From the Chinaman’s we go on to the house of a
painter, in a less delectable quarter of the town, but
find the good man is away at a kyaung, gilding and
carving. Amongst the wooden piles, under the floor
of his house, is his workshop, littered with samples of
his craft: gilt wooden figures of mythological beings ;
paintings of the zats being made for an approaching
Phongyi byan ; and pencil drawings of arabesque design.
Rude as are the details, there is about this workshop
amongst the piles the indefinable air of an atelier;
somewhat that distinguishes it from a place of purely
material preoccupations.
From here to the monastery on the hill, whose
gilded spire is conspicuous in any panorama of the
town, there is a steep ascent up a long flight of stairs.
A colossus of Buddha, under a temporary shelter in
the open air, is approaching completion. His body is
of brass, his head of gold and silver. The workmen
standing on the soles of the Buddha’s feet, or seated
behind him filing and polishing his brazen limbs, , look
very little beside him. Some brass shavings are being
molten over a green fire with the aid of a pair of ingenious
bellows. They consist of two cylinders of bamboo,
which stand upright from the earth, and two more,
scarcely an inch wide, connected with these, but leading
along the surface of the ground to the lip of the furnace.
Two light pistons of bamboo, garnished with red cocks’
feathers, move in the upright cylinders with the least
pressure of the hand, and as they move, drive a fierce
current of air through the long cylinders.
508
The Abbot is busy with his breakfast in a corner
of the new kyaung where the glass and gold mosaic
flames in many colours in the morning sun. His food,
which presents an appearance of luxurious variety, has
just been brought to him by two lads, in a red basket
slung from a gilded pole. A pale woman, of saintly
mien, sits reverently in the doorway, glad to think that
she is earning merit for the hereafter by ministering
to his wants, while the carnal old man, fat with ease
and good living, sits on his dais by the window, and
moves slowly through his meal.
From the windows of a neighbouring structure,
where the gilt catafalque containing thé bones of' his
predecessor, awaiting cremation, towers up to the roof,
there is. a view of tropical richness and beauty. The
monastery is built 011 an eminence, whose eastern slope
is laid out in terraced gardens and orchards crowded
with palms and jack-trees, durians, mangosteens,
Liberian coffee, and many flowers. Through the interspaces
of the lustrous foliage, there are glimpses of
blue hills and monastery spires,; a picture of intricate
beauty. Adjoining the catafalque, there is a chapel,
with golden doors, through whose bars there is visible
an interior of barbaric splendour. In the centre a
colossal figure of the Buddha sits under glittering
umbrellas, and on three sides along the walls there are
rows qf golden figures. The light, pouring in through
stained-glass windows, gleams on these figures, and fills
the spacious room with a haze of gold. Outside in
thé open ante-room, the white walls are frescoed with
509.