Indian Antiquary Vol 52

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Stephen Meredyth Edwardes, Krishnaswami Aiyangar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 371

DECAMBER, 1923) A PROTECTIVE CHARM FROM THE ROYAL PALACE AT MANDALAY 351
A PROTECTIVE CHARM FROM THE ROYAL PALACE AT MANDALAY.
BY SIR RICHARD C. TEMPLE, Bt. The Third Burmese War (1885-1889) broke out towards the ond of 1885, and what remained of the Burmese Empire was annexed by the British Crown on 1st January 1886. This last political act necessitated many changes in the Royal Palace at Mandalay, its capital. With those I was intimately concerned in my official capacity thero for threo years from 1887 to 1889, both years inclusive. The Palace had to be transformed from a typical mediæval Far Eastern stockaded enclosure of 200 acres into the Head Quarters of a XIXth Century local administration of the British type, while the newly conquered country, henceforth to be known as Upper Burma, was being organised as a British Indian Province.
As the country became pacified and the need for special protection no longer prossing, the former walled Royal City of Mandalay of 1,000 acres, of which the Palace formed the centre, was evacuated of its 65,000 inhabitants--a long and complicated operation put into my hands. This proceeding was necessary in order to form a Cantonment, and as the fashion then was, a City of Refuge for British troops and residents : and then the sanitation of the Palace stockaded enclosure became a matter of paramount importance. This in its turn necessitated inter alia the exposing to the open air of its crowdod buildings and of the area on which they stood as far as possible, an oporation involving the removal of the mighty palisade surrounding it. The palisade consisted of solid teak posts twelve inches in diameter and some twelve feet high, a few only on either side the Eastern gato being preserved to show what the palisade had been like. All the gates with their solid brick pillars wero destroyed.
In 1889 the last gato loft-the Eastern Gate-was dismantled, and as I had information that the "Foundation Stone" of the Palace had been deposited in one of its brick pillars, I gave instructions that if anything of the kind was discovered, information was to be given me before it was removed or tampered with. I well remember an agitated Burmese official coming running to me in my quarters in the Palace (marked R on Plan attached) not far from the Gate, to tell me that the stone" had been found. I went at once and found it in situ, embedded about four-and-a-half feet from the ground in the right hand pillar (as one left the Palace) of the inner approach to the East Gate, at the spot marked with a cross in the Plan. The “stone” consisted of an inscribed stone coffer with a stone cover about eighteen inches square and twelve inches deep, hollowod out to contain a small thin silver plate about eight inches square. On taking off the lid or cover it was found that on the silver plate was lightly engraved a charm for the protection of the Palace (vide Plates of "The Charm "attached).
It was one of many about the Palace, and subsequently to its discovery a MS. book was found there, showing that a great number of such protective charms were placed about it. The site of each was explained in the MS., with the aid of which several of them were brought to light. I remom ber seeing the book and examining it, and afterwards assisting in the discovery of some of the charms, but neither the book nor the charms were ever in my possession and I do not remember what became of them.
A similar inscribed stone coffer was found in the left hand pillar of the same gate, also four-and-a-half feet from the ground, but there was neither silver plate nor charm in it.
The inscriptions on the stones were in modern Burmese ; vide facsimiles on Plates A and B taken from estampages made by myself at the time. Mandalay was founded by King Mindon Min in 1857 and the Palace was completed in 1858, so it may be presumed that the right-hand stone coffer and its contents were about thirty years old when discovered.