Читать книгу Soo Thah: A Tale of the Making of the Karen Nation - Alonzo Bunker - Страница 6

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THEY named the new baby Soo Thah, which means "Pure Fruit." He was a little brown boy with bright, black eyes and black hair, like the other babies in the village. He was put in an oblong, bamboo basket, swung from the rafters of the house by ropes made from the bark of a tree. This house was in a village in far away Burma, Asia. The rude village was perched on a mountain top overlooking a distant plain; and as far as the eye could reach in every direction were unbroken forests of luxuriant foliage.

The house was like a great nest, made of bamboo and jungle wood tied together with rattan, while the roof was covered with woven grass. There was not a nail in the whole structure. It was built on poles, the floor being quite eight feet above the ground. Under the house were hen-coops and pig-pens, made of logs as a protection against leopards and other wild beasts which abounded in the neighbouring forests.

The new baby had no beautiful dress in which to be presented to admiring relatives. A few dirty rags were his only clothing; and yet he looked as contented and cunning as do most babies. And though born in the jungles among a wild people, he began to speak the same language babies use in more favoured lands.

His parents were very fond of him; yet this might not have been true had the baby been a girl instead of a boy; for heathen people do not often set a high value on girl-babies.

Why they named him "Pure Fruit" is doubtful. Perhaps it was because he "looked good enough to eat." Any way, that was his name even when he became a famous preacher of the "glad tidings," and a missionary to his own people.

When Soo Thah was only a few days old his grandmother came to see him. She was bent and shrivelled, looking very much as witches have been pictured; but she thought she knew all about taking care of children. "This is a pretty child," said she. "He must be kept out of the way of nats, or they will surely seize his Kala, and then he will sicken and die."

NATIVE HOUSE.

These nats remind one of the wicked spirits which our Lord called demons, and in heathen belief they seem to answer to the latter. Both the Hillmen and the worshippers of idols on the plains of Burma believe in the existence of nats, the former calling them nahs. They also believe that everything, animate and inanimate, has a spirit, which they call Kala, or La, and that these spirits, when separated from the body, live in the spirit country. But we shall hear more of these later.

Now the Kala is the food which the nats most crave. Accordingly they go about "seeking whom they may devour,"--the Kala of things, or of persons. When they succeed in seizing it, they bear it away from its body, and its owner at once becomes ill, and will surely die if the Kala is not enticed back again. Thus the elders teach. Therefore when the grandmother saw such a winsome child, she was alarmed, lest nats should seize its Kala, and so cause the baby's death.

She accordingly prepared an offering for the nats of the house, and placed it on the altar in the corner devoted to these evil spirits. Then taking the child in her arms she offered her prayers and pronounced her blessing, after which she tied scarlet strings around its little wrists, neck and loins. The offering was to satisfy the hunger of the nats, so that they would not pry about the house and discover the baby. If, however, this proved unavailing, the scarlet strings were intended to dazzle the nat's eyes, and so prevent him from seizing Soo Thah's Kala. In like manner travellers in the jungles, where tigers abound, are wont to weave bamboo strips into a square, with large holes in it, and hang this on the lower limbs of a tree near their camp, believing that the tiger's eyes will be dazzled when seeing this device, and so be frightened away.

When the old woman had done all this, she called the father and told him he must never leave the house early in the morning or late at night, as the nats were then abroad in greater numbers than at other times, and they might follow him when he returned home, and so find Soo Thah. Besides, when any one came up into the house, he must not go near the baby for some time, lest a nat might be following him.

The grandmother then had the father make a new ladder by which to enter and leave the house, and new water-buckets and mats of bamboo. He must also obtain new chatties, or cooking-pots, and buy a new knife for preparing their food--all of which was done by way of precaution. For the same reason when a person dies, the children of the family must have their faces blackened, or the Kala of the deceased may entice those of the children away, with the inevitable result.

When Soo Thah was a few weeks old, his father made a feast, to which he called all the neighbours. During the feast he produced with some ceremony a small hoe, and, placing the baby's tiny hand on its handle, struck the ground three times with it, to show that the child was devoted to the tilling of the soil, and to insure his growing up to be a diligent and thrifty man.

His mother in her constant fear, remembering what the grandmother had said about the nats, had secured at some trouble and expense a tiger's tooth and a few hairs from the tiger's tail, and a bear's claw. These, together with some magic roots and nuts, she had woven into a necklace for him to wear as a talisman. In fact both father and mother had very little rest from anxiety about their children while they were growing up. Any sickness from lack of proper clothing, or suitable food, was at once charged to the presence of nats; and instead of caring for the child's body the parents in their ignorance did all in their power to conciliate the dreaded enemy. Without any knowledge of the laws of health, of sickness or medicine on the part of the parents and being slaves to their miserable superstition concerning the nats, what wonder that most of the little folk die very young!