Anna and the King of Siam

by Margaret Landon

  “Of course not. That’s just what St. Paul means—the motive consecrates the deed.”

  “But all men are not fortified with self-control which shall fit them for great exemplars, and of many who have appeared in this character, if strict inquiry be made, their virtue would be found to proceed from other than a true and pure spirit. Sometimes it is indolence, sometimes restlessness, sometimes vanity impatient for gratification, and rushing to assume the part of humility by purpose of self-delusion.

  “No,” the King continued, taking several long strides and warming to his subject. “St. Paul in this chapter,” he declaimed as from a pulpit, “evidently and strongly applies the Buddhist word maitri—or maikree, as pronounced by some Sanskrit scholars—and explains it through Buddhist’s custom of giving the body to be burned, which was practiced centuries before Christian era, and is found unchanged in parts of China, Ceylon, and Siam to this day. Giving the body to be burned has ever been considered by devout Buddhists the most exalted act of self-abnegation. To give all one’s goods to feed the poor is common in this country with princes and people, who often keep nothing back, not even one cowrie shell to provide for themselves a handful of rice. But then, fear of starvation or death by hunger is unknown in Buddhist country.”

  He fell to musing as he paced. “I know a man of royal descent, and once possessed of untold riches. In his youth he felt such pity for poor and old and sick, and such as were troubled and sorrowful, that he became melancholy, and after spending several years by the continual relief of the needy and helpless, he, in a moment, gave all his good, in a word ALL, ‘to feed the poor.’ This man had never heard of St. Paul or his writing, but he knows and tried to comprehend in its fullness the Buddhist word maitri.

  “At thirty he became a priest. For five years he toiled as a gardener. For that was occupation he preferred, because in pursuit of it he learned much useful knowledge of medicinal properties of plant, and became a ready physician to who could not pay for healing. But he could not rest content with so imperfect a life, while the way to perfect knowledge of excellence, truth, and charity remained open to him, so he became a priest. This happened before I was born, sixty-five years ago. Now he is ninety-five years old, and I fear has not yet found the truth and excellence he has been in search thereof so long.”

  The King’s face was infinitely sad. “But I know no greater man than he,” he went on. “He is great in the Christian sense, loving, pitiful, forbearing, pure. Once when he was a gardener, he was robbed of his few and poor tools by one who had been befriended by him in multiple ways. Some time after that the King met him and inquired of his necessities. He said he needed tools for his gardening. A great abundance of such was sent him, and immediately he shared all with neighbors, taking care to send the most and best to the man who had robbed him.

  “Of what little remained to him, he gave freely to whoever lacked. Not his own but another’s want, were his sole argument in asking or bestowing—not loving life, nor fearing death, desiring nothing the world can give, beyond the peace of a beautiful spirit. This man is now a high priest. He would, without so much as a thought of shrinking, give his body to be burned, alive or dead, if by so doing he might obtain one glimpse of eternal truth or save one soul from death or sorrow.”

  The conversation came back to Anna vividly as she sat in the temple yard. It was this man, then, who was dying. His life had spanned almost a century. Three years before he was born, Siam had fallen to Burma and all the treasure and beauty of Ayuthia had been burned. He had seen the city of Thonburi rise, seen the Chao Tak go mad and die, seen the Chakri kings build the new capital at Bangkok, seen four of the kings of that dynasty rule, seen the coming of the Europeans whose influence was growing stronger and stronger. What were his thoughts this last day of his life?

  At length a young man appeared in the door above her and beckoned. He was robed in white and he bore in one hand a lighted taper and in the other a lily. She followed him through the long, low passages that separated cells of priests. The sound of many voices chanting the hymns of the Buddhist liturgy fell on her ear. The darkness, the loneliness, the measured monotone, all combined to produce in her—matter-of-fact person that she prided herself on being—an excitement close to awe.

  As the page came to the threshold of one of the cells he whispered to her in a tone of entreaty to take off her shoes. This she did quickly. At the same moment he prostrated himself with abject humility before a low doorway. Anna slipped past him and stooped to scan curiously the scene within the cell. There sat the King, cross-legged on the floor. At a sign from him she bent and entered to take a place beside him.

  On a rude pallet, about six and a half feet long and not more than three feet wide, with a bare block of wood for a pillow, lay the dying priest. A simple garment of faded yellow covered him. His hands were folded on his breast. His head was bald, and the few blanched hairs that might have remained to fringe his sunken temples had been carefully shorn. His eyebrows, too, were closely shaven. His feet were bare and exposed. His eyes were fixed, not in the vacant stare of death, but with solemn contemplation upward. No sign of disquiet was there, no suggestion of pain or trouble. Anna was startled and puzzled. Was he then really dying?

  Her entrance and approach made no change in him. In his attitude and expression she saw only sublime reverence, repose, absorption. He seemed to be communing with a spiritual presence. At his right was a dim taper in a golden candlestick, and on his left a golden vase filled with white lilies, freshly gathered. These were the offerings of the King. One of the lilies had been laid on his breast, and contrasted with the faded yellow of his robe. Just over his heart lay a coil of unspun cotton thread, divided into seventy-seven filaments, and distributed to the hands of the priests. Closely seated, they filled the cell so that none could have moved without difficulty. From time to time one or another of the solemn company raised his voice in a chant and all the rest responded in unison.

  “Sang-khang sara nang gach cha mi.” (Thou Excellence of Perfection, I take refuge in thee.)

  And the choir responded, “Nama Pootho sang-khang sara nang gach cha mi.” (Thou who art called Buddha, I take refuge in thee.)

  “Tuti ampi sang-khang sara nang gach cha mi.” (Thou Holy One, I take refuge in thee.)

  And again the response, “Te satiya sang-kang sara nang gach cha mi.” (Thou Truth, I take refuge in thee.)

  As the familiar words reached him a flickering smile lighted the sallow face of the dying priest with a mild visible radiance. The rapture of that look, which seemed to overtake the infinite, was almost too holy to gaze on. Anna shut her eyes in awe. Riches, station, honor, kindred—he had resigned them all more than half a century since, in his love for the poor and his longing for truth. Here was none of the vagueness or incoherence of a wandering, delirious death. He was going to his clear eternal calm. With a smile of perfect peace he spoke: “To Your Majesty, I commend the poor. And this that remains of me I give to be burned.” That, his last gift, was his all.

  Gradually his breathing became more laborious, and turning with infinite effort toward the King he said tranquilly, “Athamaphap cha pai diau-ni.” (I am going now.)

  Instantly the priests took up a loud chant, “Phra Arahan sang-khang sara nang gach cha mi.” (Thou Sacred One, I take refuge in thee.)

  A few minutes more and the spirit of the high priest had breathed itself away. The eyes were opened and fixed, the hands clasped, the expression sweetly content. Anna’s eyes and heart were full of tears, but she was strangely comforted, strangely at peace, as she had not been for months in the tumult of the Palace.

  On the afternoon of the next day she went, at the King’s command, to the temple of Wat Saket, where the high priest’s will was to be carried out. Anna followed the King’s order with much reluctance. There was no place to which she had less inclination to go. It was here that Tuptim and Phra Palat had been burned alive, and here that the King’s memorial to them had been erected. The
temple was outside the city wall. The buildings and grounds were extensive, for it was the national burning-ground of the dead. Within the mysterious precincts was performed the Buddhist rite of cremation, under circumstances that were horrible to the Western mind. A broad canal surrounded the temple and yards. Not only the dead, but also the living had often been burned here. Into the canal at the dark of the moon unfortunate wretches who had dared to oppose the San Luang, the secret inquisition, had been thrown.

  None but the initiated dared to approach these grounds after sunset, so universal and profound was the horror the place inspired. It was frightful and offensive to Anna’s eyes as she entered it, for the vows of the dead, however ghoulish and monstrous, were faithfully consummated here. The walls were hung with human skeletons, the ground strewn with skulls. Here were scraped together the horrible fragments of those who had bequeathed their carcasses to the hungry curs and vultures that hovered and snarled and tore at the rotting human flesh. The half-picked bones were gathered and burned by the outcast keepers of the temple, who were not rated so high as priests. They received from relatives of the dead a small fee for this final service. In the midst of the foul incense of burning flesh and bones, which never left the place, the priests watched and prayed night and day for the regeneration of mankind. So the Buddhist vow was fulfilled, and the Buddhist deed of merit accomplished.

  Fortified with smelling salts and many handkerchiefs and dressed carefully in mourning white, Anna arrived. The men hired to do the dreadful offices upon the dead had already cut off all the flesh and flung it to the dogs that haunted the monstrous human garbage-field. She was thankful to have been spared that much. The bones and adhering flesh had been placed in an urn upon the funeral pyre. This was a broad platform with four high posts, crowned by a canopy not unlike the umbrellas which were placed above the King’s throne and carried over him in procession.

  One by one the vast throng that had gathered lighted tapers and joss sticks and set them against the pyre. Then the great fire of wood was ignited and several priests stood at hand to sprinkle it with water as it roared skyward. It was fully three hours before the burning was finished. When at last the ashes were gathered into an earthen pot to be scattered in the little gardens of peasants too poor to afford manure, Anna was faint from the nauseous odor and the hideous sights around her. All that was left now of the great man was the remembrance of a look.

  “This,” said the King, who had come close to her, “is to give one’s body to be burned. This is what your St. Paul had in mind, this custom of our Buddhist ancestors, this complete self-abnegation in life and death, when he said, ‘… though I give my body to be burned, and have not maitri, it profiteth me nothing.’”

  Sickened and sorrowful she turned away.

  33

  THE PRINCE’S TONSURE

  Anna was very conscious during the last months of 1865 that Prince Chulalongkorn was growing up. His wrists hung out of his jacket. The roundness of his face had disappeared, and the childish droop of his mouth was gone. He was much taller than he had been and more slender. The little boy she had begun to teach in 1862 was turning into a man.

  The whole Palace was seething with preparations for his coming tonsure. The Prince was now thirteen and would soon enter the novitiate of the priesthood, since this event must take place before a boy was fourteen. At that time his hair and eyebrows would be shaved in accordance with Buddhist custom. It was therefore important that the long lock of hair which had been reserved uncut on the top of his head since infancy should be removed according to the Brahmin rite of Sokan before it was less ceremoniously shaved.

  From the day the Prince was born, King Mongkut had been eager to settle the succession upon him. According to the laws of the country the final choice of each new monarch rested with the Senabodi. King Mongkut had always been afraid that the council would choose his younger brother, the Second King, to succeed him rather than Prince Chulalongkorn, since there was a strong prejudice against boy kings, few of whom survived the Palace intrigues that surrounded them. He could proceed to his goal only by indirection. He knew very well that his own elevation to the throne had thwarted the ambitions of the Usurper, who also had wanted a favorite son to succeed him. Mongkut was afraid for Chulalongkorn, afraid that his own ambitions might be thwarted in the same way. Therefore he did what he could to elevate the prince in the estimation of the nobility and the people. He even talked with the Kralahome about abdicating in favor of Chulalongkorn when the boy was a little older, and of directing his first steps in the kingship from a palace he planned to build adjacent to the Royal Palace.

  Now he arranged the most elaborate tonsure he could devise, knowing that ceremonies of this sort enhanced the importance of the prince in the eyes of the whole nation. For the first time in recorded Siamese history he himself, the King, prepared to play the role of Siva, from whose tonsure of his son Ganesa the rite of Sokan was supposed to have been derived. This alone would greatly increase the significance of the ceremony and would proclaim to the kingdom as nothing else could the King’s desire for his son.

  The King had explored the records of Siam and Cambodia and had compiled a detailed description of a curious procession that had attended a certain prince of Siam centuries before on the occasion of his tonsure. His Majesty had decided to conduct Chulalongkorn’s tonsure with the same display, only more elaborate and costly. There would be a pageant, borrowed partly from the Ramayana and partly from the ritual of the kings of Cambodia. The King had had the ancient narrative poem Kailasa adapted for the occasion.

  The whole royal establishment had been set in motion. About nine thousand young women, among them the most beautiful of the concubines, were cast for parts. Boys and girls of good family were brought from all quarters of the kingdom to assist in the mammoth spectacle. So intricate were the preparations that school suffered. Regular studies had to be abandoned and in their place were rehearsals of singing, dancing, recitation, and pantomime.

  An artificial hill called Mount Kailasa was erected in the center of the Palace gardens. It was fifty feet high and had a circumference at the base of not less than three hundred feet. The framework was teakwood, shaped to describe peaks, valleys, clefts, and caves, covered with bamboo wattling. Over this was laid paper of metallic appearance, so that parts of the mountain seemed made of iron, other parts of copper, brass, tin, silver, or gold. On the summit a golden temple was erected and richly hung with tapestries, its spire reaching another thirty feet into the air. Two revolving silver wheels attached to mirrors were over the doors of the temple on the east and west, representing the sun and the moon.

  The cardinal points of the hill were guarded by a white elephant, a sacred bull, a horse, and a lion. These figures were mechanized so that they turned on pivots. At a certain point in the rite they were to be brought together and a rain of sacred water from the Brahmaputra was to be showered from their mouths on the prince as he stood in a marble basin. Summonses were sent to the high officials in each province and feudal state to attend the ceremonies. Priests from all over the kingdom were invited to participate. Every nation was to be represented in the grand procession.

  On New Year’s Eve—December 31, 1865—selected monks assembled in the Dusit Maha Prasat to chant appropriate texts, while the Brahmans performed their own peculiar rites in a specially erected chapel. On each of the three preliminary days the procedure was the same. The mornings were devoted to religious services by the two sets of priests. In the afternoon the prince was carried on a palanquin by a long and roundabout route through the Palace grounds to the Dusit Maha Prasat. Here the King awaited him and together they made offerings of tapers and incense before the images. Then in the same palanquin both King and prince returned over the same route.

  The procession was exactly as the King had directed. First came the bearers of gold umbrellas, fans, and great golden sunshades; then four hundred Amazons arrayed in green and gold with their armor. Behind these walked twel
ve girls in cloth of gold, with fantastic headgear adorned with precious stones, who danced to the gentle monotonous movement of tabors. In the center of this group moved the three loveliest girls, one of whom held a peacock’s tail, and the others carried two branches of gold and silver, sparkling with leaves and rare flowers. The girls were guarded by two duennas on either side.

  After them stalked a dignified group of court Brahmans, bearing golden bowls filled with roasted rice, which they scattered on either side as emblems of plenty. Another group of Brahmans followed with tabors which they rattled as they moved along. Then came two young nobles, splendidly robed, who bore golden cages, lotus-shaped, in which were birds of paradise, the sweetness of whose song is supposed to entrance even beasts of prey. After them marched the sons of the nobles, burdened down with the gold ornaments they wore. Next was the King’s Japanese bodyguard in terrifying horned masks, painted armor, and striped pantaloons; then another line of boys representing the natives of India in costume, Malayan boys in typical dress, Chinese and Siamese boys in English dress; and finally the King’s infantry, headed by a company in European uniforms.

  Outside the line of this long procession marched five thousand men in rose-colored robes with tapering caps, reminiscent of dunce caps. They represented guardian angels attending upon the different nations of the world. Then came bands of musicians dressed in scarlet, imitating the cries of birds, the sound of falling fruit, and the murmur of distant waters in the imaginary forest they were supposed to traverse on their way to the sacred mountain.

  At this point came the prince himself, borne in the gold palanquin of state, very serious of face and dignified of bearing. He was dressed in handsome robes of white, richly embroidered with gold. On his head was a small jeweled coronet, a miniature of the crown worn by his father on state occasions. His arms and legs were weighted with heavy gold bracelets.