ber once
I was going up the river on a festival night by the full moon, and we
saw point after point crowned with lights upon the pagodas; and as we
came near the great city we saw a new glory; for there was a boat
anchored in mid-stream, and from this boat there dropped a stream of
fire; myriads of little lamps burned on tiny rafts that drifted down the
river in a golden band. There were every now and then bigger rafts, with
figures made in light--boats and pagodas and monasteries. The lights
heaved with the long swell of the great river, and bent to and fro like
a great snake following the tides, until at length they died far away
into the night.

I do not know what is the meaning of all these lights; I do not know
that they have any inner meaning, only that the people are very glad,
only that they greatly honour the great teacher who died so long ago,
only that they are very fond of light and colour and laughter and all
beautiful things.

But although these festivals often become also fairs, although they are
the great centres for amusement, although the people look to them as
their great pleasure of the year, it must not be forgotten that they are
essentially religious feasts, holy days. Though there be no great
ceremony of prayer, or of thanksgiving, no public joining in any
religious ceremony, save, perhaps, the giving of alms to the monks, yet
religion is the heart and soul of them. Their centre is the pagoda,
their meaning is a religious meaning.

What if the people make merry, too, if they make their holy days into
holidays, is that any harm? For their pleasures are very simple, very
innocent; there is nothing that the moon, even the cold and distant
moon, would blush to look upon. The people make merry because they are
merry, because their religion is to them a very beautiful thing, not to
be shunned or feared, but to be exalted to the eye of day, to be
rejoiced in.

CHAPTER XIV

WOMEN--I

'Her cheek is more beautiful than the dawn, her eyes are deeper
than the river pools; when she loosens her hair upon her shoulders,
it is as night coming over the hills.'--_Burmese Love-Song._

If you were to ask a Burman 'What is the position of women in Burma?' he
would reply that he did not know what you meant. Women have no position,
no fixed relation towards men beyond that fixed by the fact that women
are women and men are men. They differ a great deal in many ways, so a
Burman would sa