RULES FOR THE ACOLYTES.

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donor then murmurs an inaudible blessing, and the monk moves on, giving place to his successor. Thus they proceed from house to house, never making a request, or giving thanks, or even uttering a word. It is considered a favour by the people to be allowed to accumulate merit by making these offerings to the monks. When the monks have collected sufficient for their day's requirements, they return to the monastery, where they can regale themselves upon the food until noon, after which they must fast until sunrise the next morning. The abbot and other monks of more than ordinary rank do not beg, but have their daily wants supplied by the pious in their neighbourhood.

In case a monk requires anything else besides his daily food, he goes at a later period of the day, and silently stands for a few minutes near the house of the person he hopes to obtain it from. On seeing the monk, the person salutes him respectfully, and asks him what he needs. The monk replies, "My body has met with the necessity" of such a thing, which he names. If the person is unable or unwilling to present it to the monk, he bows low before him, at the same time clasping his hands in front of his face, and says, "Let it please thee, thou lord of favours, to proceed onward, and bestow thy compassion upon somebody else." The compassion, of course, is the privilege of supplying the particular want of the monk. No monk may, by the rules of his order, ask for anything until he has been requested to name his requirement.

The inmates of the monasteries are divided into three classes the monks, the nanes (or acolytes), and the pupils. The rules or commandments designed for the monks are 227 in number, and are given by Colquhoun in his interesting work Amongst the Shans.'1 The rules for the nanes

are as follows: Take no animal life; do not steal; have no venereal intercourse; do not lie; drink no intoxicating liquor; eat no food after mid-day until daybreak the next morning; adorn not the body, even with flowers, nor make it pleasant by perfumery; be not a spectator at theatrical or musical performances; sleep not on a bed raised higher 1 Page 219.

304

TEACHING IN A MONASTERY.

than one cubit (19 inches); touch not silver or gold, or anything which passes for money.

Youths may be admitted as nanes at any time above seven years of age, but cannot become monks before being fully twenty years old. To become a monk a man must pass immediately from being a nane, If he has been a nane at some previous time, he must still become one again, and be reinstituted, before he can enter the ranks of the monks. Persons can be admitted as nanes or monks at any time in the year, except from the first evening of the eighth (Siamese) waning moon until the middle of the eleventh. The period which includes the rainy months of the year is termed Wasa, and is the great annual harvest - time for making merit. It is during this season that the monks may not absent themselves for a single night from their monastery. More people become monks in the first half of the eighth month than in any other month of the year.

Previous to being admitted as a monk, or even a nane, the candidate has the hair shaved from his head and eyebrows; and, if he has a beard, has it plucked out by the roots. This ceremony is repeated twice a-month by the monks and nanes, on the day preceding the full and new moon of every month. The shaving day is called "Wan Kone."

in

The pupils are taught by the monks either in the hall of the monastery, or in a building erected for the purpose the temple grounds. The parents select the monk by whom they wish their son to be taught, and the monk takes his pupils under his special care; and they are fed and lodged in the monastery. When they have learned to read and write their native characters, they have to study the Cambodian character in Siam (the character in which the Siamese sacred books are written), and the Pali character in the Shan States.

Some of the lads, while in the monastery, learn the first rules of arithmetic, others medicine, some the sacred books, and all the rules of manners. In this latter respect our English board schools might well take a lesson from the rules of the Buddhist monasteries. The rules of etiquette

LEARNING MANNERS.

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are called Sekiya-wat, and include the adjustment of their robes; walking and sitting in a graceful and becoming manner; how to sit and rise up decently; the attitude of body and mind in which they are to partake their food; behaviour to their superiors and inferiors, and to the pagodas and images; how to behave themselves when begging, and when in the presence of the laity, especially in that of the fair sex.

U

CHAPTER XXV.

LEAVE ZIMMÉ WITHOUT INTERPRETERS-BORROW A TENT-REACH BAN PANG KAI-THE CRY OF GIBBONS-LEGEND-A PRIMITIVE PAGODATHREE KINDS OF PAGODAS-DESCRIPTION-LOW PLATEAU DIVIDING MEH LOW FROM MEH WUNG-BRANCH RAILWAY FROM LAKON-THE HEAD SOURCES OF MEH WUNG-A STORM-TEAK-REACH MUANG WUNG COCKLE'S PILLS-A TEMPLE AT NIGHT-TOWER MUSKETS—A PLAGUE OF FLIES-MOOSURS-DR CUSHING LEAVES FOR BANGKOK -HIS EXCELLENT ARRANGEMENT-TRANSLATOR OF THE BIBLE INTO SHAN-LOSS OF SHAN INTERPRETERS-MR MARTIN JOINS PARTYBAU LAWAS IN SOUTHERN SIAM-ARRIVAL OF MR GOULD-ELEPHANT TITLES DINNER AT THE MARTINS'-A PRESENT OF CIGARS.

AFTER being detained five days at Zimmé in the hopes of one of the missionaries being able to accompany me to the sources of the Meh Wung, the Princess Chow Oo Boon kindly hired me some of her elephants, and I started on the morning of April 26th, without interpreters, accompanied merely by the elephant-men and my own servants. Natives of India have an astonishing power of quickly learning sufficient words and sentences of a strange language to allow them to express themselves more or less fluently to the people of the country. As Jewan, Veyloo, and Loogalay were not exceptions to the rule, and I had acquired some little knowledge of the language, I thought we should be able to manage very well.

As the rains had set in, and we might expect showers every night, I borrowed a good-sized bell-tent from one of the missionaries, which, on a pinch, would contain myself and two of the servants; while the other one could curl himself up in an elephant-howdah, and shelter himself beneath its cover.

THE CRY OF GIBBONS.

307

I followed the route which was taken by McLeod in 1837, when on his way from Zimmé to Kiang Tung, as far as Ban Pang Kai, a village 9 miles to the south of Viang Pa Pow, which we had visited when pro

ceeding to Kiang Hai. pass over the divide

The height of the

between the Meh

Hkuang and the Meh Low crossed by the route is 3413 feet above the sea.

During the morning, before reaching Ban Pang Kai, we were accompanied by the howling of the gibbons which infested the evergreen forests; and I halted for a few minutes to take down their cry, which ran thus: Hoop-hoi, oop-oi, oo-ep, 00-ep; hoo-00-00, oi-e-e-e, hoi-e, oop-oop, oi-oi-oioi, oop-oi, oi-oi-oi-oo, oop-oi, hoi-hoi-hoi, hau-au-au. For miles on the journey these were the only sounds heard in the forest, and even the notes of some of the birds vociferated in the early morning seemed to be imitated from this cry. One calls koo-a-woo, at-a-woo; another, koo-akoo, koo-a-hoo; another, koo-wa-ra, hoo-wara; another, hoop-pa-pook; and another, hip-poo-hill, hip-poo-hill.

The Shans call the gibbon hpoo-ah (husband), from the similarity of its cry to that word, and account for its wailing as follows: In a former existence a woman, who afterwards was born as a gibbon, lost her husband, and becoming distracted, wandered through the forest rending the air with her cries-hpoo-ah! hpoo-ah! (husband! husband!). When she was born as a gibbon, she continued the cry, which has been kept up by her descendants ever since.

View of the hills to the north-east of Zimmé from Pen Yuk.

Ban Pang Kai lies 49 miles from Zimmé, and 2058 feet above the sea. Although only a small village, it possesses a temple, the roof of which was anything but water