Yet the Portuguese,- heroic in-all -their early enterprises,
made a great bid for sovereignty in Burma; and
it was at Syriam that the drama:wast play;ed out. The
tale is connected with the career of one Philip de Brito
y Nicote, who began as a cabin boyi gr.evy as a palace
menial in Aracan, rose to be King of Pegu, and ended
writhing on a stakeJn the sun, where he lingered for
three days in mortal agony, overlooking ' the city which
for- thè space of thirteen years had been the centre of
his power. But the story of De Brito is not for these
pages.
The site of Rangoon itself is an immemorial one,
arid the chronicles of the people talk with customary
liberality ' in thousands of years. Five hundred and
eighty-five years, before Christ, they say, two pious
merchants who trafficked to Bengal with Peguan rice
came, at. a time-of famine upon the Buddha meditating
under the trees. of Gaya. Asked whether they sought
the; goods . of this, world or the next, they replied with
becoming ¡piety .- that they were in search of;/1 heavenly
treasure.” , - They then made their obeisances; before,
the Buddha, and received four hairs of his head and
were told ; to, bury, them in the Thein-Got-Tara Hill,
where ihis three predecessors had left respectively a staff,
a water-filter* arid a robe. They were to know the locality
from a takoon, a felled wOod-oil tree lying athwart, and
touching the ground neither with its root nor its branches.
On their return, after a somewhat distracting search,
they found the place indicated, and they buried in it, in
1 As with most popular etymology, there is no reality in this derivation.
58
a golden casket, the relics they had brought. Over them
was ¡built the first nucleus of the Shway Dagdn Pagoda.
The town -of Takoon or Dagon grew up around this
sat'red spot, and from time to time there is mention in
Burmese history ■ of visits to it from kings and princes,
and '■ of the gradual growth of the pagoda. Stone
TH E PAGODA
inscriptions in the courts of the pagoda date back
to the year 1485, and it is well known that
Shinsawbu, ' Oueeri of Pegu early in the sixteenth
century, visited the town and greatly enlarged the
pagoda.
The first account of it that we have from any
European observer is-that in 1579-of Gasparo Balbi,