Closely connected with the idea of sacrifice is the deification, or at least promotion to the rank of spirit with power over men, of those who have died a violent death; and especially of those who have been put to death by rulers, not in order to raise up guardian spirits, but to serve their own end, or what they believe to be those of the community. Within this category fall the greatest of the Burman national gods,—the Blacksmith of Tagaung and the Brothers of Taungbyôn.
The Blacksmith has already been referred to as the divinity who watches over every Burman household. As a man he was called Maung Tin Dè; as a spirit, the Măhagiri Nat, or Min Magăyi. According to the legend as told me, he was a man of prodigious strength, and when he struck his anvil the whole city shook. This offended the king, who ordered his arrest. Maung Tin Dè fled to the hills, and the king sent for his sister Saw Mè Ya, and, making her his queen, induced the blacksmith to return, and then ordered him to be burnt alive in a champac-tree. His sister threw herself into the flames, and became the Taungdyiyin Nat. The story as told in the Upper Burma Gazetteer[1] adds that the two heads were taken out uninjured. The spirits thereafter abode in the tree, and ate anyone who came near. The king, therefore, had the tree uprooted and thrown into the river. It floated down to the royal city of Păgan, whose king, to prevent similar harm to his people, gave the spirits a temple on the great lone mountain of Pôppa, visible from the city. An annual festival was held in their honour, and until the sixteenth century, when the practice was suppressed, oxen and buffaloes were sacrificed to them. A coconut, surmounted by a piece of red cloth, is still hung in every Burman house as an offering to the spirit of Maung Tin Dè.
A version of the Blacksmith legend differing altogether from the ordinary one is worth recording, as it was told
- ↑ Part i., vol. ii. p. 19.
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