CH A P T E R X L I I
S IT T A N G
^ ' I T T A N G is built at the mouth of the Kha-wa
streamlet, and consists now :,of a few wide roads,
a bazaar, and three hundred houses. It was built by
the Talaing (Mun) under We-ma-la, the prince who
founded Pegu, thirteen hundred years ago. Traces of
the Taking supremacy survive in the Kyaik Ka-lun-pun
pagoda, and in the ruins of the town and palace of
Kyaik-ka-tha, a few miles inland. The strange name
o f the pagoda is connected by the people with a quaint
legend of Buddha. A thousand giants, it is said, lived
here in the days of the great teacher, and when he
came to Sittang they grew hungry at the sight of him
and resolved to eat him. But their efforts to catch
him were in vain, for howsoever they pursued he was
always out of their reach. At last, very weary and
fatigued, they gave up the chase, and asked him how
he had succeeded in escaping them. To which he
replied that he had never moved at a ll! Then he
preached the law to them, to their edification, and in
their new-found zeal they built the pagoda whose name
in the Taking languageis an epitome of the story.
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The name Sittang, or Sit-taung, is associated by its
people with the march of a general of Anawrata, King
of Pagan, who paused here on his way to the conquest
of Thatori, to ask the king for more troops. The
story is trifling, but it shows that the historic march of
the. great king on the Taking capital has never been
forgotten.
The lower base of the pagoda is of hewn laterite ;
its upper arid newer portion is ascribed to a Burmese
governor, and the flight of stairs that leads up its
western face was cut by the British garrison, which
appears to have used the summit as a signalling station.
The view from it embraces the Sittang—or, as it is
called • by the people, the Paung-Laung-^-river, and
beyond it à level plain, slightly forested, which, stretches
away to the low hills near Pegu. In clear weather the
golden spire of the Shway Hmaw Daw Pagoda can be
seen twinkling in the sun. In the west, wooded and
slightly undulating country reaches away .to' the foot
of the Kyaik-ti-yio hill, whose singular pagoda is visible
from here: It is a day’s journey from Sittang, or two
days for slow travellers, old people, and women with
small children. The pagoda festival lasts “ from the
full moon of Tabaung to the full moon of Tagoo,” and
it was to begin within four days of my visit to Sittang,
on February 27th. This, in fact, is the great festival-
season throughout Burma. It is a time of leisure and
of plenty for the country-side the harvest has been
gathered in, and there is little work to be done till the
Setting in of the rains. It is a season therefore of
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