Myanmar Pagoda Shwedagon Temple..

The Shwedagon Pagoda platform, with a perimeter of nearly fourteen hundred feet, is the place of worship. The pagoda itself has no interior. It is a solid stupa of brick raised over a relic chamber. A cutting made into its centre has revealed the fact that the original pagoda had seven casings added to it before it attained its present proportions. The shape of the pagoda is that of an elongated cone. It is divided by Myanmar convention into twelve parts:' 
First, the pagoda platform base is surrounded by a great number of small pagodas ; then the three terraces, called Pichayas ; next the Bell ; the inverted Thabeik, or begging bowl ; the Baungyit, or twisted turban ; the Kyalan, or ornamental lotus flower ; the Plantain Bud ; the brass plate for the Hti, or umbrella ; the Hti ; the Sein bwin, or artificial flowers ; the Vane ; and last of all, the Seinbu, or bud of diamonds or diamond orb.

Of these the pagoda hti with its accessories is of exceptional interest. It was presented to the pagoda by Mindon Min, King of Burma, and its transmission from Mandalay to Rangoon was almost a political event. The placing of htis on the chief pagodas of the country has always been an expression of sovereignty in Burma, and few indeed of a more striking description can well be imagined. The king strove hard, therefore, to secure the consent of the British Government then established in Rangoon, to the placing of his gift by his own representatives upon the summit of the Shwedagon ; but, for political reasons, without success. The gorgeous object, highly valued was brought down by a deputation of the Royal officers as far as the border, where it was taken over by a British subject.

The king was thus gratified in his spiritual desire ; his political yearning had to remain unappeased. The hti, which to the eye of the spectator standing at the foot of the pagoda, seems but a very small object, is in reality a canopy of iron and gold thirteen and a half feet in diameter, and forty-seven feet in height. It is hung with nearly fifteen hundred bells, of which more than a hundred are of gold and the rest of solid silver. Large as many of these bells are they cannot be seen with the naked eye from the pagoda base ; but their music can be heard in the night watches, when the wind blows amongst their silver and golden tongues. The vane and the sell& are practically invisible. Certainly no gleam
 
of their jewels' ever reaches the human eye. Let us recognize the nobility of sentiment that underlies this matter. In a like spirit one sees placed at the climbing pinnacles of 13.664 rubies and 433 diamonds.

It is only in Myanmar or Burma, so often accused of superficiality, that men put a great ransom in jewels where no eye can testify to their splendor.

The platform upon which the Shwedagon Pagoda stands is approached by four great flights of stairs at the cardinal points. 

Of these, the southern stairs are the most frequented, facing as they do the immemorial road which leads up from the banks of the river, straight through the heart of the town to the pagoda. The eastern and the northern stairs are used by the smaller communities of people who reside in their neighborhood. The western stairs have been closed to worshippers at the pagoda since the irony of events converted it into a British fortress. Each of these stairs has an individuality of its own.

-The Southern Approach

Here the first steps on the roadside arc flanked by a pair of colossal gryphons, at whose feet there are strange contrasts of lepers in the toils of death and children unconsciously at play. Beyond the gryphons there is a modern arch of masonry, unworthy of its place in the forefront of the great fane. Beyond it again there reach away in deep gloom the first stairs of the covered passage to more open spaces where the light falls in

iron gate whose chains and loop­holes are rusty from want of use. On the east the long moat reaches away to the corner bastions ; on the west to the barred door of the arsenal guard-house. Here in this gate made for purposes alien to the Buddhist faith there is a mist of sunlight through which the figures of the ascending crowd pass into the shadow of the upper stairs. The outer porch is of grey wood and mosaic gold and dark intricate carving, and the Chinese letters testify to the race of the donor. The slant red sunlight streams in unexpected bars amongst the shadows of the stairs, falling here upon a woman's face, transfiguring it, there upon a mass of lambent gold on a white pillar ; or it flames in the heart of the amber beads which fall in curtains before the stalls. And thus, climbing on up the stairs, polished by the bare feet of the worshipping millions, one comes with a swift transition upon the great court of the pagoda, and all that it has to show of wonder and splendor and moving life. There is no spectacle in the world more fit to dazzle the eyes.

Shwedagon Pagoda Flights of Stairs at the Western Entrance - Cardinal point Myanmar - Burma

There is a quieter pagoda scene at the south-east corner, where, under the shelter of great trees, and remote from the world that throngs about the inner aisles, there are wooden platforms built up to the level of the high containing wall. So skillfully is the place chosen that one can visit the pagoda a dozen times without coming upon it. Here pilgrims rest ; finding shelter from the noontide heat, a resting-place at night, and at all hours that there is light, from the first coming of the morning to the passing of thesunset beyond the Dalla plains, a view of surpassing interest and beauty. A beautiful Myanmar pagoda was placed between tufted palms rise up here dark and stately in the forefront ; the grass-covered bastions of the fort lie below ; and beyond, reaching away to the horizon, spreads the fair site of the city of Rangoon. The Pegu river and the Hlaing meet there under the guns of Monkey Point, and the loops of the smaller river reach away through the heart of the level plain to the misty land of the dawn. The spire of Syriam pierces the distant sky ; the dark smoke-clouds of factories trail in the wake of the invisible winds. Where the Puzun-Daung creek opens out like an estuary into the wide space of waters, the pent roofs of the mills, and the masts of the cargo boats, cluster together, and in the sapphire mist there are traced in outline the lineaments of a great and populous city. Much nearer and under the eastern slopes the Royal lakes lie like a chance mirror, and every phase of the passing day is caught upon their surface. Here, true to his instinct of piety, his love of the beautiful, the Myanmar or Burman pilgrim who has paid his devotions at the great shrine retires for silent meditation. Maybe it is an old man who sits here alone as the evening draws in, his eyes turned towards the world of palm-trees and distant rivers, of red roofs and the paling hues of the Myanmar Pagoda at sunset ; while a rosary moves in his fingers, responsive to the prayer falling from his lips, his face rapt in an ecstasy of holiness. There is some quality in the Myanmar's which lifts him up at such times and in such places to a great dignity. I can only suggest in explanation his absolute sincerity, the

Myanmar pagoda between palms at the riverbank Myanmar Pagodas at Sunset at Bagan central Myanmar

A shrine in the vast outer circle of lesser pagodas and shrines transparent humility of his piety, his unconsciousness of self and of the world in his effort to reach the heart of the spiritual life ; and his artistic instinct, never in his personal actions at fault A little way from this secluded corner of the pagoda, in a privacy still greater, there lie the graves of our dead who fell in an assault on the shrine. On the eastern face of the pagoda there is another flight of long stairs that is often crowded with worshippers, but there are no stalls here, and for great portions of the day the silent corridors are void. Their loneliness was long enhanced by the presence of a single tenant, an old leper,nearly blind and in a terrible state of dissolution. He was a singular creature who never asked an alms. Of nights he sat by the flame of a smoky lamp whose wick flickered in every passing gust. I could never learn his history, but he has long since attained peace, and no successor has come to fill his place or prolong his awful vigil. The stairs lead down through vermilion aisles to the outer moat and drawbridge, and beyond them by a paved causeway to Bahan, the village of the pagoda slaves. Here of an evening the faint blue smoke hangs in a cloud above the little houses ; and of a morning on feast days the causeway in the sunlight is thronged with silken worshippers on their way from the eastern country-side to the great shrine. The northern pagoda entrance is quiet ; yet even after the concentrated splendor of these two other approaches, possibly on that account it makes it own appeal. Here the golden mass of the pagoda is seen in unbroken unity through an avenue of dark Palmyra palms. The steps that climb up to it are seldom trodden. Quiet is their charm ; and on many a day when the heart is heavy and little able to face the pageantry of life—of the life that ever streams up the pathway from the white dragons to the southern tazoungs—people are glad to come up this way and rest in silence in the comforting beauty and stateliness of the great temple. On the west there is nothing but a dead wall, the limit of arsenals and barracks. -The Architecture of a Pagoda I do not propose here to give any complete account of the architecture of the pagoda. Not only is there a wealth of minute detail, the descrip­tion of which would involve something like a dissertation on Buddhism and Myanmar mythology, but there is the fact that the buildings at the base and on the platform of the pagoda are for ever changing. A description of the pagoda as it was when this book was written would be incom­plete to-day. This is due as much to the ephemeral nature of the wooden buildings as to the progressive character of Myanmar art. For Myanmar art is essentially alive. It is full of vitality and is ever receptive of new ideas. The spirit of the people is buoyant and full of élan, and the rapidity with which new developments begin and advance towards fruition is amazing. Thus of late years a  great advance has been made in the art of glass mosaic, and where a decade ago a few pillars wrought into simple designs alone represented it, there are now scores of elegant columns worked in the most daring colors into patterns of great beauty and intricacy. Unhappily the advance is not always in the right direction and much that has been done marks a falling away, both in simplicity and in taste. If the Myanmar mind be, as I believe it to be, thoroughly alive, it is also prone to extravagance and excess, and this failing is nowhere so marked as it is in Myanmar or Myanmar art.  There is a fascination in the mere multiplication of things which it is unable to resist, and objects beautiful in themselves become an occasion of fatigue to the eye by their incessant repetition.

One notable example of this is furnished in the base of the pagoda. Originally of a design remarkable for its antique simplicity and dignity, it has of late been almost entirely concealed by the accumulation of an enormous number of petty shrines. .

Some of these indeed are wrought with delicacy and skill. Yet they serve no true purpose of art, since they are wholly unnecessary ; and they are worse than unnecessary, since they obscure what was already beautiful and adapted to its purpose. To protests made by lovers of the great shrine the invariable answer is that the new chapels will look very fine when they are finished.

The trustees to whose care the pagoda building is committed urge on the other hand, that it is not in accordance with Buddhist feeling that the right of any man to earn spiritual merit by adding something to the national pagoda should be denied, and that the sum now paid for permission to erect one of these little shrines is a valuable addition to the resources of the pagoda. Without even this justification is the introduction of tin and iron in place of the wooden roofs and pinnacles of the old tazoungs

As one walks round the face of the pagoda one is struck by the variety of strange creatures that ornament it. Here there arc sphinxes and leogryphs, which hark back in their origin to Nineveh ; dragons with large eyeballs and pointed tongues ; and elephants that kneel in adoration. There are trees of gold with crystal fruit, begging bowls of glass mosaic, stone umbrellas of great antiquity, and altars upon which the floral offerings of the pious exhale strange perfumes into the air. Astronomical lore is manifested in the tall vermilion posts inscribed in gold with the names and symbols of the sun, the moon, and the planets ; and at intervals there are square tanks of masonry, into which the drainage of the pagoda charged with golden dust is borne. Hundreds of pounds' worth of gold are recovered from the residue of mire that remains in them each year when the waters have run off.

At each of the cardinal points, with their backs to the pagoda and their faces set towards the four approaches to the shrine, there stand, open to the visits of the devout, tazoungs or chapels, with multiple tapering roofs supported on lofty pillars of mosaic and gold. Within there are seated images of the Buddha, some of them so charged with gold that all trace of features has been obliterated. Within the gloom of these chapels countless tapers flicker, lighting up the marble, the brass, and the gold of which the images are made. Here the devotion of the pious culminates, and the voices of the worshippers vibrate in loud unison through the golden aisles. Two of these tazoungs arc the outcome of recent zeal, and if they lack the simple dignity of the earlier buildings which they have dis­placed, they certainly surpass them in their lavish use of gold. There is gold everywhere, from the pediment of the stately pillars to the topmost pinnacle of the ascending roofs.

The fancy of hiding his spiritual light under a bushel is unknown to the Burman or Myanmar Buddhist. The acquisition of merit—of the merit that helps souls to rise in the scale of perfection, which eventually floats the perfect into the infinite peace of Nirvana—is the laudable ambition of every earnest man and woman in Burma. It is the action that counts, and its efficacy is little affected by the manner in which it is performed. Moreover the Myanmar mind is too direct and simple to entertain the idea of ceremonial modesty on the one hand, or of hypocrisy on the other. All men when they have prayed at the pagoda and bestowed their alms strike with a deer horn one of the great tongue less bells on the platform to rouse the attention of the Recording Angel.

These new buildings illustrate at once the vigor and the element of decline in Myanmar or Myanmar art. Between the golden pillars there arc screens of fine wood-carving most delicately and skillfully wrought. The artist has not followed any model but his own fancy. He has had the courage to break away from the traditional boldness of design and execution which characterize the national carving ; but his efforts, great in them­selves, have led him into a style of work that is too delicate for open-air effect, for which this carving is pre-eminently intended: If Myanmar carving proceeds too far along this line it can only end in extinguishing itself.

The coloring of these buildings is superb. Outside they are vermilion and gold—within they arc green and gold and purple. They are carved to their summits and laden with numberless figures, each of which is alive with action.

Between these tazoungs, fixed at one end in the mass of the pagoda itself, and a vast outer circle of lesser pagodas and shrines, there is an open space, narrowing unhappily every year, which is flagged with rich flesh-colored stone. It is upon these stones that the worshippers kneel in paying their devotions. Of the outer group of buildings there arc many of great interest and charm ; amongst them stand the htis of a bygone day, and upon the edge of the platform the tag6n-dryings which arc perhaps the most graceful objects ever invented by Myanmar art. Their lofty columns, inlaid with rich mosaic, are supported at the foot by striking figures of nuts, and they are surmounted at their summits by effigies of the galon bird and the sacred Hansa of Pegu. Streamers of colored gauze flutter from them upheld by the passing winds. They are the Myanmar equivalent of the splendid flag-staffs that once carried the banners of the Republic before the front of St. Marc's.

Of such is the architecture of the pagoda. Great as it is it is surpassed in interest by the life that animates it. Year after year for more than ten years I who write this visited the Shwedagon Pagoda. Upon countless occasions I have climbed up its dark stairs ; I have walked in wonder and delight upon its platform ; I have mingled with its silken throngs ; I have seen the men and the women and the little children at prayer ; I have looked upon the great drama of worship as it has unfolded itself before my eyes. I have walked there in the first freshness of the dawn, in the company of its earliest visitors ; I have spent the noontide in the shelter of its great trees ; I have followed the glory of the setting sun, as it has thrown its magic upon all that is splendid in the great shrine ; I have walked alone in the company of the night and heard the music of its clear-voiced bells tinkling far overhead in the passing breeze ; and I have seen the dawn come upon it again, and moonlight and sunlight for one supreme moment compete upon its golden face. I have gone to it in all times of joy and sorrow, and in every mood, for I have found it comforting and beautiful, and I suppose that I can claim to know it and to love it as well as any one in the world ; yet, when I come to describe it, its fascination, its beauty, the life that moves upon it, the emotion it embodies, I realise that I am undertaking a task that is beyond my power of performance. Many who live within the sweep of its shadow, but seldom visit it, will not understand my estimate of it ; but the Shwe Dagon remains. This much may at least be said of it ;

It is the greatest cathedral of the Buddhist faith ; it can be compared only with the great shrines of the earth. And if in many obvious respects they surpass it, in one it surpasses them all ; for every one of them, for all its beauty, is covered in some form with a roof, whereas in the Shwe DagOn there is architecture which has learnt how to keep for its dome the dazzling firmament above it. That is the great fact about this pagoda, which it takes some time to find out. Once it is realised the mighty fabric falls into its true perspective. It is no longer the main edifice, a mass of dead brickwork ; but the great shaft of a temple of which the blue sky and the stars by night are the vaulted roof. Let the reader when he goes there remember this and he will find his delight, his admiration, his understanding of the great fane much enhanced.

-The Pagoda On a Festival Day

To the occasional visitor there must always seem a plenitude of worshippers at the pagoda ; but in truth its life ebbs and flows from day to day and season to season. It reaches its height at the full moon of Taboung, when pilgrims drawn from the farthest corners of South­eastern Asia assemble at it for the great annual festival. From the confines of China ; from the highland principalities of the Shan ; from the fastnesses of the Karen, though in numbers diminishing each year with the spread of Christianity amongst them ; from Bangkok and Annam ; the people come to pay their devotions at the Shwe DagOn. But pre-eminently they come from the land itself in which the pagoda stands, and it is as a Myanmar spectacle that the feast demands the notice of the world.

Lanterns making a circle of fire against the night are hung upon its circumference a hundred feet above the base of the pagoda. A million waxen tapers flame before the effigies of the Buddha, and upon the purple and the gold and the mosaic and the carved wood. The clang of bells, the refrain of the worshipping populace, the silken tread of unnumbered feet upon the polished stones, daze the car with their multitudinous music. Vast as is the platform of the pagoda, there is at times scarcely room to move upon it for the press of pilgrims. White muslins and delicate silks, and flaming turbans, bangles of red gold, and pyramids of diamonds, and flowers placed in the uncovered coils of the women ; monks in swaying yellow robes, Shans in flapping hats and wide trousers, pig-tailed Chinamen, and peasants clad in the rough homespun of the jungle, make up the varied scene.

Before  the  dawn,  " When the red star appears," the worshippers rise and prepare their offerings of fruit ,and flowers and sweetmeats, and one by one they con­verge upon the temple. A few, still earlier in their devotions, climb while it is yet dark, with the aid of lanterns, up the dark polished stairs. The morning finds a great company assembled. Here and there men pray in companies, representing some religious association ; parties of villagers frightened by talks of town dangers keep together ; but for the most part the worship is individual. The worshipper kneeling before the pagoda lights the tapers he has brought, and holding his offering of flowers in his joined hands, prays, repeating in adoration the excellences of the Buddha. Strange prayers, as to a being who hears and can help, for the things that arc dear to men, go up from these unbelievers in a personal god. The man and his wife kneeling together pray that they may see the Buddha Arimaddeya when he comes again as the savior of mankind, and that thus they may attain neikban. Till then they beg that they may live again as husband and wife. Others solicit with great earnestness at the feet of Thakia­muni the favor of becoming at some time a Buddha like himself, and wish, like King Laukatara, " that they may be born in the same country of the same parents ; that they may ride the same horses and be attended by the same companions " as of old. Lovers come here and pray that their love may continue, and that if fate should separate them it may survive into a future existence ; that it may last for ever till neikban is attained. Aged men and young women, mothers, and children scarce able to lisp, all unite in the one great universal prayer : " May we attain by the merit of the three precious things—the Buddha, the Law, and the Assembly—to neikban ! "

And this neikban—what is it ? Eternal extinction or eternal and conscious peace ? The everyday Buddhist in Burma at least is in no doubt upon the subject ; and for an exalted idea of Paradise, is there anything more reassuring than this ? " Where the believer expects to find a sure shelter against all errors, doubts, and fears ; and a resting-place where his spirit may securely enjoy the undisturbed possession of Truth."

A visit to the Shwedagon Pagoda at the time of the annual feast is the goal of the pious Myanmar or Burman's ambition. The popular refrain at the festival sung by all classes and by people of all ages, runs thus : And old people full of gratitude at having seen it go to and fro in an ecstasy, chanting their " Nunc Dimittis " : " Lo, if I die now, I care not, for I have lived to look upon the great Phaya.'"

Yet devout as are the assembled people, profound as is their reverence for the shrine, it is not for purposes of worship alone that they come together here. The Myanmar arc a catholic people, with an instinctive appreciation of the good things of life. They extend their patronage as liberally to the white man's shops as they do to their own, and country visitors by their unaffected admiration and artless mistakes provide much delight to the town-bred citizen. They stand before the big windows of the English drapers and indulge in wonder at the fine things it contains. " A-mai-lai, what a paradise ! " At the Italian confectioner's —" He, Ko Saw. This is nat awza, the food of the gods. Nothing like this in the jungle." Familiar contretemps occur, such as an intem­perate assault on the mustard-pot ; and old ladies who should know better nearly choke themselves by too rapid a consumption of glace vanilla. And if Rangoon, to the annual pilgrim, bulks in this way as a kind of material paradise, it is also associated in his mind with dangers he must guard against ; such as the trite Shway-lain, the Shan-lain, and the Pyanpe. The Pyanpe involves the temporary abduction of a child or of one of the wagon bullocks, and the payment of a price by the distracted owner for its recovery. Young ladies who have come to worship at the pagoda remind themselves that Rangoon is a wicked city, and the knowledge that some dashing young fellow may carry them off in a fast cab adds a thrill of excitement to their simple pleasures. Every smart young fellow who throws an eye at a pretty girl looms up in her timid imagination as the abductor of tradition.

Yet these are but episodes. The great body of the pilgrims moves through the ceremony of devotion and pleasure with little anxiety or mishap. Perhaps the greatest pleasure of all is found in the plays that are performed in the thoroughfares of the town and on the outer slopes of the pagoda, where there is room for a vast encampment. The play, which is performed in the open, under the starry sky, is nearly always a tale of kings and queens and princes and princesses, to which the people listen with an interest as great and unabated as that of a child listening for the hundredth time to the same old fairy tale. These royalties who move upon the Myanmar stage are very real people to the Myanmar imagination, and their lofty ways and sad fortunes wring many a heart. Yet there is always a new element in the play imported by the topical allusions and jokes, the material for which is collected by the actors by listening with attention to the votes populi and noting the misadventures of the day. Jokes of this kind are received with exuberant delight by the assembled people. The plays near the pagoda are organized and paid for by the trustees ; many of those in the town by notabilities of a generous habit. The audience assembles without invitation.

Thus, one by one, the days of the great pagoda festival are accomplished ; the ox-wagons in which the nearest multitude has come are harnessed again, and the clanging bells of the cattle, the merriment of the occupants, prolong the festivity far into the country-side. Steamers and trains now bear away more distant dwellers. Yet even now many a pilgrim walks a month's journey to his home. .