Burma: Census of India 1901 Vol. I - Khamkoo

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34 REPORT ON THE CENSUS OF BURMA.
observers. At no period of history has a nominal profession of faiths often far
more exacting than the Buddhist been found incompatible with a genuine, if surreptitious,
allegiance to the gods of an earlier age.
Who shall say how many centuries
after the introduction of Christianity the performance of old-time idolatrous rites
was kept up in rural England, or how many conquered orientals have consented
to bow down in the house of Rimmon since the Captain of the host of the King of
Syria was told to go in peace. The difficulty with which idolatry dies, even where
Islam has long been the nominal creed of the people, has often been the theme of
Indian writers.*' Among our Southern Mongolian neighbours the story is the
same. Mr. Blagden, in his preface to Mr. Skeat's recently published Malay
Magic, says
" It is necessary to state that the Malays of the Peninsula are Sunni Muhamadans of the.
school of Shaf'i, and that nothing, theoretically speaking, could be more correct and orthodox
(from the point of view of Islam) than the belief which they profess.
" But the beliefs which they actually hold are another matter altogether, and it must be
admitted that the Muhamadan veneer, which covers their ancient superstitions, is' very
often of the thinnest description. The inconsistency in which this involves them is not, as
a rule, realized by themselves. Beginning their invocations with the orthodox preface
1
In the name of Godj the Merciful, the Compassionate' and ending them with an appeal
to the creed ' There is no godj but God, and Muhammad is the apostle of God, they
are conscious of no impropriety in addressing the intervening matter to a string of Hindu
Divinities, Demons, Ghosts and Nature Spirits, with a few angels and prophets thrown in as
the occasion may seem to require * * * There can be no doubt that the
increasing diffusion of general education in the Peninsula is contributing to the growth of a
stricter conception of Islam, which will involve the gradual suppression of such of these old
world superstitions as are obviously of an unorthodox character. This process, however,
will take several generations to accomplish."
; If this is done in the green tree of Muhamadanism what can be expected in
the dry, the tolerant, easy-going ethical system of Buddhism?
The whole spirit of compromise, in which rude uncultured minds regard new
faiths that appeal more to the reason than to the instinct, that heritage of an immemorial
past, is admirably described in a legend that the heathen Karen make
use of to explain away the apparent inconsistency of their Animistic practices
with their belief in an all-powerful Supreme Being. It is given in 'Mr. Smeaton's
Loyal Karens of Burma. It relates how some children, left by their parents in
a safe place out of the reach of beasts of prey, were, nevertheless, so frightened
at the approach of a tiger that, to save themselves, they took some pigs that had
been placed in the shelter with them and threw them down for the tiger to devour.
" Their eyes, however (so the -story runs), were fixed, not on the tiger, but on the path
by which they expected to see their father come. Their hands fed the tiger from fear, but
their ears were eagerly listening for the twang of their father's bow-string which would send
the arrow quivering into the tiger's heart. And so, say the Karens, although we have to
make sacrifices to demons, our hearts are still true to God. We must throw sops to the foul
demons who afflict us, but our hearts are ever looking for God.
It is doubtful whether the great majority of Burmans would be prepared to
make a frank as profession of the faith that was in them as Mr. Smeaton's
Karens. For all that, however, their position as regards their religious beliefs is
no less anomalous.
The whole matter has been summed up for us by Mr. Andrew Lang, who
puts' into words a clearly acknowledged truth when he says in his Custom and
Myth " : What_ the religious instinct has once grasped it does not, as a rule, abandon
but subordinates or disguises when it reaches higher ideas." In Burma, as.
elsewhere, the existence of spirits, kindly or malevolent, as the case may be, is
the fact that has from time immemorial been laid hold of and assimilated by the
religious instinct of the native, and this ingrained conception the Burman has
refused to cast off with his acceptance of the loftier truths of Buddhism. He has
disguised it, that is all ; if, in truth, that can be called a disguise which is so unblushingly
transparent: Nor is there any reason why it should be rejected. There is
here no question of a jealous Jehovah, content with nothing less than whole-heart>
fed devotion; Though it may not have been to fulfil that Buddha came, it was as-
* An interesting examp'e is quoted at page 168 of Mr. Baines' General Report on the 1891 Census.