THE SUNDAY OREGOXIAX, PORTLAND, NOVEMBER 10, 1907. MN TT7- H Br A H 1 XX U1Z ? -4- , v,. I i o ft Vwv i 4 , h: vv ?W5 It Funeral Festivities of . the Late Sadaw, or Vicar -General, of. the Buddhists in Burmah One of the Strangest and Most Remarka ble Festivals in the World GIRLS WHO, TAKE PART W THE : CEREMONIES .'S'V -S' w. 1 1 1 1 t ' ' . V srTsr N ': : ' 1 r I $ W 'f - - .;L;i,t . "i nr., .... r f " "'"iuuu , . 'lfM j 1 f t ; xii '. -otv' j rTvX w.- h- S issrJ STnyS?, '"V ft ifjfzz: vw, -."w, A v . T 't I t7 J 4 , V"W . 4 - I JsX' Jf i 1 cmZSG- IS JL PART OF Tim CEREMONIES. HERE 7EEY KICK WUH THEIR BARE FEET. AND G-IVZ VIOLENT UPWARD KNOCKS WITH THEIR. KNEES -k'"" T1 nri"-'T T " ' -t"-"" w.- 2SO fUNERAI, QT THE SADAfVJS COUPDETE GJAWT JSZiEPKANT J00 FEET HI&H, REPRESENTING- THE SACRED WHITE. ELEPHANT FROM THE SERINE GE ITS BACK. IS SUSPENDED THE G-IEDEQ COFFIN. i r TrJ jf"35 ..if s. .w s;' ",Ar;sf.-xf- v t . ri 4 f:it 7" V V ZT-LA&NLFI CENT JTCNERJIL, PILB WHICH 13 SBT AFIRE ST JKTROCKfrr BY CAPTAIN FRANCIS THATCHER, 1.ATE INDIAN STAFF CORPS, IHAVB been In places that the foot of white men has seldom trod and I have looked upon things the like of which few mull of my color have witnessed but of all sights the glittering, unique and fantastic pageants of the purple and gor geous Bast attending the funeral festivi ties of Sadaw or Vicar-General of the Buddhists In Burma is unparallod throughout the world. The word "festlvitlea" is used advisedly for the Buddhist monk does not "die" as an ordinary Individual, he "returns" to the highest heaven of the spirits, there fore a Buddhist monk's funeral la called a "pohn-nyee-byan" the return of the great glory. Even a Junior member of the order of the great yellow robe is cremated with great ceremony and state, but when a distinguished head of the order dies, such as the illustrious Sadaw who recentls passed away and whose obsequies I de scribe here It is a great event. As tens of thousands of the faithful florked in masses from every part of the empire to attend the great pageant a white man here and there, drawn by the Ftrange and fantastic, followed In their wake. L,lko them, a craving for the un usual sights of life, drew me to the scene. l.onn before the arrival of the first pil grim the corpse of the Sadaw had been carefully washed by his chief supporters .id monastic scholars (a group of whom are shown in the accompanying illustra tion surrounding the Sadaw) and the in testines taken out. The cavity of the stomach lind been filled with ashes, saw dust, spires and other suhstances likely to dry up the humors and the skin sewn to gether asain. The body hnd been spread over with a thin layer of wax and tightly swathed in white cloth from head to toot. The linen had been then varnished over with wood oil and then every particle of thf corpse covered with gold leaf. The body was now placed in a coffin made of a single log roughly hollowed out and with a very substantial lid. The lid was not fastened down for a considerable-time and a pipe led from the coffin Into the ground to assist In drying tne Sadaw's body, hut this last was hardly necessary for the Vicar-General was already a withered up old man of great age at the time of his demise. The inner coffin was then,varnished and gilded all over. - Then, an outer casket was prepared called a "payoung bohng" which was i sumptuously gilded and painted in the panels which were fringed with mosaic bits of looking glass, colored glass and zinc. The paintings represented relig ious subjects, scenes from the life of Shin Gautama; his famous meetings with the old man, the sick, the dead, and the monk: his departure at night from the magnificent court of King Thoodawdana; his ascent to Tawadebuthara and the like. Rearing himself over the top of the sarco phagus stood the figure of an Immense dragon recalling the pious dragon chief that sheltered the Lord Buddha from a flood of rain by coiling seven times round his body and expanding It's hood as a covering. This all being completed, a substantial building of teak, open all round, was erected, with the tapering ecclesiastical "paya-that" rising over it; above this was fixed an immense white umbrella with deep white lace fringe and round about hung a number of paintings rep resenting the different races of men the swarthy Hindu, the oblique-eyed China man, the Kareum. with his pig tattooed on his back, and the ghastly white faced European, with his dog and gun. All the paintings were grotesque and some simply horrible In their delinea tions of the torments of hell. Here and there In this odd kind of mortuary chapel were "Kehnnaya." gay tinselled pasteboard figures of men with birds' lower extremities. Boxing as One Feature of a funeral Here the body lay in state and a con stant stream of pilgrims from all parts of the country flocked to visit it and to say their religious sentences and' make offerings of fruit and flowers as they would at a pagoda. The lying In state lasted several months, during which time a continuous succession of festivi ties were celebrated with dances, plays, all kinds of games, such as the popular national one of Gohn-nylre ton pure. Gohn or khon means to Jump and nylre is to deny or bluster. A more noisy and contentious game it would be difficult to find and boxing, which is a very com mon institution, but hardly carried out according to the Queensbury rules, for they kick with their bare feet andglve violent upward knocks with the knee and have many other unorthodox de vices for knocking one's opponent out, and all the while wild bursts of music fill the air. At the end or this periocLl the final act of this strange ceremony or scries of ceremonies takes place, and the accompanying photographs will give some idea of the weird and fantastic magnificence of the scene, which, is most ly splashed out in vivid blotches of crimson and gold. An enormous funeral pyre was con structed of bamboo matting, pasteboard, brightly painted and covered with glitter ing tlnsel This was in the form of a seven-roofed spire, representing the num ber of heavens of the nat-dewahs. It was square up to the height of 30 or 40 feet, where there was a platform on which was placed a sort of. cenotaph resembling the gorgeous payoung- bohng or outer casket in construction and de coration. Above this towered, some hundred feet higher, the great bamboo canopy. Numerous other spires were ar ranged aroung the great central one, all glittering with gold and flashing with thousands of tiny mirrors and colored glasses, to be burnt along with It. No function of such importance as this would be complete without the two na tional emblems being represented the peacock and the white elephant. On one side of the funeral pyre, with Its gaily decorated seven-roofed spire towering towards the heavens, stood an enormous white elephant on a mosaic teak platform, made of pasteboard paint ed white, with a richly painted howdah perched on its - back, a hundred feet In the air. It was certainly a curious spectacle, with Its companion, the peacock, on the other side, with its glittering upstanding tall, spark ling in its thousands of facets of multi colored mirrors, reflecting the flashing lights and myriads of falling sparks and bursting fire-balls, innumerable rockets from every side. Now comes a part of the ceremonial which seemed to outsiders strangely absurd, but had a rellfious significance to the Burman and c.ulte In keeping with his national characteris tics. Borne half a dozen stout rattan or coir ropes were fastened to tne car and all the able-bodied men or as many as could hang on to the ropes seized them and commenced a frantic and uproar ious tug-of-war. There was no .selection of sides or numbers, and reinforcements were always ready- to back up the side which was on the point of losing. This contest went on for hours. The explana tion of this curious rite IS this: . It is considered of the greatest possible merit to drag a jjohu-gyee's body to the funetaU. pyre, and this Koothoh falls to the share of those who win In the tug-of-war. Grotesque Spectacular Incineration. At last the coffin was brought to the pyre and hoisted up to its lofty plat form, beneath which is stored a ereat quantity of combustible material: wood soaked in oil, pitch and abundance of scented chips. Around the cars surged thousands in their bright-colored silk garments and variegated head-cloths. Many wore horribly grotesque masks, representing the weirdest kinds of dev ils the whole scene being lighted by thousands of torches and colored fires; shrieks of demoniacal laughter and shouts of derision rent the air; snatches of chants and songs mingled with the angry cries of men fighting and quarreling, for now the culminat ing point is reached when the pyre Is about to be lighted. On ordinary occa sions a liielfer match would be suffi cient or even the fire obtained by the friction of a plug In the hollow bam boo, but these methods are too worldly and would fall to satisfy the sanctity and dignity of the illustrious Sadaw. Tht pyre had to be lighted by rockets fired from a distance. Scores of these had been prepared weeks beforehand and carried round, triumphantly In pro cession by the people who had made them, preceded by bands of music with young .men and dancing girls, singing and dancing of the potency of the powder and the accuracy of the aim which will attain for them the glory of setting fire to the pyre. Huge Sized Rockets. Each rocket had a figure of some kind, a nat-dewah, a tiger, a bear, at tached to it. Some of them were of huge size, constructed of the trunks of trees hollowed out and crammed full of combustibles. In which sulphur was the chief ingredient. Many were eight to ten feet long and five or six feet lit circumference and secured by Iron hoops and rattan lashings. Then, amid the shouts of the multitude, the rock ets were exploded and the sky. literally liquid gold and fire, lighted up the strangest scene Imaginable. The larg est of the rockets were mounted on go carts and many others guided by a rope fastened to the paya-that. Many of the rockets failed to have any other effect than making a jgreat splutter others toppled off their go-carts amid screams of derision from the crowd, but it was viot unattended by loss of, life, as might have been expected, for some of the bigger rockets flew off at a tangent Into the crowd, where its fiery belchlngs found mnny victims, but this was only Incidental and was to be expected. In 'the midst of the flashing lights and thundering rejrts one lucky rocket plunged right into theinflam mable materials piled below the bier and in a few moments the flames were leaping like great yellow tongues, lick ing the topmost pinnacle of the spire. It was the beginning of the end. Roof after roof fell, setting fire to all the surrounding spires and offerings placed round the basement. The joints of the bamboos exploded with the noise of pistol shots, whilst the swaying crowd cheered each separate occurrence, ami when finally the central spire fell with a hiss, a shout of triumph roso from the assembled multitude, suggest ing anything but death and pious ob servances. But there on earth they will tell yoil all is changeful, sad and unreal, and one more death brings but nearer toi the fir.nl rest of Nehban. "When the last smoldering embers have cooled, the monastic brethren search for any pieces of bones that may remain, and these are carefully gathered up and pounded down, mixed Into a paste and', molded into an Mfage of Buddha, whlclj Is stored up in the monastery. ON BEAUTIFUL RIVERSIDE DRIVE New York City's Beauty Spot Has Cost $10,000,000. With the completion of Riverside drive to Washington Heights New York may safely boast of the finest and perhaps the costliest driveway In the world. The ex tension of the drive with Its elaborate parking of the Hudson shore will prob ably be thrown open to the public during the Fall. Many of the architectural feat ures meanwhile have. been completed, the carefully graded slopes have been covered with grass, and for upward of a mile the new drive is practically completed. The extension commences at One Hun dred and Thirty-fifth street, in line with the great steel viaduct which crosses Manhattan valley and. following the line of the Hudson shore in great sweeping curves, finally joins Boulevard Lafayette near One Hundred and Fifty-eighth street. The cost of this mile of parking will be in excess of $3,000,000. The new section of Riverside Drive con forms to the general plan and decorations of the present park. It is carried along at about the same height above the river and at every point commands an uninter rupted view to the west and north. The extension will be richer, however, in ar chitectural features. Considerable vari ety has-been left to 'the western face of the slope by breaking It at frequent In tervals with elaborate stone arches or massive walls and winding staircases. There will be four of these arches at the ends of the cross streets, flanked by rows of steps connecting the various terraces of the drive. The stone work through out is very massive, the exposed surfaces being of light granite. The entire western face of the new park will bo broken by. a aeries of walks coiJstlll other patns run along the varlo neetlng the several terraces. These in turn will be shaded with a wealth of foliage. One of the features of the upper level of the drive will be an elaborate public shelter at the foot of One Hundred and Fifty-second street. The lower ter races will be supplied with public emfort stations. Those at One Hundred and Thirty-eighth street and One Hundred and Fifty-first street have already been built. The treatment of the cross streets also marks an Improvement over the older section. The street arches, which are of granite, are arranged with interior staircases, so that the drive may be reached conveniently from the street level on either side. The river view from the new extension of the drive is, even finer than from the lower park. There are fewer unsightly objects between the drive and the river, such as docks and coal yards. The drive front at this section describes a beautiful curve outward, end ing In Washington Point, while the un broken line of the Palisades bounds the opposite shore of the Hudson. A broad driveway, a bridlepath and one or more footpaths will extend from end to end of the new extension. The main drive will be 60 feet In width, bordered with grass, and eventually It will be overhung with shade trees. The bridlepath winds from side to side. In some1 places descending to' the uppor terraces of the park. At several points where the drive crosses one of the grranite bridges the bridlepath merges Into the main drive. The footpaths ex tend on both sides of the drive fo practically the entire distance, while 51 terraces of the eastern slopes. One of the novel features of the extension is a great interior pipe gallery which runs Its entire length. The gallery, which is four feet beneath the upper level of the drive, is six feet square, thus mak ing it convenient from end to end. It is connected with the surface by a series of manholes at intervals of 150 feet. The gallery will be used for wires and pipes of all kinds. The river front along the line of the new extension has presented some in teresting engineering problems for the builders of the drive. First of all. it was necessary to ' bridge. Manhattan Valley with a great steel causeway, a span nearly seven blocks long. The drive had to be carried high over the houses and factories of this section, while at the same time maintaining the general level. At other points great retaining walls have been built upward of 100 feet in height of solid granite. The most curious feature of the drive from an engineering standpoint is the great extonsion or apron outside the retaining wall In front of Trinity Cemetery. It was originally Intended to cut away the western part of the cemetery from the drtve, but it was found to be impossible to gain admit tance. The only thing to do was to go around the cemetery, and since the New York Central tracks bounded It on the west the problem was a difficult one. A massive retaining wall was built to the height of the drive and the road way has been actually extended over the tracks for a distance of 60 feet without any visible means of support. , v X