d and loved. There is no one beside him in the heart of the
people. If you would know what a Burman would be, see what a monk is:
that is his ideal. But it is a very difficult ideal. The Burman is very
fond of life, very full of life, delighting in the joy of existence,
brimming over with vitality, with humour, with merriment. They are a
young people, in the full flush of early nationhood. To them of all
people the restraints of a monk's life must be terrible and hard to
maintain. And because it is so, because they all know how hard it is to
do right, and because the monks do right, they honour them, and they
know they deserve honour. Remember that all these people have been monks
themselves at one time or other; they know how hard the rules are, they
know how well they are observed. They are reverencing what they
thoroughly understand; they have seen their monkhood from the inside;
their reverence is the outcome of a very real knowledge.

Of the internal management of the monkhood I have but little to say.
There is the Thathanabaing, who is the head of the community; there are
under him Gaing-oks, who each have charge of a district; each Gaing-ok
has an assistant, 'a prop,' called Gaing-dauk; and there are the heads
of monasteries. The Thathanabaing is chosen by the heads of the
monasteries, and appoints his Gaing-oks and Gaing-dauks. There is no
complication about it. Usually any serious dispute is decided by a court
of three or four heads of monasteries, presided over by the Gaing-ok.
But note this: no monk can be tried by any ecclesiastical court without
his consent. Each monastery is self-governing; no monk can be called to
account by any Gaing-ok or Gaing-dauk unless he consents. The discipline
is voluntary entirely. There are no punishments by law for disobedience
of an ecclesiastical court. A monk cannot be unfrocked by his fellows.

Therefore, it would seem that there would be no check over abuses, that
monks could do as they liked, that irregularities could creep in, and
that, in fact, there is nothing to prevent a monastery becoming a
disgrace. This would be a great mistake. It must never be forgotten that
monks are dependent on their village for everything--food and clothes,
and even the monastery itself. Do not imagine that the villagers would
allow their monks, their 'great glories,' to become a scandal to them.
The supervision exercised by the people over their monks is most
stringent. As long as the monk