The romantic East: Burma, Assam, & Kashmir - Khamkoo

42 THE ROMANTIC EAST
carriage just before reaching and just after passing
Pegu station, are being shut off by a building, with
steel lattice pillars,
under construction to protect it
from the elements.
Its direction from Pegu station
is between a conical pagoda near at hand, and
the square Mahazedi farther off to the west.
The
Kyaikpun pagoda with the great seated figures,
90 feet high, of the Four Buddhas, lies to the south,
and beyond
it the Shwe-ku-gyi pagoda.
In Pegu we saw many Burmans wearing only a
loin cloth, and had our first opportunity of studying
at close quarters the designs with which their
bodies were tattooed, some few from neck to instep,
but most of them from the waist to the calf of the
leg.
There is a curious story, told by Sangermano
but denied by Symes, in relation to the origin of
the universal Burmese custom of tattooing the
body, which ascribes this custom to the wise king
who commanded the young men to be tattooed, and
the young women to wear their lungyis
so as to
expose one thigh, as they are still sometimes worn in
Mandalay. The object was to encourage marriages
and increase the declining birth-rate. The Karen
women who live in the Pegu district, and come