Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/102

90 me by the lessee of a neighbouring fishery and is the only version which accounts for the peculiar position of Min Magăyi as the universal house-spirit. The king, he told me, was Thado Năgănaing, the slayer of the Dragon, of whom more hereafter. He took Dwe Hla and Dwe Byu, Maung Tin Dè's sisters, into his palace. Tin Dè tried to recover them, and being unsuccessful smote his anvil such a mighty blow that the whole city trembled. As a punishment for this he was hanged on a malla-tree and then burnt in a smith's furnace, while his sisters were beaten to death. After becoming a nat Tin Dè asked his sisters for a kingdom to rule over, and they gave him the right of entry into any house in the country.

The Brothers belong to a much later date, having lived under King Nawyăta in the eleventh century. They are said to have been the sons of an Indian (possibly an Arab) and a female bilu, or ogress, who lived on Mount Pôppa. Through their mother they inherited magic powers. Nawyăta, who was an ardent proselytizer for the Buddhist religion, and is credited with having made southern Buddhism the faith of Upper Burma, ordered each of his subjects to contribute a brick to a pagoda which he built at Taung-byôn, near Mandalay. The Brothers failed to contribute bricks, and were put to death. They became nats, and an annual festival, attended by thousands of Burmans is still held in their honour. Their golden images are kept in a shrine close to the pagoda which was the occasion of their death. Here is enacted an elaborate ceremony, lasting several days. On the last day two branches of the coffeewort tree, one for each brother, are set up near the shrine. The topmost twig of each is cut by a priest or priestess of the cult, and the crowd fall on the tree and tear it to pieces. The fragments are taken home and planted in the fields to bring a good harvest.

The coffeewort tree is not, as far as I know, otherwise regarded as sacred, and in my description of the ceremony