are touchy and vindictive, punishing neglect or discourtesy
with misfortune and ill-luck. No explanation is offered as to the
origin of many Nats, but others, who may be regarded as forming the
second category, are ghosts or ancestral spirits. In northern Burma
Chinese influence encouraged ancestor worship, but apart from this
there is a disposition (equally evident in India) to believe that
violent and uncanny persons and those who meet with a tragic death
become powerful ghosts requiring propitiation. Thirdly, there are Nats
who are at least in part identified with the Indian deities recognized
by early Buddhism. It would seem that the Thirty Seven Nats, described
in a work called the Mahagita Medanigyan, correspond to the Thirty
Three Gods of Buddhist mythology, but that the number has been raised
for unknown reasons to 37.[174] They are spirits of deceased
heroes, and there is nothing unbuddhist in this conception, for the
Pitakas frequently represent deserving persons as being reborn in
the Heaven of the Thirty Three. The chief is Thagya, the Sakra or
Indra of Hindu mythology,[175] but the others are heroes, connected
with five cycles of legends based on a popular and often inaccurate
version of Burmese history.[176]

Besides Thagya Nat we find other Indian figures such as Man Nat (Mara)
and Byamma Nat (Brahma). In diagrams illustrating the Buddhist
cosmology of the Burmans[177] a series of heavens is depicted,
ascending from those of the Four Kings and Thirty Three Gods up to the
Brahma worlds, and each inhabited by Nats according to their degree.
Here the spirits of Burma are marshalled and classified according to
Buddhist system just as were the spirits of India some centuries
before. But neither in ancient India nor in modern Burma have the
devas or Nats anything to do with the serious business of religion.
They have their place in temples as guardian genii and the whole band
may be seen in a shrine adjoining the Shwe-zi-gon Pagoda at Pagan, but
this interferes no more with the supremacy of the Buddha than did the
deputations of spirits who according to the scriptures waited on him.

4

Buddhism is a real force in Burmese life and the pride of the Burmese
people. Every male Burman enters a monastery when he is about 15 for a
short stay. Devout parents send their sons for the four months of
_Was_ (or even for this season during three successive years), but by
the majority a period of from one month to one w