These _Pongyees_, who were always clean-shaven, and clad in yellow robes, transcended in purity of life and devotion to their sacred cause any others of like persuasion that I ever came across. They were, moreover, courteous, unassuming, and affable to a degree, always ready to impart any information that lay within their ken, and supporting it with such written documents as they possessed.
The people at large held them in the greatest veneration, and the funeral obsequies of any distinguished member of the order were of an elaborate and somewhat costly nature. The first process was the embalming, in which art the Burmese must have been little inferior to the ancient Egyptians. When this process had been completed and the limbs were bound up and covered with a kind of varnish, the body was placed in a _kyoung_, where it lay in state for a month or six weeks, during which time there was always a light burning within the building, while prayers, intercessions, and offerings of every kind were made by devotees from all parts.
The last rite of all, cremation, I had the good fortune to witness, on a very important occasion, amid a large concourse of worshippers. The mummified remains were reverently laid on an iron grating between two low parallel walls, and a fire was ignited below, fuel being added as required; and although the wood was dry, and both it and the body burned furiously, the latter took a considerable time to incinerate.
While the deceased was lying in state, some foolish Europeans, possessed, I regret to say, of more zeal than honesty, made off one night with a few of his ornaments, and escaped only by the skin of their teeth.
Thus, even to Burmese philosophy there was a limit; they could endure with stoical indifference the spoliation of their temples; they uttered no audible protest against the unholy appropriation of pagodas sacred to Buddha, “the Wise,” “the Enlightened,” but when their offerings for the repose of a high priest’s soul were surreptitiously made away with, then their anger was kindled. The images were coveted, not for their intrinsic value, but because they were clever caricatures of the invader, both the civil and the military element being represented. Thus the resentment of the marauder predominated over even his cupidity; though no one who knew the character of the Burmese could ever suppose for one moment that they intended this as an insult, for, being themselves almost proof against the shafts of ridicule, they not unnaturally concluded that a nation so superior in intellect would be above such trifles. And here they erred; their intercourse with Europeans had hitherto been fragmentary—limited to a casual trader, and it had consequently never dawned on them that the sensitiveness of a race varies directly with its organization.