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For nearly forty years, namely from their very first arrival in the Colony, the East Indian immigrants had, according to specific agreement with the Government, invariably been allowed the privilege of celebrating their annual feast of Hosein, by walking in procession with their Pagodas through the public roads and streets of the island, without prohibition or hindrance of any kind from the authorities, save and except in cases where rival estate pagodas were in danger of getting into collision on the question of precedence.
Taylor and others to lend me four lacs of pagodas towards discharging the arrears of pay of my troops. Upon this, I wrote a letter of thanks to Mr. Stratton; and upon the faith of this money being paid immediately, I ordered many of my troops to be discharged by a certain day, and lessened the number of my servants. Mr.
Passing the other evening one of the handsomest pagodas in the island, an oblong square building of yellow stone, with a mitre-shaped tower at one end, I was surprised by the number of European carriages in waiting.
He was a clever man within his limitations, and cultured up to a point; but he was not philosopher enough to know that he viewed the purlieus of Limehouse through a haze of Oriental mystery conjured up by the conversation of his companion. Temple bells there were in the clangour of the road cars. The smoke-stacks had a semblance of pagodas.
The fearless Western nomenclature fits the place. It is an ancient sea-bottom, with its clay strata worn by frost and flood into forms like pagodas, pyramids, and terraced cities. Labyrinthine canons wind among these fantastic peaks, which are brilliant in color, but bleak, savage, and oppressive.
An even more remarkable thing is that each of these diminutive pagodas has also within it a portion of the Buddhist scriptures, engraved upon a solid block of stone, and all of these together make up the Tripitaka, upon which the Buddhist pins his faith. In the center of the grand enclosure stands a beautiful white pagoda, with wreaths of gold about its graceful spire.
But the greatest of all the Burmese pagodas, the Shwe Dagon of Rangoon, is a solid mass of brick, with no interior cell, yet enormous in size, erected on a broad platform one hundred and sixty-six feet from the ground, towering to an additional height of two hundred and seventy feet, and crowned with a jewelled "umbrella" at the total elevation of four hundred and thirty-six feet above the teeming streets of the city below.
I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by paroqueats, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed for centuries, at the summit, or in secret rooms; I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshipped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brahma through all the forests of Asia; Vishnu hated me; Siva laid wait for me.
On either side are stone balustrades, and sometimes beautiful temples, mosques, or pagodas, according to the creed of the founders. At every time of the day, on the Ghauts, may be seen groups of bathers; while graceful female forms are continually passing and re-passing, loaded with water-pots, which are balanced with the nicest precision on their heads.
I wish I could see that hedge in blossom. It must be wonderfully strange and lovely, and must look by moonlight like a whole range of fairy Chinese pagodas carved in ivory. At dinner we had some delicious green peas, so much in advance of you are we down here with the seasons. Don't you think one might accept the rattlesnakes, or perhaps indeed the slavery, for the sake of the green peas?
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