Kachin State

I wrote the following looking across the huge blue expanse of water. A cormorant is on a post hoping a fish will swim by, as is a kingfisher with a long red bill. Gulls are wheeling over boats taking local people to the pagoda. Around the Lake there is Water Hyacinth, which is a scourge in many parts of the world as it is invasive and prolific and clogs up waterways – but here it just occurs around the edge of the Lake.

There is an unusual story about this area. There are several versions, some more unusual than others. Apparently in BC 184, which was the time of the dragons, there was no Lake. There was a village of 10,000 houses and 1,000 monasteries. But the villagers were not Shan or Kachin.

They were Ta Man Ti or magic people. They carried a blanket with them and if they took it off, it could be seen that they were half tiger and half human. They had no religion, no Buddhism, no rules or laws. But then we learned that there was just one Buddhist woman: widow Daw Aye Moan

One night, Daw Aye Moan was visited by a good nat in a dream. It is rare to hear of a good nat. Nats are part of Myanmar’s spirit world. They are the spirits of people who usually came to a sticky end and therefore want to make trouble for people still living. There are 37 main nats in Myanmar. There is one for each village or town, one for each profession or job. In some places there may be a nat for each house. The spirit world of nats is as alive to the Myanmar people as the Buddha and his teaching and is much older.

The good nat told widow Daw Aye Moan that everyone in the village must leave within a week otherwise they would die. Daw Aye Moan spent every day giving this message to the villagers. But nobody believed her.  Eventually, she knew she must leave so she did, taking her two children and her two buffaloes with her. She climbed a mountain to be safe and when she looked next morning the huge lake, now known as Indawgyi, covered the entire area. All houses in the village were submerged and all the people had drowned.

Apparently, when Daw Aye Moan escaped up the mountain called Low Mon only one of the two buffaloes made it to the top with her. The smaller of the two drowned. We visited the spot where one huge boulder contains the footprint of the buffalo that drowned and next to it the footprint of Daw Aye Moan. All her life the widow wanted to build a pagoda according to her faith, so the Sayadaw or Abbott of the Lwei Monastery organized the building of a pagoda for her at Mohnyine.

We learned the lake has three levels. The bottom is where the dragons lived (a long time ago) then there is the submerged village level, and now the Lake, which has the pagoda Shwe Min Zu in the centre. We walked to the Pagoda first by road and then for half a kilometre on a causeway, which is under water in the rainy season as the water level rises by seven or more feet and can only be reached by boat. Fortunately in February it was only ankle deep and we walked admiring the view as we went.

The pagoda is interesting for several reasons. First, it is owned by two villages, side-by-side, so neither can say the whole pagoda belongs to them. In November and December every year, the water on the left side of the pagoda remains blue, but the water on the right side turns red. Further enquiries on my part revealed that it was a bad nat that does this. The red is a sort of medicine and all the fish on the right side die. Apparently, the fishermen are pleased because it is much easier to catch dead fish than ones that are still alive!