FOLK ELEMENTS IN BURMESE BUDDHISM
By MAUNG HTIN AUNG
London Oxford University Press
PREFACE
Chapters 2 to 8 were originally given as lectures to the Burma Research Society, Rangoon, at its annual meetings from 1952 to 1957. they have, of course, been rewritten, but traces of the spoken world remain here and there, and occasionally the same facts given in an earlier chapter are repeated in a later chapter, for which defects I crave the reader`s indulgence.
I had promised my publishers, the Oxford University Press, to submit the manuscript of this book by June 1958, but other preoccupations intervened and some years passed before I could do so. I am grateful to them for their patience. In the meantime, I wrote an essay on the subject for Perspective of Burma in 1958. I am grateful to Intercultural Publications Inc..., New York, for permission to reproduce that essay as Chapter I of this book.
MAUNG HTIN AUNG
CONTENTS
1. Folk Elements in Burmese Buddhism
2. The Nine Gods
3. The Feast of the New Year
4. The cult of Alchemy
5. The Cult of the Magus
6. The Lord of the Great Mountain
Appendix. The Festival of Light
7. The Thirty-seven Lords
Appendix 1 . List of the Thirty-seven Lords
Appendix 2 . The Cult of the Naga
8. Initiation Ceremonies
9. The Ari Monks and the Introduction of Buddhism
Bibliography