AND particularly about the Bassein Pwos. They used to be written Pghos, but neither that nor Pwos is quite right, for no letters in our alphabet will just fit the native term. They differ in dialect from all other Karen tribes, and to some extent also from each other, as locality varies. They are found mostly in Burmah, though they are said to extend also into the country on the Siamese border. A gentleman connected with the English Forest Department in Burmah—Burmah is, of course, under the sway of Queen Victoria—told me several years ago that he had followed them for seven hundred miles down the interior of Tenasserim, the long and narrow extension of Burmah down toward Malacca. However this may be, it is well ascertained that there is a large mass of Pwo Karens lying in the interior, to the east and southeast of Moulmein, and it is painful to be obliged to add that no work for Christ has as yet been done among them. Father Brayton, our veteran worker among the Pwos for the last fifty-five years, saw something of them many years ago. The old man has long been calling for a family from America to go and take up life among them, and I cannot write this without a prayer that the eye of their future missionary may rest upon it.
Like other Karen tribes, the Pwos have been wonderfully prepared for the gospel by their singular traditions handed down from their forefathers. These said in substance: "In olden times we had the word of God, but lost it in time of famine. Presently our younger brother, a white man, will come in a ship from the West, and will bring it again." Often the writer has heard the native Christian preachers appeal to this tradition as pointing to the American missionaries. Their traditions of the creation, Eden, and the fall, are mysteriously parallel with the Christian Scriptures. The comparatively small numerical results which have been attained among this people are chiefly due to the smallness of the mission force which has been employed among them.
In a lesser degree it is due also to the fact that they, most of all the Karen tribes, have been attracted by the Buddhism of the Burmese, and not a few Pwo villages have their Buddhist monasteries, and support Burmans as their priests. The people as a whole are, like other Karens, demon worshipers, or rather demon fearers. Practically one might sum it up thus: There is somewhere a God, but he is good and will not hurt us, and therefore we need pay him no attention; but the streams and the trees and the fields and the hills are full of malignant spirits, from whom our sorrows come, and them we must propitiate. It is a great day when the head of a heathen household hands over to a Christian preacher the common old junk bottle which he has used, in his propitiatory feasts, and which he holds eminently sacred. We have a hymn and an address and a prayer in view of the magnitude of the occasion.
God seems to have put the work for the Pwos, as for most other Karen tribes, chiefly into the hands of the American Baptists. We have now two central Pwo stations, the one covering the Rangoon-Maubin field, and the other the Bassein district. The first, in charge of Rev. Walter Bushell, has seventeen churches with seven hundred and fifty members, and the Bassein field twenty-nine churches with a membership of about fifteen hundred. Besides these there are several hundreds of Pwos connected with the Karen missions at Henthada, Moulmein, and Tavoy, so that there are probably in all some twenty-eight hundred Pwo brethren and sisters in Christ. Of course these represent three or four times that number of adherents. The work in the Bassein district was begun in 1854 by Brother H. L. Van Meter, who labored ardently until his death, in 1871. His faithful wife followed a year later. Rev. S. T. Goodell, and later Rev. J. T. Elwell, were, with their wives, in charge of the field, and continued the laying of broad foundations of self-help among the disciples gathered. Both these brethren have gone to their rest. The present writer and wife succeeded to the work in 1884. Misses Higby, Tschirch, and Black are also connected with this mission. The people for whom this Bassein branch labors number perhaps fifty thousand. The entire Bible has been translated into the Pwo language under the superintendence of "Father" Brayton, now past eighty.
The first meeting among the Pwos that the writer was ever privileged to attend—in January, 1884—was the praise meeting of all Christian Pwodom, held at the neat village of Thayagone, to celebrate the completion of this work. I remember old pastor Moe Coo, the leading spirit of the Bassein association, pleading at that meeting that every Pwo Christian possess himself of a copy.
The deepest conviction, except one, that my missionary life has wrought into me is that all men are brothers, not simply in the judgment of charity, but as per the facts of the case. People have been surprised when I have said to them that I have worked among the Pwos for months at a time without the thought ever crossing my mind that they are of a different race from myself. Once in a while it flashes over me, Why, these people are Karens! Now this is not because I carry a tomahawk and thirst for blood, but because I really cannot see much difference between a Pwo Christian in a jungle in Burmah and a Christian at home. They dress differently, of course, and their habits of thought differ in some marked particulars, but for the most part they live in the same spiritual latitudes.
I have in mind two of the former pupils of our school, Myat San and his gentle wife, Nahn Yeng. The former spent four years as a missionary among the Karens of Northern Siam, in the vicinity of Lakon. To reach the scene of this new work required a journey of75a month on foot across the mountains, and by boat along the streams. Myat San, after his four years of work, returned to Bassein on furlough, and nearly three years ago was married to Nahn Yeng, to whom he had been for several years engaged. How well I remember this girl, her patient, never-varying sweetness and earnestness of character, her searching of the Scriptures, her constant watchcare over her younger brother and sister in school with her, her natural refinement, and the sweet face which mirrored her heart within! After the wedding in our large school building, the young couple set their faces toward Siam, but not until rumors of war and the gathering of dacoits, or banditti, along their route had reached them. Her husband wished Nahn Yeng to remain behind rather than risk the dangers of the journey, but she insisted on sharing them with him. They left us in March, 1890. For nearly two years no tidings came from them, except that she had been very ill with fever the early part of the way. Presently came inquiries from the little flock in Siam as to why their missionaries had not returned to them. At length it transpired that they, together with three of the converts from Siam who accompanied them, had been cruelly massacred by the Shan men whom they employed as guides. Four men received, I believe, five dollars each for their bloody work, having been hired by one who had some grudge against the Christians. . . . The tender flock in their Siam home was left, and is still left, without human care. Our society is, I understand, waiting for an American family to go to this Karen work in Northern Siam.
Perhaps seven years ago there came to us two young men, strangers, and evidently much stirred. They hastened to tell us that they had been sent from a remote village in a densely heathen district. Some time before one of the villagers, while away from home, had come upon a copy of the Burmese tract, "Who Is Man's Lord?" written by the elder Haswell. He had brought it home with him, it had been used in the village, much interest had been stirred, and these two had been sent the long distance to Bassein, where, it was understood, a Christian missionary could be found. They were to seek further instruction, and to make inquiries about schools which, it was said, the Christian missionaries conduct for the Pwo race. I can never forget their intense earnestness. The next term Aung Poo, the younger of these two messengers, entered our Bassein school. He has remained under training ever since, and I have never seen any pupil of any nationality, American or otherwise, show more Christian pertinacity in the pursuit of knowledge. He must have been nineteen when he began. All this is to prepare himself for a life of proclaiming the gospel to his heathen nation, and he is now an honored student in the Karen Theological Seminary. When traveling with him a few months ago, I was struck by the singular tact, as well as the eager intensity, which characterized his preaching among the heathen whom we visited. It is interesting to add that a church was organized in his village not long after his conversion, and that the other messenger who accompanied him on that first visit to the city has ever since been a leader in all good works.
It is pleasant to explain, by instances like these, why it is that the Christian Pwos so win both our esteem and our tender love. When one thinks back over the numbers who have borne estrangement from kindred for Christ's sake, he scarcely knows of which to speak. There rise in mind an old couple who, much of the time for thirty-five years past, have lived alone among scoffing heathen neighbors, and who all this time have borne brave Christian testimony. It was my privilege three years ago to witness the baptism of six of the family of one of our brethren who for thirty years had stood alone for Christ—a long seed sowing, but he had his reward. Not all who are threatened with estrangement from friends are so fortunate nor so shrewd as one of this man's relatives. His wife with outrageous clamor had averred that the day of his baptism would coincide with the day of their separation. Our quiet friend one day suddenly disappeared. No one could say where. As the days passed, his wife began to find the house lonely. She began to make inquiries. Then she began to be anxious. Presently she began to be broken hearted. She averred that if only her husband would come back, he might be baptized, or anything else, and welcome; and thereupon, after two weeks of voluntary exile, our friend reappeared as suddenly as he had disappeared.
The love of money is scarcely a root of evil among the Pwos, though wasteful use of it sometimes is. They are very generous among themselves, and carry the same spirit very largely into their church relations. None of the churches receive outside aid, nor do their village schools. American funds are drafted upon for the salaries of the American missionaries among them, for rather less than half the cost of the work done by native evangelists among the heathen villages, and for a part of the expenses of the central schools, including plant. The Bassein plant is now worth about twenty thousand dollars. The entire membership of the twenty-nine churches gives on an average a tenth of their incomes for Christian work. Noticing last year that the boys in the Bassein school were not using their new football ground, though the game is one to which they are devoted, I inquired the reason. After some hesitation the fact was elicited that they could not afford a new ball. Nevertheless, these same boys were giving into my hands every month more than the price of one.
One Sunday last dry season a young man who had just entered the school as teacher, having been for some years a pupil there, brought an offering amounting to twenty-five rupees, or about nine dollars. Some months before he had decided with himself that if ever he came to have a salary of his own, the first fruits—that is, the pay of the first month—should all go to the Master's treasury. This nine dollars was the first month's salary. For years he has given heavily of his scanty means. During the past seven years the pupils and teachers of the town school have contributed twenty-two hundred rupees through their "school subscription," in addition to about eight hundred rupees through other channels. At present three rupees about equal one dollar. These contributions have sufficed for eleven hundred feet of good fencing, two or three hundred books for the reading room, a large glass case for the incipient museum, cost of painting the new schoolroom, a covered walk, and for many other things. The missionaries in charge of the school have joined in these contributions, but to no such degree as to make it other than a genuine Karen enterprise. It should be remembered that the children's parents live in houses averaging from twelve to twenty dollars each in value, and I may add that I once, at a loss to myself, purchased a native house for forty cents. Families average probably a little over a hundred dollars each annual income. There have been many touching instances of self-denial practiced by these children and by their Pwo teachers in making these offerings.
But, after all, in the end how truly such giving has its reward! "There is that giveth and yet increaseth." Three footballs have been given to the boys since the incident of last year, and I now cry, Hold, enough! To Son Tay, who gave the first fruits, God returned within a few months several times his donation; and the disciples at large rejoice, not only in the increase of their churches and jungle schools, but also in the marvelous way in which God has led them in providing increased facilities for the work of their central school in Bassein. This has one hundred and forty pupils. Five substantial buildings have been added,—a chapel and schoolhouse combined, a home for the American ladies who teach in the school, a large dormitory for the girls, one for the boys, and recently a dining hall,—besides land, grading, fencing, furniture, and apparatus. While speaking of this development of the school, one should not omit to say that every year a large proportion of the older boys and girls, instead of going home, spend the first two months of the vacation in preaching and teaching in remote heathen or newly Christian villages. Most of our churches come into being by such means. These pupils, when the hot season has so far advanced that not even a native can work, return to their homes for three or four weeks of vacation before the rainy season brings the new term of the town school.—Missionary Review.