SETTLING A MANDALAY MYTH.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 10560, 6 January 1896, Page 3

SETTLING A MANDALAY MYTH.

The Academy prints the following :—" On a small door to the left of the throne as one enters what is now the.'ladies' room' of the Upper Burma Club, bub was formerly tho audience hall of Queen Suphajii'at, at Mandalay, are the marks of a 'bloody hand.' They were getting faint when I last saw them ; but they were' plain enough iv 1887, about which time the myth alluded to in this letter began to arise.

" The story! as told io a public lecture somo time ago by an old resident of Mandalay, who ought, at auy rate, to have known better was in outline as follows: There was a certain, daughter of a Shan Sawbwa on whom King Thibaw showered more favours thau Queen SupbajaliU approved, and in consequence the Queeu had her murdered, the 'bloody hand' on lhe doorway bsiDg the marks of the unfortunate girl's fingers as she tried to escape. I suppose the romance of this version of what occurred was too much for the lecturer, aud he could not resist the temptation of telling it, instead of what was locally well known at the time and was the truth of the tale.

" I must, say that the story when he told it waß in various versions current in tho Mandalay garrison, but at the same time it was, to those who kuew Burraah and the manners of its people, manifestly untrue. Since then I have seen it repeated, in more or less garbled and embollished forms, in newspaper aud migfizine articles, and quite lntely in a little book of tales about Burma. Tho ' bloody hand,' too, is of course shown to every new arrival and to every globe-trotter, and the myth around it is io a fair way to become an ' established fact.' I think it, theiefore, worth while to tell the facts as I heird tbem before it is too late. Iv auy cake it will do no harm to history and the reputation of tho late Queen ol' Burma if this letter should give rise to a little discussion on the story.

" The Shan Sawbwa's daughter did exist and did rouse tbe jealousy of the Qu»en, and in revenge the Queen bad taken her cff the palace platform iolo tbe gardens, in front of the summer house in which Thibiw subsequently abdicated, at a spot now marked by a brass tablet. Justin front of this house iisnn ornamental water, and on the brink of tb's the girl was unmercif oily beaten, and tben turned out of tbe palace, the Kiog not having tbe spirit to protect her against bis wife. She was certainly nob killed in the palace, nor was her blood shed by tho Queen herself, as is now said. Such a thing was practically impossible, as in Burmese superstition all sorts of horrors would come upon the Crown and the Throne if human blood w«re shed in the palace itself by the King or tbe Queen. Royalties were not killed, when it was desirable to despatch them, in tbe palace, but outside it; nor was their blood shed; they were beaten on the gullet by bamboos and thus suffocated.

" As regards the ' bloody band,' the Queen's palace was used as a hospital immediately after the British ocoupation and for some time later, and duriug its use as such many operations were peiformed there on wounded and otber men. The true explanation of the 'bloody hand' on the door in question being that it is the mark of some person conceroed in an operation wbich took place there. The door had been pushed open by some person with blood on his hands, as the marks themselves testify.

" My own opinion has therefore always been that there ia no more truth in the story of tbe Shan girl'a murder by tbe Queen than there is in that, also commonly told, of her husband passing his days in bouts of drunkenness. Thibaw, as I have heard bim described by those who knew birn intimately, waß in truth a learned monk, with no notion of kingship or administration. He was exceedingly well read in the Buddhist Scriptures, and always ready with apt saws, which be applied to almost every contingently of life in the wisest way. The description of another kiDg has often struck me as peculiarly applicable to the last feeble King of Burmah,' He never said a foolish thing, and never did a wife one.'—R. C. Temple. Government Honse, Port Bar, 4-ndamau Islands. September 27.1895."