Burma: Census of India 1901 Vol. I - Khamkoo

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REPORT ON THE CENSUS OF BURMA. 33
" The Mdras are— .
(i) Khanda mira or continued existence ;
(2) Kilesa mira or concupiscence J
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(3) Maccu mira or death; y f
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(4) Abhisankhara mira or Karma, the result of one's actions ; and
(5) Devaputta mara or the Tempter.
" For a time these heretical teachings spread like wildfire as their acceptance absolved
the adherents of the sect from the obligation to support Buddhist Monks. The Burmese
Government, which was an ardent follower of the maxim of the Unity of the Church and the
State, became seriously alarmed. The King at once ordered the arrest and impalement o£
the founder, Maung Po, and his sect was proscribed in Upper Burma. One of his principal
followers, Maung Ka, fled to Pegu, which then became the rallying point of the dispersed
and persecuted adherents. Thence the doctrines spread to Shwegyin and Thabyegan inthe
Hanthawaddy district."
46. It is easy to understand that the attempt to inaugurate any form of Buddhism
that did not afford a full measure of regard for
BuT r ° f the pr!esthood in the priesthood must, in Burma, have been foredoomed
to failure. The Upper Burma Gazetter in the Chapter
" Religion and its Semblances " shows that there are few phenomena more striking
than the prominent part taken by the pongyis of Upper Burma in the political life of
the past century. Their influence over the people on the one hand and the Government
on the other is as great as that exercised by any priesthood whose doingshave
found a place in the annals of ecclesiastical polity. They have been described
as "holding the balance between the rulers and the ruled." So dominant a power
were they in the land a score of years ago that when, with the annexation, the old
order was changed and the priestly prestige was threatened by the new, which found
no place for the monkish intermediary in its system, there were few more pertinacious
and dogged opponents to the British rule in the new territory than the wearers of the
yellow robe. Nor was it only in Upper Burma that the flame of revolt was fanned by
the priesthood. In Tavoy, Tharrawaddy and Sandoway, districts of the Lower Province,
the pongyis fomented disaffection in the early post-annexation days. I
should be the last to deny that, as a rule, the Burman ecclesiastic is the upright,
clean living member of society he is said to be ;
what I do maintain is that, when he
falls below the high level he usually maintains, he but seldom scruples to use to the
very uttermost his very great powers for mischief. The latter days of early British
dominion were days of anger, hatred and malice, and it is not to be wondered at that
the heart of the Church militant burnt within it. We have seen the result. I think
it may safely be said that, but for the monks, the pacification of the country would
have been completed far earlier than was actually the case. Even as late as in 1897
a p6ngyi was able to collect a handful of fanatical laymen around him and lead them
to a hare-brained attack on the fort at Mandalay. All this active participation in
things temporal is, as Sir George Scott points out, as little in keeping with the
frigid precepts of the Great Law Giver as it would be with the pacific teachings
of the Sermon on the Mount, and would not for a moment be countenanced by
the laity but for the fact—now largely recognized—that the Buddhism of the
people, whose spiritual guides the pongyis are, is of the lips only, and that inwardly
in their hearts the bulk of them are still swayed by the ingrained tendencies of their
Shamanistic forefathers, in a word are, at bottom, animists, pure and simple.
47. From a purely statistical point of view it is obviously immaterial whether
. . the religion returned by the Burmans. or any other.
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body of persons is their real and not merely their nominal
faith. A Census Report, however, must at times be critical as well as statistical
in its scope, and it will not be without profit, before passing on to a consideration of
the animistic religion, to form some conception of the extent to which spirit worship
underlies the faith to which the greater number of people of Burma have given
a professed adherence. The point is by no means new. It has been touched
upon frequently before ; it forms the text of some of the most instructive paragraphs
of Mr. Eales' 1891 Census Report, but I doubt whether even yet sufficient
stress has been laid upon it.
The phenomenon of a discredited but real belief existing for long periods
obscured, but not stifled, by a formally superimposed creed is familiar enough ta