BURMA AND THE BURMESE 5
A 19th century description of Burma, Burmese culture and Burmese customs

BURMA AND THE BURMESE 5

to it. In shape the Eastern island resembles a moon in her quarters ; the Western a fullmoon; the Northern is square, and the Southern is the shape of a trapezium. The two thousand small islands are of the same shape as the large island on which they are dependent. Each side of Mount Meru is of a different color, the eastern being silver, the western glass, the northern gold, and the southern the color of a pale carbuncle. These colors affect the ocean, which is divided into the white, the green, the yellow, and the brown sea. The islands and their inhabitants are also of the same color as that part of Mount Meru which faces them. Thus the inhabitants of the Eastern island are white as milk, those of the Western, green, the Northern, golden, and the Southern, brown. The depth of the ocean varies considerably. The seas between the bit, islands and their dependent small ones are easily navigable, but those between the great islands are far too stormy for any ship to live in. Not only do the waves rise to an enormous height, but dreadful whirlpools are of frequent occurrence, and monstrous fish abound. So large are these fish that their movements cause the sea to boil, and when they

sport in the water they raise tempests. The Southern island is inhabited by the Burmese, Chinese, and Indians, and we English live in one of the small dependent islands. The first inhabitants of the Southern island lived for an almost infinite number of years, but their descendants growing gradually less virtuous, their lives became shorter and shorter until ten years was the length of a mans life. Seeing that wickedness was the cause of the short lives of their parents, children began to lead meritorious lives, and consequently lived for twenty years. Each succeeding generation improved in virtue and the performance of good works, and had their lives protracted to forty, eighty, one hundred, one thousand, ten thousand years, and finally to the length of the existence of the first inhabitants. This decrease and increase in the duration of the life of man must take place sixty-four times before the world can be destroyed. In the Eastern and Western islands the people are all giants, and live for five hundred years. The Northern island is a land of bliss, flowing with streams of sandal-water. Nobody does any work, but lives for a thousand years in tranquility, always resembling, in vigor and in person, a youth < 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12 > Henry Charles Moore, "Burmese Traits" 1893