Pagoda

Early on the morning of Good Friday the pagoda festival was at its height. The road to the pagoda was lined with shrines and stalls selling flowers and all kind of other things. Streams of jeeps and pick ups went past, taking early-morning worshippers.

A few of them were disguised with a carnival decoration of cardboard peacocks, and were carrying boys, about to enter the novitiate, to pray at the pagoda before the ceremony began. The boys wore expensive imitations of the old Burmese court dress, with helmets and epaulets like

The air was full of the odor of flowers, candles and incense sticks. From somewhere above came the deep, melodious breathing of gongs.

Coming out to the Shwedagon Pagoda platform or terrace a brilliant spectacle comes up.

The before mentioned Fitch, a adventurer, who saw Venice, Goa and the East Indies of his days, had stood here in admiration, although unable to refrain from a sour aside on the vanity of consuming gold leaves in such a way.

Coming in from the Shwedagon Pagoda west entrance, the terrace is lined with shrines, guardian ogres, fabulous beasts, and mild-faced, winged gorgons squeezed in between and behind them; and then, in the immediate background, rises a golden escarpment, a featureless cliff of precious metal, spreading a misty heights, in which the crawling shapes of pilgrims, sticking on their gold-leaf.

The innumerable foreground shrines are banked with flowers, and decked with die votive parasols which usefully protect an image from the sun in a tropical country, often replace the candles necessary to light its cavern in the north.

When they wanted to pray with offerings of flowers held between the palms hundreds of images and shrines were to choose from, of gold, silver, marble and wood.

Myanmar Buddhists insist with the emphasis that they are not worshipping the material object, but the great principle it represents.

People worshipped pagoda

individually, or in groups, in the large shrines or out in the hot sun shine of the terrace, directing themselves vaguely towards the spire of the pagoda. Year old babies were lowered tenderly into the ritual position, where, often unable to straighten themselves, they sprawled in adoration, until recovered.

On this day there were many ways to acquire merit: by buying water in plastic bottles from the sellers and pouring it over the images that sat in the hot sun; by relighting candles that had gone out, and replacing parasols that had fallen down and striking a gong, and then the ground beneath it, to call the attention of the nats of the earth and sky to the worshipper's prayers.

Until the recent troublous times Buddhists from all over the East, journeying as freely as did European pilgrims to Santiago de Compostella and Monte Sant' Angelo, visited the Shwedagon for this festival.

About 200 meters from the foot of the Shwedagon pagoda, the Government had organized a secular festival, a combination of a pwe and fair, that was not quite successfully one thing or the other. A very slow dance to the music of drums and flutes, stopping occasionally to beat himself on the chest in the Tarzan manner. Suddenly they went into action, leaping into the air like fighting-cocks.

There was much initial flurry, an exciting spectacle lasting a few seconds, when both men tried to floor each other with flying kicks. A clinch followed with unrestricted use of knees, fists and elbows. The winner is decided when, as a spectator explained, 'the first blood oozes out'. With typical regard for foreign susceptibilities this man was kindly doing his best to outline the rules governing the contest.

At midnight a straight theatrical show started in one of the tents. The first scent: showed a young Myanmar or Burman engaged in the hopeless courtship of a girl who, it was made clear, led him on, only to spurn him cruelly. At first she smiled, but the moment he approached, her smile turned to a grimace of contempt.