Chapter 27 - U Khanti, the Seer of Mandalay Hill

In the year 1929, during a pilgrimage in Burma, I was staying for some time at Mandalay together with the Venerable Nyanatiloka Mahāthera of the Island Hermitage near Dodanduwa in Ceylon, where I had undergone my novitiate as a Brahmachari. Nyanatiloka Thera had come to Burma a short time after my arrival at Rangoon to pay his last respects to his old Guru, U Kumara Mahāthera, who had just passed away in the little monastery of Kyundaw Kyaung, where Nyanatiloka had received his ordination twenty-six years before. The body of the revered teacher was kept in a dragonprotected richly adorned teakwood sarcophagus filled with honey to preserve the body until the preparations for the cremation had been completed. Since this might take a year or more in accordance with Burmese custom, it was not possible for us to wait for this opportunity, and therefore Nyanatiloka decided to join me during a part of my pilgrimage upcountry. After travelling for about two weeks on a trading steamer on the Irrawaddy, visiting on the way the ruined city of Pagan, with its thousands of temples and pagodas, we finally reached Mandalay which we made our headquarters for the time being an order to visit the many places of religious and historical interest in and around the town.

The most sacred place of Mandalay is a rocky hill which rises steeply on the outskirts of the town from the otherwise flat country The hill is covered with temples, pagodas, and innumerable smaller shrines and sanctuaries, connected by a long flight of roofed stairs, which lead from the foot to the top of the hill. One of the most remarkable sights, however, when approaching the hill, is two groups of hundreds of small pagodas (altogether more than one and a half thousand!) presided over by a big central pagoda in each group.

The origin of these enormous building activities goes back to King Mindon Min, who reigned over Burma from 1851 till 1878. Inspired by a dream, he abandoned his former capital Amarapura and founded Mandalay, which he adorned with magnificent palaces and religious monuments. Being an ardent Buddhist, he wanted to follow in the footsteps of a former king, who had caused the teachings of the Buddha to be inscribed on golden tablets, which were housed in a beautiful temple. This, however, only aroused the cupidity of the neighbouring Chinese, who invaded the country and carried away the golden tablets. King Mindon Min, therefore, decided to have the sacred texts carved on heavy marble slabs, which would attract neither invaders nor thieves, and which would preserve the teachings of the Buddha in their purity for all coming generations. At the same time they should be freely accessible to all people who wanted to know the word of the Buddha, not only scholars and priests but also the common man. For this reason each single slab was housed in a separate open shrine, a miniature pagoda-like temple, in which people could study undisturbed any part of the innumerable sacred texts not only in the original Pali, but also in Burmese transcription.

Thus the King built the Kuthawdaw Pagoda, surrounded by 799 smaller pagodas, each executed with the same meticulous detail, housing the complete canonical texts (Tipitaka). A similar 'city of pagodas' was to be built for the even more numerous commentaries of the sacred scriptures, but the King died before this work could be started. His successor, King Thibaw, was more interested in his sumptuous court and his numerous concubines, and was soon overthrown by the British, who annexed his kingdom. Thus, King Mindon Min's work was forgotten, and even the sanctuaries on the Mandalay Hill fell into disrepair. Pilgrims hardly dared to approach them because of robbers who often waylaid them on the deserted hill.

But one day a lonely pilgrim, whose heart burned with the pure flame of faith, felt so deeply grieved at seeing the desecration and decay of this place, which, according to Burmese belief, was once visited by the Buddha himself, that he decided to devote his life to the sacred hill and not to leave it until it had been restored to its former glory. Though he had no worldly possessions beyond his begging-bowl and the dark red robes of an ascetic, he had implicit faith in the powers of the spirit, and without worrying over the ways and means to achieve his purpose he sat down on the summit of the hill, in the shelter of one of the dilapidated sanctuaries, and devoted himself to meditation, unconcerned for his safety or his livelihood. Nobody could rob him, because he possessed nothing worth robbing. On the contrary, the pilgrims who saw him engaged in silent meditation began to bring gifts of food. When no pilgrims came he went hungry, when food was offered he ate. But slowly more and more people were encouraged and attracted to visit the sacred hill, when the news spread that a hermit lived on its top among the ruins of ancient shrines.

His mere presence seemed to re-sanctify the so-long-deserted place and soon people offered their help to repair the shrines and even to build new ones, as well as places where pilgrims could rest and meditate. Thus, temples, statues, halls, and pavilions, and covered stairways connecting them, grew up one after another, and the more the work proceeded, the more means were put in the hands of him who possessed nothing, but who seemed to command all the riches of the world. Not content with having restored the Mandalay Hill to its old glory and sanctity, he soon started on an even more ambitious undertaking; to complete the work, which King Mindon Min had not been able to accomplish in his lifetime: by having a complete set of the Great Commentaries to the Holy Scriptures of Buddhism engraved on marble slabs and by building a second 'city of pagodas', even bigger than that of the Kuthawdaw, in which to house them.

After having accomplished this gigantic task, U Khanti, the Hermit of Mandalay Hill, who by now was known as Mahāyati, the 'Great Rishi' (or 'Seer), decided that it was not sufficient to preserve the sacred scriptures in stone and to make them accessible to those who could visit the pagoda shrines, but that they should be made accessible to the whole world by printing the complete canonical and important postcanonical literature of Buddhism. This was so enormous a task that no publisher or printer could have undertaken or financed such a venture. But the Great Rishi was undaunted. His power seemed to be limitless. Within a short time he was able to build his own up-to-date printing press at the foot of the hill, and at the time Nyanatiloka Thera and myself were staying at Mandalay, an enormous amount of books, covering almost the whole of the above-mentioned literature, had been published in well-printed and neatly bound volumes. Even in Ceylon, with its more advanced book production, many of the important pāli texts, especially those of the Abhidhamma, dealing with the philosophical and psychological aspects of the Buddhist doctrine, were not available in printed form in those days.

After hearing of U Khanti's achievements, we naturally were anxious to meet him, and so one morning we set out to pay a visit to the Rishi of the Mandalay Hill. We lived outside the town at a considerable distance from the sacred hill, so that we had to take a tonga (a two-wheeled horse-cart) to reach our destination. But when we arrived there, we were informed that the 'Yathi' (Rishi) had left in the early morning for a place some twenty to twenty-five miles distant in order to supervise the restoration of an ancient Buddhist monument.

It goes without saying that we felt greatly disappointed, especially as it was uncertain whether we could find another opportunity of meeting him, because we had a rather busy programme before us.

Reluctantly we climbed back into our tonga, but hardly had the horse turned, when a motor-car came from the opposite direction, stopped right before the entrance of the covered staircase leading to the crest of the hill, and a tall red-robed figure emerged from the car. There was something incredibly impressive in the appearance and the quiet movements of this noble figure, unhurried and self-assured with the natural dignity of a born king or a great leader of men. We immediately felt: this must be the Great Rishi and without hesitation we stopped the tonga, got out again, and went back to the gate, where we were told to our great joy that, against all expectations, U Khanti had suddenly returned, and that we would be able to see him. We were led into an open pavilion, and there, surrounded by a number of Bhikkhus and other attendants, the Great Rishi received us. Again I could not help feeling how his personality stood out from all the others who were present, and how he, who was not an ordained member of the Bhikkhu Sangha (the orthodox Order of Theravāda Monks), commanded respect even from those who regarded themselves the exclusive custodians of the Buddhadharma and superior in ecclesiastical rank. He received us smilingly and with great politeness, bowing to Nyanatiloka as an Elder (Thera) of the Sangha, and invited us to sit down, while giving orders to his attendants, who served us with tea and sweets. In the meantime he answered questions from his secretaries, who from time to time approached him with papers or asked for instructions, but all this went on so quietly and unobtrusively that it never seemed to interrupt his attention towards us or to disturb the flow of our conversation. He was greatly interested in the activities of the International Buddhist Union, of which Nyanatiloka was the President and I myself the General Secretary. When speaking about our plans to make the 'Island Hermitage' of Dodanduwa into an international centre of Buddhist culture and the necessity to make Buddhist literature more accessible to the world, I was just about to mention our special interest in the Abhidhamma literature and our difficulties in procuring the necessary books. But before I could make any such remarks he turned to one of his attendants, who thereupon disappeared in the direction of a building nearby, which, as we later realised, housed his press and his bookbinding department. Within a few minutes some servants appeared with stacks of books in their arms. "Here is a present for you", the Rishi said with a smile, and motioned the servants to spread the books out before us. How can I describe our surprise! They were exactly the volumes which were missing in our Dodanduwa library: a complete set of Abhidhamma texts! We were absolutely overwhelmed and almost speechless at the promptness with which the 'Yathi' had divined our secret wish and his kindness at presenting us with such a valuable gift.

When he saw our joy he offered us also the other sets of books which he had printed in his press, all of them beautifully bound with gold-embossed leather backs, but they were too many to take with us in our tonga, and so they were sent to our place on the following day. As I see from old newspaper cuttings of those memorable days in Mandalay; we received books to the value of more than 700 Rs., a sum which today would amount to not less than 3,000 Rs.! This was indeed a gift worthy of a king, and we were moved beyond words.

After we had taken leave from the Rishi, some Bhikkhus of his entourage accompanied us through the innumerable sanctuaries of the hill which gave us an idea of the magnitude of the work that had been accomplished here and which yet was only a fraction of the activities of this remarkable man. In the course of our conversation, one of the Bhikkhus told us that the 'Yathi' had left Mandalay Hill in the early morning in order to supervise the building activities at a distant place, as we had been informed on our arrival. But in the middle of his inspection work he suddenly announced that he had to return immediately to Mandalay, as there were some people who had come from far away to see him. And without further delay he got into his car and asked the driver to go as fast as possible. And, as if he had forseen it, he arrived exactly at the moment we were about to leave.

Now we realised that our meeting was not merely accidental, and when we told the Bhikkhu how surprised we had been when the Rishi gave us exactly those books which we had had in mind -- before we even could mention them -- he said in a voice, vibrant with emotion and deep conviction: 'Don't you know who he is? He is the rebirth of King Mindon Min'

I must confess that I had no doubt that it was so. In fact, it only confirmed what I had felt from the first moment I set eyes upon the noble figure of the Rishi. There was something royal in his bearing, something that commanded respect, if not veneration. His appearance, his deeds, and his whole personality were to me a greater proof than what factual investigations could have produced. His life and his actions showed unmistakably that he possessed unusual psychic and spiritual powers, among which the remembrance of his former birth and the aspirations of his previous life seemed to be the driving force of his personality, a force that gave a heightened meaning to his present existence. To him the knowledge of the past was not a dead weight or a hindrance but a greater incentive to act and something that aroused his sense of responsibility for the completion of a task which had been left unfinished. It was like the fulfillment of the vow of a Boddhisattva, who retains the continuity of his consciousness over many lives and deaths on account of an aim that is bigger than the horizon of a single human existence. It is our higher aspirations and our ultimate aim that make us immortal, not the permanence of an immutable separate soul, whose very sameness would exclude us from life and growth and from the infinite adventure of the spirit and condemn us for ever to the prison of our own limitations.