jutting crag stands some marble image covered with gold, and spreading its uncouth proportions to the setting sun.  Every recess is converted into shrines for others.  But imposing as is this spectacle, it shrinks into insignificance compared with the scene presented on entering the cavern itself.  It is of vast size, and needs no human art to render it sublime.  The eye is confused and the heart appalled at the prodigious exhibition of infatuation and folly.  Everywhere—­on the floor, over head and on every jutting point, are crowded together images of Gaudama—­the offerings of successive ages.  A ship of five hundred tons could not carry away the half of them.”

Pagodas are innumerable.  In the inhabited parts there is scarcely a peak, bank, or swelling hill, uncrowned by one of these structures.  In general, they are almost solid, without door or window, and contain some supposed relic of Gaudama.

The religious system of the Burmans contains many excellent moral precepts and maxims, which, however being without sanction or example, are utterly powerless to mould the character of the people to wisdom or virtue.

A curious feature of Buddhism is, that one of the highest motives it presents to its followers is the “obtaining of merit.”  Merit is obtained by avoiding sins, such as theft, lying, intoxication, and the like; and by practising virtues and doing good works.  The most meritorious of all good works is to make an idol; the next to build a pagoda.  It confers high merit, also, to build a zayat, to transcribe the sacred books, to erect any useful public edifice, to dig public wells, or to plant shade or fruit-trees by the wayside.  If they give alms, or treat animals kindly, or repeat prayers, or do any other good deed, they do it entirely with this mercenary view of obtaining merit.  This “merit” is not so much to procure them happiness in another world, as to secure them from suffering in their future transmigrations in this; for they believe that the soul of one who dies without having laid up any merit, will have to pass into the body of some mean reptile or insect, and from that to another, through hundreds of changes, perhaps, before it will be allowed again to take the form of man.

This reliance on ‘merit,’ and certainty of obtaining it through prescribed methods, fosters their conceit, so that ignorant and debased as they are, “there is scarcely a nation more offensively proud.”  It also renders them entirely incapable of doing or appreciating a disinterested action, or of feeling such a sentiment as gratitude.  If you do them a favor, they suppose you do it to obtain merit for yourself, and of course feel no obligation to you; the simple phrase, “I thank you,” is unknown in their language.

Like the ancient Romans, the Burmans believe in dreams, omens, and unlucky days; observe the flight and feeding of fowls, the howl of dogs, and the aspect of the stars; they regard the lines in the hand, the knots in trees, and a thousand other fortuitous circumstances, and by these allow their actions to be governed.