A Burmese wonderland; a tale of travel in Lower and ... - Khamkoo

164 A BURMESE WONDERLAND,
amongst Ms own countrymen upon whom, in defeat,
he turned as a marauder. These, however, are
matters of discipline. They are the faults of all semicivilized
soldiery : and they do not necessarily reflect
on the fighting quaUtiesof the race.
Let us therefore attempt to revive the personality
of a great Burmese soldier whose history is now considerably
obscured, but whose name is still universally
remembered and cherished throughout the country.
Maung Yit, or as he is popularly called Bandula, was
born at the village of Tapa^in in Lower Chindwin, a
district which ever suppUed Burmese Governments
with their best soldiers. Of his early history we have
few details. We see him plainly only at the close of
his career. His reputation was already made in Assam
and Arakan, nor did final disaster completely destroy
it. A grateful King—and Kings are not usually
grateful to defeated generals—raised a pagoda in his
memory. His armour is still exhibited in the British
Museum : and
in 1918, ninety-three years after his
death, a subscription was raised, and the site of his
fall marked by a stone pillar inscribed :— Mahabandula
Min was struck by a piece of shell (bonzan) on 1st April
1825,- and was mortally injured djring almost
immediately.
At the outbreak of the First Burmese War, Bandula
commanded the Burmese Army in Arakan which
contemplated the invasion of Bengal, and caused no
small anxiety in Calcutta. The unexpected appear anc