Indian Antiquary Vol 58

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 235

DECEMBER, 1929)
A KACHIN FOREST SHRINE
227
Then there is the peculiar way in which the guardian spirits are regarded with mixed feel. ings. They can give support and safety in all the conditions of life and at the same time are capable of infinite mischief. It is essential to keep them in a good temper and friendly. They are found in endless variety, as everything connected with mankind anrl his environment has its guardian. The customs relating to the worship of guardian Nats of houses, villages, towns, tribes and property, and so on, are many and various, but they all tend to one endpropitiation and self-protection. The effects of the resultant customs have at all times been most serious to the people, human sacrifice and head-hunting being among them. The object of all the forms of sacrifice observable in Burma is the same—to satisfy the cravings of the spirits and to prevent them from "eating out the lives ” of the quick. The principle is to give & small part of the animal or thing sacrificed, usually an article of food, to the Nats, and to devour the rest, or to eat up what has been deposited as an offering.
In 1888 Sir Saint-Hill Eardley-Wilmot gave me a photograph he had taken of a Kachin forest shrine at which the people offered animal sacrifices, chiefly white cocks. As it is a very fine representation of a jungle shrine I now reproduce it in this Journal.
In attempting to arrive at a reason for such a shrine and such rites thereat as above indicated it is necessary to confirm the remarks already made by others of my own in E. R. E. III (17 ff, 8.0. Burma) on the point of the attitude of such a people as the Kachins towards Divinity. We must realise that they have great difficulty in grasping the existence of a single God of the universe: There is no doubt that the idea of a single universal God is foreign to the Indo-Chinese mind as developed in Burma. There is no tendency towards a belief in God, or in idols or priests, as the symbols or interpreters of Divinity, or towards the adoration of stocks and stones.
The nearest approach to an apprehension of the idea of Godhead is among the Kachins, who in one series of legends refer to Chinun Way Shun. He is said to have existed before the formation of the world, and to have created all the Nate. But, under the name Ka, he is aiso the Spirit of the Tilth.
Nevertheless, there has always been much made of the possession by the Karens of traditions concerning God and of ethics of a distinctly Christian type before 1828, when the existing American Baptist missionary influence commenced. The pronounced Christian and Judaistic tone of these traditions has naturally excited much comment, but there can be no doubt that they are imported, probably through early Roman Catholic missionaries about 1740 (Vita di Gian Maria Percoto, 1781). Their strongly Jewish form has given rise to a rather vague conjecture that they were learnt from early Nestorian Christians, during the wanderings of the Karens southwards from their original Indo-Chinese home.
Though they find it difficult to believe in God as that term is understood in Indian and European religions, tho Kachins believe in a human soul (numid) as an independent material entity bound by special attraction to an individual body and giving life to it, and in benevolent spirits. The Kachins say that Shingrawa, the man-creator of the earth, which he shaped with a hammer, is kind and good, and therefore little notice is taken of him, and shrines to him are fow and neglected. This attitude towards benevolent nats is important as explaining the absence of their worship in Burma, and also the statement of most European observers that ali nats and spirits are malevolent, which is not the case. The Southern Chins also have a national spirit, Kozin, who is indifferent. The house-guardian (eing-saung nat) of the Burmans and Talaings is another instance of a spirit who is described as simply indifferent.
Besides Shingrawa, the Kaching recognize as beneficent nats : Sinlap, the giver of wisdom; Jan, the sun ; and Shitta, the moon. These may be worshipped only by the chief once & year or at the periodical national festival (manau), and then without sacrifices. Trikurat, or Kyam, is a gooul spirit of tho forest, who fascinatos tho game which the hunter stalks. He is propitiated by tronding on ashos from the house-hearth on return from a hunting expedition, and sprinkling tho blood of the victim towards the junglo. The Spirit of the Forest