in and Ma
Gywin. The latter is a woman's name, and the parents remembered that
these were the names of the man and wife who had died in Okshitgon about
the time the children were born.

So the parents thought that the souls of the man and wife had entered
into the children, and they took them to Okshitgon to try them. The
children knew everything in Okshitgon; they knew the roads and the
houses and the people, and they recognised the clothes they used to wear
in a former life; there was no doubt about it. One of them, the younger,
remembered, too, how she had borrowed two rupees once of a woman, Ma
Thet, unknown to her husband, and left the debt unpaid. Ma Thet was
still living, and so they asked her, and she recollected that it was
true she had lent the money long ago.

Shortly afterwards I saw these two children. They are now just over six
years old. The elder, into whom the soul of the man entered, is a fat,
chubby little fellow, but the younger twin is smaller, and has a curious
dreamy look in his face, more like a girl than a boy. They told me much
about their former lives. After they died they said they lived for some
time without a body at all, wandering in the air and hiding in the
trees. This was for their sins. Then, after some months, they were born
again as twin boys. 'It used,' said the elder boy, 'to be so clear, I
could remember everything; but it is getting duller and duller, and I
cannot now remember as I used to do.'

Of children such as this you may find any number. Only you have to look
for them, as they are not brought forward spontaneously. The Burmese,
like other people, hate to have their beliefs and ideas ridiculed, and
from experience they have learned that the object of a foreigner in
inquiring into their ways is usually to be able to show by his contempt
how very much cleverer a man he is than they are. Therefore they are
very shy. But once they understand that you only desire to learn and to
see, and that you will always treat them with courtesy and
consideration, they will tell you all that they think.

A fellow officer of mine has a Burmese police orderly, a young man about
twenty, who has been with him since he came to the district two years
ago. Yet my friend only discovered accidentally the other day that his
orderly remembers his former life. He is very unwilling to talk about
it. He was a woman apparently in that former life, and lived about
twenty miles away. He must have lived a