The Shway Dagohn by Esther Singleton
"The Shway Dagohn," as presented in Esther Singleton's anthology *Turrets, Towers, and Temples* (1898), is a descriptive essay by Gwendolin Trench Gascoigne, excerpted from her book *Among Pagodas and Fair Ladies* (London, 1896), devoted to the great Golden Pagoda of Rangoon, Burma — known today as the Shwedagon Pagoda. Gascoigne opens with a survey of the structure's physical grandeur. The pagoda rises 370 feet, tapering from a wide base to its crowning feature, the *Htee* — an umbrella-shaped golden spire encrusted with precious stones and hung with small jewelled bells whose tinkling in the breeze she describes as producing the tenderest and most mystic of melodies. This *Htee* was the gift of King Mindohn-Min at an estimated cost of fifty thousand pounds. The pagoda's religious significance is equally immense: tradition holds it was first erected in 588 B.C., though its original height was a mere twenty-seven feet, and it has been encased in successive layers of brick over the centuries to reach its present monumental scale. The structure is said to enshrine the drinking cup, robe, and staff of three earlier Buddhas, as well as eight sacred hairs of the historical Buddha, making it so holy that pilgrims travel to it from Siam and even Korea. Gascoigne then renders the experience of approaching and ascending the pagoda. She advises viewing it at dawn, when the crystal morning air and the first rays of the Eastern sun cause the golden surface to scintillate like a myriad of diamonds, and the structure, framed by tropical foliage on the final spur of the Pegu Hills, strikes the observer dumb with reverence. The southern stairway is the principal entrance, guarded at its base by two colossal plastered brick lions whose purpose is to repel nats — evil spirits — from the sacred precincts. The stairway ascends beneath a series of elaborately carved teak roofs supported by wood and masonry pillars, with frescoes of the Buddha painted on the ceilings overhead. The emotional texture of the approach is mixed. The first sight of the entrance is gorgeous, full of Eastern colour and charm, but almost immediately the visitor encounters rows of lepers lining the way, each extending a tin vessel for alms with maimed and distorted hands. Gascoigne dwells on this contrast — the horror and pity evoked by leprosy set against the beauty of the shrine — and meditates briefly on the question of why Providence permits such suffering, before admiration of the pagoda's nearness overtakes every other feeling. Along the steps on either side are small stalls selling offerings: flowers of every shade, fruit, candles, paper devices, flags, and gold leaf for devotees to press upon the pagoda surface as an act of merit. At a pagoda feast, the steps are crowded with pilgrims from across the country. Gascoigne paints a vivid scene: laughing young women in brilliant silk *tamehns* with flowers coquettishly arranged in their hair; young men in *pasohs* of indescribable hues following close behind bearing fruit and flowers for Buddha; yellow-robed monks stealing glances at the young women despite the convention of shading their eyes with lotus-shaped fans; white-robed nuns ascending wearily in long flowing garments with cropped hair; small children clutching bright flowers and fruit. The play of light and shadow — a sunbeam falling on a monk's yellow robes and turning silk into luminous colour — is rendered as a scene of almost painterly beauty. At the summit, the visitor emerges onto a broad open paved platform on which the great pagoda rises as if straining toward heaven, surrounded by a galaxy of smaller pagodas clustered around it like attendants around a high priest. Around these stand carved kneeling elephants and deep urn-shaped vessels to receive food offerings. Crows and pariah dogs devour the offerings freely, which does not trouble the givers — feeding any animal is counted an act of merit, and the accumulation of merit across incarnations is the central preoccupation of Burman religious life. Draped around the smaller golden pagodas and the base of the large one are pieces of woven silk, offerings from women, each completed in a single unbroken night of labour. The outer circle of the platform is ringed with shrines housing hundreds of Buddha images in every size — standing, seated, reclining — rendered in brass, wood, stone, and marble. The cast of features is always the same: a placid, amiable, benign countenance with notably long earlobes, considered in Burma a mark of great truthfulness. Nearly all images are sheltered by the royal white umbrella, an emblem formerly reserved in Burma for the Buddha, the king, and the lord white elephant alone. The essay is at once travelogue, architectural description, and meditation on the intersection of beauty, suffering, religious devotion, and cultural difference, presented through the perspective of a late-Victorian British observer with genuine aesthetic responsiveness and a mixture of sympathy and colonial distance. Sources: - [Turrets, Towers, and Temples | Project Gutenberg](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/72946/72946-h/72946-h.htm)
By Esther Singleton · First published 1901 · Genre: Travel Writing, Descriptive Essay, Cultural Commentary