In another picture a crow is represented breaking a vessel full of money with its beak. Close at hand are a man and woman embracing one another. This denotes loss.

A man and his wife represented dancing together signify great gifts to the pagoda.

Another picture, which represents a husband and wife standing together in front of a house, with a horse and cow near it, denotes that the child to whom this picture may refer will be a farmer.

Near the picture of a dog, which one man holds by the tail while another hits it on the head, is written: "When the lot falls here, be not boastful, but humble; avoid pride and assumption, for that will only raise up enemies for you."

The following are some spells :

Take this amulet (a piece of bone carved rudely square, and with mystic figures on it), put your foot up against a tha-byay tree, and repeat the eetee peethaw (a form of worship in learning which one spends four or five months in the monasteries) thirty-seven times. Then you will be able to turn any given man into a ghost and make him do as you please.

Take the stalk of a betel leaf in your hand. Repeat “Ohn padan roopa wahree thwa ha" seven times, and then throw the stalk at the person. He or she is sure then to listen to what you say.

The following is a charm to cause a dream about your lady love :-Get an exact likeness of her made. Find out the hour and day on which she was born, her name and exact age. Then having begged permission from the guardian spirit of both the houses (your own and hers), chant as follows: "Oh, Thoorathadee, fairest goddess of

flowers, daughter of nats most high, grant most graciously all that I desire of thee: ta-sa ma-chan: without keeping back the least remainder; without withdrawing a single joy: prithee do this without fail, sweet goddess of woodland love." Repeat this seven times before the figure. Then go to sleep.

CHAPTER XVI.

SLAVES AND OUTCASTS.

It is a work of the greatest possible merit to build a pagoda, and the founder, prefixing Payah-tagah to his signature, for the rest of his life is looked upon as certain to pass into neh'ban on the completion of this, his present existence. Similarly a man acquires great koothoh by repairing portions of one of the old national shrines, putting up a new umbrella on the summit, setting the steps that lead up to the platform in order, or even by simply gilding afresh a few square feet on a feast day. By doing any one of these things a man sets his balance of kan on the right side and gains the good opinion of his neighbours. It is therefore, not unnatural that all foreigners should be struck with the fact that the regular servitors of the places of worship, those who sweep the platform, carry off dead leaves, broken branches, and litter generally, and keep the place in order, that these men are not only slaves, but are regarded as outcasts with whom the rest of the community will have no dealings and whose society is contaminating. Not only is the original para-gyoon a slave for life, for no one, not even a king can liberate him or provide a substitute in his place, but his descendants, till the cycle of Shin Gautama's religion shall have come

to an end, and all the relics shall vanish from the earth; all his children throughout the thousands of years that have to elapse, are fixed and settled slaves of the pagoda from their birth, and any one marrying a pagoda slave, even unwittingly, becomes himself, with all the children he may have had by a previous wife, irremediably a para-gyoon. Why this should be I do not know. Some learned men may be able to explain it, but I have never come across them, and the vast mass of Burmans share my ignorance. So strict is the dedication that any one who attempts or connives at setting free a pagoda slave is condemned to misery in the lowest hell, awizee. The servitor of the shrine can be employed in no other duty than keeping it in order, and kings and great men are threatend with loss of power and dire destruction if they venture to employ such outcasts as servants, even in the meanest capacity.

Slavery of the familiar form known in semi-civilized. countries still exists in Upper Burma, but the pagodaslaves are a perfectly distinct body. A person who sells himself, or is sold, by his relation for debt is in a very inferior position doubtless and cannot enjoy any very great privileges. But he can always work his release and is not thereafter considered as lying under any particular stigma. But the para-gyoon are neither more nor less than outcasts. They are looked upon as unclean, and the rest of the community will have no intercourse whatever with them. So much is this the case that in British territory, where they have of course been liberated from their compulsory servitude; they are looked upon with no less aversion than in Upper Burma, and though nominally free and independent, have to travel into districts where they are unknown before they can find employment even of the most menial kind.

It is no explanation of the taint that the original

servitors were prisoners taken in war, condemned convicts, or people expressly sentenced to this office on account of hideous crimes. The reverence for the pagoda cannot be exceeded, why then should the care of it and the surrounding buildings be left in the hands of such vile and degraded people? Besides, in the old autocratic days, not entirely vanished yet, it was a common thing for a pious sovereign to set apart certain villages, or a stated number of houses in those villages, for the service of the pagoda, and the victims were selected, quite regardless of personal character, by the village headman from those who were unable to buy themselves off. The cloud, therefore, which hangs over such people in English territory is all the more singular. The feeling came out very strongly in the case of a man with slave blood in him, who was appointed by the local government to be a magistrate. Subordinates declined to act under him, and resisted all he did; the people were still more demonstrative and petitions flowed in begging that the disgrace might be removed from their district. It was to English minds quite impossible that this should be done, and equally so that he should not receive support in the execution of his duties. The matter was far from being simplified by the natural feelings of resentment, showing itself in undue severity when occasion offered, which filled the victim of the popular clamour, and it was only by the exercise of great tact and patience that the English Deputy Commissioner was able to quiet the people, and after long persuasion gradually to set matters right. But the majority of paragyoons are far from being so fortunate. Here and there in Rangoon and Maulmein are a few men who have got into business, but it is only by carefully concealing their antecedents, and they live in constant terror that the few who know them will betray their secret and reduce them to

VOL. II.

L