¹ On the 37 nats see especially Scott, J. G. and Hardiman, J. P., Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States, Pt. I, Vol. II, Rangoon, 1900, 1626; Sir R. C. Temple, The thirty-seven mats, London, 1906; Taw Sein KoGoogle Scholar, Burmese sketches, Rangoon, 1913, 1615; Brown, R. Grant, The pm-Buddhist religion of the Burmese, Folk-lore, XXXII, 2, 1921, 77100Google Scholar; Aung, Maung Htin, The Lord of the Great Mountain, JBRS, XXXVIII, 1, 1955, 7582;Google Scholar The thirty-seven Lords, ibid., XXXIX, 1, 1956, 81100; (revised as) Folk elements in Burmese Buddhism, London, 1962, ch. vi, vii.

² Observations on a tour in the region of Mount Popa, Central Burma, France-Asie, XIX, 179, 1963, 7845. My debt to this most illuminating paper will be apparent in much of what follows.

³ The 32 myos in the medieval Mon kingdom, BSOAS, XXVI, 3, 1963, 590.Google Scholar

⁴ Square brackets indicate emendations, which apart from lacunae are such as involve one character only. Mon place-names for which there is no conventional anglicization are transliterated in italics.

⁵ Reading jray suṁ for jray bhuṁ. But the compound is perhaps a popular etymology for jayabhum, the soil of victory where an essential part of the coronation ceremony took place, and site of the pagoda of victory Kyk jamnah.

⁶ Assuming that lak kuit, literally thousand million, is equivalent to the more usual lak kluik in this context. Both are apparently popular etymologies of lak lhek Letkaik, earlier lak khrek.

⁷ The text has 17, and might be construed (17) the stream-winner of the Shwemawdaw site. But this is almost certainly corrupt. Two gods have been conflated under no. 16 in the next paragraph to accommodate the false total.

⁸ Or of the Moustache Ficus at Rangoon.

⁹ Or of the budding Ficus at Rangoon.

¹⁰ These two have been conflated in the text by the omission of an index number, and subsequent numbers adjusted accordingly, to accommodate the misreading referred to in n. 7 above. They cannot be identical, since the sm is at the top and Zingyaik at the foot of Zingyaik hill.

¹¹ Two entries may have been conflated here.

¹² Nidn rambhakath, in Phra Candakanta (ed.), Nidna Rmdhipatikath, Pak Lat, 1912 (hereafter cited as NR), 479.

¹³ cf. Shorto, A Mon Genealogy of kings, in D. G. E. Hall (ed.), Historians of South East Asia, 1961, 68, 701.

¹⁴ For which see Htin Aung, Folk elements in Burmese Buddhism, 557.

¹⁵ See Htin Aung, Folk elements, 834; Mendelson, op. cit., 786.

¹⁶ cf. RSASB, 1914, 11 fr., 349; A. B. Griswold, Dated Buddha images of northern Siam, Ascona, 1957, p. 623, n. 31; (Ajaplacetiya) Epigraphia Birmanica, iv, 1, 1936, 116; (the Four Buddhas) ibid., IV, 1, 1936, 539.

¹⁷ ibid., III, 2, 1928. The planting of the bo tree is described on face M of this inscription, No. XII.

¹⁸ If, as seems likely, bh guih is the bh guih mhjay rṁ of the Mahjayrma the foundation of which is recorded at NR, 84.

¹⁹ Though he not only effected a wholesale purge of the saṅgha but also revoked his predecessor's excessive grants to the Shwe Dagon-both, to say the least, bold departuresit was the noble author of Puṁ Dhammacet, not the monk who wrote the Nidna, that condemned these acts.

²⁰ The 32 myos, 584.

²¹ Slapat rjawaṅ datow smiṅ roṅ, ed. Halliday, R., JBRS, XIII, 1, 1923, 17; ed. W. Schmidt, Sb. K Akad. Wiss. Wien, Phil.-hist. Kl., cm, 3, 1906, 66.Google Scholar

²² cf. Shorto, The Kyaikmaraw inscriptions, BSOAS, XXVI, 2, 1958, 361 ff.Google Scholar

²³ BSOAS, XXVI, 3, 1963, 57291.Google Scholar

²⁴ The same symbolism was applied to the captains of the palace guard, as the title accorded them, smiṅ waṅ, shows. Were the offices ever identical? The phrase smiṅ waṅ jataṅ found at inscription XII, M 212 (Epigraphia Birmanica, III, 2, 172), may represent an earlier *smiṅ waṅ caturaṅ regents of the fourfold army. Heine-Geldern notes a similar duplication in the Burmese wungyi and winhmu: Weltbild und Bauform in Sdostasien, Wiener Beitrge zur Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte Asiens, IV, 1930, 54.

²⁵ I failed to note in The 32 myos the reference at inscription VIII, A 78, to Kyanzittha's restoration of the great relic stupas built by King Dharmsoka, Dhammaceti's Sirimsoka (Epigraphia Birmanica, I, 2, 1920, 157; reading mahdhtu).

²⁶ Dhammaceti's list raises the question whether there was not at some stage a wholesale transplantation of district cults and relics to the capital, involving the establishment of a micro-microcosm there as well as the alienation of potentially dangerous power,' anubhau, from conquered territory. We may compare the transplantation of the Duttabaung cycle of Prome nats to Pagan. In this spirit Anawrahta carried off the images of the gods from Thaton (pp. 1401 below); and princes, too, were increasingly kept at court.

²⁷ Rjdhirj, in Phra Candakanta (ed.), SudhammavatrjvaṁsaSharjdhirjvaṁsa, Pak Lat, 1910 (hereafter cited as SR), 1789.

²⁸ It has an analogy in the Taoist tripartition of heaven, earth, and water, the dragons which rule the last corresponding to the chthonic ngas of South East Asian tradition.

²⁹ Epigraphia Birmanica, 1, 2, No. I, H 513.

³⁰ cf. the Chinese explanation quoted on p. 137; and on the sanctity of high places Mendelson, op. cit., 788. H. G. Quaritch Wales, Dvravat in South-East Asian cultural history, JRAS, 1966, Pts. 12, 479, discounts this view, but without all the evidence here adduced.

³¹ op. cit., 7823.

³² Htin Aung's explanation (Folk elements, 789) of the Mahagiri nat's domestic function is not wholly convincing. He notes a dhammathat tale which may be thought to connect house-guardians with tree-spirits. Grant Brown (op. cit., 90) records a variant tradition that the nat obtained the right of entry into all houses when he asked his sisters (one of whom in the standard version shares his Popa cult as the Shwe Myethna nat) for a kingdom.

³³ op. cit., 787.

³⁴ Folk elements, 735.

³⁵ Uppanna Sudhammawat-rjwaṁsa-kath, in SR, 1112; Gawampati, ibid., 556.

³⁶ R. Halliday (ed.), Lik smiṅ Asaḥ, Rangoon, 1923, passim; Nidna rambhakath, 1621; Gawampati, 8490.

³⁷ Temple, op. cit., 46; Htin Aung, Folk elements, 856, 889. A different tradition is preserved at Mindon, of which Shwe Nabe is tutelary goddess, and Dr. Htin Aung supposes a conflation of cults. Shwe Nabe's icon, showing her with nga head-dress, often resembles that of Shwe Myethna without the vahana.

³⁸ Htin Aung, Folk elements, 6773, 912; Temple, op. cit., 4950. Although Htin Aung gives the sons successive births, the Mahagita medanigyan, cited by Temple, makes them twins. Byatta entered Burmese service when he was suborned by Kyanzittha to overcome the spirit of his brother Byatwi, which guarded Thaton. The tale bears a certain resemblance to Mon legends of the Thaton champions Prp Jnok and Prp Dot, Big and Little Prp. It is difficult to reconcile the names, but Byatta and Byatwi might be corruptions of Prp Stuṁ and Prp Jwi, Right-hand and Left-hand Prp. The theme of invulnerables who allow themselves to be killed is to the fore in all these legends.

³⁹ op. cit., 7956.

⁴⁰ The name bears either interpretation.

⁴¹ The possibility that there was a historical Byatta who brought the Zingyaik cult to Popa suggests an explanation differing in some respects from that put forward above. On this hypothesis, it would have been Byatta who fastened on Prome gods the nga ancestry on which Dr. Htin Aung casts doubt, and concocted a similar legend about himself as the chief devotee. His execution, and that of his sons who inherited the cult, can then be seen as steps in its annexation. The special royal devotion to the Mahagiri nat appears to have begun with Kyanzittha.

⁴² For Gandhamdana as a name of Popa, see Mendelson, op. cit., p. 806, n. 25; and of Zingyaik hill, NR, 16.

⁴³ As against lineage, reincarnation is patently a Buddhist theme, though both are often cited in legitimation of a king or chief. But the dual destinies of the twins may be older than Buddhism; Dr. C. Hooykaas has drawn my attention to a Balinese tradition in which the guardian nga of a magic mountain has descendants who are respectively priest and self-styled worldly ruler.

⁴⁴ Lvi, S. (ed.), Mahkarmavibhaṅga, Paris, 1932, 62.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Letthshe pagoda inscription, extant in four later copies printed, with some modernization of the text, in Inscriptions copied from the stones near the Arakan pagoda, Rangoon, 1897, II, 830, 838; Original inscriptions collected by King Bodawpaya, Rangoon, 1913, 1, 9.

⁴⁶ Epigraphia Birmanica, III 1, 1923, No. ix, A 27 ff.; Inscriptions of Burma, Portfolio plate vi. I have discussed the Gavampati evidence at length in an article in course of publication: The Gavampati tradition in Burma, Dr. R. C. Majumdar felicitation volume.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ cf. Jaini, P. S., Mahdibbamanta: a paritta manuscript from Cambodia, BSOAS, XXVIII, 1, 1965, pp. 734, n. 22.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ This is the sense of Epigraphia Birmanica, III, 1Google Scholar, No. IX, E 34 ff. Cf. Mendelson, E. M., A Messianic Buddhist association in Upper Burma, BSOAS, XXIV, 3, 1961, p. 574, n. 1. Each god is associated with a post of the palace.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Guimet, Annales du Muse: Bibliotheque d'tudes, XXI, Paris, 1910.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ The association recalls that of bau and kalok postulated above, if the harvest gods were gods of sky or rain. Cf. the Japanese belief in rice gods which descend to the fields from the mountains for the period from sowing to harvest: Toshijiro Hirayama, Seasonal rituals connected with rice culture, in Dorson, Richard M. (ed.), Studies in Japanese folklore, Bloomington, 1963, 60.Google Scholar

⁵¹ This may well be why Burmese guhs are crowned by a stupa or ikharathey are not caitya caves!and why the spire of a stupa always protrudes from a surrounding cetiyaghara, an arrangement retained in the design of the modern Kaba-e.

⁵² It may have been a back-current of the Chinese practice that induced Bayinnaung in 1553 to flank the east gate of his palacethis being in Burma the direction of honourwith hills of Good Empery (duiw surajja) surmounted by Rma's tree of Good Empery, as recorded at NR, 146.

⁵³ Tin, Pe Maung and Luce, G. H. (tr.), Glass Palace Chronicle, London, 1923, 94.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Cultes indiens et indignes au Champa, BEFEO, XXXIII, 1, 1933, 367410.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Aymonier, . F., Les Tchames et leurs religions, Rev. de l'Hist. des Religions, XXIV, 1891, 187237,Google Scholar 261315; Cadire, L., Croyances et pratiques religieuses des Annamites dans les environs de Hue, II-III, BEFEO, XIX, 2, 1919, 147.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ The longest is that of Makutarj, probably the Manuha of the chronicles, in the Thaton inscriptions reproduced at Inscriptions of Burma, Portfolio IV, plates CCCLVIII, CCCLIX. Several of the epithets of which it is composed are proper to a aivite god-king: -parameswara iswararaja abheyamahrjadewtidewa., It might be illuminating, in view of the common Burmese prejudice against repairing a pagoda as opposed to building a new one (for which cf. e.g, Yoe, Shway, The Burman: his life and notions. Third ed., London, 1927, 1534), to compile a list of the stupas erected by their predecessors which kings nevertheless repeatedly rebuilt, enlarged, or repaired. Inscription XV in Epiyraphia Birmanica, IV, 1, lists four such rebuildings of the Shwe Dagon down to the fifteenth century.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ I have noted the same custom in Ceylon, where the frontal bone may be exposed to view in a glass-fronted compartment.

⁵⁸ Grant Brown, op. cit., 96.

⁵⁹ Mus. op. cit., 383.

⁶⁰ Epigraphia Birmanica, I, 2, No. I, c 235: mahjan guṁloṅ ci ḍeḥ t'eḥ strak giṅgiṅ.

⁶¹ Martaban land roll of 1766 (MS).

⁶² The 32 myos 590.

⁶³ NR, 12.

⁶⁴ The career of Htilaing Min (Kyanzittha), JRAS, 1966, 12, 64.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ op. cit., 383.