j.
rfDiriw "al



PLATE VII

I. Naga Min

The "Serpent-King" is occasionally represented
as embracing a whole pagoda in his coils and almost
invariablyhe decorates the top of temple-balustrades.
See also p. 323.

2. Galon

This heraldic bird of the Burmese corresponds to
the Indian Garuda, the mythic "vehicle" which
bears the god Visnu. This representation may be
compared with the Indian conceptions given in
Mythology of All Races, vi. Plates X, XVI. See also
infra, pp. 323-24-

3. BiLU

The Bilu, or ogre, feeds on human flesh and may
be recognized by the fact that he casts no shadow.
Cf. pp. 294, 352. These three mythic figures are all
Indian in origin. After Temple, Thirty-Seven Nats
of Burma, p. 9.



INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 273

found Hkun Ai very dejected and gloomy, and abruptly asked
him what was the matter. He replied that he was homesick
and wanted to see his old father and mother. The Dragon
Princess was soft-hearted enough to think this reasonable; at
any rate, they went back to the country of men and came out
at the Nawng Put Lake. She, however, either would not, or
could not, remain there. Accordingly she told him that she
would lay an egg from which a child would be hatched, and
this he was to feed with the milk which would ooze from his
little finger whenever he thought of her. Then she said that if
either he or the child were ever in danger or difficulty, he was
to strike the ground three times with his hand, and she would
come to his aid. She laid the egg, plunged into the lake, and
returned to the country of the Nagas. Hkun Ai heaped hay
and dead leaves over the egg where it lay on the banks of the
Nawng Put Lake, and then went home to his parents, to whom
he gave a full account of his adventures; but he said nothing
about the egg, of which, with characteristic masculine self-
consciousness, or sheepishness, he was very much ashamed.
The old couple were delighted to have him back again, but
they noticed that every day, after his meals, he went away to
the lake. So one day they followed him secretly and found
him nursing a child in his lap. Then he told them that this
was his son by the Naga Princess, and how he had hatched the
egg under dry leaves. Dry leaves are called tiing in Shan, so
they named the child Tung Hkam (" Golden Dead Leaves ") and
taking him home with them, they brought him up. From the
day that the baby entered the house, everything went well with
them. They prospered exceedingly and became great people
in Man Se, and Tiing Hkam grew up into a youth who quite
warranted the pride they had in him.

When he was fifteen or sixteen years of age, it was widely
rumoured that the Princess Pappawadi was to be given in
marriage. Pappawadi was the daughter of a king whom the

chronicle calls Sao Wong-ti (in Chinese Hwang-ti means "the
XII — 19



274 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

Emperor"). To the Shan, Mong Che, or Mong Se, denotes
the Province of Yiin-nan, rather than the Empire of China,
and this Wong-ti was, no doubt, the ruler of Yiin-nan-sen, the
capital of the Province. The Princess Pappawadi, who was
in her fifteenth year, was famous for her beauty, and so many
suitors for her hand flocked from all the countries of the earth
that the Emperor, her father, had a golden palace built for
her in the middle of the lake near the town. In the palace a
gong was hung, and poster and proclamation announced that
whosoever reached the palace dry-shod without the use of
bridge, boat, or raft, and struck the signal-gong, should have
the Princess to wife. Hkun Tung Hkam heard the news among
the rest, and he set out from Mong Mao with a large following.
When he arrived at the capital, he found the lake surrounded by
the camps of kings and princes, all of them suitors for thehand
of Princess Pappawadi. They were holding high revelry, but
none of them had hit upon any means of getting to the golden
palace. Hkun Tung Hkam lost no time. On the evening of the
day of his arrival he went to the shore of the lake and struck
the ground three times with his hand, as his father had told
him to do if he was ever in difficulties. His mother, the Naga
Princess, promptly appeared, and when she understood what
was wanted, she stretched her body from the shore to the island.
Over this Tiing Hkam walked and stood before the Princess.
They promptly fell in love with each other, and Tung Hkam
struck the signal-gong. Sao Wong-ti had them brought to his
own palace and there asked Hkun Tiing Hkam who he was
and whence he came. He was much gratified to hear that
the mother of the suitor was a daughter of the King of the
Nagas, and his father a descendant of the ruling house of
Hsen-wi Kaw Sampi. So the two were married, and Sao
Wong-ti himself escorted them back to Mong Mao, where he
built a lordly palace for them. Tiing Hkam reigned for seventy-
two years, and was then succeeded by his two sons, first Hkun
Lu, and after him Hkun Lai.



INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 275

This legend Is quite different from the ordinary story of
Hkun Lu and Hkun Lai, who are generally accepted In all
traditions as the first Shan kings. They are usually fabled to
have come down from the sun and to have been accompanied
by two ministers of state, one descended from the sun and the
other from the moon; and they were also attended by an as-
trologer, descended from the family of Jupiter, and by a number
of other mythical personages. The deity In heaven who sent
them down was named Tiing Hkam, who gave them a cock
and a knife, with Instructions that, as soon as they arrived on
earth, they were to sacrifice the cock with the knife and offer
up prayers to Tiing Hkam himself. Then the two brothers
were to eat the head of the cock and give the body to the min-
isters and attendants. When they reached earth, however. It
was found that the cock and the knife had been forgotten, and
one of the mortals, named Lao Ngu, was sent to fetch them.
He seems to have been an unprincipled person, for, when he
returned, he announced that the deity, Tiing Hkam, was an-
noyed at the forgetfulness of the two brothers and had sent
a message that they were to eat a portion of the body of the
cock and to give the rest to their retinue. In this way Lao
Ngu secured the cock's head for himself and duly ate it. He
then asked for some recognition of his services, and being ap-
pointed Governor of Mithila (northern Bihar, India) by the
brothers, he eventually became a wise and powerful ruler In
China, whereas the heaven-descended brothers sank to the
level of the ignorant Mao Shans.^^ Moreover, they quarrelled
among themselves, until finally Hkun Lu marched off west,
crossed the Irrawaddy, and founded a kingdom for himself
at Mong Kawng (Mogaung in Upper Burma), from which
the Shans established their westernmost province of Ahom
(Assam).

The dragon-myth is also found in many other places. The
Palaungs, who are not Tai at all, but belong to the Austro-
Aslatic family, trace their rulers to the same dragon source.



276 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

There was a serpent maiden, Princess Thusandi, who Hved In
the spirit lake In the Mogok Hills. Prince Hsurlya (Sanskrit
Surya [" Sun"]), son of the Solar King, fell In love with her, and
she loved him. The Dragon Princess was delivered of three
eggs, and Immediately afterward Prince Hsurlya was summoned
home by his father, the King of the Sun. He had to obey,
but when he reached the sun he sent a letter, together with the
precious stone Manlkopa, to the Naga Princess, giving It to
two parrots as his messengers. The two birds on their way
met others of their kind, and resting with them on a large
tree, for a time forgot all about the letter and Its enclosure.
A Taungthu and his son came by, found the letter, took out
the Manlkopa, put some birds' droppings in Its place, and went
their way. After a time the parrots returned to a sense of their
duty and carried the letter to the Naga Princess. She was
delighted with the letter, but when she found what the en-
closure was, she was so angry that she took two of the eggs and
threw them Into the Irrawaddy.

One of the eggs moved upstream to Man Maw (Bhamo),
where It was taken out of the river by a gardener and his wife
and put In a golden casket as a curiosity. A male child hatched
out of the egg, and the gardener and his wife brought him up,
first under the name of Hseng Nya and afterward of Udibwa
("Born of an Egg"). When Udibwa reached maturity, he
married the daughter of the ruler of Se-lan, a Shan chief on
the China border. They had two sons, the younger of whom,
MIn Shwe Yo, became Emperor of China and took the title
of Udibwa, which is given to the Emperors of the Chinese
dominions by the Burmese down to the present day. From
childhood the elder boy, MIn Shwe The, was afflicted with a
kind of leprosy. He preferred cold and mountainous places,
and accordingly built the town of Setawn Sam, on the crest of
the Sagabin Hills In Loi Long Tawng Peng, establishing him-
self there as Sawbwa, or Chief. From him all the Palaung Bo,
or chiefs of the Palaungs, are descended.



INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 277

The Naga's second egg drifted down the Irrawaddy until it
reached Paukhkan (Pagan), where it stranded on the river-
bank. It was picked up by a washerman and his wife, who put
it away in a golden pot, in which it also hatched out a man-
child. The baby was of so noble a bearing that the couple
named him Min Rama, because they thought he must be of
the Pagan Rama Min's family, and afterward he actually did
become King of Pagan.

The third egg the angry Princess threw away at Kyatpyin, in
the centre of the present Ruby Mines District of Burma. It fell
on a rock and was shattered to pieces, this being the origin of
the rubies and other precious stones that are still found there.

Thus, as the Palaung Chronicle (which as yet exists only in
manuscript) proudly announces, the Sawbwa of Loi Long,
the Emperor of China, and Min Rama, who became King of
Pagan, were all brothers and were descended from the Naga
Princess Thusandi. The Tawng Peng Sawbwa and all his
people are her descendants, and the Rumai, or Palaung, women
to the present day wear a dress which is "like the skin of a
Naga." The Naga serpent must have been quite a gay crea-
ture, for the women's dress consists of a large hood which is
brought to a point at the back of the head and reaches down
over the shoulders. The border is white with an inner patch-
work pattern of blue, scarlet, and black cotton velvet. The
skirt is often composed of panels of cotton velvet of these
various colours, with leggings to match, and the general effect
is distinctly showy, apart from the broad silver torques, bangles,
and ear-rings, and the wide belt of intertwined black varnished
rattan hoops, often decked with cowries and seeds.

[Prometheus]

Fran9ois Garnier tells much the same tale of the origin of
the Lao, and Siamese Shans, in his Voyage (T exploration. At
the Swing Festival in Bangkok four celebrants are always pres-
ent wearing the Naga head-dress of the King of the Dragons,
and the last true King of the Hkmers, Arunawati Ruang, is
fabled to have had a sylvan dragon for his mother.



278 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

For all the abundance of dragon princesses, there is very
little mention of male dragons, except the King of the Dragons,
who is never much more than a lay figure in the background.
One would expect Nagas to be more or less prominent features
in deluge-legends, but this is not the case.

The most detailed of these deluge-myths is perhaps that of
Kengtung, the easternmost Shan State, which borders on
China, the territory of the French Republic, and Siam. In
the beginning this State was a wide stretch of jungle with a
very scanty population, except in the hills, which were inhabited
by the Hkas. The Hkas are not a race, or rather not any one
race, the name being applied by the Shans to the savage tribes,
whether they are Wa, Lahii, Akha, Lamet, Yaoyen, Lihsaw,
Bahnar, or what not, just as the Chinese call them all Ye-jen,
or "Wild People." The word means "slave," and the insinu-
ation is that slavery is all they are fit for, however difficult
it may be to establish the postulate as an actual fact.

In those early days, at any rate, the Hkas were a very im-
portant factor in Kengtiing. A man came to the country from
the land of Baranasi (Benares) to do the work of a cowherd.
Although he was poor, he was very generous and always
shared with the hillmen what food he had. Therefore, when
the ruler of the valley-dwellers died with no heir to succeed
him, the Hkas put Ko Pala, as the neatherd was called, — the
name is simply the Sanskrit word gopdla ("cowherd") — into a
large basket and carried him by night to the dead Chief's house,
where they put him on the throne. The scheme was made the
simpler because all the people in the capital were worn out by
the funeral ceremonies for the dead King. In the morning the
elders and people appeared, and Ko Pala explained to them that
he was nominated King by the Hkas. When the wise men were
consulted, they agreed that the omens were favourable and that
Ko Pala might be elected Chief of the State; but they added
that after one hundred years there would be rain for seven
days and seven nights, and that the whole of the plain would



INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 279

be submerged. It is sad to have to relate, but either prosperity
spoiled Ko Pala, or the Hkas expected too much. At any rate,
they thought that as King he did not give them enough to
eat, so, on the pretext that they were going to take him to
another, much larger kingdom, they got him into a big basket
again, and carrying him off to the edge of "the great ocean,"
they deposited him on an islet, where he died of want. When,
after sundry reincarnations, he returned to the Kengtiang plain
in the form of a crab, he found that the flood had come. It
will be noted that he appeared not as a dragon, or any simpler
form of serpent, but as a crab. He stayed till the waters had
gone down, and then he entered a cave in a hill to the north
of the town of Kengtung, where he died. The hill is called
Loi Pu Kao, or the "Hill which the Crab Entered," to the pres-
ent day, which is a proof of the truth of the story. There is
nothing to show when this happened, but it is definitely as-
serted that when Gotama Buddha had kept his twelfth vassa,
or annual retreat of four months during the rainy season, Keng-
tung was still flooded, with the exception of the seven hills,
on which, like Rome, the present town is built. This would
put the flood in the fifth century before Christ. In this year
forty-nine rahans (monks) arrived, and one of them planted his
staff in the hill called Sawm Hsak, They also saw three flights
of birds, one white, one speckled, and the third black. This
their leader interpreted to mean that in future years a holy
man, coming from the north, would drain the waters and
make this region an inhabited state, which would be occupied
by three sets of people, one a race which professed religion,
another only indifferently Buddhist, and the third thoroughly
uncivilized. Then the monks went their way, after the proph-
ecy had been inscribed on a rock on the Sawm Hsak Hill, which
stands within the present walled town of Kengtung. After a
space of a hundred and fifty years from the time when Gotama
attained Nirvana (probably in 483 B.C.), a ruler arose in the
country to the north. He was called Wong Ti-fang, and his



28o INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

name and fame were very great. He had a thousand and four
wives, all the daughters of chiefs, and he had a thousand and
four sons, all of them expert in manly exercises except four,
who persisted in a desire to become hermits. Wong Ti-fang
was much annoyed and had them imprisoned, but after seven
days, during which they refused to take food, they disappeared,
and were found only after long search, studying at the feet
of a holy man much venerated in the state. Wong Ti-fang then
yielded, and allowed them to wander off, on the understanding
that, if they found any place fit to be made a state, they were
to report to him.

The brothers proceeded south through Chieng Hung to
Kengtiing, where they found the mark of the staff left by the
rahan and the prophecy written on the rock of the Sawm Hsak
Hill. One of the brothers, with his pilgrim's staff, scraped a
small channel to the south to let off the water which still
covered the whole face of the country, and then the party
wandered on till they came to the shores of the great ocean.
From there they returned, but were disappointed to find that
very little water had run off to the south, and that the flood
was not greatly abated. So two of the brothers cut channels
to the north, and another planted rice, after which they re-
tired to the hill range to the west, where they lived for seven
years. When they came down, they found the country all dry,
except for a small lake near the Sawm Hsak Hill. In this they
discovered a female Naga whom they asked to become the
guardian spirit of the state which was to be. This is the only
mention of Nagas in the legend. They were satisfied that it
was a fine country for growing rice, so they returned to tell
their father, W5ng Ti-fang, who sent five hundred households
to colonize it. The rice, however, did not do well. It was ex-
traordinarily fine in the stalk, but there was no grain in the
ear. After three successive disappointing harvests, the dragon
guardian informed them that this was because it was not in-
tended that the state should be colonized by Chinese, and that



PLATE VI IT

Shrine of the Tree-Spirit

Such a spirit-shrine is found in nearly every grove,
usually in front of the most conspicuous tree, most
often a plpal or a "buttress tree." This particular
grove stands outside the eastern gate of the city of
Samka, in the Southern Shan States. Cf. Plate IV.












;%><J» '?»?*'






' ^*' .<*J<f'






^.H M .m)






*l'" .?









'^^•;Si^^






INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 281

they had best return to their own country, which they accord-
ingly did.

Meanwhile a gourd — about which our sources give us no
previous information — had ripened and fallen to the ground,
where it burst, and the seeds were scattered in the tracks of
elephants, wild cattle, and rhinoceroses. From these seeds
sprang the Wa race, all of whom at first paid homage to Wong
Ti-fang. There was one branch, however, which refused to do
this, giving as their reason that they had no leader, whereupon
the guardian spirit advised them to adopt the expedient usual
in such cases. A carriage was sent out with four horses and no
driver. The horses stopped of their own accord under a certain
tree. From this tree there came down two beings, male and
female, from the Spirit Country, and they were accepted by
the people as rulers of the land. From them was descended
Mang Rai, who married the daughter of the Chief of Chieng
Mai in the Siamese Shan country. He was the founder of
Chieng Rai and Chieng Hsen and, eventually, of the State of
Kengtiing, from the plains of which the Wa were driven into
the hills.

In commemoration of the legend two customs are maintained
in Kengtiing to the present day. When a Chief dies, the gov-
ernment of that State is handed over for a short space to a
Buddhist monk, who, after a longer or shorter period, installs
the new Sawbwa. At the same time two Wa men are brought
in from the hills to the Haw, as the palace is called. There they
are given food, and when they have finished their meal, they
are formally expelled by the Ministers of State. This is con-
sidered to be an admission that the Wa were the aborigines of
the country, and at the same time an assertion that they no
longer have a right to anything but their hills. At the annual
Spring Festival also the corybantic procession through the
town is led by a Wa, usually in an advanced state of intoxica-
tion. The rabble stream through at a pace something between
a lope and a jog-trot, which seems to be the rate of progres-



282 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

sion which suits their hilarious condition better than a walk,
and they carry with them emblems which to the ordinary ob-
server seem merely lewd, but to the philosopher suggest the
origin of life. They end on the banks of the river which flows
northward, and this may be supposed to be in memory of the
draining away of the flood. The ceremony there is more of the
character of a spring festival and is alluded to below.

The Karens, who now live scattered in the Delta of the Irra-
waddy and eastward across the hills far into Indo-China, have
a tale of the origin of their race which is much more redolent
of savage fancy than the stanzas which Mason gives, hinting
at the Garden of Eden. The Mepu, or White Karens, are
responsible for the legend. According to this, many hundreds
of thousands of years ago a brother and sister lived at Ela in
the Pyinmana District. Ela is now a station on the Rangoon-
Mandalay Railway, but at the remote period of which the
tradition tells it must have been very near the sea-coast, if
not under the sea altogether. Nevertheless, there is no sug-
gestion of a flood. The brother and sister were named Lan-yein
and A-mong respectively. Apparently they belonged to the
aboriginal race of Upper Burma, though it is possible that some
of the people think they were descended from the skies. The
Karens, however, are a very ponderous people, without any
of the imagination of the Chins, though they are undeniably
more worthy in the most offensive sense of the word, and much
easier to manage from an administrative point of view. What-
ever their origin may have been, the brother and sister were
on excellent terms with the celestial deities, and the Sek-ya
Min, the Lord of Supernatural Weapons, presented them with
a magic drum, which, when it was beaten, drove away every
enemy and likewise supplied all the wants of its owners. The
brother and sister lived happily together until, one day, Lan-
yein got a porcupine by beating his wish-drum. He cut the
animal in two and gave one half to his sister, but, unfortunately,
it was either the outer half, or the hinder half, or she was not



INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 283

very circumspect in the way she took it. At any rate, in her
half were large quills which wounded her hand, whereupon she
jumped to the conclusion that Lan-yein had given her this
piece on purpose. So she lost her temper, which suggests that
she, at all events, had become very mundane in her ways, and
she determined to have her revenge. Accordingly she went
to her brother and said she had had a dream that, if a new
skin were spread on the wish-drum, they would get what they
wanted far more readily than had hitherto been the case. Lan-
yein also was earthly enough to desire a still more easy life, or
else he was trusting enough to suspect no evil, for he tore of!
the skin and put on a new drum-head. But the experiment
proved an utter failure. The magic spell was broken, and he
got nothing, no matter how hard he beat the drum. Then
Lan-yein, being very angry, resolved to leave A-mong and go
to live in some other country. At the same time he did not
want an open rupture, but thought it best to slip away quietly.
So he told his sister to go and catch some prawns, and said
that he was going fishing. She went off unsuspectingly, and
he set out in the opposite direction. Apparently, however,
while he was waiting for the fish to bite, he improved upon his
original plan. At any rate he came back with the fish which
he had caught and found that A-mong also had been success-
ful. The fish and the prawns were cooked, but the fish were
white and the prawns were not. Lan-yein then announced that
it was not safe to eat the prawns till they turned white, but
since his fish were already of that colour, he ate them. Then
he told her that he was going out to cut a clearing for an opium
field, ordering her not to follow him till the prawns had
become white and she had eaten them. She waited hours and
hours, but the prawns did not grow any whiter, and at last
she became so hungry and so anxious that she went to look
for her brother. She followed him till she arrived at Maung-la,
just west of the present village of Loi Mawng. By that time
she was so weary that she could not go any farther, and



284 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

resting so long that the footprints disappeared, she could
trace him no more. So she settled down in Maung-la, where she
later married one of the men of the village, and from her are
descended the Mepu race of White Karens.

Lan-yein went on till he reached China, but there he was at
a loss to decide where he should stay. Accordingly he caught
four green beetles and set them free, one to each point of the
compass, north, south, east, and west. But the green beetles
did not come back together, so he decided that the place was
not a favourable one and again set off on his travels. He tried
the omen three times, and the third time the signs were propi-
tious. The four green beetles all came back simultaneously
to their starting-place. So he resolved to settle there, but,
to make quite sure, he tried another test. He dug seven holes
in the ground, and when he saw that the earth from the seven
refilled only one of the holes, he was satisfied. His magical
powers were great and soon gathered people round about him,
so that he became very powerful and very famous, and in the
course of time was chosen Udibwa, or Emperor of China.

Lan-yein did not altogether forget A-mong, but apparently
became reconciled to the loss of the magic drum. In those an-
cient days the women of China wore brass anklets, and when
he became Emperor, Lan-yein sent twelve pairs of these to
his sister by some messengers going to Burma. They showed
A-mong how to put them on, and the fashion was so much ad-
mired that all the women of the Mepu race have worn them
ever since. The tale has not the imagination of the Chin legends,
but it hints at what was probably the original home of the
Karen race, and in so far has its merits.

The people farther south fall back upon the common egg
notion. A King of the country of Karanaka had two sons,
Titha Kumma and Zaya Kumma, both of whom renounced the
world and determined to become hermits. They left their home
and went to settle on separate mountains near the seaside,
not far from the present site of Tha-tun. They occasionally



INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 285

went for a walk on the seashore, and during one of their excur-
sions they found two eggs which had been laid and abandoned
by a Naga who came up out of the sea. They carried them off
to the hills, where in due time two children were hatched from
them, and these the hermits brought up. One of them unfor-
tunately died when it was ten years old, but it had acquired
enough merit to be born again in the country of Mithila, and
there, while still a child, it became a disciple of the Buddha
Gotama. The other was in charge of the elder hermit and
grew up to manhood. He lived in the forest till he was seven-
teen years of age, and then, with the aid of Sek-ya (Pali
Sakka, Sanskrit Sakra), who corresponds to Indra in Indian
mythology,^^ he built Tha-tun and ruled under the name of
Titha-yaza, whom some have thought to have been Asoka's
brother, Tisya. The brother, who had died young and been
reincarnated to become a disciple of the Buddha, interceded
with Gotama himself, and so the All-Merciful One flew through
the air to Tha-tun thirty-seven years (which would probably
be 446 B. c.) before he attained Nirvana. The King and the
people of the city listened to the teaching of Gotama, but the
inhabitants of the surrounding country were savage and re-
sentful. This tradition probably presents in a roundabout
way the real facts of the case. The King and his people were
the Talaing immigrants who brought Buddhism of the South-
ern School with them, but the people whom they found there,
and who contiinued to live in the neighbourhood, were prob-
ably Kolarian Mon belonging to the Munda family which
stretched across Indo-China. We should also note that from
Tha-tun the great King Anawra-hta brought religion to
Pagan on the Irrawaddy. He asked for copies of the sacred
books, but these were refused him, whereupon, marching to
Tha-tun with an army, he carried off King, monks, people,
and sacred books, paying Tha-tun only the compliment of
copying its temples at Pagan.
The Lao people, who inhabit the upper part of Indo-China,



286 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

north of Slam, Cambodia, and the Saigon country, have the
more pagan and extremely common tradition that all the races
who now form the population of Eastern Indo-Chlna came out
of a melon or pumpkin. This melon grew at Muang T eng,
as the Lao people call It, but which the French, copying the
Annamese, term DIen Blen-phu. This Is a high plateau to the
north-east of the Nam U, a river which flows Into the Me-
khong a little above Luang Prabang.

Muang T'eng Is Interesting In another way, because, In the
palmy days of the Burmese Kingdom, It was the farthest east-
ern outpost and lay close to the Hill of the Four Flags, the
Alan Le-gyet, where the standards of Burma, China, Slam, and
Tongking were planted on the summit and were visited an-
nually by patrols from each of the countries concerned.

[Prometheus]

According to the legend, the children of this melon spread
eastward to the shores of the China Sea; southward down the
valleys of the Mekhong and the Menam; and westward toward
Burma. When It Is combined with traditions of a deluge, there
is inevitably a suggestion of Noah's Ark, a fancy which would
not suggest Itself to an inland people with nothing bigger than
dugouts. The heat of Indo-China, Tongking, Annam, the
Lao States, and Slam apparently led the Inhabitants to think
of nothing but gaining their living with the least possible exer-
tion, and dulled their interest In what may have been their
past history. Yet we may regard the legend as hinting at the
character of the race In prehistoric days. The original inhabit-
ants were probably a dark-skinned race, of whom very few
traces now survive, unless possibly the Wa, In their block of
hills on the middle Salween, represent these aborigines. Never-
theless, the colour of many of the races at the present day sug-
gests such an original complexion, in spite of the repeated
mingling with yellow and light-skinned Invaders.

The position and character of the Mekhong Valley clearly
show that It was the chief of the lines of exit for the yellow
hosts pressing southward from Tibet, and no less clearly



INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 287

demonstrate that It was the main line of penetration for the
copper-red bands entering from the south and marching inland.
Moreover, the situation of the basins of the Mekhong and the
Menam inevitably suggests them as the place of refuge for the
races driven from the north-east or expelled from the west by
conquering invaders. It is more than probable that there was
Mongolian irruption down the line of the Mekhong which
began the mingling of yellow blood with the quasi-Negritos
whom we may take to have been the first inhabitants of the
country. After the Mongolians came the peoples, originating
from Turkistan, who had overrun India, Yiin-nan, and Malay-
sia, and were themselves partly driven out by the Aryans.
They actually founded a dynasty in the Lao country, and
though the royal line was ephemeral, the people left their mark
on the character of the population. The mixture was made
still more bewildering by the inroads of the Malays, who first
occupied the coast-line of Indo-China and then forced their
way up the Mekhong. They probably got no farther than
Suwannakhet, but nevertheless they also introduced a new
type. It is possible that this mixture of autochthones, Tibetans,
Central Asiatics, and Malays is responsible for the variety of
races whom the French call the Khas. The name is a slovenly
one, for kha is simply the Shan word for "slave," no matter
of what nationality or origin, just as the Chinese lump all
aboriginal races together under the name of Ye-jen, or "Wild
Men." There is a sort of general superficial resemblance, but
the difference of dialects and features is quite sufficiently
marked to render it highly improbable that they should all
be classed together.

When the Annamese, who are of Sinitic (or Chinese) origin,
succeeded, after long wars, in overthrowing the Kingdom of the
Chams, they drove the conquered back to the basin of the
Mekhong, where they centred round Bassak as a capital in a
territory which to the present day is known to the Lao Shans
as Champa Sak. Upon them fell the Tai, or Shans from the



288 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

north, and drove Into the hills what remained of them and the
Kha races. They occupied all the plains and all the valleys,
and flight to the hills or absorption was all that was left to
their victims. Thus a still further confusion of races arose,
and since most of the communities lived isolated lives, there
was a bewildering development according to the type pre-
dominating in each particular district, though along parallel
lines. Even the name Tai, which is given to, and claimed by,
the populations themselves, implies a great number of socie-
ties which are diff"erent In many ways and yet have points of
resemblance.

Finally, there were two infusions of what we call Aryan
blood. The first came in the fifth century of our era from the
south northward, starting from Cambodia and penetrating
as far as Luang Prabang. The second was two centuries later,
when the Buddhist sacred books came from India by way of
Burma and the north of the Mekhong Valley. These Aryan
immigrants not only brought many books and much doctrine,
but they also absorbed a large number of Brahmanical super-
stitions which profoundly affected the aboriginal beliefs.
This is more clearly to be seen among the Tai of the north-
west than among those along the Mekhong Valley. From the
physical point of view Aryan influence was very slight, but
on the moral and Intellectual side It was very powerful among
the peoples of the plains and valleys, though scarcely at all In
the hills.

This may account for the bald and fragmentary details of
mythology which are to be found among the more northerly
races of central and eastern Indo-China. It Is only here and
there that we find legends on the scale of those of the Chins
and Kachlns, and one can never be sure that the myths have
not been borrowed from some of the neighbouring tribes.
The Wa, who may be taken to be at least as old and as little
crossed with the other races as any in the hills, have a more
detailed version of the pumpkin or gourd story. In the begin-



INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 289

ning of time, they say, three pappada ("hills") were inhabited
by two beings, who were neither spirits nor human, and who,
though they seem to have been of differing sex, had no earthly
passions. They existed spontaneously from the union of earth
and water. These the Wa call Yatawm and Yatai, while the
Shans name them Ta-hsek-khi and Ya-hsek-khi. The Creator
Spirit, who is styled Hkun Hsang Long, saw them, and re-
flecting that they were well suited to become the father and
mother of all sentient beings, he named them Ta-hsang Ka-
hsi ("Great All-Powerful") and Ya-hsang Ka-hsi ("Grand-
mother All-Powerful"); and from his dwelling-place in the
empyrean, which is called Mong Hsang, he dropped two
hzve-sampi, or gourds, down to them.

Picking up the gourds, Yatawm and Yatai ate them and
sowed the seeds near a rock. At the end of three months and
seven days the seeds germinated and grew into large creepers;
and in the course of three years and seven months the creepers
blossomed, each producing a gourd, which, by the end of
the full period, had swollen to the size of a hill. At the same
time Yatawm and Yatai and the twelve kinds of creatures
(concerning whom no details whatever are given) came to know
the sexual passion. There is here a kind of suggestion of the
Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, but with no hint of an
assumption that Hkun Hsang Long did not intend the gourds
to be eaten. When the gourds had reached their full size, the
noise of human beings was heard inside one, and the noise of
all kinds of animals inside the other.

Ya-hsang Ka-hsi at the same time grew great with child
and gave birth to a girl who had the ears and the legs of a tiger,
whence her parents called her Nang Pyek-kha Yek-khi ("Miss
Queen Phenomenon") and made over to her all the expanse
of earth and water and the two gourds. Apparently the eat-
ing of the first two gourds had brought death into the world
as well as passion, for the two first beings, we are told, were
now well stricken in years, so that they called aloud and



290 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

addressed the Nats and Thagyas, the spirits and archangels,
vowing that whosoever was able to split the gourds should
have their daughter to wife.

At this time there was one Hkun Hsang L'rcng, who had
come down from Mong Hsang in the skies and by eating the
ashes of the old earth had become so gross and heavy that
he lost the power to reascend to his own country. This sug-
gests the thalesan, or flavoured rice, of Burmese legend, which
brought about the debasement and fall of the original celestial
Brahmas. Hkun Hsang L'rong was, therefore, constrained to
remain upon earth and be associated with the spirits of the
hills and dales, the trolls and pixies and kelpies, and he wan-
dered far and wide. He passed through the three thousand
forests of Himawunta (the Himalayas), he wandered to the
foot of Loi Hsao Mong, which seems to be a Wa equivalent
for Mount Meru, and he crossed mighty rivers and fells to the
sources of the Nam Kiu (the Irrawaddy), and thence over
to the Nam Kong (the Salween), which borders the Wa
country on the west. Finally he came to the place where
Yatawm and Yatai lived, and when he saw their young daugh-
ter Nang Pyek-kha Yek-khi, he fell in love with her, in spite
of her tiger's ears and legs, and asked for her hand in marriage.
The old people were not unwilling, but they told him of the
vow which they had made to the spirits of the air, and insisted
that only the man who had the power to split the two gourds
should wed their daughter.

Then Hkun Hsang L'rong recalled the pilgrimages which
he had made and the merit that he had thereby gained for
himself, and he called aloud and said: "If indeed I be a Bodh-
isattva who, in the fulness of time, am destined to become a
Buddha and to save all rational beings, then may the Hkun
Sak-ya (Indra) and the Madali Wi-hsa-kyung Nat, that
powerful Spirit, descend and give me the two-handed Sak-
ya sword, the celestial weapon!" Thereupon the two eternal
beings came down from the Elysian Fields and gave him the



INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 291

magic falchion, two-edged and wonderful. With this he cut
open the two gourds; first that which enclosed all the animals
of the earth, and then that in which the human beings were
contained. Before he struck, however, he called to warn those
inside. The hare and the crab were very anxious to get out.
The hare curled himself up in a ball with his head between
his legs and watched for the stroke of the sword; but the crab
crept beside him and took no precautions. When the blade
fell, the hare leaped out of the way, but the crab was cut in half.
Such was the glory of the sword that there was no stain of
blood upon it, and ever since crabs have remained bloodless
creatures. Then Hkun Hsang L'rong took up the shell of the
crab and said: "If in truth this world is to be the abode of
rational beings and the birth-place of the five Buddhas, then
let this be for a sign, that where the shell of this crab falls,
there shall a lake be found." With these words he flung the
crab's shell down on the mountain-top, and thus the lake
Nawng Hkeo was formed, and on its shores Hkun Hsang
L'rong built a city called Mong Mai. This Nawng Hkeo Lake
is the sacred mere of the Wa and covers a large area on the crest
of a whale-back ridge not far from the Chinese frontier. Since
this place was the motherland, and its inhabitants were the
parents of all the generations of men, it was afterward named
Sampula Teng, and the people were termed Sampula, the first
of the children of men on this world, called Badda (Pali bhadda,
"good"). Hkun Hsang L'rong, however, named it Mong Wa
("the Country of the Wa") and said: "Whoso attacks or in-
jures Mong Wa and harms its children, the Wa Hpilu Yek-kha,
may he be utterly destroyed by the Sak-ya weapons!" He
declared the land to be independent forever of all the countries
surrounding it, so that it has remained a purely La Wa Hpilu
Yek-kha region from the beginning till now; and he made the
country rich with the seven kinds of metals — gold, silver,
iron, copper, lead, tin, and the soil of the earth, the latter
being a metal according to Burmese notions.



292 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

The races of men that came out of the great gourd were sixty
in number, and they were divided into four classes: those who
lived on rice; those who Hved on maize; those who Hved on
flesh; and those who lived on roots. Each had its own language
and raiment and manner of living. From these are descended
the five clans of Yang (Karens), two clans of Pawng (who they
were does not appear), five clans of Tai (Shans), six clans of
Hke (Chinamen), ten clans of Hpai (also undetermined),
two clans who were neither Hke nor Tai, and thirteen clans
of Hpilu Yek-kha.

There were nine aged persons who came out of the gourd
when it was cut open, and Hkun Hsang L*r6ng, after making
them his Ministers in Mong Mang-liin Sampula, arranged with
them the distribution of the different races. The Hpilu Yek-
kha lived in the centre, the Hpai in the south-east, the forty-
one races of Hkun Hsang L'rong's family in the south-west,
the Tai in the north-west, and the Hke in the north-east.

The six clans of the Pyamma Yek-kha and the twelve clans
of the Twatahsa were among the descendants of Hkun Hsang
L'rong. He was supreme sovereign and built the two cities
of Nawng Hkeo and Nawng Awng Pu. He had three sons:
Mang Lu, Mang Lai, and Mang Lon, and when they were
thirty-seven years of age, in the year seventy of religion (673
B. c), they went to Nawng Taripu, the source of the Nam
Kong (the Salween), where the kings, Hpi Lu and Hpi Hpai,
gave them their daughters in marriage. Mang Lon had a son,
Mang Kyaw Sa, who married a Wa Princess and later had an
amour with a Naga Princess, who laid an egg in a teak forest
in his country. The egg was hatched by a tiger, and the child
who came from it took at first the name of Hkun Hsak, from
the teak forest where he was born, though afterward he was
known as Hso Hkan Hpa ("the Tiger King") when he became
famous and founded the city of Wing Mai.

This is a jumble of Buddhism, totemism, and simple fantasy
which seems to represent very well the vicissitudes, if not of



INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 293

the Wa States themselves, at least of the country round about.
The hill tribes are naturally spirit-worshippers, but their
chief concern is to deceive the disembodied spirit so that he
may not come back to trouble them. They fire off guns to as-
sure the departed that he is not wanted; they zigzag the body
when they are taking it out for burial, so that the ghost may
not know his way back; and they usually put the grave in a
jungly place where he may very easily lose his bearings, or
they inter him beneath the house where he may be kept under
surveillance and may be propitiated immediately if any-
thing untoward happens. Apart from these ghosts, there are
spirits who have never been incarnated. They divide their
spheres of mischief among them; one spirit gives stomach-
aches, another spoils the crops, another causes men boils
and blains, and others watch for opportunities of making
villages and individuals hostile to one another.

The great bulk of the Indo-Chinese races have a fondness
for totemistic birth-stories, and many claim, as we have seen,
to be sprung from eggs, some from dogs, and a few from rep-
tiles. The Wa trace their lineage to tadpoles, and in connexion
with this they cherish a legend which explains why they find
it necessary to cut off human heads and to set up skulls in
avenues outside their villages. The story has much more the
character of a national myth than the patchwork gourd story.

Yatawm and Yatai are still taken to be the primeval Wa.
As tadpoles they spent their first years in Nawng Hkeo, the
hill-top lake in the centre of the head-hunting country, but
in due course they became frogs and then went to live on a
hill called Nam Tao. They continued to ascend in the scale
of life, and becoming ogres, they established themselves in a
cave termed Pakkate, about thirty miles south of the moun-
tain lake on the slope over the Nam Hka, a river flowing due
south at the western foot of the hill of Nawng Hkeo. From
this cave they made forays in all directions in search of food,
and at first they were content with deer, wild pig, goats, and



294 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

cattle. As long as this was their only sustenance they had no
offspring; but all Hpi Hpai, as the ogres are called, in the end
come to eat human beings, this being their most distinguish-
ing characteristic after the facts that they have red eyes and
cast no shadow. Accordingly one day Yatawm and Yatai
went farther afield than usual and came to a country inhabited
by men. They caught one and ate him, and carried off his
skull to the Pakkate Cave. After this they had many little
ogrelets, all of whom, however, appeared in human form, and
the parents, therefore, placed the human skull on a post and
worshipped it. There were nine sons, who established them-
selves in the nine Wa glens, mostly in the west, and they bred
and multiplied rapidly. The ten daughters settled on the fells
and were even more prolific. Their descendants are most in-
veterate head-hunters, and the skulls are always men's. The
language which the new race spoke was at first that of the
frog, a sort of Aristophanic "Brekekekex Koax Koax," but
this was elaborated in time into the Wa tongue of the present
day.

Yatawm and Yatai enjoined on their children the necessity
of always having a human skull in their settlements. Without
this they could not gain any peace, plenty, prosperity, com-
fort, or enjoyment, and this command has always been piously
obeyed. When the venerable ogres felt death approaching,
they summoned all their progeny, and after giving an account
of their origin they said that they two, Yatawm and Yatai,
were to be worshipped as the father and mother spirits. There
were other spirits, they admitted, but these were all bad and
malevolent; Yatawm and Yatai alone were genial and benig-
nant, and the most seemly offering to them was a grinning
skull bleached to a snowy white.

The sacrificial offerings, however, when such seemed neces-
sary, were to be buffaloes, bullocks, pigs, or fowls, with plenti-
ful libations of rice spirits. The special occasions on which
these were required were marriage, the commencement of war,



INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 295

a funeral, and the putting up of a human skull. In addition
to these meat offerings, a human skull was desirable under
exceptional circumstances or for special objects. Thus, when
a new village was founded, a skull was an imperative necessity.
If there were a drought which threatened a failure of the
crops, no means would be so successful in bringing rain as the
dedication of a skull. If disease swept away many victims, a
skull only would stay the pestilence. But the good parental
ogres expressly said that it was not necessary that the villagers
should always slay a man in order to get his head; they might
obtain the skull by purchase or barter.

[Prometheus]

There are now grades among the Wa. The thorough-paced
wild Wa, the descendants of the ogre daughters, never miss a
chance of taking a head, whether circumstances suggest it or
not; and, moreover, they prefer the heads of strangers or inno-
cent people. Above them come the Wa who accept the al-
ternative offered by the moribund Yatawm and Yatai; they
set up the heads of those killed in fight, or the skulls of thieves
and robbers. The Wa is considered well on the way to reclama-
tion when he gets his skulls by purchase, even if he may not
make any inquiry as to how they were secured, so long as he
gains them for the village avenue, which is always outside the
village and usually lined with trees, though the skulls are
only on one side. Finally, there is the Wa who is forgetful
enough of the ogre pair to dispense with human skulls and
to mount only those of bears, leopards, and other wild beasts.

The Wa, unlike the Kachins, are a dwindling, or at any rate
not an expanding, race. At one time they not only held the
whole of Kengtiing, but also extended into the Siamese Shan
States, and the remains of their old forts, or fortified villages,
are still to be seen even in the comparatively low country
round Chieng Mai. They seem to have been strongly settled
there in the last years of the fifteenth century, if we may
judge from the Lusiad of the great Portuguese poet Camoens, in
which he tells of Vasco da Gama's first voyage to the Far



296 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

East. Nowadays there are many Wa who have not only given
up the worship of Yatawm and Yatai, but have become more
or less fervent and orthodox Buddhists. The Shans call them
Tai Lol, that is to say, "Hill Shans," and they even employ
the name themselves, though they also use the style Wa Kiit
("the Wa Who Were Left Behind") and are almost universally
so referred to by the professed Wa tribesmen.

They are probably of the same race as the Hka-che of the
northern Lao country, who have a tradition that they and the
Lao, or Siamese Shans, were once brothers. Their father died
and left a cow elephant with her calf and a box, saying that
the property was to be divided between them. The box
contained two bundles, and it was agreed that the Hka-che
was to have first choice. He took the bundle which lay at the
top, and this turned out to be the smaller one. In it there
was nothing but the tiny strip of cloth, or perineal band, which
is his costume to the present day; but the Lao found in his
bundle a jacket, a turban, and a silk waist-cloth, such as he
still continues to wear. The Hka-che then chose the mother
elephant, as was natural enough, and thought that he had thus
got even. He took the cow elephant away into his hills, while
the Lao was left with the calf. But the mother elephant soon
grew restless and sad at heart, and so, breaking away before
long, she bolted back to her young one. Thus the Lao got
both and refused to give up the mother, so that the Hka-
che went off in high dudgeon to the hills, where he has stayed
ever since with neither clothes nor elephant.

The Kachins have a less humble story to tell of how they
made a bad start. Men became mortal because they had dis-
pleased the sun-spirits, and as a result the domestic animals
broke into the garden of the first men. The fowls ate the fruit
of the plant of life, the cattle devoured the leaves, and the
hogs made short work of the roots. Thus the plant of life dis-
appeared altogether, and man complained, whereupon the
guilty animals confessed their misdeeds and undertook, as a



INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 297

penalty for their fault, to become substitutes for man and to
give their lives for his, since, if it had not been for their tres-
pass, mankind, or at least Kachins, would have remained im-
mortal. That is why cattle and other animals are offered as
surrogates for men when sacrifices are made in cases of ill-
ness or calamity. This tradition suggests a connexion with,
or an observation of, Buddhist neighbours, for it is always
brought forward as an excuse for taking innocent animal life.
There is no distinction between clean and unclean animals.
Squirrels, rats, moles, prawns, etc., are presented whole, but
when hogs or cattle are sacrificed, only a very small portion
from the most undesirable parts goes to the spirits.

The Kachins take care that the sun and other spirits shall
know what attentions have been paid to them. At the sides,
and often at the back, of every Kachin dwelling are a number
of crosses which show how many cattle the household have
offered, the skulls being hung on the crosses, or else put up,
as still more conspicuous ornaments, on the front post and the
frame of the doorway. At the front door are emblems which
indicate what sacrifices have been made to the spirits that
cause skin diseases and similar afflictions. At the back corner
is the special place for the spirits of the household, who are
the particular guardians of the family. Most of these house-
hold Nats can trace their pedigree back to some venerated
father or mother, or to a far-away ancestor, who, for one reason
or another, preferred the old home to a new place in the
land of the departed. But no trust in their family affection is
ever assumed. On the contrary, they are always considered to
be morose, and as likely as not bent on mischief. The affec-
tionate mother will return from spirit-land and in the shape
of a chirping cricket will entice the anima of the still living
child to wander away, with the result that the infant dies in a
few months. A departed relative will come back and leave his
finger-prints on the boiling rice, the consequence being that
most of those who eat it will fall ill and die.



298 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

An old and highly respected chief, if he is not properly buried,
will cause a drought or a flood and will destroy the crops of
the entire community. Therefore, at the entrance to the vil-
lage is a special display of things which he may want, so that
he may not make trouble; and in front of every house is an
array of altars which represent the precautions taken to pro-
pitiate the various spirits from above and from below.

This idea is probably at the bottom of the Nga-hlut Pwe of
the Burmese, when they go out in gay bands to rescue fish
which have been stranded by the rapidly falling floods at the
end of the rainy season. The fish are gathered in water-pots
and buckets, and carried off to be set free in the river. The
pious Buddhist thinks he gains much merit toward a new exist-
ence by this performance, just as the King of Burma, the father
of King Thibaw, used to buy caged birds and have them lib-
erated on audience days for the benefit of his soul and the Im-
pressing of his subjects.

In Burma the festival is always near the time of the New
Year, or Water Festival, about April, toward the end of the hot
weather. In Luang Prabang, on the Mekhong, which is now
French territory, It is a direct part of the Festival of the New
Year, and in fact is a sort of day of purification, taking place
on the first of the seven days which the feast lasts.

From break of day on, the streets of Luang Prabang are full
of gay crowds, all In their best holiday clothes. They make their
way to the market-place to buy living creatures there, mostly
fish and birds, though there are always a few land animals,
rats, squirrels, porcupines, and the like. The purchasers carry
their prizes home and keep them there until about four o'clock
in the afternoon, when the sun begins to get well down. Then
all enter boats and set out for the small islands which the fall-
ing of the river has brought to light opposite the town. When
they have landed, they proceed to set their purchases free,
each into its own element — the birds into the air and the fish
into the water. The explanation given is that It Is to obtain



INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 299

pardon for the sins which they have committed during the
past twelve months, but it Is probably an inversion of the idea
of sacrificial offerings, condemned by Buddhism. After the
populace have returned home, about sunset, the Buddhist
monks are invited to private houses and make the tour of the
town. They expound the sacred books and offer prayers for
prosperity, their reward being generous gifts of cooked rice,
fruit, cakes, flowers, and wax candles, and, in later days,
tinned milk and food generally, and cheap watches, lithographs,
carriage clocks, musical boxes, and detestably ornate Austrian
glass and chinaware, to say nothing of Dutch clocks and glass
chandeliers.

For the next six days the whole population give themselves
up to enjoyment. Every one visits every one else and pours out
good wishes for the New Year. By way of emphasizing this
and giving a visible sign, it Is the custom to tie bands of cotton
on the wrists of one's friends, which not only bring luck, but
guard against disease. Even the images of the Buddha are
decorated with them, though perhaps chaplets of flowers are
more common than cotton bracelets. Moreover, all the Images
are taken down from their pedestals and altars, and are arranged
on trestle-staging in the form of a rectangle where every one
can come close to them and lave them with scented water.
This Is not called washing them; the proper phrase is "making
them glorious and transcendent," and that Is why perfumed
water is used. It is also sprinkled on the monks as they pass
along the streets paying visits to other monasteries, just as
the laity call on one another. The Shan Chief, together with
his ministers and officials, also go up and down the streets
and are liberally splashed with this scented water. Some
of them are on elephants and some in palanquins, but that
makes no difference to the loyal crowd.

The people themselves have no such daintiness with one
another. They use plain water, and the sprinkling becomes a
ducking which, especially in the case of the young people, ends



300 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

in soaking to the skin, the girls being particularly zealous in
the matter. In Luang Prabang the young men are not allowed
to have revenge, as they are in Burma, where an excited maiden
in her bedraggled silk skirt and thin jacket often has her figure
as well defined as a modern lady of fashion. By way of com-
pensation for this exemption of the fair sex from a ducking,
the young gentlemen of Luang Prabang have permission to
smear the girls' faces with soot — if they can — but are ex-
posed to reprisals in this respect in addition to a possible
sousing. This goes on all through the New Year's Feast, but
at four in the afternoon there is usually a lull while everybody
goes to get flowers to decorate the pagodas, and at night all
visit the open-air plays where there is, of course, no splashing,
except for naked small fry. In fact, all splashing stops with the
setting of the sun.

On the fourth day of the festival all officials go to pay homage
to the native Chief, and subordinate officials call on those
higher in rank and age; and along with the usual presents they
respectfully tie a cotton thread round the great man's wrist.

The latter part of the festival is simply a Spring Feast, such
as may be found in all countries, but the freeing of birds and
fishes at the commencement seems to bring spirit-worshipping
notions and Buddhist pity for all living things into some sort
of connexion with one another.

This is all the more certain because the Thai-dam, Thai-
hkao, Thai-deng, and Thai-niia, the Black, White, Red, and
Upper Thai, although of the same race and origin as the Lao
people, offer sacrifices to the spirit, just as the Kachins do,
though they are more eclectic in their choice. Thus a dog is the
proper animal to offer to the spirit of the tiger, a goat to the
spirit who guards the path to the places where water is drawn,
and buffaloes or cattle to the spirits who protect the village
or the household. Oxen and buffaloes are also sacrificed to the
manes of ancestors, but the skulls are not kept. In most
localities they are placed on rafts and launched on the river



PLATE IX

Prayer-Spire

Such a spire is launched on the river at the Water
Festival, and the one here represented has grounded
just above one of the great rapids of the Salween, in
the State of Mong Pai.



THE NEW YORK

PUBLIC LlBiURY



ASTOB, LENOX AND

TILDBN FOUtiDATIONS

B L



INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 301

with an accompaniment of gunshots to attract the attention
of the spirits.

The less civiHzed tribes seem to have no trace of the serpent-
worship which, at one time or another, was spread over so
much of the earth, but it is conspicuous in the legend, emblem,
and actual representation of all the more developed races of
Indo-China, just as it is in the mythology of many other peo-
ples of all the continents in the world. It is not merely that
the serpent was the tempter in the Garden of Eden; that he
was the guardian of the golden apples of the Hesperldes,
Hera's wedding gift, and was deprived of all his hundred
heads by Hercules as his eleventh labour; that he was coiled
under the altar of Pallas at Athens; that Aesculapius took a
serpent's form during a pestilence in Rome and that the God-
dess of Health bears a serpent in her hand; that Jupiter Ammon
assumed the shape of a serpent and became the father of Alex-
ander the Great by Olympias; and that cobras still haunt the
precincts of Hindu shrines and are tempted out by fifes to
drink the milk that is offered to them." The serpent is also
taken to be the symbol of deity, because, as Plutarch tells us,
it feeds on its own body; the shedding of its skin was believed
to renew its life, whence it is the emblem of immortality or
eternity, or, at any rate, of renovation. The sacred snake
was prominent in the Greek mysteries just as he is one of the
chief symbols of the religious rites of certain tribes among the
North American Indians. ^^

In most of the Indo-Chinese countries the plain snake is
usually changed into the more ornate dragon, very probably
through the influence of China and Japan. The Japanese
formerly worshipped the water-snake as a god, and they have
traditions that the Creator appeared to man in the form of a
serpent; while the Chinese long ago adopted the dragon as
their national emblem. This theory seems best to account
for the huge serpents, with men for legs, which writhe about
the streets at many Buddhistic festivals in all parts of Indo-



302 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

China, and the same creature Is still to be seen in Japanese
festivals. Moncure Conway, in his Demonology and Devil-
Lore, supposes the dragon to have originated in a confused
memory of extinct saurians, but it seems more likely that it is
merely a florid imagining of a plain snake. The Burmese and
Siamese idea of the dragon, however, is not so much a concept
of a terrible supernatural monster like the Vrtra of India or
the Hydra of Greece, slain by deities and heroes, such as Indra
and Hercules, as it is a belief in the existence of a being like
the drakos of the Gypsies of south-eastern Europe, to whom
the dragon is nothing more nor less than the ogre of fairy-tales.
He has a human wife, rides horses, wears boots, hunts hares,
lives In a palace, and even becomes a "Brother of the Cross";
but the Indo-Chinese have perhaps more tales about female
dragons than about any others except the King of the Drag-
ons, who ordinarily is not a very formidable person.

The most elaborate dragon tales are naturally found in
Tongking, which is nearest to China and has been most in-
fluenced by It. One of these relates to the small lake in the
middle of the town of Hanoi. The Tongkingese call this Hoan-
kiem-ho ("the Lake of the Great Sword"), and there are two
distinct legends which give the reason for the name.

The first of these appears in the Geography of Annam and
is rather bald. It states that King Thai-to, of the Le Dynasty,
was sailing one day on this lake, when all of a sudden he saw
an enormous tortoise, which arose to the surface and began
swimming straight for the royal boat. The King in his alarm
struck at it with his sword, but the tortoise seized the weapon
in its jaws, tore it from the King's hands, and then dived to
the bottom of the lake and was never seen again.

This matter-of-fact statement Is very much expanded In the
second story, which is, moreover, far more popular because it re-
fers to legendary details of Annamese history that are the pride
of all patriotic citizens. The hero of the tale Is King Le-loi,
who was the founder of the later Le Dynasty, and the time is



V :;n



.*<f V



? i; '1 .r 'IT-



PLATE X

The Guardian of the Lake

The raft, formed by binding two dugouts together
and laying a bamboo platform across them, carries
the image of Hpaung-daw-u round Yawng-hwe
Lake in the Southern Shan States. Hpaung-daw
means "Royal Raft," and the legend is that on it a
King of Burma flew through the air to visit outlying
parts of his dominions. The festival takes place
about October at the end of the Buddhist vassa (see
p. 279), and the guardians of the image are the Chief
and his Ministers of State. Cf. Plate XX.



INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 303

laid about 141 8 a. d., when the Chinese were still in occupa-
tion of the country after the overthrow of the Tran Dynasty.
At this time there was a young man in Hanoi who had held
some appointment in the palace, but had been turned out into
the world when the Chinese took possession of Tongking. He
became a fisherman to gain a livelihood, although this was not
at all the right thing for a Buddhist to do, and one day, when
he had thrown his cast net into the Little Lake (so called to
distinguish it from the Great Lake, which lies to the north of
the town), he drew up, not a fish, but a large sword with a
broad, strong blade which flashed out rays of lightning when
he took it in his hand. At the same moment Le-loi, having a
sudden perception of divine command that was laid upon him,
carefully concealed the sword and secretly sought to get
supporters for a popular rising against the Chinese. When he
had gained a sufficiently strong following, he declared open
hostilities, himself leading the war of independence which
lasted ten years from 141 8 to 1428 and which is certainly the
most creditable Incident in the national history. The struggle
ended with the expulsion of the Chinese, and Le-loi was then
crowned King in Hanoi, preparing himself for this by making
an offering to the spirit of the lake where he had once been a
humble fisherman. He went there in procession, girt with his
magic sword and escorted by an enormous crowd going before
and behind; but he had scarcely reached the borders of the mere
when there was a noise like a clap of thunder, whereupon the en-
tire assemblage saw Le-loi's sword leap from the scabbard and
transform Itself Into a jade-coloured dragon which immediately
plunged into the waters and disappeared. Thus it was made
clear to every one that the genius of the lake had transformed
himself into a sword and had availed himself of the arm of
Le-loi to bring about the defeat of the Chinese, whence the
mere has been called "the Lake of the Great Sword" ever
since.

[Prometheus]

In those days the lake was much bigger than it now is, so that



304 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

the war-boats used to manoeuvre on it and engage in mimic
battles, but it was divided into two at the end of the eight-
eenth century by a causeway, on either side of which many
houses were built. The larger part was on the left toward the
street now called Paul Bert, and this section of Hanoi got
the name of Ta-vong, or "Prospect of the Left," while the
other was styled Hu'u-vong, or "Prospect of the Right," and
the houses made up the Ta-vong quarter.

On the northern side of the Hoan-kiem-ho, in the Ta-vong
portion, there is a small island called Ngoc-so'n, or "Moun-
tain of Jade," following the Chinese idea that an island in
the sea or in an inland body of water is the summit of a moun-
tain and therefore should be called by the name shan, which cor-
responds to the Annamese jo'n. A small wooden bridge on
piles, so narrow that it is a gangway rather than a bridge,
connects the island with the brick-paved road and ends
on the island in a narrow pathway with walls both to right
and to left. To one side is a huge stone obelisk supporting a
pen — the Chinese camel's-hair pen. Those unacquainted with
Chinese have mistaken this for an emblem of phallic worship,
but one side bears the inscription "Obelisk of the Pen,"
and the other "To write on the blue of the sky." A little
farther on is a small triumphal arch surmounted by a huge
representation of the ink-slab used by Chinese literary men.
This ink-slab is heart-shaped and is carved out of a single
block of stone, supported by a frog whose two hind feet are
joined together to form the tail of a lizard. An inscription
round the sides says that "the method of making ink on an
ink-slab was described in the book of Xuan Thu of the Han
Dynasty. The ink-slab here presented is not of the ordinary
shape; it is neither square nor round. Its beauty results from
the literary triumphs which it helps to produce. On this portico
it occupies a middle place. It is neither too high nor too low.
In front it sees the obelisk of the pen. If it leans over a little,
it looks on the calm waters of the lake. It resembles a star



INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 305

surrounded by clouds, and it shows how the subtle-minded
write their thoughts on the empyrean." Round the plinth are a
number of inscriptions: "The broken shadow of the island is
thrown on the waters of the lake, like blotches of ink"; "The
starry-pointing pyramid raises the power of the pen to the
heavens"; "When the moon shines at night, if you see a crane
fly past, it is the spirit of literature"; "When you walk across
the bridge, you are full of joy and confidence, and do not
think of catching fish"; "The high obelisk which writes on the
blue heavens is supported on a small stone path"; "When the
full moon shines through the portico, it silvers the bridge that
leads to it"; "Science is bright and glorious everywhere, in
heaven and on earth"; "The glitter of the great sword throws
its light to the planets, Jupiter and Venus." This narrow
paved path leads to the main part of the island, which is cov-
ered with a series of temples. It is the triumphant approach
of letters to the sacred fanes, which are not dedicated to Con-
fucius, but to Van-xuong, the genius of literature. The first
was founded in honour of Kuan-de, the supreme Architect
of the Universe, but later, after the time of the great Gia-
long, the contemporary of the "Grand Monarque" (Louis
XIV), the "Mountain of Jade" — a name which comprises
both the island and the entire group of temples on it — was
built and immediately became a centre where all scholars
and learned men gathered to talk with one another and to seek
quiet for study and meditation under the guardianship of the
dragon of the lake.

Van-xuong, the god of literature, is represented standing
with a pen in his hand. He is supposed to live now in the
Great Bear, though formerly he dwelt on earth. The court-
yard of his temple is decorated with a number of balanced
phrases in the Chinese style. Thus one runs.



"There is nothing that the Saint does not understand;
There is no one that understands the Saint";



and.



3o6 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

"In the heavens he is a star;
On earth he is a mountain."

Some of these sentences, which are written in gold or encrusted
work on a black, green, or vermilion ground, are obscure, am-
biguous, or enigmatic. Thus: "When he is calm, he is like the
polished sabre hung aloft like the crescent moon"; "When he
is irritated, he is like a fiery steed snorting and neighing at the
autumn wind." On the other hand, there are good examples
of the parallelism of which the Chinese are so fond:

"The first descends from heaven,
The second springs from the earth;
The two unite.

The one is the spirit of the wise man,
The other is the spirit of the warrior;
The two are equally powerful."

"Under the rays of the moon the temple has the sheen of the dia-
mond;
The reflection of the steel of the magic sword tints the waters of
the lake blue."

Moreover the lake is said to symbolize the flood of literary
works which evermore are presented to Van-xuong, and, thanks
to the guardian spirit, those offered at Hoan-kiem-ho surpass
all others.

The Pagoda of Tran-vu, which the French call the Grand
Buddha, on the banks of the Great Lake north of Hanoi, is
also connected with serpent-worship. Although it is styled the
Grand Buddha, the colossal bronze statue in the shrine really
represents the spirit Huyen-vu, who, in the pantheon of the
early Chinese, was held to be the guardian of the whole of
the north of the heavens. The Tongkingese temple history,
which gives him the name of Tran-vu, makes him out a na-
tional hero and asserts that he repulsed the Han and the
Tung, which Is, however, quite a mistaken idea, for it was pre-
cisely the Han Dynasty which introduced the worship of
Huyen-vu. If we may believe the legend, Tran-vu killed the



INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 307

fox and the tiger, conquered the serpent, and enslaved the
tortoise. According to Chinese mythology, the genius or Spirit
of the West was Bach-ho, the White Tiger; the Spirit of the
East was Thang-long, the Blue Dragon; and the Spirit of the
South was Chu-dieu, the Red Sparrow. Each of them had his
standard, and these were embroidered with special sym-
bolical emblems, those of Huyen-vu being the serpent and the
tortoise.

The worship of Huyen-vu among the Chinese dates from the
very earliest days of the race. The Annals, one of the famous
Chinese Classics, relate that the Emperor Hwang-ti, two
thousand five hundred years before the beginning of the
Christian era, had a banner borne before him on which were
the figures of a serpent and a tortoise, while the Li-ki, another
of the Classics, says that the flag of Huyen-vu represents
the seven stars of the north and should be embroidered with
a serpent and a tortoise. These have the reputation of keep-
ing danger far away and of subduing evil, and for this reason
the standard of Huyen-vu should be carried, not only in the
van, in front of the Emperor, but should also be displayed by
the rear-guard. One author says that the flag should be made
of a single piece of silk about eleven feet long, and another
states that it should be black and should have its sides cut
into four indentations to represent flames. The Chinese cling
obstinately to their old traditions, though they are sometimes
much puzzled to explain them; and they therefore preserved
the emblem of the tortoise, adding the serpent because they
thought that all tortoises were female and that it was only
through the serpent that the species could be perpetuated, this
being the reason why, among the lower classes at the present
day, '-'son of a tortoise" is a term of abuse.

The Chinese overran Tongking in iii b.c, and it was prob-
ably at this time that the cult of Huyen-vu, which was kept
up for centuries, was introduced. The tortoise emblem, which
has now practically disappeared in China, is still almost uni-



3o8 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

versally retained in Tongking, where it is held that its rounded
back represents the sky and its flattened belly the earth, and
that it is the symbol of strength and longevity. Consequently
all Annamese temples dedicated to kings or spirits have, on
either side of the altar, a tortoise with a crane standing on
its back. The crane is believed to live a thousand years, and
the tortoise ten thousand, and so the suggestion is, "May you
be worshipped for a thousand and for ten thousand years."

The temple of Huyen-vu on the Great Lake was built by
Ly-thanh-tong, who reigned from 1056 to 1072, and it is still
in existence. Ly specially placed the town of Hanoi under
the protection of this spirit and he set up in the temple a
wooden image of Huyen-vu which was modelled, on the Chinese
form of representation, as a warrior and with the old emblem-
atic attributes. By 1680 the wooden image had so crumbled
away that King Vinh-tri ordered his Minister Trinh to have
it replaced and, that it might last forever, he commanded
the new statue to be made of bronze. The work was done by
Tongklngese founders, but they followed exactly the old Chi-
nese model. The spirit is represented as seated with his hair
falling loose on his shoulders and with bare feet; the left
hand is turned up, and the first finger points to the skies;
the right hand rests on the hilt of his sword, which is poised
on the back of the tortoise, while a snake coils round the
blade. When this statue was set up, the original significance
of the worship had been forgotten, for in the ten centuries which
had elapsed since its first establishment the Annamese, hav-
ing shaken off the yoke of the Chinese, had recovered their
independence and had also, by slow degrees, lost sight of the
initial purpose of the temple and the real identity of Huyen-vu.
They still went on worshipping him, but they had made him
into a national hero and had even changed his name into
Huyen-thien, or Tran-vu.

At the present day, though his Chinese origin Is not alto-
gether forgotten, the deity is no longer regarded as the guar-



INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 309

dian of the northern heavens, for he .has been transformed
into the protecting spirit of Tongking, to whose miraculous
intervention and assistance the achievements of the national
heroes are ascribed. The Tongkingese consider that their
greatest fighters and wisest statesmen have been inspired by
Tran-vu, beUeving that he was several times incarnated in
human form and lived several earthly existences to deliver
Annam from Chinese invasions and from dire chimeras —
such as the nine-tailed fox, the magic cock, and a series of evil
spirits that victimized the people — as well as from a variety
of epidemics. He has become the national tutelary saint, one
of the four wardens of the kingdom, the palladium of the Anna-
mese race; and he is worshipped impartially by the Buddhists,
the Taoists, and the Confucians.

A great many temples are erected to him all over Tongking,
and Hanoi itself boasts of two of them — one, that of Huyen-
thien, in the town, not far from the river-front, and the other,
that of Tran-vu, on the Great Lake. The Huyen-thien and
Tran-vu images are of exactly similar model, but the bronze
statue on the Great Lake is considerably larger, measuring
3.07 metres in height, or a little over ten feet, its weight being
3986.4 kilogrammes, or something like 8620 pounds. The
Huyen-thien image is massive, but not nearly so large as
the Tran-vu statue. The figure is made of wood, lacquered
over in different colours, and profusely gilt. This temple of
Huyen-thien is served by nuns, and apart from the tutelary
deity it is principally filled with images of the Buddha, being
devoted to that faith, though an inscription states that it was
erected to the glory of Huyen-thien, Tran-vu, Nguyen-quan,
"the greatest of the spirits."

The Tran-vu Temple, on the contrary, notwithstanding
the foreign name of the Grand Buddha applied to it, is scarcely
Buddhistic at all. The main shrine and the surrounding courts
are somewhat dilapidated, and the sanctuary in which the
image stands is pitch dark, so that the figure can be seen only



PLATE XI

Sale of Flags and Candles

There are no family names In Burma, and a child
receives its name from the day of the week on which
it is born. Each of these days has a group of letters
assigned to it, as well as an animal, either actual or
heraldic; and wax models of such animals, with
prayer-flags for each group of letters, are sold at the
stalls on the pagoda platform to be placed before the
shrines.



THE NEW YORK

PU&LIC LIBRARY



ACTOR, LENOX AND
TILDEN FOU-NDATIONS



INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 311

ground in this direction. The largest of these hillocks still
bears the name of "the Hill of the Standard of the Ly." The
foundations of the ancient buildings can be traced to this day,
and the whole of the ground is so covered with fragments of
tiles, broken pottery, and bricks that very little else can be
seen. In those days Hanoi went by the name of Thanh-long,
which means "the City of the Dragon," and the raised cause-
way was constructed to protect it from floods. Tradition de-
clares that the palace which stood here was pulled down by
one of the kings of the Ly Dynasty. The particular monarch
is not named, but it is said that he ordered the destruction of
the palace because his only son died there, and then caused a
temple to be constructed in its stead. The shrine was con-
structed over the foundations of the palace, and it was dis-
covered, when repairs were being carried out some years ago,
that the army joined the King in erecting it, because two col-
umns were found inscribed "Hu'uKwan" and "Ta Kwan,"
which mean the right and left wings of the army. The temple
itself contains absolutely nothing of interest, neither statues,
works of art, nor inscriptions. In front of it is a wide sheet of
water fringed by huge banians and having in the centre a
wooded island which is said to cover the head of another dragon
under the water. At the bottom of the stairs leading down
to the paved causeway stands an altar, quite out in the open,
with tho, the character for longevity, carved on It, and it is
much frequented by men who are growing old. A little farther
on, at the very foot of the two stone flights of steps which
give approach to the temple, is a tiny shrine, closed with a blind.
This is sacred to a malevolent female spirit who lives in the
woods and who is said to have pursued and slaughtered the men
sent out to cut down the trees to furnish the timber required
for the building of the temple. She went on doing this until
it occurred to some one to appease her by building a shrine
in her special honour. This scheme was successful, but one
wonders that she was not made more violent than ever. The



312 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

shrine was built indeed, but the builders reflected that no
promise had been given as to how large it was to be, and so
they worked off their spite by making it as small as they possi-
bly could. Singularly enough, the fury does not seem to have
resented it, but the Annamese still stand in great dread of her
and maintain that it is absolutely fatal to pronounce her name.
There is no imaginable misfortune that may not befall the man
reckless enough to do this. Therefore, the better to safeguard
themselves and others, they have proceeded to forget her name,
and this really seems to be a fact and not a mere pretence.

Not far from Linh-lanh is the village of Ke-buoi, which the
French call Village du Papier, and here a temple has been
erected in honour of a fisherman who captured a tiger in his
cast net at the very moment when the beast was making an
attack on the King as he was sailing on the Great Lake at
Hanoi. The King conferred upon his defender all the lands
round the lake and had this temple built to commemorate the
fisherman when he died. The shrine is still preserved, though
the King was the fourth of the Tran Dynasty and reigned from
1293 to 13 14, and it was in his reign that the old custom began
of tatuing the figure of a dragon on the thighs of the Princes
of the Royal house, this being done to show their noble origin
and to suggest their heroic virtues. The name of the gallant
fisherman is therefore preserved and held in honour where
that of the unclean spirit is rigidly suppressed. Muc-thai-uy
is held up as an example for all men to copy, and the villagers
are enjoined to keep his shrine and memory to the end of time.

There are others who are deified in this way, the most notable
being two sisters who are commemorated in the Temple of
Chua-hai-ba. From ill B.C. till 38 a.d., during the Han
Dynasty, Chinese governors ruled Tongking, and the last of
these, To-dinh, is remembered as the worst of all for his tyranny
and his cruelty. These two sisters, the elder named Trung-trac
and the younger Trung-nhi, were noted for their virtues and
for their learning. They were descended from the royal family



INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 313

of the Hung, of the country of the Glao-chi, and they Hved in
the village of Mi-Hnh in the district of Phong-chau.

Trung-trac was married to a man named Chi-sach, of the
village of Chu-duyen, but her husband had the misfortune to
displease the Governor in some way, and To-dinh had him
beheaded without trial. Chi-sach seems to have been a person
of some reputation, or perhaps his execution was the last straw;
at any rate it was the cause of a general rising of the Tong-
kingese. Trung-trac threw off her woman's dress, armed her-
self with cuirass and sword, and placed herself at the head of
the insurgents. Her sister joined her out of natural love, and
the native officials and notables flocked to their standard.
The Tongkingese fell upon the Chinese everywhere, and
Trung-trac's army performed prodigies of valour. Sixty-five
towns fell before her attack, the Chinese were driven back
beyond the frontier, and To-dinh owed his safety to the speed
of his flight. But the Emperor Kwang-vu had him pursued,
arrested, and lodged in gaol at Thiem-nhi.

Trung-trac was proclaimed Queen and established her capi-
tal in Oduyen, the modern Son-tay. There she reigned with
great dignity and popularity, but after three years the Em-
peror Kwang-vu, determining to have his revenge, gathered an
immense army and launched it against Tongking under the
command of Ma-vien, the most noted of his generals. The two
sisters Trung led out their forces, and battle was joined in
the Lang-son Hills. There was a most desperate struggle; and
when night fell, neither side had gained any advantage. Then
followed a campaign of skirmishes and ambuscades in which
Trung-trac displayed most remarkable military qualities,
but the Tongkingese army gradually wasted away, whereas
every day brought the Chinese fresh reinforcements. Trung-
trac had to retire, but she fought bravely all the way and
thus held the enemy in check for more than a year. When she
reached the Cam-hke River in the Province of Son-tay, she
resolved to make a last effort with the forces which she still had.

[Prometheus]

314 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

The struggle was bloody and desperate, but the Chinese tri-
umphed, and to celebrate his victory Ma-vien set up brazen
columns, on which he inscribed the words, "When this pillar
falls, it will be the end of the Annamese race."

Historians do not agree as to the fate of the two heroines.
Some say that only Trung-nhi perished in the battle and that
Trung-trac, with despair in her heart, retreated to Mount
Hi-son, whence divine beings carried her to heaven. How-
ever that may be, the Trung sisters have always remained
the personification of patriotism in the hearts of the Tongkin-
gese, and the people of their native district built a temple in
their honour at the mouth of the Day River, where they have
been worshipped ever since.

The devotion of Trung-trac and Trung-nhi to their country
has never ceased. It is related that in the twentieth year of the
reign of Anh-tong of the Ly Dynasty, in 1158 a.d., there was a
terrible drought in Tongking, and the monarch sent the monk
Cam-thin to ofi"er sacrifices and prayers for rain at the temple of
the two sisters. It rained the following day, and in his delight
at seeing the country saved from ruin and famine the King
had himself borne in his palanquin to look at the rice fields,
once more wet and verdant. When he went to sleep that night,
he saw in vision the two sisters, riding together on an iron horse
which was carried by the wind, their costumes being blue
robes girt with a red sash and a head-dress shaped like the flower
of the hibiscus. They told him their names and said that it
was they who had brought the rain and that they would always
grant what was asked of them with prayer and devotion.
When he awoke, the King told all of his dream. He had the
temple to the sisters gorgeously decorated and ordered a per-
petual sacrifice to be made. Later he had a second temple
built in their honour close to Hanoi, but it was carried away
by the scouring of the banks, and subsequently another was
erected behind the embankment to the south of the town, this
being the Chua-hai-ba of the present day.



INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 315

Another legend, told by the people of Hanoi to glorify their
temple, gives a quite different account of the end of the two
sisters. According to it the sisters did not die on the field of
battle, but escaped and afterward drowned themselves in
the Day River out of pure despair. This is the reason, they say,
for the building of the temple which stands at the junction of
the Day and the Red rivers.

This temple to the sisters is of considerable size, but is not,
externally at least, in very good preservation. It stands a
little way oif the road to Hue. The main shrine has a number
of outbuildings attached to it, and the remains of an ancient
paved way led from the high propylaea to the temple door.
One of these propylaea now lies on the ground, and so does a
stone pillar with a rounded top, which was evidently intended
to receive an inscription that was never carved. The column
clearly stood on the back of a stone tortoise, which is now half
hidden in the grass. Inside the quadrangle are two clay figures
of elephants, painted black and large enough to be able to carry
real tusks. The shrine stands in the centre of the quadrilateral
formed by the main building and its annexes, and the sanctuary
is carefully curtained off with red hangings. The statues of the
two sisters stand on a stone platform about three feet high,
and to the right and left are low chapels, shut off with mats,
these shrines being filled with representations of the figures of
the servants of the two Trungs. The whole is richly decorated
and is kept in admirable order by the nuns who are in charge of
the building. The abbess is usually the widow of some high
official, and it is only by her permission that the tapestries are
raised and access is obtained to the sanctuary. The statues
represent the sisters as considerably over life size and as
kneeling with both hands raised in supplication to heaven.
They are dressed in the garments of their sex, Trung-trac in a
yellow silk and Trung-nhi in a red silk robe. Both of them wear
a gilt head-dress of the most elaborate kind, decked out with
hibiscus flowers of gilded paper. The tables for offerings are



3i6 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

covered with vases, bouquets of flowers, and piles of fruit,
but none of these can be presented without the candles which
are sold on the premises. An Inscription on stone records the
particulars of the building of this temple In the Huong-vlen
suburb of Hanoi. "Great acts," it says, "are usually per-
formed by men. When, therefore, In the course of centuries
a woman triumphs over the disabilities of her sex and ac-
complishes heroic deeds, everything possible should be done to
commemorate them." A long and circumstantial account is
given of the state of affairs which led the sisters to take up
arms for their country: "These women, accustomed to be
clad in rich silken garments, and whose hands had never
touched anything but jewellery, now donned heavy Iron breast-
plates and brandished the sword and the lance. . . . When
they drowned themselves, they did so, not out of despair, but
because they had completed the task which had been laid upon
them by the supernatural powers, and they therefore, of their
own accord, returned to the land of the spirits." The inhabit-
ants of the village of Huong-vlen are dedicated to the service
of the temple, to offer the sacrifices, to burn the Incense, and
to look after the lamps of the sanctuary, and this from genera-
tion to generation, "for the heavens and the earth will never
come to an end."

Bach-ma Is one of the oldest and most venerated temples
in Hanoi and is connected with the Trung sisters' shrine In
a very curious way. It was originally built for the worship
of the Chinese general, Cao-blen, who was first Governor, and
afterward King, of Annam, and who was so beloved of the
people that they raised him to the dignity of one of the pro-
tector spirits of the country. Later the Chinese became very
numerous in this quarter of the capital and took possession of
the temple. Some repairs having to be made to the building
and to the Image, they seized this opportunity to substitute
the worship of Ma-vlen, or Phuc-ba, for that of Cao-bien.
This Ma-vien was the very general who invaded Tongking,



^HC





It tJ




stc.




rhe




L


PLATE XII


ol


A AND B


X



The White Elephant

A. This shows an elephant-supported pagoda in
Laihka, a Shan capital which suffered terribly in
the civil war that marked the reign of King Thibaw.
A veiy similar pagoda stands in Muong Nan, one of
the Lao Shan States.

B. A pagoda on the back of a kneeling elephant.
The stucco has flaked off the hind quarters, but no
pagoda is repaired unless it stands for the benefit of
the country, the state, or the town.



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PUB^LIC LIBRARY






INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 317

reduced the country to slavery, and fought the battle which
was the cause of the defeat and death of the two Trung sisters.
Ma-vien is consequently as much detested by the Tongkingese
as Cao-bien is loved and honoured. Nevertheless there was
no change for more than five hundred years till the reign of the
great Emperor of China, K'ang-hsi, in the eighteenth century.
Some litterati then made inquiries, and satisfying themselves that
this substitution of divinity had been made, the worship of
Cao-bien was resumed on their representation. To confirm the
restoration and rehabilitation of Cao-bien the scholars drew up
a statement whose main facts were engraved on a stone slab.
The original memoir extends to book size and is full of in-
teresting archaeological details about the history of Hanoi.

The first temple was merely a bamboo and mat hut in the
village of Long-do, but notwithstanding its flimsy material,
it was the one building in the place that survived when a
conflagration utterly destroyed the rest of the town. Later the
Long-do area was taken up for the formation of the citadel,
or walled town, of Hanoi. While Cao-bien was constructing the
embankment and moat which surround the capital, a celestial
white horse appeared and by its course traced out the proper line
for the embankment. Ever afterward Cao-bien was given the
surname of Bach-ma ("the White Horse"), and this title, it is
said, the ignorant Chinese confused with Phuc-ba, which was
the style given to Ma-vien, the detested conqueror of Tong-
king. As long as the Cao-bien temple was in Long-do, Chinese
were rigorously excluded; but when it was moved inside the
town, it was erected in a Chinese quarter, whence the people
there made Chinese garments for the image and surrounded
it with Chinese accessories. Thus the conqueror of the patriot
sisters supplanted Cao-bien, who was greatly favoured by the
dragon guardian of the city of Hanoi. It is related that while
he was building the embankment to protect the Dragon-City,
as Hanoi was then called, from the inroads of the river, a por-
tent appeared to him. As he was walking outside the town,



3i8 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

a rushing mighty wind came, and after it the ground sent
forth a cloud of five colours. It was broad daylight at the time,
but nevertheless the stars appeared in the sky, and in the midst
of them shone a radiant figure seated on a golden dragon. This
spirit, who held a book in his hand, dropped down to the cloud,
hovered there for an instant, and disappeared, after ascending
and descending three times. Cao-bien was greatly alarmed. He
thought that it was an evil demon and made a number of sac-
rifices, but during the night the being again appeared to him in a
dream, saying: "Why are you afraid.'' I am Long-do, the guard-
ian spirit of Thanh-long, the City of the Dragon. You have
made the city fair to see and you are protecting it from the rav-
ages of the river. I have willed that you shall be King." And
King he did become and reigned in Long-do. There were no
more visions, and Cao-bien feared that he had lost the favour of
the divine being. Therefore, on the advice of his ministers, he
had a huge statue of the spirit made of copper and iron which
weighed a thousand pounds; but a storm arose which threw
down the statue and reduced the copper and iron to dust.
Then Cao-bien again thought that he had to deal with a fiend,
so he made himself an amulet of gold, silver, and iron; but
a clap of thunder came, and the amulet was likewise dissolved
in dust. Cao-bien now being certain that this was an indication
that his death was not far off, built the Long-do Pagoda
to the dragon spirit at the spot where the vision appeared to
him. Not long afterward his life did actually come to an end,
and in his honour the people then erected the original hut
temple.

King Thaiton of the Ly Dynasty, in the first year of his
reign, gave the name of Thanh-long ("Dragon City") to the
capital and renewed the Dragon Temple. The spirit of Cao-
bien appeared to him during the night, prostrated itself before
the King, and wished him a reign of ten thousand years. When
he awoke, his Majesty proclaimed Cao-bien guardian protector
of the city, and giving him the title of Kwang-loi-vu'o'ng in



INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 319

memory of what he had done for it, he ordained a feast at the
beginning of each year.

Accordingly every spring a temporary altar Is erected In
front of the temple, the clay figure of a bufi'alo is carried in
procession before it, and the guardian spirit is entreated to
grant good harvests. The chief Ministers of State also meet
in the temple to discuss the affairs of the country and are aided
In their debates by the spirits of the LInh-lanh Temple, the
Dong-co Mountain, and the To-llch River.

Three times during the Tran Dynasty all the houses sur-
rounding the temple of Cao-bien were destroyed by fire, but
the shrine itself remained unharmed in the midst of the flames.
It Is believed, therefore, that the sound of the drum hung in
the temple is able to extinguish flames, and whenever a fire
breaks out near by, the drum is beaten. There are a great
many lacquered inscriptions in the shrine and numerous rich
caskets containing patents of titles conferred on the divinity
by the various rulers of Annam.

Such deified heroes are common in Muhammadan coun-
tries, and they are also found In China in both Buddhist and
Taolst shrines, but it Is not usual for a temple to be erected to
a living man. In Hanoi, however, stands the SIng-tu' Shrine,
which was built in honour of Nguyen-hu'u-do, who at the time,
in the eighties of the last century, was actually Viceroy of
Tongklng. The history of the fane Is of great Interest as show-
ing the process of hero-making and the quasi-deifLcation of a
human being. The temple stands outside the city limits, to
the north of Hanoi, near the Son-tay road. When the French
annexed the country, the temple was flauntlngly new. The
brickwork, the pictures, the lacquer, and the gilding were ab-
solutely garish In their freshness. The paving of the courtyard
was admirably laid, and everything was kept spick and span
by a well dressed staff. The contrast with other sordid and
dilapidated shrines was very startling, but the deified saint
was then still alive. Everything was complete except the



320 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

statue, which, .indeed, was ready, though it was not put on its
pedestal. That could not be done before the death of the man
himself, but in place of the statue there was mounted on the
altar the photograph of Nguyen-hu u-do, surrounded by all
the ceremonial paraphernalia and the offerings of the wor-
shippers. Another singular feature was the inscription on a
marble slab — the Chinese translation of an order by General
Briere de I'lsle declaring the building religious and private
property and forbidding interference with its custodians.

Two marble tablets, walled in the screen which stands in
front of the entrance, set forth the reason for Nguyen-hu*u-do's
deification. The first gives several previous instances in na-
tional history where a living man has been deified. Of these
was Huyen-thien, who received the honour for "his merit ";^®
Chu-kong-thuc, Governor of Ky-chao, who was famed for his
ability as an administrator and who has a statue raised in
his honour by the Emperor in the Province of Dong-do; and
Do-nguyen-khoi, Governor of Kinh-chu, whose fellow-pro-
vincials set up a stone pillar near the Han-thuy River and in-
scribed it with a laudatory account of his services. Like these
heroes of old, Nguyen-hu'u-do was able, in times of the great-
est stress, to command the troops, to assure the food of the
people, to maintain order throughout the country, to conduct
negotiations with external powers, and to conclude a treaty
of peace. When the war was over, the most laborious and
delicate duties were imposed upon him. "Who is there that
must not admit that his wide intelligence and the great spirit
of justice which possessed him were not due to the mountain
at whose feet he was born, to the stream which waters the vil-
lage where he grew up.^" Then follow details of his rise in the
service of his country until in the end, when no official was to
be found at the court of Hue to conduct the negotiations with
the representative of France, he carried them to a successful
conclusion and, by restoring peace to a sorely tried land, saved
it from pending ruin. In spite of this effort, war again broke



INDO-CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS 321

out, and it was he who, with calm fortitude, induced the hot-
heads to lay down their arms. Though the capital had fallen,
they had no thought for the future of the country, so that the
King, in his day of trial, again could rely on none but Nguyen-
hu'u-do to save the people from destruction. He restored them
to life, "and therefore we sing to him the Con-y chant and
recite the poetry of Xich-tich. Therefore we have raised in
his honour this temple, where, besides his, there are the altars
of Bich-cau and Ngoc-ho, the prayer for longevity, the golden
buffalo, and the white horse. This temple shall be eternal like
the granite table of the State, and fragrant like the orange-tree
which no one dares destroy." "You are the pillar of gold which
supports our feeble strength; you are the dazzling gleam of
the precious diamond which lights up our darkness. We have
seen the red lotus in the blue lake and we hymn the grace of the
swaying bamboos on the banks of the river Ky. You are the
emblem of wisdom. May your portrait repose in peace on this
altar. May you live to extreme old age, and may happiness
always abide with you." This tablet was raised by the civil
and military mandarins of the Province of Hanoi and by the
men of letters and the mass of the people. The inscription was
composed by the Minister of the Interior on the twenty-fourth
day of the fifth month of the first year of the reign of Kien
Phu'c.

The second tablet was erected by the officials and people of
Hanoi itself and gives a more extended account of Nguyen-
hu'u-do's birthplace, parentage, and career. He was the son
of a mandarin and was born at Ha-thanh in Thanh-hoa. "Of
all human qualities," the inscription declares, "virtue is the
chief and merit the second. The man who unites both is
worthy of human adoration." The Tong-doc, or Chief Commis-
sioner, was the father of the people. Under his care the hum-
blest cottage was as securely protected as the most stately
palace, and therefore the shrine was erected in his honour
according to the prescribed rites as to site and construction.



322 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

An annual festival is decreed where all bring the offering of
their hearts, the tribute of their gratitude, the assurance of
their devotion, and heartfelt wishes for his happiness and long
life. The temple is declared to be as imperishable as the feel-
ings which caused its erection, and it is to stand for a hundred
thousand years. Thus do we see hero-making in its early-
processes.



CHAPTER III
THE FESTIVALS OF THE INDO-CHINESE

A WEALTH of mythology is hidden in the popular festivals
of Farther India, and some of these are brought into con-
nexion with the mythic lore of India. Thus in Burma the great
Spring Festival is closely united with a tale from India which
tells how the god Brahma, ^^ whom the Burmese call Athi, for-
feited his head in a bet with Sek-ya (the Indra of the Indian
Olympos) over a mathematical calculation. The head was
placed in the care of seven goddesses who transfer it from one
to another at the commencement of each year, and the new year
begins in the spring at the moment when the head passes from
hand to hand.

[Prometheus]

In Siam the festival is the same, but it is called S5ngkran
(Sanskrit sankrdnti, "the sun's entry into a new sign of the
zodiac"), which is obviously the same as the Burmese Thag-
yan or Thingyan, while the Tewada King is none other than
the Burmese King of Tawadeintha.^^ The prognostications of
the hon, the Brahman priests of Bangkok, who correspond
to the pounds of the old Burmese court, are equally significant.
If, when he descends, Phra In (the great Vedic god Indra) ^^
bears warlike weapons in his hands, it means that there will
be a troubled year. He may carry a torch or a lantern, which
foretells a severe hot season; or a watering-pot, which implies
abundant rain; or merely a wand, which prophesies peace.
Similarly, if he comes on foot, it will be a hot year; if he rides a
Naga dragon, the monsoon will be heavy; if he is mounted on a
cow or a buffalo, the crops will be excellent; if on a Khrut (the
Sanskrit Garuda),^" another name for the Galon, or heraldic



324 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

bird of the Burmese, there will be high winds. Both countries
celebrate the occasion with a Water Festival, which we have
already described^^ and which suggests a libation to the earth
in the spring. The same idea is seen in the drinking of the
water of allegiance, which usually takes place in March, about
a month before the New Year Festival. The ceremony is of
very great antiquity and was observed in all the Courts of Indo-
China. Every official had to appear without fail and drink his
cup of water.

At the end of the year, on the seventh and ninth days of the
second month of the old Siamese, or Tai, calendar, the Lo Chin
Cha, or Swing Festival, is celebrated. This falls in the latter
part of December or the beginning of January, and is un-
doubtedly a harvest feast. The ceremony is always performed
by the Brahmans in Bangkok, although the exact meaning of
the rites has been entirely forgotten in the centuries during
which they have been celebrated.

A member of the Royal Court is always appointed to pre-
side over the ceremony, but a different person must be chosen
each year. He dresses himself up for the part and at day-
break starts from a temple where, as Phra In, he is supposed
to have descended from the heavens. He makes a tour of
the city in spectacular procession, eventually reaching the
square where stands the permanent swing, a lofty wooden
erection, whose ornamental carved top must be more than a
hundred feet above the ground. The streets leading to the
square are provided with light bamboo trellis-work screens
which stand on either side of the road at right angles to it,
their object being to prevent the interference of evil spirits
and to avert all danger of malign influences. The Swing Com-
missioner halts in a small thatched hut at the entrance to the
square, where he is received by the Brahman priests with
offerings and prayers. He then crosses to another thatched hut
opposite the swing, where he seats himself with his right foot
resting on his left knee and with two Brahmans on either side



THE FESTIVALS OF THE INDO-CHINESE 325

of him. Then, and not before, the Immense crowd of spectators
who have gathered enter the square and fill It to suffocation.
A plank seat, six feet by one, Is suspended from the cross-bar
by six strong ropes of rattan, three on each side. This seat Is
about fifteen feet above the ground, and a rope Is attached to
It so that It can be set In motion. In front of this is a tall
bamboo with a little bag of money tied to the top of it. Four
men, wearing Nak, or dragon, head-pieces, are hoisted on the
swing, and as they begin to pull on the ropes, the Brahmans,
entering a number of detached cubicles which stand round
the square, commence to Intone prayers. The four dragon
dancers start posturing, and the swing-seat gradually rises
higher and higher to the accompaniment of the excited shouts
of the crowd below. When it rises high enough to come near
the bamboo pole, one of the swingers, leaning far out from the
seat, makes a snatch at the bag of money. The object Is
to catch it In his mouth, and if he succeeds, there Is a yell of
delight from the spectators; but if he misses, there Is cor-
responding disapproval, which changes to dismay if he fails
again. When the first bag is secured, another Is put up, and
when this also has been carried off, the Minister who repre-
sents Phra In rises, acknowledges the prayers of the Brahmans,
and with his retinue returns along the same route by which
he came. The prosperity of the year is considered to depend
upon rapid success In the securing of the bags of money, so
that all the onlookers are directly Interested.

The Brahmans at the present day seem to have lost all
knowledge of the origin of the custom, which appears to have
been intended primarily to assist the sun — by what Is known
as "sympathetic magic" — to mount higher and higher In the
heavens just as the swing gradually ascends, so that the cere-
mony becomes quite as much a prognostic of the character of
the coming year as a thanksgiving for good harvests garnered
In.^^ The priests are, therefore, extremely zealous to see that
all the rites are punctiliously observed. It is very unlucky if



326 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

the swing sways crookedly, still more so if one of the dragon
swingers falls off, and bungling over the taking of the coins
is distinctly ill-omened. It is also a bad sign if the imperson-
ator of Phra In, either absent-mindedly or in the excitement
of watching the performers, takes his foot off his knee.

The ceremony is repeated in precisely the same fashion after
a day's interval, but at the present time the rite is very tame
compared with what it used to be within living memory, and a
strong body of police stands ready to maintain order. For-
merly if one of the Nak dancers fell from his perch, or if there
were repeated failures to secure the bags of money, the crowd
fell upon the delinquent and handled him very roughly, for this
is always taken to be a sign of scanty rains. If the personator
of Phra In took his foot off his knee or neglected any other of
the prescribed duties, the Brahmans themselves attacked him,
tore off his fine garments, and drove him away. In earlier days
also the retinue of Phra In were allowed, or at any rate took,
great liberties. They demanded money and contributions from
all whom they met along the route and forcibly seized what
they wanted, though it is said that sturdy shopkeepers, or
stalwart onlookers, occasionally resisted violently and broke
their pates for them, which, however, in no way interfered with
the progress of the function.

The custom is not known outside of Siam, but the tugs of
war in which the Burxnese and Shans indulge seem to have
much the same underlying notion. ^^ When the rains are very
late in coming, a huge rope of twisted rattan or bamboo is
prepared, and the entire community, men, women, and chil-
dren, pull at it. There is no attempt at choosing sides, or getting
equal numbers to pull against one another. It is usually a case
of the north of the village against the south, or of the east against
the west. Occasionally it may be village against village, but
that is more common in the case of tugs of war which are held
to determine who shall have the right to set fire to a dead
monk's funeral pyre.



PLATE XIII

Funeral Pyre of a Burmese Monk

A Pongyi, or mendicant Buddhist monk, is in-
variably cremated, and his pyre is always decorative,
and sometimes very elaborate. It is not fired by a
match, but by rockets discharged by the villagers
in the area of his ministry. These rockets are di-
rected by guide-ropes, and the successful village
expects good fortune, at least for the coming year.
After a photograph by P. Klier, Rangoon.



THE FESTIVALS OF THE INDO-CHINESE 327

The dragon head-pieces possibly hint at serpent-worship,
which may have been brought from India with Brahmanism.
In any case Brahman traces in Siam are far more conspicuous
than in Burma, even in Pagan or in Tharekettara, the ancient
name of Prome. In many places on the coast of southern Siam
hundreds of phra phim ("stamped gods") have been found,
some with the features of the Buddha on the obverse and Pali
formulae on the reverse, and some impressed with one or other
of the Hindu divinities. Caves are the usual places where such
objects are discovered, often underneath a layer of bats'
guano three feet thick. British Museum experts who have
examined them pronounce them to date from the twelfth
century and to be the counterparts of the tablets found in
Kasmir, Tibet, and parts of north-west India. Besides these
there are abundant remains of stone and bronze sacred images
in all the ancient cities and the older pagodas. The Buddha is
the commonest, but great numbers represent the Hindu
Brahma, Siva, Laksmi, and Ganesa (the Creator, the De-
stroyer, Good Fortune, and the Averter of Difficulties).^* Along
the west coast of the peninsula they are particularly common,
and Siva, Visnu (the Preserver, according to Indian mythology)^^
and Laksmi actually have Siamese names and are called Phra
In Suen, Phra Narai, and Phra Naret. They were, no doubt,
brought over by the first Brahmans who came to Indo-China.
In the most ancient pagodas figures of Hindu deities actually
outnumber those of the Buddha, but It Is worth noting that in
northern Siam Hindu Images are quite as uncommon as they
are In Burma. The architecture of the sacred buildings shows
the same thing. Indian influences are conspicuous in the south,
whereas in the Lao country the pagodas all approximate to
the Burmese type. In like manner the legends and myths of
Siam have a strong Indian tinge, just as those of Tongking
are at least as much Chinese as national. In Annam, or at
any rate In the south of It, the Hkmer have left some Brah-
mano-Buddhist traditions.



328 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

There is one traditional festival which is common through-
out Indo-China. It is, in reality, a world-wide religious func-
tion occurring about the time of the vernal equinox, but in the
Indo-Chinese countries it takes an agricultural form, which is
natural enough since the enormous bulk of the people are cul-
tivators of the ground.

Chinese history tells us that in the most ancient days it was
the custom for the Emperor himself, with his own hand, to
plough a special plot of ground when the rainy season was
about to begin. The rice from this particular field was always
offered to certain spirits, and this practice was established not
less than four thousand seven hundred years ago. The "Son
of Heaven," as the Emperor of China was styled, apparently
surrendered this privilege in favour of personal intercession
for his people on the Altar of the Earth at the Temple of
Heaven at Pekin. At any rate the ploughing has long since
been abandoned, and the Chinese believe less in spirits (except
ancestral spirits) than any other race in Asia. The festival
is well known in Buddhist history, because one of the earliest
miracles or omens in connexion with the Buddha Gotama
took place at the Ploughing Festival at Kapllavastu, when the
little Prince Siddhartha was taken out to see his father, the
Raja Suddhodana, and his Ministers ploughing the first fur-
rows of the year. He was placed in the shade of the rose-
apple-tree, and the shadow never moved until, the sods all
turned, it was time to go back to the palace.

As long as the Burmese kingdom lasted, the Le-twin Mingala
was regularly celebrated at Mandalay, and the abandonment
of the "Gracious Ploughing" by King Thibaw, the last of his
dynasty, caused much concern to pious people. The British
Government naturally does not continue it, and now the only
place where the ceremony is to be seen, at any rate on a great
official scale, is in Siam. How long It will last with a King who
has passed through Harrow, Oxford, the Royal Military
Academy, Woolwich, and the Danish and Russian armies is



THE FESTIVALS OF THE INDO-CHINESE 329

uncertain, but in any case the participation of the King himself
in the Rek Na ceased long ago. For time to which the memory
of man runneth not to the contrary, the duty has been handed
over to a Minister of State, most often — and with evident
propriety — to the Minister of Agriculture.

Though this ceremony has been observed in Siam for the
last three or four centuries, its place of origin is somewhat
doubtful. The obvious suggestion for its provenance is China,
where it began in order to raise the dignity of agricultural
labour, but there is no proof of this. On the other hand, all the
details suggest identity with those of India, especially as the
Court Brahmans take the most important part in the function.
This, however, by no means implies that it is a Brahman in-
vention, for the custom is based on the oldest pre-Brahman
nature-worship and is probably coeval with the cultivation of
rice. The Brahmans themselves simply adopted it, as they
have adopted or transformed Dravidian and other aboriginal
deities in India from early times to the present day. For a time
the Rek Na languished, but latterly, from a period which coin-
cides with the Eastern revival that followed the military tri-
umphs of Japan, much greater interest has been taken in it, and
the King himself has attended in the field near the Royal Park
outside Bangkok when the ceremonial has been in progress.

The propitious day, hour, minute, and second are labo-
riously calculated and announced by the Court Brahmans.
The field then being carefully cleared of all grass and weeds,
three bamboos are fixed in the ground from east to west.
The corners of the field are hedged oflF with open bamboo
trellis-work, and though these hurdles are absolutely flimsy,
they are believed by all to be efficacious against the passage of
evil spirits. At one corner of the ground a high bamboo arch,
called the Jungle Gate, is erected, and near it is a temporary
thatch-roofed shed in which stands an altar with images of
Siva, Ganesa, Laksmi, and other Brahman deities. From this
altar runs a white cord which connects with the Jungle Gate



330 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

and the three bamboos, and this zigzags about the field, visiting
the corner bamboo trellis-work on its way. Throughout the
night preceding the propitious day the Brahmans gather at
the foot of the altar in prayer and invocation, the benign in-
fluence of this passing out through the cord all over the plot
of ground. On the side opposite the shed stands the Royal
Pavilion, with another beside it for the Queens and the ladies
of the Court, while seats are ranged round about for the
officials and nobles. From early dawn the populace begin to
assemble in a brilliant crowd, all dressed in their best, and
hours are passed in eating, smoking, and drinking until the
Royal body-guard marches up and lines the field. The fanfare
and the National Anthem announce the arrival of the King with
his suite, and then comes a dramatic moment. The bands
cease abruptly, and the shrill notes of a single flageolet play
over and over again a plaintive three-barred refrain, to the
accompaniment of the roll of twenty muffled drums. This
announces the approach of the Minister of Agriculture, high
on a throne borne on the shoulders of men, with a retinue of
bowmen, spearmen, and trident-bearers, all of them in the
ancient national dress, marching on in front. They enter the
field through the Jungle Gate, and the Minister alights to
visit the shed and offer up a prayer before the deities on the
altar. Then come a pair of oxen harnessed with red velvet
ropes wrapped round with gold thread, and these are yoked
to a plough resplendent with gilt mirror mosaic work. The
front of the plough, curving up like a gondola, ends in a
figure-head which may represent the benignant mother of the
tilth. When all is ready, the Minister leaves the altar shed and
takes the handles of the plough. He is dressed like the ancient
kings of Siam, with robes of cloth of gold jewelled all over and
wearing the high conical crown which the Sawbwas of the
Shan States use to the present day on ceremonial occasions.
First of all he prostrates himself before the King, and then
the men in charge of the oxen lead them round the field. In



PLATE XIV

The Goddess of the Tilth

This bronze figure, which stands in a shelter espe-
cially built for it, is in Mong Nai, the capital of the
premier state west of the Salween. Its history is
unknown.



THE NEW YORK

PU&LIC LIBRARY



ASTOR, LENOX AND

TILDBN FOU-^DAriONS

B L



THE FESTIVALS OF THE INDO-CHINESE 331

recognition of the inexperience and the age of the Minister,
the ploughshare does not cut a furrow, but merely makes a
scratch on the ground. The importance of the ploughing,
however, is not so much the actual turning of the soil as the
way in which the Minister of Agriculture comes out of it. His
robes are very heavy, and the waist-cloth is kept secure only
by a hitch in front. Consequently he is in frequent embarrass-
ment with it, and with feverish interest the crowd watches
him and his efforts to keep it properly adjusted. If he lets It
hang too low, the rains, on which the rice harvest depends, will
be scanty. If he girds it up too high, there will be floods which
will ruin the hopes of the cultivators.

The field is always encircled in the direction of the sun, and
three circuits are made. When these have been completed,
two old women bring baskets of seed rice and accompany the
Minister as he takes handfuls of the paddy, scattering the seed
over the ploughed ground. When the baskets are exhausted,
and enough has been done, the oxen are halted, and the crowd
makes a rush to pick up grains of paddy. Men, women, and
children tumble over one another in their anxiety to get a
kernel or two, for the seed is considered sacred, and a single
grain among the farmer's seed corn will be better than tons of
manure.

The Minister and the old ladies now hurry as fast as they
can to the shed, but they are caught and searched from head
to foot for grains of paddy that may have caught in their clothes.
The vendors of fruit, drink, and cigars join with the rest, and
even the trident-bearers and the men of the body-guard take
part in the scramble, carrying their weapons all the time. When
it is quite certain that absolutely no more seed grain is to be
found, the Minister comes out of the shed, followed by a train
of men carrying shallow baskets of rice, maize, millet, peas,
beans, earth-nuts, and every kind of grain and cereal. These
are put in a row on the ground, and the plough oxen are led up
to them. Again there is strained interest in the crowd, for the

[Prometheus]

332 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

grain of which the oxen eat the most will be the crop that will
be poorest in the coming year. Unfortunately this is not always
a conclusive test, for it occasionally happens that one of the
pair merely sniffs at the baskets, while the other is apparently
prepared to eat the whole collection. The Brahmans, how-
ever, skilfully manipulate this part of the ceremony and get
the bullocks away with some adroitness, so that it is not always
very evident to the onlookers what the presage is. The Brah-
mans apparently always profess entire satisfaction, though
they may not be unduly communicative as to the most prom-
ising crops for the year until the moment when the definite
pronouncement is made.

The Brahmans gather in the shed round the altar, as soon
as the bullocks have been led off the field, and begin to intone
prayers. One of them takes his place behind the altar and there
makes notes, nowadays on a sheet of foolscap with a lead
pencil, which he frequently sucks_as an aid to thought and an
assertion that he is acquainted with its peculiarities. When
the invocations are coming to a close, he steps forward and
reads aloud the interpretation of the omens in this fashion:
"There will be a bumper rice crop; the rains will be up to
average, but the rise of the river will be some inches below
that of the year just past; the maize crop will be disappointing,
\' but peas and beans will be abundant." The band then strikes
up the National Anthem; the King, who has waited for the
bulletin, departs with his escort, and the people stream back
to their homes, while the Minister of Agriculture and his body-
guard are snapshotted by professionals and amateurs, and con-
gratulated by their friends.

The Spring Feast of the people of Kengtiing, the easternmost
of the British Shan States, is in violent contrast to the mixture
of East and West which is seen at Bangkok, where the Minister
has been known to refresh himself with a brandy and soda after
his exertions. In Kengtiing, since the British occupation, it has
sunk into something little better than an indecent orgy, but



THE FESTIVALS OF THE INDO-CHINESE 333

even before this much of its old savagery had disappeared.
It seems certain that, almost within living memory, this festival
was the occasion of a human sacrifice. The chosen victim,
stupefied with opium, or brutahzed with liquor, was car-
ried in procession round the town and then taken out to a
small stream, the Nam Hkon, to the north of the capital.
There he was slaughtered, and his heart and liver were torn
out. Formerly the victim was chosen by lot, then a man
under sentence of death was taken instead, or, if no criminal
was available, a notoriously bad character was substituted,
usually a cattle thief.^For at least fifty years the votive offering
has been a dog. The heart and liver are torn out and for-
mally offered to Lahu, the spirit of the city, and are then left
on the river-bank to be devoured by the beasts of the field
and the birds of the air. There are many resemblances to
the meri'ah offering of the Khonds of India, and the whole
suggests the idea of the slain god which is exhaustively treated
in that volume of Sir J. G. Frazer's Golden Bough which is en-
titled The Dying God.

The KengtiJng festival is certainly a spring feast, and it
takes place in the middle of the Water Festival, which cele-
brates the beginning of the New Year in all Indo-Chinese
Buddhist countries. The sacrifice, however, does not seem to
be taken either from Buddhism or Brahmanism, but to be
very much older. The chief figures in it are Wa hillmen
brought into the town for the purpose and fed and filled
specially for the occasion with heady rice spirits. The leading
figure is directly suggestive of phallic worship. The whole
party passes through the town at a fast run, indulging in
obscene antics all along the route. A small Image of Lahu
is thrown into the river. This is in the shape of a frog, and it
may be noted that this is the form, according to Shan Ideas,
of the evil spirit which swallows the moon when an eclipse
occurs.^^ A variety of offerings are left beside the stream, and
the whole Is certainly a spring festival and considered to be



334 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

essential to the welfare of the cultivators and the State gen-
erally, though there is no ploughing of the ground.

Later in the year, about the beginning of the rains, in the
eighth month of the Shans (about July), another festival
takes place at Kengtung. The spirit worshipped on this occa-
sion is Sao Kang, who has his abode in the Nawng Tung, a
lake in the centre of the city. On this occasion, the chief feature
is the marriage of four virgins to Sao Kang. According to
custom, the virgins should be dedicated every three years, but
the present Sawbwa has given no maidens in marriage to Sao
Kang, and his elder brother, whom he succeeded in 1896,
carried out the rite only once, in 1893.

The conditions are as follows: The maidens must be of pure
Hkon race, that is to say, of the sept of Shans who are the chief
inhabitants of the Kengtung Valley. When the festival is
decided on, all the girls of the low country are summoned,
ten being selected from among those of marriageable age.
They must be as comely as possible, and it is absolutely essen-
tial that they be without scar or disfigurement. From among
the ten, four are chosen by lot, these being decked out in
garments which have never been worn before. They are
taken to the house of the Chief Minister, and there installed
on a platform erected for the purpose. Four old women, thought
to be possessed by spirits, must be present. It is not clear
whether these are supposed to be discarded spouses of Sao
Kang, nor is it even certain that it is he who possesses them,
but it is clear that they are taken to represent him, and their
wants have to be ministered to by the four selected maidens.
These damsels present them with the food, betel, and cheroots
which they may require, and in which the rest of the as-
semblage indulge freely. The four old women have to remain
throughout the whole ceremony, but it is certain that they
are not chosen because they are regarded as witches. Dotage,
blindness, and the infirmities of age seem to be the chief requi-
sites which must characterize them.



THE FESTIVALS OF THE INDO-CHINESE 335

The festival ends only when the supplies of food and drink
are exhausted, and the girls are then taken to the Sawbwa's
haw, where strings are tied round their wrists by the Minis-
ters and Elders of the town. This is intended to guard them
from bad luck. The girls usually sleep for a night or two In the
Sawbwa's residence and then return to their homes. This
concludes the function so far as they are concerned, and there
seems to be no reason why they should not marry afterward.
The theory appears to be that, If nothing happens, and if they
retain their usual health, the spirit does not regard them with
any particular affection. If, however, one of them dies within
a comparatively short time, it is assumed that she has been
accepted by the spirit. For his propitiation pigs, fowls, and
sometimes a buffalo are sacrificed. The spirit guardians of the
gates of the walled town receive offerings once a year, but these
are always cereals or vegetables — the fruits of the earth.

The Red Karens also have a Spring Festival, the chief feature
of which is the erection of a post in a place set apart for the
purpose in or near the village. In small hamlets these poles
are often of bamboo, but in the chief's towns they are usually
substantial wooden masts, fifty or sixty feet high. A new post
is set up every year, and the chicken bones, by which the
Karens chiefly seek omens to guide them in matters both great
and small, are consulted as to which tree is likely to be the
most propitious, on what day it should be felled, and whether it
should be immediately trimmed of its branches or left for a
time unshorn of its foliage. After it has been rough-hewn, a
finial is prepared to be mounted on the top. These are in va-
rious patterns, the particular significance of which has not been
ascertained. When the chicken bones Indicate the lucky day
— always In April — the villagers set out to drag the post
from the jungle to the place where It Is to be erected. Some-
times they must go a considerable distance, taking more
than a day for their journey; and in that case the whole party
sleep round the log, for it is most important that no living



336 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

creature, man or beast, should step over it. When the post
has been set up, a fantastic dance is performed by the entire
population to the accompaniment of drums and gongs. Great
quantities of pork are eaten, and far too much liquor is drunk.
Everybody in the village contributes for the festival, and all the
food and drink thus collected is made one common fund so
that there may be no cause for bickering, which might have bad
results for the village, since quarrelling is infectious and
might easily extend to the guardian spirits.

Another festival is held in the month of August, when the
rains are ordinarily at their heaviest. All the fields have been
sown by this time, and the people have nothing to do. So,
on a propitious day chosen in the usual manner, the whole popu-
lation marches out to the music of drums and gongs. A post,
about four feet high, is erected, not too near the village, and
on this is fixed a rudely carved image of some animal, usually
a horse or an elephant, fashioned out of a block of wood.
Offerings of fruit and flowers and bamboos of rice spirits are
placed on the ground before it, the day being finished with
the usual feasting and drinking of arrack. The idea is that
any evil spirits who may be lurking around will mount the
elephant or the horse, and ride off to the country of the Shans
or over the Siamese border.

The feast which is celebrated in the autumn, after the har-
vest has been garnered, is devoted to honouring the dead rather
than to giving thanks for the abundance of the crops. At this
time, accordingly, tribute is paid to the memory of relations
and friends who have died during the year. The whole night
preceding the festival is noisy with the firing of guns, in con-
formity with the invariable custom in a Red Karen village
when some one has died. Next day quantities of rice spirits
are brewed; and after a bullock or a pig has been slaughtered,
small strips of the flesh are skewered on pieces of bamboo and
roasted. Then all who have lost kindred during the past year
form in procession, and to the clashing of high sounding cym-



PLATE XV

Red Karen Spirit-Posts

Every Red Karen village (cf. pp. 268-69) erects
a spirit-post once a year. Villages are satisfied with
bamboo, of which the white ants soon make an end;
but the ones here shown are of teak and stand not far
from the Karenni State of Bawlak-e.



THE NEW YORK

PU&LIC LIBRARY



ASrOR, LENOX AND
TILDBN FCUNDATldNS



THE FESTIVALS OF THE INDO-CHINESE 337

bals and the booming of deep-mouthed gongs and drums they
make a tour of the houses of all friends and relations in neigh-
bouring villages. Each of the inmates is presented with a piece
of roasted meat and has a drink out of the bamboos full of
arrack. The night is devoted to more firing of guns. A cere-
mony of much interest in connexion with this festival is the
carrying of embers outside the village fence. A small piece of
smouldering wood from the house fire is placed in a bamboo and
ceremonially thrown away in the jungle. The exact signifi-
cance of this seems to have been forgotten, but it is said to
have been customary from the earliest times of the race and is
believed to safeguard the householders from fever and sickness
generally.

The Taungthii, who are undoubtedly Karens by race, though
they will not admiit it, have a village feast before sowing begins.
Each household contributes to a common fund three fish, a
little rice, and some ginger, salt, and chillies. When these are
cooked, a portion is taken for the spirit of the tilth and placed
in his shrine, while the villagers eat the rest. If there is not
enough to satisfy the hunger of all, it is inferred that the rice
crop will be meagre; but if something is left over, it will be good
in proportion to the amount that has not been eaten. On the
day when the rice-fields are sown no Taungthii will give food,
fire, water, or anything else that may be asked of him, no
matter what the necessity of the applicant may be, or how-
ever close the degree of his relationship. If he were to do so,
his crop would be eaten by insects. The first handful of seed
is always sown at night just before the farmer goes to bed.
It is not likely that he will be asked for anything at that hour,
so he will at least have made a fair start without straining his
compassion. When the paddy has been stowed away in the
granary, it can be taken out only on days which have been
ascertained to be lucky; it would be most reckless to bring it
out on any random day simply because some was wanted for
cooking.

xu — 23



338 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

At the time of sowing the Kachins have a great festival,
during which the Duzua, or headman of the village, worships
the deity Wakyet-wa, or Chinun-way-shun, on behalf of the
people. Eggs, dried fish, fowls, and liquor are contributed
as a communal offering, and usually a fowl or some dried fish
— occasionally a cow or a pig — is buried as a sacrifice. The
actual offering is made by a priest who acts as the representa-
tive of the headman, and when he has presented it he does not
turn round, but backs away from the place. After this sacrifice
all work is prohibited for four days, at the expiration of which
the "earth-priest" determines which family in the village shall
be the first to begin the sowing in order that the harvest may
be abundant. Two additional holy days are then observed,
during which more offerings of eggs, fowls, and liquor are made
and consumed; and after this the entire village sets about sow-
ing. No reaping whatever may take place till the first fruits
of the crop sown by the first house have been gathered in and
ofi"ered to the Nats of that particular family. This is usually
done before the crop is actually dead-ripe, so that the fields
of the rest of the population may not suffer. During the time
of the harvest and threshing the "father and mother of the
paddy-plant" are invoked and urged to remain in the granary
that there may be no loss, and that seed for the following year
may be plentiful. With the carrying home of the grain the
last harvest ceremony of the year takes place. A woman picks
a few ears from a patch that has been purposely left uncut,
and putting them in her basket, she trudges off home, swaying
wearily and often resting as If the load were an enormously
heavy one. This is always done, even if the crop has been very
poor, for the earth-spirit is considered to be just as ill-tempered
as all others, and might easily prove spiteful in years to come
if he were not flattered.



CHAPTER IV
THE THIRTY SEVEN NATS

THE Burmese attitude toward spirits is prompted by their
relations with their neighbours. The Burmese and the
Shans had little mercy for the hill people when they caught
them at a disadvantage. They slaughtered them all if it was
a case of fighting, and they swindled them shamelessly if it
was a matter of buying and selling. Most of them have tales
of how they were defrauded from the earliest days by their
crafty neighbours. A favourite tradition Is that when the Great
Spirit created mankind, he gave all of them written alphabets,
but the hillmen had theirs inscribed on hide; when food
failed them, they ate the skin, so that they have been without
letters ever since and have always been the prey of their more
learned lowland enemies. The Kachins and some other races
held their own in the matter of fighting, lording it over the
settlers in the nearer valleys and plains, but there are others
who tell doleful stories of how they were imposed upon, like
the Hkamuks and Hkamets in regard to the Lao Shans.

A favourite notion of chicanery appears in the numerous
traditions of the building of pagodas to decide the issue of a
struggle without unnecessary bloodshed. The opposing forces
agreed that whoever first finished the erection of such a pagoda
was to be considered the victor without the fatigue and the
material loss of actual fighting. There are few Buddhist
races in Farther India that do not tell how they came off
triumphantly by the simple process of making a bamboo frame-
work In the shape of a pagoda, covering It with cloth, and ,
then smearing it with lime.



340 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

With such credulity" it is not surprising that the mythology
of the people is distinctly anthropomorphic. One might
expect the mythological characters to be borrowed from the
gods of Hindu mythology, but they seem rather to be inde-
pendently developed. The most characteristic denizens of the
Indo-Chinese pantheon are the "Thirty-Seven Nats" (or
spirits) of Burma. These spirits of the Burmese here and there
suggest the Vedic gods, as when the Thagya Min, who is their
leader, may, like the Kachin Shippawn Ayawng,^^ be paired off
very well with Dyaus, Zeus, or Jupiter; yet it seems more prob-
able that they have come down from that wide-spread, but
very remote, stage in the mental development of mankind
which deified first the phenomena of nature and afterward
the passions of mankind. Indian influence is very slight,
notwithstanding the fact that the great bulk of Burmese lit-
erature comes from India, The tales of the Rdmayana^'^ to cite
an outstanding example, do not introduce themselves into the
national religion, whose names, ideas, and incidents are entirely
indigenous. The Burmese mythical characters are much
materialized, but they never fall so low as the deities of some
other races, such as the African fetishes, which are often very
roughly treated by their worshippers when things do not go as
well as is expected. The number of the Nats is always given
as thirty-seven, but this is rather characteristic of Burmese
random, haphazard ways, since in reality there are only thirty-
four, because the brothers Shwe Byin are always worshipped to-
gether, while in the same way the Mahagiri Nat is almost in-
variably named in company with his wife Shwe Na Be, his
sister Thon Pan Hla (or Shwe Myet-hna), and his niece Shin
Ne Mi. Nevertheless there is a categorical list of the whole
thirty-seven, and they are formally tabulated and discussed in
a treatise called the Maha Gltd Medani, an edition of which
has been published at Mandalay. Moreover rude images of the
whole thirty-seven are carefully preserved in the enclosure
of the Shwe Zigon Pagoda at Pagan, on the Irrawaddy River.

[Prometheus]

THE THIRTY-SEVEN NATS 341

It Is true that the Thagya Min has a shrine to himself, and as
the King of Nats Is worshipped separately and In a very dif-
ferent way from his subject spirits. The true explanation
seems to be that, though thirty-seven names are recorded,
there are only thirty-four occasions of worship.

The Mahd Gitd Medani gives a short history of each of the
deified personages, which takes the place of the tablets and
Inscriptions set up by the Chinese and the Annamese, and the
proper ode for each Is given with directions as to the dress of
the hierophants and with Instructions regarding the character
of the accompanying music. These odes, called the Ndt-than,
or "spirit melodies," are really short biographical sketches In
metre, put Into the mouths of the beings worshipped and
recited by the mediums In a state of ecstatic possession. They
are mostly quite moral In their tendency, for they impress on
the audience the sinfulness of treason, rebellion, and as-
sassination. In the case of Nats who were members of the
Royal family a detailed account of their genealogy is given.
Of the whole thirty-seven nineteen were royal, one was a
merchant, and the rest belonged to the poorer classes.

Some examples from the Mahd Gitd Medani will give the
best Idea of these dithyrambs. They show that conscientious
monks have no great reason for opposing this excrescence on
Buddhism, and are even justified In the mild toleration which
they show, sometimes to the extent of taking personal part in
the worship of the Nats. Perhaps, In fact. It would be more
accurate to say that Nat-worship is the basis on which the
Buddhism of the people rests.

The Thagya Min, the first Nat whom we shall consider, is
the King of Tawadeintha, the land of the spirits, and his yearly
descent to earth marks the beginning of the Burmese New
Year with formalities which are not widely different from
those that we have already described as observed In Slam.^^
The Mahd Gitd Medani has not a great deal to say about him,
but he Is, it states, the representative of the King of Thagyas,



342 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

who lives on the summit of Mount Meru, the Indian Olympos.
On festival days a large shed is erected, and in this it is proper
to act various kinds of plays. While these are going on, the
Ndt-thein, or spirit mediums, enter, carrying shells in their
right hands and sprigs of young leaves in their left. They are all
dressed alike in ornamental-bordered waist-cloths, broad-sleeved
jackets, and white scarves thrown over their shoulders. They
advance with mincing steps and chant the Ndt-than as follows :

"I am the King of the worlds that are situated in the midst
of the Four Islands and are surrounded by the Seven Encircling
Seas and the Seven Ranges of Mountains. The righteous and
the pure in heart will I protect and I will punish such as
are ungodly and do evil. Therefore have I descended from a
height of one hundred and sixty-eight thousand yuzanas [a
yuzana — the Sanskrit yojana — is thirteen and a half English
miles] to watch over the good and over the bad, and therefore
do I pray that every one may avoid evil and cleave fast to that
which is good." Then the music strikes up, and the ceremony
concludes with the vivacious dancing of the possessed women.
The Thagya Min, however, stands apart and has the super-
natural character of an angel of the skies rather than the earthly
connexion of the others, who are essentially spirits in the
common acceptation of the term.

The Mahagiri, Magari, or Magaye Nat is as universally, and
perhaps more constantly, worshipped. With him is almost in-
variably joined his sister, Hnit-ma Taunggyi-shin, often
called Shindwe Hla, Saw Meya, or Sawme-shin, but most
generally Shwe Myet-hna Nat ("the Golden-Faced One");
and Mahagiri's wife (Shwe Na Be) and niece (Shin Ne Mi)
are also quite commonly added. The story varies slightly, but
the main points agree in all districts of Burma, the popu-
lar version being here given rather than the bald statement of
the regular treatise.

In the reign of Tagaung Min, the King who took his name
from his capital, Tagaung (or Old Pagan, as it is frequently



' PLATE XVI

Thagya Min Nat

Thagya (or Thingyan) Min Nat is the lord of the
heavens, and his annual descent to earth marks the
beginning of the Burmese year (cf. p. 323). After
Temple, Thirty-Seven Nats of Burma, No. i.



THE THIRTY-SEVEN NATS 343

called), which stood above Mandalay on the Irrawaddy River,
there lived in that city a blacksmith named Nga Tin Daw,
who had a son named Nga Tin De, noted as the cleverest
blacksmith and the strongest man of his time. He had such
great influence in Tagaung that the King was afraid of him
and feared that he would raise a rebellion. In order to con-
ciliate the blacksmith the King married Tin De's sister, giv-
ing her the title of Thiriwunda, but despite all this Tagaung
Min, still uneasy in mind, finally told the Queen to sum-
mon her brother to the palace to receive an appointment.
When Tin De came, he was seized by the palace guards, tied to
a tree which grew in the palace yard, and burned to death.
The Queen begged permission to bid farewell to her brother,
went up to the burning pile, sprang into the flames, and per-
ished with him. As she threw herself on the blazing faggots, the
body-guard rushed up to scatter the fire, but they were too
late. Both brother and sister were dead, and all that remained
of them was their heads, which had not been in the least harmed
by the flames. Becoming Nats, Tin De and the Queen took
up their abode in the sanga-tree, a sort of magnolia, which grew
within the palace enclosure; from this they descended every
now and again, killing and devouring people, .particularly
those who came near the tree. After this had gone on for
some time, the King had the tree uprooted and thrown into the
Irrawaddy ; and it floated down with the current as far as Pagan,
where it stranded on the river-bank close to one of the city
gates. Thinle Gyaung (or Thila Gyaung) was then King of
Pagan, and to him the two spirits revealed themselves one
night, though not before they had killed and eaten every
one who came near the tree. They appeared in spirit form, but
with their human heads, teUing King Thinle Gyaung of the
cruelty of the King of Tagaung. He took pity on them and
gave orders that a suitable temple should be built on Poppa
Hill to receive the Mahagiri Nats and their arboreal man-
sion. When it was completed, the tree was conveyed with



344 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

great formality to its new home, a log being still pointed out
there to prove the truth of the legend. The Mahagiri Nats,
when they were properly housed and treated with considera-
tion, gave up aggressive destruction, attacking only those
who directly offended them. The King ordained that an
annual festival should be held in their honour in the month of
Nayon (May-June), and this was celebrated regularly for many
centuries. In 1785 King Bodaw Pay a presented two golden
heads to the shrine to be kept by the official in charge of the
Poppa neighbourhood, and these were brought out and ex-
hibited to the people every year on the occasion of the festival.
When the feast came round, the golden heads were carried to
the spirit temple. The officials and the people from all the coun-
try round about gathered and marched in procession with bands
of music and dancers at their head, while Ministers of State
were also specially deputed from the Court to attend the feast
with State offerings. When the shrine was reached, the heads
were placed on the altar, the traditional propitiatory rites
were performed, and after the day was over the heads were
restored to the proper official.

When Burma became entirely British territory, the two
golden heads were taken to Pagan and kept in the Treasury
for some years. Thence they were removed to the Bernard
Free Library in Rangoon, where they may be still be seen, but
the special festival on Poppa Hill has been abandoned.

The Mahagiri Nats were of great service to King Kyanyit-
tha, both before and after he succeeded to the throne of Pagan.
In recognition of this he issued an order that all his subjects
should honour these two Nats by suspending a votive coco-nut
in their houses, and this has been done ever since, although the
brother gets all the credit in many places, being formally recog-
nized as the Eing Saung Nat, the household spirit. The coco-
nut will be found hung up in every Burman house, not merely
in Upper Burma, but even in Rangoon. It is usually set in a
rectangular bamboo frame, and over the top of the coco-nut



PLATE XVII

Mahagiri Nat

Min Mahagiri, or Magaye, is the spirit in whose
honour a coco-nut is hung in the porch of every Bur-
mese house. After Temple, Thirty-Seven Nats of
Burma, No. 2.



THE THIRTY-SEVEN NATS 345

Is placed a square of red cloth which represents a turban.
When any illness breaks out in the house or in the family, the
coco-nut is inspected, the special points being that the water,
or coco-milk, should not have dried up, and that the stalk
should still be intact. If anything is amiss, a fresh nut is put
in place of the one which is discarded. There is a suggestion
that this use of the coco-nut is a reminiscence of head-hunting,
or at any rate of the collection of skulls in ancient days. At
all events it is recorded that as long as the feast was kept, sacri-
fices of animals and offerings of alcoholic liquor were made
to the Mahagiri Nats. Burmese histories state that in Decem-
ber, 1555, of our era, the Hanthawadi Sinbyuyin, the Brangin-
oco of the early European writers, reached Pagan in the
course of his progress through his newly conquered dominions,
and there he witnessed the festival held in honour of the
Mahagiri Nat and his sister. Noticing that white buffaloes,
white oxen, and white goats were slaughtered before the altar,
and that libations of rice spirits were poured out, he declared
that this was quite contrary to the spirit of Buddhism and
commanded that It should cease forthwith, on penalty of the
pains of hell for those who disobeyed.

New golden heads, fashioned in 18 12, replaced the original
models made at the command of Bodaw Paya. These later
heads, presented by the same monarch, who was the great-
great-grandfather of King Thibaw, the last sovereign of Burma,
were larger and more finished in their workmanship than the
first casts. It Is these that are now preserved In Rangoon.

The Mahd Gitd Medaniy the handbook for the worship of
the spirits, says that plays must be performed on the occasion
of the festival. While these are going on, the spirit wives
(Ndt-kadazv), dressed In the garments described in the chant,
come forward with twigs of young leaves of the thabye-tree.
They prostrate themselves three times, rising to their feet
before each prostration, and then they lay down the twigs
and begin to dance and sing the Ndt-than:



346 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

"Here do I come, radiant with flowing girdle and satin loin-
cloth of foreign manufacture, with white muslin cloak and ample
sleeves. In my right hand I hold a fan, and my helmet is made
of palm-leaf gilt with pure gold. Aforetime I lived my life in
Tagaung, whose ruler causelessly suspected me of harbouring
evil designs against him. He commanded his Ministers to
arrest me and put me to death; therefore I was forced to leave
and take refuge in the jungle. Then the King bethought him
of a stratagem. He made my sister. Saw Meya, his Chief Queen
and tempted me back by the promise of the office of Governor
of the capital. When I came back, he caused me to be tied to a
sanga-tree, and there I was burned alive, for sword and spear
were alike powerless to do me harm. Thus did I become a
spirit. My sister, whom I dearly loved, was named Saw Meya,
or Shindwe Hla, and now I am known as Maung Tin De,
or Mahagiri. I pray you of your courtesy, let your love for a
man of the upper country be as sweet as honey in the court.
[Here instructions are introduced to the band to strike up ap-
propriate music]

"The Lady of the Golden Palace is worthy of love for her
grace and beauty. The glory of His Majesty is as that of the sun
in all his splendour and effulgence, yet though he thus shines
gloriously, he beams on the people with a fragrance and a cool-
ing breath like unto a fresh breeze laden with the odours of the
wild jasmine. Hence it is that the countries which own his Royal
sway are many and varied, and therefore is his capital happy and
prosperous. The great mountains of rock covered with sal- and
malla-tvees are now the dwelling-place of the Nats. Their
retreat is gorgeous with gems and responds to the prosperity
of the country. There lives Her Majesty, the Chief Queen,
the Lady of the Golden Palace, and there also lives her mighty
brother, renowned for his valour and the strength of his body.
These two are by Royal Decree rulers over a vast stretch of
country over which they keep watch and ward. By Royal
Command, issued at the desire of a high-placed Queen, the



PLATE XVIII

An Avatar Play

Plays in Burma are always performed in the open
air, and there is no charge for admission, the cost
being borne by some pious member of the com-
munity to celebrate a festival or a domestic event.
The circular frame is fitted with drums and gongs,
and is called Saing-waing or Kyi-waing. The figures
to the right of it are the "prince" (in the centre)
and the clown (on his left).



'*?,£'„






THE THIRTY-SEVEN NATS 347

Chief Queen, whose birth was lowly, was consigned to the flames
with her brother and was burned to death. The mighty moun-
tain [Poppa] Is now the abode of their manes' [Then the music
breaks In, and the frenzied dance begins.]

At Poppa the Chief Queen, Hnit-ma-daw, Taung-gyl-shin,
the Shwe Myet-hna Nat, Is always worshipped along with her
brother, but this does not seem to be the case In the greater
part of Burma and certainly not in Lower Burma. At Poppa
Hill she has a special chant of her own, which runs as follows:

"With a white scarf wound round my head, a jacket em-
broidered in silver and gold, with wide fringes and tight sleeves,
a cotton petticoat [in the case of male Nats the mediums, who
are nearly always women, wear the masculine paso, or waist-
cloth] with an ornamental border, and a girdle laced over with
gold, I, the Queen of Tagaung, the fondly loved and blameless
daughter of the Myothugyl [mayor] of Tagaung, Maung Tin
Daw, have decked myself and come. [In the preliminary in-
structions It Is stated that when the clairvoyantes appear,
they must each hold In their left hand a betel-box, with four
silver cups enclosed, and In their right a water goblet. These
are raised and lowered three times, and then laid aside before
the song and dance begin.] I was a true sister to Shindwe Hla,
who was younger than I, and now I live on Poppa Hill with my
loving brother Nat, Maung Tin De, who all for his mighty
strength and vigour was tied to a tree and burned, though I
pleaded sore that he was brother-in-law to the King. Then In
my grief did I hasten to the burning pile and threw myself
Into the flames. They strove to save me, but all they saved was
my head, which parted from my body. Then did I become a Nat
and among the Nats I am known as 'the Golden-Faced One.'
The King interred us beneath the flower tree In the palace court,
brother and sister he buried us there. But there came the
many: there came the foolish: there was no place for the view-
less spirits of the air. Therefore the tree was torn up: by the
roots It was uprooted: with Its roots It was cast into the mighty



348 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

river. It floated down the river: it was borne by the great
Irrawaddy: the floods bore it to the north gate landing-place
of the palace at Pagan. There we saw the King: there we told
our tale: and Thinle Gyaung, the King, gave us all Poppa for
our realm."

Then, to the appropriate music indicated in the text, begin
what a worthy Burmese official calls "the enthusiastic dances of
the Nat-inspired females."

The Mahagiri spirits are recognized and revered all over
Burma. The Shwe Pyin Nyi-naung (elder and younger
brother) are not so widely known, but they are even more ven-
erated In Upper Burma, especially at Madaya, close to Man-
dalay, where an annual festival is held, attended by vast
crowds from all parts of the Upper Province.

Their story is as follows: About a thousand years ago, in
the time of the Thaton King, a certain monk went one day to
bathe in the river. While he was bathing he saw a wooden
tray floating toward him, and on it were seated two little boys,
evidently of Indian descent. Taking them to his monastery,
he brought them up, giving them the names of Byat Twe and
Byat Ta {byat being the Burmese name for a wooden tray).
He taught them all he knew and sometimes took them out on
excursions into the forest. On one of these occasions he came
upon the body of a wizard tatued with charms which rendered
him invisible at will. The monk told the boys to carry the body
home, for he proposed to roast and eat it, so that he also
might acquire supernatural powers; but when he got to his
monastery, he found that the boys had already eaten the dead
weiksa and had become luzun gaung (skilled in the black
art). In his anger he reported the matter to the Thaton
King, who sent men to capture the two brothers. The
elder was caught and put to death, but the younger,
Byat Ta, escaped and made his way to Pagan, where he took
service under King Nawrahta Minzaw, his function being to
gather flowers for the palace. In the discharge of his duties,



• PLATE XIX

Shwe Pyin Naungdaw Nat

The elder of the twin brothers who are worshipped
with great ceremony in a village not far south of
Mandalay. After Temple, Thirty-Seven Nats of
Burma, No. 25.



THE THIRTY-SEVEN NATS 349

the Pandawset — to give Byat Ta his official title at the
Royal Court — used to go to Poppa Hill, a distance of a week's
journey for an ordinary man, though he was able to accom-
plish it in a single day owing to his magic powers. Here on the
Hill he met a giantess disguised as a young and handsome
woman, and falling in love with her, he became by her the father
of twins. On the day that the infants were born he arrived late
at the palace, and the King, who was beginning to be anxious
to rid himself of a man of such extraordinary powers, ordered
him forthwith to execution. Just before he was put to death,
Byat Ta told the King of the birth of the children, begging
that he would adopt them because they, too, like their father,
would be luzun gaung. The mother, who knew what had hap-
pened, put the twins in two pyin, or jars, launching them
on the river which bore them to Pagan, where the King found
them and took charge of them, giving them the names of
Shwe Pyin-gyi and Shwe Pyin-nge ( Golden Great Jar" and
"Golden Little Jar"). As the boys grew up, they became
great favourites in the palace and proved to have inherited
their father's supernatural powers.

[Prometheus]

In the third century of the Burmese era, the beginning of
the eleventh century of our own, King Nawrahta Minzaw
went to China with a large force to demand the tooth of the
Buddha Gotama from the Chinese Emperor, but the latter
did not come to meet the Burmese Monarch, whence Nawrahta
took offence at what he thought was a slight on his dignity.
To avenge this he caused the chief image of a spirit worshipped
by the Chinese to be flogged, but when the divine being
shrieked, "Nga Law Ni, Nga Law Ye, and Nga Law Tayi,
save me!" the Chinese Emperor became aware of the arrival
of the King of Pagan and proceeded to defend his capital with
charmed swords and spears, as well as with fire and water placed
round the city walls. King Nawrahta chose four men whom
he sent to call the Udibwa to account, but though they suc-
ceeded in passing the barrier of swords and spears, they could



3 so INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

not get through the fire and water. The King then dispatched
the Shwe Pyin brothers, who, overcoming all obstacles, made
their way to the Emperor's sleeping chamber, where they
smeared the Udibwa's face with lime, wrote some sentences on
the wall, and plucked three hairs from his head, which they
took back to Nawrahta. The Chinese Emperor was furious
when he awoke and found what had been done to him, but was
so amazed when he read the writing on the wall that he pre-
sented Nawrahta with the tooth of Gotama for which he
had come, adding an abundance of gold and silver, besides some
maidens of the palace. Peace and friendship were declared to
exist between the two countries, and the tooth of Gotama is
said to have been kept In the tower at the east gate of the
palace down to the time of the foundation of Mandalay,
though all trace of It Is now lost. To commemorate his success
the King of Pagan on his return built the Sudaung-byi
("Prayer-Rewarded") Pagoda at Taung-byon.

Now, however, the officers of the Court grew very jealous
of the Shwe Pyin brothers and cast about for an opportunity
to bring them Into disfavour with the King. Each member of
the Royal retinue had to do his share in the building of the
Sudaung-byi Pagoda, but the enemies of the twin brothers con-
trived to leave a portion of the inner wall incomplete for the
lack of two bricks. This, they told the King, was due to the
negligence of the Shwe Pyin brothers, and Nawrahta ordered
them to be executed, but the twins made themselves Invisible,
appearing only at long Intervals. At last they surrendered,
and the King ordered that they should be put to death, not at
Pagan, but at some distant place. It was impossible to kill
the Shwe Pyin Nyi-naung by ordinary methods, so they were
taken to a hamlet where thayelbn (hide ropes) were procured;
and the village of L5ndaung exists to the present day to prove
it. They could not, however, be strangled with these, so the
party went on to another place and called for wayindok (stocks
made of male bamboo), but though Wayindok village still



THE THIRTY-SEVEN NATS 351

pays revenue, It was impossible to kill the brothers with these.
Thereupon the twins themselves simplified matters by explain-
ing that if they were taken to a certain place and put to the
torture called the kutuyat (emasculation), they would surely die.
This form of mutilation was accordingly adopted with the result
that the Shwe Pyin were at last put to death, and Kutywa
now marks the spot where the execution took place.

At the Sudaung-byi Pagoda the traveller may still see the
vacant places where the two bricks ought to have been; and
there are also two huge boulders with which the brothers used
to play ball; the stocks in which they were confined; and a
small cell in which they underwent the torture, its floor still
stained with their blood.

Some time after they were put to death the King was re-
turning to Pagan on a Royal barge, but when he reached a
place now called Kyitu, it suddenly stood still in mid-stream,
and nothing could move it. The astrologers, when consulted,
said that the stoppage was due to the twin brothers who
had now become Nats and who wished to punish the ingrati-
tude of the King in having put them to death after the service
which they had rendered to him in China. When Nawrahta
had summoned the spirits before him and asked what they
wanted, they upbraided him, saying that they were homeless,
whereupon the Monarch assigned them Taung-byon as a habi-
tation and built them the shrine In which their statues now
stand; while In charge of the Nat-nan, or spirit palace, he placed
one of the maidens presented to him by the Emperor of China.
The annual festival Is now one of the most popular and most
picturesque in the Mandalay neighbourhood, and the crowds
are as great as at any Buddhist shrine.

In the ceremonial dance at the yearly festival in honour of
these two brothers the inspired women first appear "in waist-
cloths with an ornamental border, wide-sleeved jackets,
white scarves thrown over the shoulders, and light-red-coloured
helmets on their heads. In their right hand they have some



352 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

young shoots of the thabye-tree. They step forward and back-
ward three times before the shrine and then retire to change
their costume for embroidered velvet, close-fitting jackets,
light-red native pasos, and hats for their heads, after which, with
a tray full of plantains in their left hand and a da, or sword,
in their right, they come forward again and begin to sing."
The song is as follows for the elder Shwe Pyin Nat:

"With green velvet tunics embroidered in various colours,
with light red loin-cloths, red turbans and sashes, we two
brothers have adorned ourselves and come hither. We were
the two pages in waiting who served Nawrahta, the King, and
went before him with naked swords in our hands. Our father
was the kald, the [Indian] native runner who was famed for
his speed and gained the name of the Royal Runner. Five
times he ran to Poppa Hill, and five times he returned with
posies of fresh flowers, before the King had combed his hair.
It fell on a day when he was on Poppa Hill that our father met
with a biluma, an ogress. They loved each other and told their
love on the Hill. In the fullness of time she gave life to us two
at a birth, and when we had grown to youths, the King at-
tached us to his person and called us Shwe Pyin Naungdaw
[the elder] and Shwe Pyin Nyidaw [the younger]. We went
with him on his journey to China, and it was through our ef-
forts that he brought back the relics of the Buddha which he
obtained from the Udibwa. When he came back he ordered a
pagoda to be built at Taung-byon, and this was to be erected by
all the persons of his court. Nawrahta, the King, went to view
it and found two spaces lacking the bricks which we brothers
had not put in. Then the King was wroth and sent us to our
death, and thus we became Nats, and the pretty maidens have
sighed for us from that day."

The chant for the younger brother is shorter:
" I am the younger brother of Shwe Pyin-gyi, who is the chief
Nat of yonder Taung-by5n. The true servant of King Nawrahta
Minzaw was I, and time and again my brother and I served



PLATE XX

The Guardian of the Lake

The image of Hpaung-daw-u is here shown richly
covered with gold-leaf by the piety of worshippers
during many years. Cf. Plate X.



,sru&



ssS-s-



THE THIRTY-SEVEN NATS 353

him at the risk of our lives. But he slew us because he found
not the two bricks, the share of work allotted to us while we
were away. On our death we forthwith became Nats, but
there was no place where we might stay. Therefore we clung
to the Royal barge and checked it in its course. Then did
the King grant to us the sovereignty of all the country that
lies by Taung-byon. Now, all ye pretty maidens, love ye us as
ye were wont to do while yet we were alive."

The suggestion of Adonis and of his counterparts, Tammuz
and Osiris, is obvious, and there is also a hint of phallic wor-
ship in the method of death. One may recall the lines of
Milton on Tammuz,

"Whose annual wound to Lebanon allured
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate
In amorous ditties all a summer's day."

None of the Nats has a particularly creditable history. It
is the old story: the good may be neglected because they are
easy-going and harmless; the vigorous, and especially the
vicious, must be flattered and cajoled.

If the Shwe Pyin Nats suggest Adonis, the Min Kyawzwa
has a distinct resemblance to Bacchus or Dionysos, for, like
Dionysos, the son of Jupiter and Semele,^° Min Kyawzwa is a
Royal spirit. The Mahd Gitd Medani has frank doubts as to
his identity and is even more sceptical as to his existence.
This is what it has to say:

"An old King of Pagan had two sons, called Sithu and
Kyawzwa, by his Northern Queen, and a son named Shwe
Laung Min by the Queen of the South Palace. He wanted
Shwe Laung Min to succeed him, and to save that prince
from the jealousies and plots of his half-brothers he sent these
two to live at Taung-nyo Lema. Later, when he heard that
they had made themselves very powerful, he ordered them far-
ther off to Taung-ngu. From Taung-ngu the brothers went and
attacked the Karens. When they came back from their expe-
dition, they built a city called Ku-hkan. They dug a number of
XII — 24



354 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

canals about It, so that the city subsequently came to be
known as Myaungtu-pauk [myaung means "canal"] and is
known to the present day as Myaungtu-ywa. But there was
not enough water in the canals, so the elder brother, Sithu,
murdered Kyawzwa, and Kyawzwa became a Nat. As a spirit
he set on his brother and strangled him, and Sithu also became
a Nat [he is numbered twenty-five among the thirty-seven].
A large building was built for a dwelling-place for Min Kyaw-
zwa, and it may be seen to the present day. In the month of
Nayon every year a feast is held in his honour with fireworks
and mains of cocks."

In another chronicle quoted by the Mahd Gitd Medani, the
history of Min Kyawzwa is quite differently related:

" In former times the King of Pagan had four ministers who
were brothers. He gave in marriage to Kyawzwa, the young-
est of the four, a girl named Ma Bo Me, who gained a living
by selling drink in Poppa village. They lived happily together
for a time, but Kyawzwa developed a taste for his wife's
liquor and spent all his sober moments in cock-fighting and
letting off fireworks. He died and became a Nat in Ku-
hkan-gyi City." The religious are left to choose which version
pleases them best. The main point is the drink, the cock-
fighting, and the fireworks.

A bamboo shed is built for the festival, and in this the girls
who represent the Nats come forward, all dressed alike in red
loin-cloths, with the end thrown over their shoulders, and with
red turbans on their heads. They imitate the letting off of
fireworks and the proceedings at a cocking main, and they
repeatedly slap their left biceps with their right hands (as
a Burman does when he is challenging to a wrestling- or box-
ing-bout), after which they dance and begin the Ndt-than:

"Here am I come, I, Maung Kyawzwa, the dearly loved
husband of Ma Bo Me, of Poppa village, clad in a spangled red
garment — I who drank deep of strong drink and loved fire-
works and cock-fights. I was the youngest of the four brothers,



PLATE XXI

MiN Kyawzwa Nat

In Burmese mythology this spirit corresponds to
the Classical conception of Bacchus. After Temple,

Thirty-Seven Nats of Burma, No. 32.



TDK Ni'^V VOUK

PUfVLIC LlDnAiiY



ASTOR, LENOX AND
TILDBN FOC-iNDATlONS



THE THIRTY-SEVEN NATS 355

who long and faithfully served Alaung Sithu, the monarch of
Pagan. Daily I went from place to place to gratify my fancy,
with my fighting-cock hidden in my arms and my money
hidden in my waist-belt, concealed from Ma Bo Me, the
wife of my bosom. Many a main did we fight under the shade
of that pipul-tree, and many a time did I reel along the streets,
drunk with Ma Bo Me's stingo, and many is the time the
pretty little maids picked me up out of the gutter." [Then
the corybantic music strikes up, and the Bacchantes weave
their paces with waving arms.]

The Tongkingese lack the array of national spirits that
the Burmese possess, yet a goodly number of them have formal
histories, though for the most part these stories can boast only
of a local significance. They are mainly of the mystical type
described by Owen Glendower, to the vast indignation of
Harry Hotspur:

"of the moldwarp and the ant,
Of the dreamer Merlin and his prophecies,
And of a dragon and a finless fish,
A clip-wing'd grifiin and a moulten raven,
A couching lion and a ramping cat.
And such a deal of skimble-skamble stuff
As puts me from my faith."

There is, however, a legend about the areca-palm and the
betel-vine which may be taken to represent the eastern devotion
to the betel as contrasted with the western cult of the vine.

Ages ago there lived a mandarin to whom the King had given
the title of Cau, which the official adopted as his family name.
He had two sons called Tan and Lang, both of them comely
youths and so like each other that it was almost impossible
to tell them apart. When they grew to manhood, they lost their
father and their mother, and with them all the possessions
which they had in the world, so that they took service in the
household of a man named Dao-ly, who was also known
as Lu'u-huyen. Dao-ly had a daughter named Lien who was
remarkable for her beauty, and both the brothers, falling in love



356 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

with her, wished to marry her. Lien was not unwiUing,
but found their resemblance to one another so very embarrass-
ing that she settled the matter by resolving to take the elder
of the two; but since neither of the brothers would tell her
which of them was the first-born, she was compelled to resort
to a ruse. She prepared a tempting meal, which she asked them
to eat, whereupon the younger, without thinking what he was
doing, took the chopsticks and respectfully handed them to
his senior. The consent of her parents was then obtained, and
Tan and Lien were married.

After the marriage Lang, the younger brother, found that he
no longer had the whole of the love of Tan, for it was shared
with the affection which he felt for Lien. Moreover he pined
for the loss of his sweetheart, and since he could not help envy-
ing his brother, he went away, walking straight ahead into
the forest. After many miles he came to a broad, deep river,
but as he could not cross it, he lay down on its banks, and be-
tween self-pity and misery and hunger passed out of this life.
His body became changed into a tree, with a tall slender stem,
crowned at the top with a coronal of fronds and clusters of
fruit. This was the betel-nut palm. When Tan missed his
brother, he went out in search of him, and by chance he fol-
lowed the same track, came to the same stream, saw the sin-
gular tree, sat down at its foot, and was transformed into a
mass of limestones. When Lien found her husband long of
returning, she became alarmed and set out on the path which
he had taken, so that she, too, came to the same stream.
As she saw the areca-palm and the heap of limestones, a
celestial vision revealed to her what had taken place, where-
upon she threw herself down at the foot of the tree, clasped
the limestone boulders, and prayed that she might die. Her
prayer granted, she was transformed into a creeper with
aromatic leaves which enlaced the stones and the stem of
the palm. She became the betel-vine.

Her parents gathered together the whole clan of the Lu'u,



THE THIRTY-SEVEN NATS 357

and they built a pagoda at the spot, where multitudes now
come from far lands to worship at the shrine raised to com-
memorate conjugal and brotherly love.

In the great heat of the seventh and eighth months (April-
May) Hung Vuong, the King, often came to the cool shade
of this fane, where one day the tale of the areca-palm and the
betel-vine was told him. He took some of the fruit of the
tree and a leaf of the vine to assuage his thirst, and found it
most refreshing; it perfumed his mouth, and his saliva was
blood-red. To promote the flow of saliva he had some of the
limestone roasted and powdered, and from that time on he
regularly masticated the three together. Then he planted nuts
of the palm and seeds of the vine, finding that they grew
luxuriantly wherever they were put in the ground. In a short
time all the people in the country adopted the habit of betel-
chewing, and the worship of the two brothers and of Lien be-
came more wide-spread than ever. In memory of the legend the
first present in Annam between engaged couples is always betel
and areca-nut, and even in Burma, where the tale is not known,
a quid of betel wrapped up in the aromatic leaf accompanies
every invitation and every friendly message.

What is clear is that there are universal stories, just as there
are universal fairy tales. They begin by being anonymous;
then they are attached to famous names, or to symbols in the
sky; and so we get the same stories among nations who have
never had any connexion with one another, but have passed
through the same intellectual processes. The folk-lore of
civilization corresponds with the savage ideas out of which
civilization has slowly grown. The engraved tablets of the
Tongkingese shrines and the pages of the Mahd Gltd Medani
find parallels in the mythology even of the Classical countries.
The myths of the Indo-Chinese races are far from homo-
geneous, yet they have many resemblances and suggestions,
not only with one another, but with the legends of all other
countries.

[Prometheus]

INDO-CHINESE

1. The best account of these languages is given in Linguistic
Survey of India, ii., Calcutta, 1904; cf. also the linguistic maps ap-
pended to R. N. Cust, Sketch of the Modern Languages of the East
Indies, London, 1878.

2. For the mythology of Buddhism in India and Tibet see Myth-
ology of All Races, Boston, 1917, vi. 187-219.

3. See ib. pp. 200-01.

4. For further information see J. Takakusu, in Encyclopedia of
Religion and Ethics, vii. 763-65, Edinburgh, 1914.

5. See Mythology of All Races, Boston, 1917, vi. 201-02.

6. See ib. pp. 209-10. For the doctrine of the Bodhisattva see
L. de la Vallee Poussin, in Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, ii.
739-53, Edinburgh, 1909.

7. For other examples of the wide-spread belief that after death
souls must cross a bridge to the other world see G. A. F. Knight, in
Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, ii. 852-54, Edinburgh, 1909.

8. For the Jewish colonies in China see A. M. Hyamson, in En-
cyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, iii. 556-60, Edinburgh, 1910, and
for the Nestorian pillar consult J. Legge, Nestorian Monument of
Hsi-an-Fu, London, 1888, H. Havret, La Stele chretienne de Si-ngan-
fou, Shanghai, 1895-97, F. von Holm, The Nestorian Monument,
Chicago, 1909, and P. Y. Saeki, The Nestorian Monument in China,
London, 191 7.

9. Cf. Mythology of All Races, Boston, 1917, vi. 175-76.

10. On the Indian worship of Nagas see ib. pp. 154-55, 203.

11. See Mythology of All Races, Boston, 1916, i. 223.

12. This story, the editor suggests, may be of Indian origin; cf.
A. von Schiefner, Tibetan Tales, tr. W. R. S. Ralston, London, 1906,
pp. 129-30.

13. See Mythology of All Races, Boston, 191 7, vi. 32-35, 87-88,
130-34, 213-14, 216.

14. See ib. i. 87-88, 172, 301, 281, 223, vi. 241.

15. ib. X. 300-01.

16. Cf. supra, pp. 308-09.

17. See Mythology of All Races, Boston, 1917, vi. 78, 107-09.

18. See infra, pp. 341-42.



430 INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

19. See supra, Note 13.

20. See Mythology of All Races, Boston, 1917, vi. 139-40; for a
Burmese picture see supra, Plate V.

21. Supra, pp. 298-300.

22. See Sir J. G. Frazer, The Dying God, London, 1912, pp. 277-85.

23. See Sir J. G. Frazer, The Scapegoat, London, 1913, pp. 173-84.

24. See Mythology of All Races, Boston, 1917, vi. 78, 107-09; 81-
84, 1 10-18; 178-81; 124; 181-82.

25. ib. pp. 29-30, 78-81, 120-24, 163-71.

26. It may be noted here that the frog is widely used in rain-mak-
ing ceremonies; cf. for India Mythology of All Races, Boston, 191 7,
vi. 62, W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India,
Westminster, 1896, i. 73, ii. 256, E. Thurston, Omens and Supersti-
tions of Southern India, London, 191 2, pp. 305-06; and in general
N. W. Thomas, in Encyclopadia of Religion and Ethics, 1. 516-17,
Edinburgh, 1908.

27. Cf. supra, p. 264.

28. See Mythology of All Races, Boston, 1917, vi. 12-13, 38o-

29. Supra, pp. 323-24.

30. See Mythology of All Races, Boston, 1916, i. 215-22.

[Prometheus]

INDO-CHINESE



I. COLLECTIONS AND PERIODICALS

Bulletin de Vecole fran^aise d* extreme orient. 1901 ff.

Excursions et reconnaissances. 15 vols. Saigon, 1879-90. (See

especially ii. 447, iii. 137, 351, iv. 267, v. 250, 580, viii. 296, ix.

131, 359, X. 39, xi. 108, 229, and for Cambodians and Chams

iii. 319, iv. 67, vi. 132.)
J-ournal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia. 1847-63.
Journal of the Siam Society. 1902 ff.

Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. 1878 ff.
Lettres edifiantes et curieuses ecrites des missions etr anger es par quelques

missionaires de la compagnie de Jesus. 34 vols. Paris, 1617-77.
Revue indo-chinoise. 1904 ff.



II. BIBLIOGRAPHY

A + B (E. Souvignet), Paganisme annamite. Hanoi, 1903.
Alabaster, H., The Wheel of the Law: Buddhism from Siamese

Sources. London, 1871.
Anonymous, Relation des missions des evesques fran^ais aux royaumes

de Siam, de la Cochin-Chine, de Camboye et du Tonkin. Paris,

1674.
Aymonier, E., Les Tchames et leurs religions. Paris, 1891.
Bastian, a., Reisen in Birma in den Jahren 1861-1862. Jena, 1866.

Reisen in Siam im Jahre 186 j. Jena, 1867.

Bowring, Sir J., Kingdom and People of Siam. 2 vols. London,

1858.
Cordier, H., Bibliotheca indosinica: Dictionnaire hibliographique

des ouvrages relatifs a la peninsule indochinoise. i. Paris, 1912.
Dumoutier, G., Pagodes de Hanoi. Hanoi, 1887.

Legendes historiques de VAnnam et du Tonkin. Hanoi, 1887.

Les Chants et les traditions populaires des Annamites. Paris,

1888.



BIBLIOGRAPHY 449

DuMOUTiER, G., Les Symboles, les emblemes et les accessoires du
culte chez les Annamites. Paris, 1891.

"Etude d'ethnographie religieuse annamite: sorcellerie et

divination," in Actes du onzieme congres international des orienta-
listes, ii. 275-410. Paris, 1899.

Le Rituel funeraire des Annamites. Hanoi, 1904.



Forbes, C. J. S., Burma and its People. London, 1878.

Garnier, F., Voyage d* exploration en Indo-Chine. Paris, 1873.

Gerini, G. E., Siam's Intercourse with China. London, 1906.

Leclere, a., Camhodge: Contes et legendes. Paris, 1894.

LouBERE, S. DE LA, Du royaume de Siam. 2 vols. Paris, 1691.
English translation. London, 1693.

LuNET DE LA JoNQUiERE, E. E., Ethnographie du Tonkin septentrional.
Paris, 1906.

McDonald, N. A., Siam: Its Government, Manners, Customs, etc.

Philadelphia, 1871.
Major, C., India in the Fifteenth Century. London, 1857. (Includes

the voyages of Athanasius Nikitin, Nicolo Conti, and Hieronimo

di Santo Stefano.)

Mason, F., Burma, Its People and Productions. 2 vols. Hertford,

1882-83.
Maybon, a., and Russier, H., Notions d'histoire d'Annam. Hanoi,

1909.
Pallegoix, J. B., Description du royaume Thai ou Siam. 2 vols.

Paris, 1854.

TvRCHASjS., His Pilgrims, new edition. 20 vols. Glasgow, 1905-07.
(Contains the travels of Caesar Frederick, J. H. van Linschoten,
Gaspero Balbi, Ralph Fitsch, Nicholas Pirmenta, and Peter
Floris.)

Sangermano, v., a Description of the Burmese Empire, Compiled

Chiefly from Native Documents. English translation by W.Tandy.

Rome, 1833. (New edition, The Burmese Empire a Hundred

Years Ago, by J. Jardine. Westminster, 1893.)
Scott, J. G., and Hardiman, J. P., Gazetteer of Upper Burma and

the Shan States. 5 vols. Rangoon, 1900-01.
Smyth, H. W., Five Years in Siam. London, 1898.
Spearman, H., British Burma Gazetteer. 2 vols. Rangoon, 1880.
Temple, Sir R. C, The Thirty-Seven Nats of Burma. London, 1906.
Vliet, Jeremias van, Beschryving van het koningryk Siam. Leyden,

1692.
XII — 30



4SO INDO-CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

III. PRINCIPAL ARTICLES ON INDO-CHINESE RELIGION
IN THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION AND ETHICS
(vols, i-ix)

Cabaton, a., "Annam (Popular Religion)," i. 537-44.

"Cambodia," iii. 155-67.

"Chams," iii. 340-50.

"Indo-China (Savage Races)," vii. 225-32.

"Laos," vii, 795-97.

Gerini, G. E., "Festivals and Fasts (Siamese)," v. 885-90.
Scott, Sir J. G., "Burma and Assam (Buddhism in)," iii. 37-44.
Temple, Sir R. C, "Burma," iii. 17-37.