The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1886-02-27 00:00:00

"THE LIKE-OF-WHICH-THERE-IS-NOT!

The special correspondent of the Bombay Gazette
in Upper Burmah gives a highly interesting account
of the remarkable religious edifices in Mandalay:
"There are two great religious edifices in Mandalay
which it is the duty. as it is the pleasure, of the
traveller to see. The city, like all Burmah, teems
uith pagodas and temples. Every hill top, every
plain, every grove of trees, every garden, has its
graceful building in white or gold, giving evidence of
the piety and of the lavishness of their innumerable
founders. The amount of money thus expended
during centuries, and now still lavished year by year,
and month by month, is past the counting of all the
clerks in the Bank of England. The roads, the
palaces, the fortifications, the aqueducts, that might
have been built with all this brick and mortar, to say
nothing of the stucco or the gold leaf, sometimes
an inch thick! A chance fire burnt down one
great pagoda, and the gold melted from its immense
surface is said to have been worth sixty-five
lakhs ! It was replaced by Theebaw, and more
gold added. This enormous waste of the national re-
sources persevered in through generations may ac-
count for the manifest poverty of the population,
which lives for the most part in habitations of wicker-
work, eked out with matting. There is no accumula-
tion of property; every family lives an ephemeral life;
those that come after will live the same. The palace in
Mandalay is composed of planks carved and gilt pro-
fusely indeed; but there is not a pucka wall to give
consistence or permanence to a single wing of it. Three
or four miles away the plinth of a pagoda was built by
Mindo-Min with such an extravagant waste of solid
material that, even as it stands, it is said to be the
greatest mass of brickwork in the world. An
earthquake nothing else would suffice rent it,
and the pagoda was never built on it. But
there it remains. This was only one of the vast
religious structures which marked that monarch's
reign. In Mandalay itself he erected a monastery—
the "Like-of-which-there-is-not "—the Incomparable,
which possesses a room unquestionably the finest in
all Mandalay. It would be no great stretch of fancy
to say it is the first in the world. The building is
composed of a series of bold terraces, six ein number,
rising one above another, the central one being the
highest. The golden room is carried on thirty-six
pillars, some of which are seventy feet high, the ceil-
ng reaching its greatest elevation in the high central
terrace, under which is a colossal figure of Gautama
beside a golden throne. The boldness of the general
design, the noble proportions of the immense hall,
and the great height attained over the throne and the
statue, fill the mind with surprise and pleasure.
Pillars, walls, and ceiling are richly gilt, glass inlay-
ing heightening the brilliancy. If the Viceroy
comes to Mandalay to promulgate the decree
which gives the future of Burmah, the ceremonial
will ho held in this noblest of throne rooms. The
Chief Commissioner has shown his appreciation of the
beautiful in prescribing the Incomparable as the scene
of the great ceremonial, if circumstances permit of its
being held. Externally, the building is vast, but
plain in design and material—the walls are white
stucco, and severely plain. But the mass, bathed in
the bright sunlight, is imposing in its simplicity. Not
far from the Incomparable is a pagoda of great size
and perfect symmetry, covered with gilding, and
rising up among no less than 464 little chapels—if
such they may be called—each containing a large
tablet of white marble, on which is inscribed a por-
tion of the sacred Buddhist books. Thus the
whole of the law is displayed, cut in marble,
to the eyes of the inquirer. This pagoda, with its
surrounding buildings, must have cost from 12 to 15
lakhs. It bears the title of the Royal Merit—signi-
ficant of the conviction indulged in by Mindo-Min
that in building this great religious edifice, with its
instructive surroundings, he had earned for himself
thegreat reward, when the time should come, 'to
reign among
the spirits' (not to 'die' like an ordinary
mortal): He would merit nirvana itself, and have
Itb hu
Mandalay;ei
ladr ,
n gw,
astoa
structure
ana e ege
ne
ffla r
owe
e, n
done with the sin and suffering of existence. Bing
sgutac engaged e
ais nok
byconstructingoas at
ta ssotmo
estab-
lish his Royal merit beyond all doubt or cavil. But
it will never be finished."

"We railroaders have to go, as well as others," said
a Bloomfield branch brakeman on learning of the
sudden death of Vanderbilt\