compassion of a Budh, the great yahan bethought himself:

"Lo! if I feed her, who shall lose but I?" and, throwing off his priestly robes, came forth with a "Ho! mother, here is meat for thee !" and died.

'So large the Master's heart was long ago," before he came upon earth for the last time to teach the Law and give the millions peace; not only when he came down from the hills, where in austere fastings he had been pondering to win the secret of "that curse which makes sweet love our anguish," and appeared before King Bimbasara to plead for the flocks that the white-robed Brahmin priests destined for sacrifice on the altar. The idea has always been a favourite one with Buddhists. A favourite myth is that of the hare, Kalpas, since the Lord of ruth appeared on earth in the form of that animal. All creatures were making offerings to the Buddha who was then engaged in preaching the sacred Law. The hare bethought himself that he too must give some alms. But what had he to give? Man might bring costly gifts; the lion found it easy to offer the tender flesh of the fawn; birds of prey brought dainty morsels; fish could produce no less tasty signs of devotion; even the ant was able to drag along grains of sugar and aromatic leaves; but the hare, what had he? He might gather the most tender succulent shoots from the sunny forest glades, but they were useless even to form a couch for the teacher. There was nothing but his own body, and that he freely offered. The Supreme Lord declined the sacrifice, but in remembrance of the pious intention, placed the figure of the hare in the moon, and there it remains as a symbol of the queen of night to the present day.

Similarly just a little below Mandalay on the river, near

the Ava road, there is a huge, castellated pagoda, the Shway Gyet-yet, raised in commemoration of another performance of the Budh, in an avatar countless ages ago. The tale is that in a season of grievous dearth, when all flesh was dying of famine, the great Master, then in the shape of a jungle-fowl, spied a holy pilgrim in the last extremity of want. There was none to pity him, none to save him from death; and the Budh, conquering, even in that distant time, one of the latest lost of the ten deadly sins-the love of life-surrendered himself to save another. Hence the pagoda standing out boldly on a great rock over the river. To the east is a representation of a fowl in stone, recalling the event; and before this, daily by the pagoda slaves and others, and on feast-days by hundreds of worshippers, plentiful heaps of gilded grains are strewn.

These personal examples furnished by the teacher of neh'ban and the Law himself, have only served to emphasize what is seen on the admission of every new member to the holy assembly. One of the articles with which, in addition to his dress and begging-bowl, every postulant must provide himself, is a strainer, without using which he must drink no water. The object is, of course, to prevent him from destroying life in the shape of the small animaculæ to be found in water. Some zealous and scientific proselytiser endeavoured to persuade the people that this was of no avail, seeing that even in the strained water there was abundance of animal life; but a council decided that, provided the water had been filtered, if the ascetic could detect nothing living, with his unaided eyes, he was at liberty to drink the water without incurring blood-guiltiness. The attacks of science on Buddhism failed as completely as the efforts of most missionaries.

The mingled pity and dislike with which professional hunters and fishermen, whose occupation implies the regular taking of life, are viewed by Buddhists, is well known, and makes itself evident in the fact that the villains in most plays are hunters. Fishermen are perhaps not so much decried-possibly on account of the plea brought forward on their behalf, that the fish die of themselves, being taken out of the water, and not through any direct action of their captors. It is in connection with fish, however, that one of the most curious national works of merit takes place annually-furnishing, like all Burmese festivals, occasion. for much fun and frolic.

The violence of the rain during the five or six months of the south-west monsoon floods the country. Not only do the rivers, which in many places rise regularly as much as thirty or forty feet above their hot-weather level-not only do they overflow their banks, and make wide seas of the neighbouring flat lands, but great lakes spring up everywhere. These are gradually stocked with fish of all kinds, most of which, by the sudden fall of the water, are cut off from all chance of retreat to the large rivers, where alone there is safety. Steadily the water goes down, the hot sun sucks up the pools, till at last the end seems to be The river is far away, and there will be no rain for months. Another day or two will suffice to bake and split into long fissures the bottom of the puddle, wherein are yet hundreds of animate things, from the whiskered mud-fish to the lordly hilsa, the salmon of India. Then the seekers after merit come out, bearing with them big chatties, huge earthenware jars, the size of some of which makes the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves seem very much more credible. Girls and boys, old men and old women, go tramping about in the soft slush, capturing the fish and dropping them into the jars of water. Great

come.

laughter there is over the wild plunges and flounderings of the boys, the little screams and "a-mè leh-leh, a-mè leh-taws" of the girls as they step upon a fish, which whizzes away with a suddenness that is apt to disturb the equilibrium, or slip with one leg slowly but irremediably into a hole-perhaps a last year's buffalo-wallow-out of which they are only extricated after much teasing and tickling by the boys. Then there is the stalking and driving of a great nga-gyee into a corner, whence with a flop and a muddy dash, he escapes into the middle again, amidst a chorus of the inevitable amè! "mother," which springs to a Burman's lips on all possible and impossible occasions. There is the caution to be observed in seizing the stinging mud-fish, the gingerliness with which, when he is caught, the waving whiskers are avoided; especially the control over yourself to be maintained if he does sting you, lest you should spoil all your chance of merit in a moment of irritation, by doing him an injury. Sometimes the fish are caught in nets; but this reckless wastefulness in the matter of combining merit with merriment is not very favourably viewed by the neighbourhood.

At last the fish are all caught and crowded together in the sin-oh-the water jars. There is, perhaps, a considerable pause before they are liberated. The nga-hloht pwè usually occurs a little after the carnival of the water feast, when everybody is doused with water; and if the fish have been rescued from their danger some time before that, they have to wait in their uncomfortable quarters all the longer. The fête seems to be celebrated with more enthusiasm in Maulmein than in any other large town in Lower Burma. In Rangoon the spruce merchants' clerks are apt to sneer at it as a “jungle feast," and rather laugh at the gatherings on the banks of the "Great Royal Lake." But in Maulmein it is different. There everybody enters into the

spirit of the thing with religious fervour. A great procession is formed, and winds its way along the long snakelike up-and-down street that constitutes the great part of the town. At the head comes a band of young men dancing-some with their faces whitened with chalk, others grimed with soot; some extravagantly dressed as princes and ogres, others scantily arrayed in a tucked-up waistcloth-capering and prancing along with the waving of hands and fantastic pacings characteristic of the national dancing. Behind them, in a bullock cart, is the band, the huge seing-waing, the circular frame with its octaves of drums, on which the performer, smoking a big green cheroot all the while, thumps away with great vigour and in excellent time, accompanied by some trumpets, a flute or two, and a young fellow with a noisy bamboo clapper. Then there is an indiscriminate crowd of well-dressed, excited people, carrying huge umbrellas, white and gold; big spires; young fellows on hobby-horses; men with long bamboos, gilt from butt to tip, looking like fishingrods, with which one might bob for whales. Mingled with these are the carts carrying the jars of fish. In the middle is a great long platform on wheels, supporting a pasteboard and bamboo and painted mat model of a steamboat. The captain, in a gold-bordered cap, occupies the greater part of the ship forward, and yells orders to the man at the helm, who ports and starboards with surprising rapidity and impartiality. The chief engineer divides his time between keeping up the smouldering cigar-stump and the cotton which supplies the smoke from the funnel, and whistling violently on his fingers. A man stands at the side, heaving the lead (a joint of bamboo stuffed with cotton). It seems to be "And a half, nine," when some one is hit on the head, and "teen bahm milla nay "—three fathoms and no bottom-when the lead fails to touch