Note 13 — Chapter V

The episode of these two merchants is well known to the inhabitants of the Irrawaddy valley. In three different manuscripts which the writer has had in his hands, he has found it related with almost the same particulars. Oukkalaba, the place the two young men started from, was situated probably on the spot now occupied by the village of Twaintay, or not far from it. How far that place was from the sea in those remote times it is not possible to ascertain with precision. Certain it is, that it was a port from which vessels sailed across the Bay of Bengal. The port of Eedzeitha has not as yet been identified with any known locality. It was situated in all probability between the mouth of the Krichna and that of the Hoogly. One of the manuscripts mentions that when Gaudama handed over to the two merchants eight hairs of his head, he bade them, on their arrival in their country, deposit the hairs on a small hill called Seingouttara, where the relics of the three former Buddhas of our period had been enshrined. They were twenty-seven days in reaching Maudin or Cape Negrais, rather a long voyage. Having come to their own place, they related to the governor all the particulars of their interesting journey. The latter, without loss of time, assembled the people and set out in search of the Seingouttara mount. All the eminences were cleared of their brushwood, but the mount could not be discovered. Not knowing what to do, they consulted the Nats on that affair. At last, through their assistance, the mount was found out. But when they inquired about the place of the relics of the three former Buddhas, the Nats of Yesapan, Inandra, and Gauveinda confessed that they knew nothing on the subject, but referred the inquirers to other Nats older than they, viz.: those of Deckina, Yauhani, Maubee, Ameisa, and Tsoolay, who at once pointed out the spot which they were so eagerly searching after. This spot is no other than the one over which stands and towers the lofty and massive Shoay Dagon. They erected a Dzedy, in which they enshrined the relics they had brought with them, the eight hairs of Buddha. This story is doubtless the foundation on which rests the popular belief that those very hairs are to this day in the interior of that monument, and the true source from which has originated the profound veneration which, in our own days, Buddhists, from all parts of Burmah, Siam, and the Shan states, pay by their pilgrimages and offerings to the Dagon Pagoda.