CHAPTER IV. A SOHN-DAW-GYEE FEAST. IT is written that in the solitude of Ooroo-wehla a woman named Thoozata vowed an offering to the spirit of the place, if she should have a male child. The prayer was granted, and the offering prepared. A thousand cows, new-calved, were milked; five hundred more were fed with this milk, and then with theirs two hundred and fifty more, and so on until the six noblest and best of all her herds produced a milk of surprising flavour and richness. This was boiled with sandal and fine spice in silver vessels, and fine ground rice, from chosen seed, set in newbroken ground, was added. Wonderful signs attended the preparation of the offering. A tha-gyah brought fuel to the fire; the great Brahma held an umbrella over the silver lota; four kings of nats sat by and watched; while subject spirits infused rich honey into the nogana. When it was ready Thoozata sent a servant to clear a place under a tree in the grove that she might make her offering to the wood-spirit. Sounama, the servant, found Shin Gautama sitting under the bawdee-tree. It was the day on which he attained the neh'ban of the passions, on which he became the Lord Buddha, and his face shone with a splendour beyond that of nats. Sounama returned and told her mistress that the spirit of the grove had appeared in person to receive the offering. Thoozata poured the nogana into a golden cup, worth a hundred thousand pieces of silver, such a cup as is always presented to the payah-loung on the day wherein he becomes Buddha. Then she went to the grove, and prostrating herself humbly, made her offering, turned on the right, and retired. The Lord Buddha bathed in the river Neritzara, at a place where more than 100,000 Buddhas had bathed, before obtaining the supreme intelligence. Then he divided the nogana into forty-nine mouthfuls, ate it, and mounted the throne, whereon he sat for forty-nine days tasting no food, and combating Mahn Nat, the spirit of death and sin. But ere he lapsed into meditation he threw his golden bowl into the river. It ascended the stream swiftly, floated steadily for a short time, and then sank in a whirlpool far down, leagues beyond the earth into the country of the nagahs, where it fell against the golden bowls of the three previous Budhs with a clang that resounded throughout the four worlds, and all things worshipped the present Lord : King and high Conqueror! thine hour is come. This event in the life of Shin Gautama is commemorated in the Sohn-daw-gyee pwè. Sohn-thee is a sacred word set apart to denote the eating of members of the Holy Assembly, and, in remembrance of Thoozata's historic offering, the mendicants are feasted annually by the pious, with a splendour and profusion far exceeding the ordinary alms poured daily with unstinting hand into the begging-bowl. The date of the feast does not exactly correspond with the original event. According to the chronicle, the Lord Buddha attained the first state of neh'ban in the month of Kasohn, about April, whereas the feast of Tawadehntha, with which the Sohn-daw-gyee is always immediately connected, is celebrated after Lent, at the full moon of Ta'soung-mohn in November. The festival is essentially one of the town rather than of the country. Except the New Year's Feast, none of the religious celebrations can be really called universal, and the Sohn-dawgyee perhaps least of all. Villages and small country towns cannot get together the splendour necessary to distinguish the occasion from the ordinary domestic feasts, or even from the daily almsgiving to the mendicants. It is therefore in a large town like Rangoon, where there is a certain amount of money, and a facility for acquiring or borrowing ornaments and frippery, that the festivities are best seen. There the fête-the word is more appropriate than any implying more of a religious character-assumes the appearance of a gigantic reception, or conversazione. Streets and quarters of the town make up a common purse for general decorations and the erection of stages for hired troupes of actors, in addition to individual effort. The dates are arranged beforehand so that no two streets shall make their effort on the same night, and so lessen the enjoyment of the public, or draw away from the expected number of spectators. A committee is elected, or appoints itself, and having got as much money as possible, hires the best available dancers and actors for the zaht pwè, if possible a puppet troupe also, and in addition, as many unattached mummers and clowns as can be got, whose business it is to dance up and down the street in the guise of dragons, snakes, nagahs, and demons of all sorts, and amuse such of the visitors as cannot get near enough to see the set play, or prefer walking about talking to their acquaintances. Bands are engaged in profusion, flowergarlanded arches erected at the ends of the street and at VOL. II. D intervals along its length, and gay Chinese lanterns hung up everywhere. Complimentary packets of le'hpet, pickled tea, serving as invitations, are sent out in profusion, but the non-receipt of one of these does not deter anybody, and all comers of whatever nationality are welcome. Nowadays the monks are wont to complain that the presents customarily made them at the Tawadehntha feast are not nearly so valuable, or even so satisfactory, as they used to be. But it is different with the Sohn-daw-gyee fête. There the emblems of the archetypal nogana are all edible and of the most sumptuous kind. In every house the offerings for the ascetics are set out for display all night long and make a goodly show, if the process can hardly be supposed to improve them for consumption. Mountains of cooked rice send out spurs of beef and pork, with flat lands of dried fish and outlying peaks of roasted ducks and fowls, the legs with their claws and the neck with the head and beak being extended as if they had been drawn out tight to exhibit their greatest length. Nga-pee, fish paste, in all its malodorous varieties of nga-pee goung, sehn-tsa, dhamin, nga-tha-louk abounds. and loads the air with suggestions of a fish-curing village, or an unclean fish monger's in the dog days. Chinese patties of sugar and fat pork, plates full of fried silkworms, maggots from the top of the cocoanut-tree, saltpickled ginger and fried garlic, and a variety of other dishes beyond the ken of occidental cookery abound all down the long tables. Alternating with these, and perhaps more pleasant to look at, are heaps of fruit, oranges, citrons, shaddocks, plantains, with here and there a late durian or two, rivalling the nga-pee in its odour, and the brick-red or purple rind that conceals the luscious "snows" of the delicious mangosteen. Plentiful tins of sardines and Reading biscuits, with somewhat muddy-looking Bengali-made lemonade, give evidence of the progress of "civilisation;" and plates of betel with the fresh green leaves of the betel-vine suggest how the morrow's afternoon will be passed in well-filled meditations by the pohn-gyees of the neighbouring monastery. The house itself is decked out on a corresponding scale of magnificence. To the uninitiated foreigner an ordinary Burmese hut presents about as unfavourable raw material for decoration as can well be imagined. Built of rough teak planking, or of split bamboo mats, and raised a few feet off the ground on posts, it resembles a marquee tent in shape and in size (according to the principle of the old Joe Miller story about the stone which was as big as a lump of chalk). On all ordinary occasions there is not a vestige of furniture in it. A row of earthenware pots with water, a couple of wooden boxes, and the rolled-up mats and blankets whereon the household sleep, are the only things to be seen. The sides and ceiling are grimed with the smoke of the fire that cooks the daily meals; the floor stained with smudges of oil and red blotches of betel. Yet this unpromising shanty the Burman transforms into a palace chamber, or stagelike fairy bower. The sides of the house are thrown up towards the street, so that the room assumes the appearance of a verandah. The floor is covered with thick bamboo matting finely woven, over which bright flowered rugs are spread. The dingy sides of the house are draped with flags and kullagahs, elaborate stitched pieces of tapestry, ten or twelve feet long, and reaching down to the ground. White, or brilliant-coloured chintz, or paper, forms a roof studded with red, blue, or green stars and rosettes of tinsel paper. Great mirrors, swinging and other lamps, statuettes of wood or stucco, candlesticks with glass shades, clocks, German half-crown engravings, and gay |