ring manner the extraordinary and striking fact that we witness
in Buddhist countries.'

This monkhood is the proof of how the people believe. Has any religion
ever had for twenty-four centuries such a proof as this?

CHAPTER XI

THE MONKHOOD--II

'The restrained in hand, restrained in foot, restrained in speech,
of the greatest self-control. He whose delight is inward, who is
tranquil and happy when alone--him they call
"mendicant."'--_Acceptance into the Monkhood._

Besides being the ideal of the Buddhists, the monk is more: he is the
schoolmaster of all the boys. It must be remembered that this is a thing
aside from his monkhood. A monk need not necessarily teach; the aim and
object of the monkhood is, as I have written in the last chapter, purity
and abstraction from the world. If the monk acts as schoolmaster, that
is a thing apart. And yet all monasteries are schools. The word in
Burmese is the same; they are identified in popular speech and in
popular opinion. All the monasteries are full of scholars, all the monks
teach. I suppose much the same reasons have had influence here as in
other nations; the desire of the parents that their children should
learn religion in their childhood, the fact that the wisest and most
honoured men entered the monkhood, the leisure of the monks giving them
opportunity for such occupation.

Every man all through Burma has gone to a monastery school as a lad, has
lived there with the monks, has learnt from them the elements of
education and a knowledge of his faith. It is an exception to find a
Burman who cannot read and write. Sometimes from lack of practice the
art is lost in later manhood, but it has always been acquired. The
education is not very deep--reading Burmese and writing; simple, very
simple, arithmetic; a knowledge of the days and months, and a little
geography, perhaps, and history--that is all that is secular. But of
their religion they learn a great deal. They have to get by heart great
portions of the sacred books, stories and teachings, and they have to
learn many precepts. They have to recite them, too, as those who have
lived much near monasteries know. Several times a day, at about nine
o'clock at night, and again before dawn, you will hear the lads intoning
clearly and loudly some of the sacred teachings. I have been awakened
many a time in the early morning, before the dawn, before even the
promise of the dawn in the eastern