Part 4 (1/2)

At various points in our lives, or on a quest, and for reasons that often remain obscure, we are driven to make decisions which prove with hindsight to be loaded with meaning. The moment I arrived in Mandalay I hailed a taxi, but-instead of looking for a hospital or hotel or going and visiting the palace with its seven hundred stupas, its statues and markets-I asked to be taken straight to the port, where I caught the first boat for Pagan.

5.

MARCO POLO.

THE BOOK OF THE WONDERS OF THE WORLD CXXVI, THE CITY OF MIEN CXXVI, THE CITY OF MIEN.

Now it should be known that after travelling on horseback across far-flung places for the two weeks I have recounted above, one comes to a city called Mien, a very large and n.o.ble place, which is the capital of the kingdom. Its people are idolatrous and have a language all their own. They are subjects of the Great Khan.

NOTES MADE BY PAUL D'AMPeRE: Mien is the Pagan of today, a village on the banks of the Irrawaddy It has a school of lacquer-work famous throughout the region, and a printing press-monastery It has been the capital of Burma since the ninth century (It is not without significance that, shortly after its independence in 1950, the country rejected the name Burma given to it by the British colonial administration and called itself Myanmar, a name derived from the ancient city of Mien, which, although less familiar to us than Burma, is the name by which it is now officially recognised worldwide.) Mien is the Pagan of today, a village on the banks of the Irrawaddy It has a school of lacquer-work famous throughout the region, and a printing press-monastery It has been the capital of Burma since the ninth century (It is not without significance that, shortly after its independence in 1950, the country rejected the name Burma given to it by the British colonial administration and called itself Myanmar, a name derived from the ancient city of Mien, which, although less familiar to us than Burma, is the name by which it is now officially recognised worldwide.) Pagan is first referred to in 1106 in a work regarded in China as authoritative, Archival Studies Archival Studies Volume 332: Volume 332: In the fifth year of Xi Lin of the Song dynasty Pagan sent an amba.s.sadors.h.i.+p with a tribute for the imperial court. These were the instructions given by the emperor: ”Pagan is now an important kingdom and no longer a dependent state. It deserves the courtesy granted to Arabia, Tonkin, etc. Henceforth, all imperial missives addressed to its king should be written on a sheet of white paper backed with gold paper, printed with flowers, sealed in a wooden coffer covered in gold plate, locked with a silver padlock and wrapped in silk and satin cloth.

Contrary to accepted wisdom about the Book of the Wonders of the World Book of the Wonders of the World (by which I mean that it is considered to be more or less a collection of the Venetians personal memories), what he tells us about the road that apparently took him to Mien was not based on his own experience; he must have heard or read it somewhere without ever setting foot in Burma. One sentence alone betrays him: the fact that, according to him, he had to ride for a fortnight to reach Mien-Pagan, when the only access to it-to this day and from whichever direction-is along the Irrawaddy River. (by which I mean that it is considered to be more or less a collection of the Venetians personal memories), what he tells us about the road that apparently took him to Mien was not based on his own experience; he must have heard or read it somewhere without ever setting foot in Burma. One sentence alone betrays him: the fact that, according to him, he had to ride for a fortnight to reach Mien-Pagan, when the only access to it-to this day and from whichever direction-is along the Irrawaddy River.

A careful reading of the preceding chapters, where he claims to have stayed in Yunnan very close to the Chinese-Burmese border, proves the even more regrettable fact that he never crossed that border nor saw the Irrawaddy with his own eyes, even though in his writings he describes the river as magnificent and unforgettable. The name might be famous the world over, but at least Marco Polo could have left us a first-hand account describing the rivers course, which would have equipped us to respond to theories put forward by some English geologists who claim it used to flow into the valley of the Sittang, another much wider river that flows from central to southern Burma. If that were the case, then its major western tributary, the Chindwin, and the upper Irrawaddy itself would have been the outlet for the Brahmaputra, and the history of Tibet, China, Burma, India and Bengal-all of which the Brahmaputra flows through-would probably need rewriting.

NOTES MADE BY TUMCHOOQ: It's so hard to know how to start! Not because these are notes about notes but because I don't know what name to give the author of these notes, a man whose surname-with its seven letters, its apostrophe and its accent-could have been my own. (I remember the first time I ever saw that name. I was twelve and living in the reform school I'd been sent to after the incident in the Forbidden City when I nearly killed my best friend in that strangling cage. A guard took me to an office, where my mother was allowed to visit me. She wrote the name on a piece of paper without a word. I was just a child at the time, and I gazed for several minutes at those unfamiliar, foreign letters with their graphic signs above the vowels, and, even though I would have had no idea how to p.r.o.nounce them, like the letters of a dead language, I still knew they made up your name. She tried to p.r.o.nounce it, several times, and did succeed, although her voice was almost stifled by sobs. The word was barely audible, uttered so tentatively, like a distant echo, and I was bowled over, not only by the strange sound of it but also by its dramatic, not to say tragic, quality.) It's so hard to know how to start! Not because these are notes about notes but because I don't know what name to give the author of these notes, a man whose surname-with its seven letters, its apostrophe and its accent-could have been my own. (I remember the first time I ever saw that name. I was twelve and living in the reform school I'd been sent to after the incident in the Forbidden City when I nearly killed my best friend in that strangling cage. A guard took me to an office, where my mother was allowed to visit me. She wrote the name on a piece of paper without a word. I was just a child at the time, and I gazed for several minutes at those unfamiliar, foreign letters with their graphic signs above the vowels, and, even though I would have had no idea how to p.r.o.nounce them, like the letters of a dead language, I still knew they made up your name. She tried to p.r.o.nounce it, several times, and did succeed, although her voice was almost stifled by sobs. The word was barely audible, uttered so tentatively, like a distant echo, and I was bowled over, not only by the strange sound of it but also by its dramatic, not to say tragic, quality.) Now, as I try to write these notes with my thoughts going round in circles and my pen still hesitating, a text from the Satyasiddhi-Sutra has come back to me. It's a fourth-century text published by the printing press-monastery in Pagan around the twelfth century; fragments of it in Pali were found in the vestiges of a stupa in Pagan and were carefully preserved, like a saints sacred bones, or his teeth, his coat or his alms bowl, for which a king would pay an astronomical price only to put them in a reliquary, bury that deep underground and build a stupa as extraordinary as a pyramid over the top of it. I've often thought about the theory put forward by Harivarman, the author of the Satyasiddhi-Sutra, who was a Brahman before his conversion to Buddhism, a theory which can essentially be summed up in this sentence: ”All that it takes to achieve Nirvana is to recognise the unreality of things and the unreality of self.”

Being an old Buddhist, as you have been for decades, I would be surprised if you hadn't read this text in its original Sanskrit version, and probably in the Pali version. You are also likely to know the Chinese version with which I wanted to make a comparative reading and which is infinitely longer because it's interspersed with the personal interpretations of its eminent translator, k.u.marajiva, who introduced the Mahayana doctrine to China and translated some forty sutras from that school of thought. The fact that he worked on a Hinayana text shortly before his death, and the miracle of his tongue resisting incineration, helped increase the fame of this magisterial work. Here is his translation: Things do not really exist, neither do knowledge, the possession of things, physical form, the body, nor the representation of an individual, but what does have a real existence is the name denoting its abstract unity, for a name is, in fact, the absolute that exists in the intimate heart of man, as it is at the centre of the universe. And all that it takes to find salvation is to recognise that fact. Anyone who, understanding this, turns for support to the extreme intelligence of the Bodhisattvas is then freed from his name and, from that moment on, is delivered not only of his own body, but also from the order of time. He attains total annihilation and is therefore, so to speak, a Buddha in a state of utter ”Awakening.”

This reminds me of your last wish, a sort of farewell that you dictated to me when you were gripped by a final surge of energy and suddenly emerged from the deep coma you had been in, following your lynching at the hands of the camp prisoners. ”Listen,” you said, ”I don't want anything on my grave; nothing but a blank s.p.a.ce, a gap, not my name or any dates.”

Why that denial of your name? It strikes me as much as a sign of protest as a philosophical principle, which meant you were already rejecting the world you were leaving behind. The world was reduced to what was left of your memory; in other words a name, yours, the last pale reflection of a process that had come full term; and, by erasing it, as the Chinese version of the Satyasiddhi-Sutra states, you were putting yourself beyond the past and, eventually, beyond the order of time altogether.

To get back to writing these notes, in the academic sense of the word, the thing that encourages me to take this liberty is the fact that there indisputably is a printing press-monastery (and that's a term you must have coined for the purpose, given that the establishment calls itself a ”temple where the monks print Buddhist sutras”) in Pagan. They've been printing books there since the eleventh century as indicated by the date of completion on the cover of the Satyasiddhi-Sutra: fifth year of the reign of King Anawratha (Aniruddha). I'd also like to point out that the reliquary in which the work was found, the one cited and commented on above, is in lacquered wood which has been extremely well preserved, and that the tradition of this particular kind of lacquer-work goes back at least as far as King Anawratha's reign.

I would like to say a few words about the lacquer, because I feel an irresistible rush of pride to think that, unless I'm wrong, I'm the only person to know of the secret love you felt for a Chinese lacquered box sculpted with figures and landscapes that your grandmother gave you for Christmas when you were ten. You yourself told me about it when I visited you in the camp: you couldn't take your eyes off this newfound friend and the tiniest scratch on it would have broken your heart. Then you recited a Rimbaud poem that you'd translated into Tumchooq, although you were so disappointed with the translation you said it spoiled the precious memory you'd just shared with me. Then you left. That memory returned to me recently when I came across the same poem, ”The Orphans' New Year's Gift,” while teaching myself French from a book I was given: -Ah! what a beautiful morning, this New Year's morning! During the night each had dreamt of his dear onesIn some strange dream when you saw toys,Candies dressed in gold, sparkling jewels,Whirling and dancing a sonorous dance ...

Buddha teaches us that everything is as if it were nothing, or rather as if it were pure non-being, not that this means an individual's actions are in the least way subject to chance. Quite the opposite, they are laid down as part of a grand design from which, I believe, even your predilection for Chinese lacquer isn't exempt. It was a sort of sign from destiny, which deals out the cards: it only remained for you to use them. Zhuangzi was the first to compare a scholar's life to that of the lacquer tree, Rhus vernicifera Rhus vernicifera, an elegant tree some twenty metres high, but which, from the age of eight to forty (the twilight of its life), is exploited, incised and regularly bled of its precious fragrant sap, thick and white as curdled milk, oozing gently from the monstrous open wound on its trunk. It is collected, filtered, purified, dyed and applied layer after layer onto wood or another background, to become a work of art, a symbol of refinement.

The Pagan reliquary in question bears a long inscription which gives the names of the craftsmen and workshop managers, and the date it was made as well as testifying to the time and application taken to turn a simple object into a unique treasure: lacquer was painted on in thin layers, each one dried and sanded before the next was applied. As this exquisite substance coagulates only in humid conditions, the drying process was carried out on the Irrawaddy in a boat taken onto the water a total of fifty times, the exact number of layers of lacquer needed to create this one item. Then the scene of Buddha's Extinction-depicted in three different tableaux-was sculpted on it, carved through the thickness of the layers: first there is an atmosphere of fear as the pyre built by the Mallas refuses to catch light until Kasyapa, his most faithful disciple, has come to kiss his masters feet one last time; then, in a mood of intense emotion, Kasyapa almost swoons with grief and has to be supported by another disciple to say his final farewell to Buddha; lastly, Kasyapa presides over the funeral ceremony and the pyre catches light of its own accord. Every time I think of those scenes carved in lacquer, another funeral scene comes to mind: yours, beside the River Lu, whose murmurings still reverberate in my ears; a misty, almost insubstantial image, except for your feet, which I touched with my forehead and kissed, as a reflex action, not because I knew the Buddhist tradition. I seem to think they were still warm.

CONTINUATION OF MARCO POLO'S BOOK: In this city there is a n.o.ble thing I shall describe to you. For in this city there was once a rich and powerful king. When he was about to die, he ordered that on his tomb or, to be precise, on his monument two towers should be built, one in gold, the other in silver, in a way that I shall describe. One of the towers was made of beautiful gems that were then covered in gold, and the gold was at least a fingers thickness, and the tower was so well covered with it that it appeared to be made entirely of gold. It was a good ten paces high and as wide as befitted its height. It was rounded on the outside and all about its curving surface it was covered with small golden bells, which rang every time the wind blew between them. And the other tower I spoke of above, made of silver and in every way like the golden tower, was made of the same materials and to the same height and in the same way And, similarly, the tomb was partly covered with gold leaf and partly with silver leaf. And the king had this built for his grandeur and for his soul. And, I shall tell you this much, to see them was to see the most beautiful towers in the world, of immense value. And when the sun touches them, they are resplendent and can be seen from far, far away.

NOTES MADE BY PAUL D'AMPeRE: Constructor kings like this run through Pagans history between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, right up to the Mongol invasion. Anawratha, its founder, and the next two generations are reputed to have built Buddhist monuments of t.i.tanic proportions, and Pagan still has more than eight hundred of them over a stretch of about four hundred kilometres, not to mention those that have fallen in ruins, making it a gigantic sacred city, which has nothing to envy Angkor in Khmer country The famous Temple of Ananda, to take just one example, is a vertiginously positioned shrine shaped like a long-handled bell, perched on a huge tiered pyramid which looks like a perfectly white hill, a great glittering ma.s.s, surrounded by two cloisters and topped with a dazzling, almost frighteningly tall point, rising higher and higher, so far into the sky it disappears in the clouds. This monument borders on the fabulous, but, in the end, my investigations served only to highlight a fundamental and widely known truth, which is that Marco Polo never came to Burma and, therefore, couldn't know that in a sacred Buddhist city like Pagan there isn't a single non-religious edifice, far less a royal tomb. Take, for example, what's known as the Shwedagon PaG.o.da, commissioned by the first king, Anawratha, in 1509 and completed by his son (or the man recognised as such) King Kyanzittha: it is a vast plinth made up of a succession of platforms, rising in tiers from a square base with inverted corners; mounted on it is a rounded silver tower with, on top of that, another tower, this one in gold and shaped like a bell, with a roof which, it was claimed, was covered with genuine diamonds, and-if the colonial archives are to be believed-these stones ended up in the coffers of the Bank of England. This stupa and not a royal tomb, as the Venetian thought, plays an important role in the country and is to this day the national shrine of Burma, for it was here that a replica of the famous Buddha's tooth was placed, the tooth preserved at Kandy and sent by the king of Ceylon, Vijayabahu (1059-1114). Constructor kings like this run through Pagans history between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, right up to the Mongol invasion. Anawratha, its founder, and the next two generations are reputed to have built Buddhist monuments of t.i.tanic proportions, and Pagan still has more than eight hundred of them over a stretch of about four hundred kilometres, not to mention those that have fallen in ruins, making it a gigantic sacred city, which has nothing to envy Angkor in Khmer country The famous Temple of Ananda, to take just one example, is a vertiginously positioned shrine shaped like a long-handled bell, perched on a huge tiered pyramid which looks like a perfectly white hill, a great glittering ma.s.s, surrounded by two cloisters and topped with a dazzling, almost frighteningly tall point, rising higher and higher, so far into the sky it disappears in the clouds. This monument borders on the fabulous, but, in the end, my investigations served only to highlight a fundamental and widely known truth, which is that Marco Polo never came to Burma and, therefore, couldn't know that in a sacred Buddhist city like Pagan there isn't a single non-religious edifice, far less a royal tomb. Take, for example, what's known as the Shwedagon PaG.o.da, commissioned by the first king, Anawratha, in 1509 and completed by his son (or the man recognised as such) King Kyanzittha: it is a vast plinth made up of a succession of platforms, rising in tiers from a square base with inverted corners; mounted on it is a rounded silver tower with, on top of that, another tower, this one in gold and shaped like a bell, with a roof which, it was claimed, was covered with genuine diamonds, and-if the colonial archives are to be believed-these stones ended up in the coffers of the Bank of England. This stupa and not a royal tomb, as the Venetian thought, plays an important role in the country and is to this day the national shrine of Burma, for it was here that a replica of the famous Buddha's tooth was placed, the tooth preserved at Kandy and sent by the king of Ceylon, Vijayabahu (1059-1114).

NOTES MADE BY TUMCHOOQ: In 1975, the year of the monkey, Pagan was struck by the worst earthquake in its history. The edifices mentioned above, those truly ancient architectural masterpieces bordering on the fabulous, were now a spectacle of total devastation: Shwedagon's stupa crumbled and still lies by the banks of the Irrawaddy today; others, half-buried in the ground or submerged underwater, still exude the grim confusion of a field of ruins the morning after a bombing. All at once their star was no longer a lucky one, a cruel setback inflicted by history. The famous Temple of Ananda, which you described in all its beauty in your note above and which was once fifty-six metres high and sixty wide, is now just a handful of dust, a stretch of wasteland where, in among a few vestiges of bricks barely suggesting the niche that sheltered him for almost eight hundred years, stands the decapitated statue of Sanakavasa, Ananda's giant disciple. In 1975, the year of the monkey, Pagan was struck by the worst earthquake in its history. The edifices mentioned above, those truly ancient architectural masterpieces bordering on the fabulous, were now a spectacle of total devastation: Shwedagon's stupa crumbled and still lies by the banks of the Irrawaddy today; others, half-buried in the ground or submerged underwater, still exude the grim confusion of a field of ruins the morning after a bombing. All at once their star was no longer a lucky one, a cruel setback inflicted by history. The famous Temple of Ananda, which you described in all its beauty in your note above and which was once fifty-six metres high and sixty wide, is now just a handful of dust, a stretch of wasteland where, in among a few vestiges of bricks barely suggesting the niche that sheltered him for almost eight hundred years, stands the decapitated statue of Sanakavasa, Ananda's giant disciple.

Peculiarly, in this ghostly setting, the nine-metre-high sandalwood torso of the statue has remained intact; only the ochre colour of the monk's robes has disappeared over the years, but in places you can still see the artist's careful work in trying to represent realistically what is known in Sanskrit as a samghati samghati, the ragged, dirty hemp robes that were the prescribed clothing for a monk visiting a king's palace, begging in the street or preaching before an audience. According to legend, Sanakavasa was born with a disproportionately large body, already wrapped in a length of cloth, which grew longer as he developed into a true giant, eventually becoming a samghati samghati after his conversion by Ananda. When the moment of his Annihilation came, he announced his wish that his dishevelled robes should remain in this world as a reminder of the miraculous power of his faith, and should turn to dust only when Buddha's law no longer served a purpose on earth. after his conversion by Ananda. When the moment of his Annihilation came, he announced his wish that his dishevelled robes should remain in this world as a reminder of the miraculous power of his faith, and should turn to dust only when Buddha's law no longer served a purpose on earth.

I actually still have your personal samghati samghati-the rags you wrapped around the side-pieces of your gla.s.ses, the lenses and frame having been destroyed by your a.s.sa.s.sins-and I keep them like a precious relic.

The ruins of Pagan fill me with joy because they remind me of the year 1975, when I first met you in the visiting room at your camp. The large hall divided in two by a wooden grille wasn't yet there because not many prisoners had visitors. I was taken to an office, where I sat or rather perched on a wooden stool so tall my feet didn't reach the ground, facing another stool, which was incredibly low-a fitting place for an enemy of the people-and that was where you had to sit and look up to me. I waited an eternity until the door was eventually opened and then, forgetting the visiting rules, I jumped down from the stool and made for the door, half in a dream and half in the real world, not even hearing the warders shouting at me to get back to my seat. You weren't yet a pig-keeper at that point, and had just come up from the gem mines; you were so muddy, broken and drained that I mistook you for Chinese and almost confused you with the old plain-clothed screw escorting you. Instead of ”Dad,” different words-”Mr. Liu”-popped out of my mouth and rang round the room, rooting the warders to the spot. The name Liu didn't correspond to your Chinese name Baolo (a transcription of Paul in Chinese) or my mother's name, and therefore mine, which is Zhong. At the time neither of us reacted. We each sat in our intended places, exchanged a bit of small talk about my journey and then, speaking in a perfect Sichuan dialect, you suddenly asked: ”What did you call me?”

You'd barely finished the question before we both burst out laughing so loudly, despite the warders' intervention, that I fell off my stool-the one reserved for the population at large-unable to control myself. You laughed so much the dirty rags around your gla.s.ses came undone and dangled from the side-pieces, swaying with every move of your head while your cheeks were wet with tears.

Tradition and respect for the hierarchy of generations meant I'd never dared ask Mum about the circ.u.mstances of your arrest, even less about the reasons for the life sentence to which China had condemned you, but on that day, during that first visit, I felt more doubtful than ever that the little man sitting facing me on his low stool could have traded his wife for a ma.n.u.script.

And even if you could have loved a piece of text more than a woman, did you know at the time of the transaction that she was pregnant?

Perhaps not. At least I hope not.

It's strange, but I followed in your footsteps, many years later; I too have left a woman I love for the sake of a text, the same text. Like father, like son? Two spectacular b.a.s.t.a.r.ds?

(One question smacks me in the face as I write this, and I wonder why I didn't think of it sooner: Didn't I leave Peking at a time when ... like you, perhaps without your knowing ... I haven't got the heart or the strength to formulate the question-about my offspring, another Tumchooq, another ma.n.u.script-hunter?)

These notes, which followed on from Paul d'Ampere's, were jotted down roughly in Chinese on the squared paper of a Burmese schoolbook, written in pen, its nib gliding from left to right and accelerating in places, as if chasing its own shadow, chasing fleeting memories or a scene that came to mind with no warning and had to be captured straight away without rereading. Were these few notes the beginnings of a book or just a sketchy introduction to the frequent internal conversations he held with the late Mr. Liu, a Freudian slip he maintained, as far as I know, all through the years when he regularly visited his father at the camp in Sichuan?

I discovered that schoolbook when I arrived in Pagan, in among other books and papers strewn over a low table in the house of the superior at the printing press-monastery a two-storey bamboo building on stilts on the side of a steep hill, protected from behind by the towering Achan mountains and facing out onto the mirror-like surface of the Irrawaddy as it flowed across a plain, irrigating rice paddies and disappearing along the valley. The monastery superior was travelling abroad and the main room in his house-which acted as an office, reading room and bedroom-was s.p.a.cious but empty of furniture; sober, even austere. Visitors took off their shoes before stepping onto the floor of plaited bamboo, a cool surface that moved backwards and forwards underfoot, and they sat on a rush mat on the floor to take tea. Hanging from the roof at the far end of the room was the superiors bed, a simple mat, clean but old with holes in places, repaired with pieces of faded blue fabric. Above this hung a white nights.h.i.+rt and an ochre-coloured tunic with only one very long sleeve, which reached right down to the floor. Neither of these, according to the monastery's deputy who welcomed me very courteously, was a samghati samghati (the robe of rags), because the master had taken his with him. (the robe of rags), because the master had taken his with him.

He added (his words translated by Min, a young Sino-Burmese girl acting as my interpreter) that, of all the masters who had presided over the monastery, the present one, although still young, had the greatest reputation for his tremendous erudition, and that monks and followers came from the four corners of the country to listen to his teachings. One day he was visited by a delegation of j.a.panese monks and they had been so impressed by him that, on their return, they invited him to Kyoto to preside over an international symposium, and this explained his absence.

I put my gla.s.s of tea down on the low table and was about to ask him to show me the stele in four languages which had brought me to Pagan when, completely by chance and for no apparent reason, I thought of Tumchooq for the first time in a long while. As I waited for the deputy to finish praising his master, I leafed through a schoolbook on the table. You know the rest. Before I even grasped what I was reading, I was shaken to the core, the words dancing before my eyes, the pages quivering in my hands as I trembled from head to foot. What a journey I've been on, I thought, to reach this moment which finally gives some meaning to my life, to these long years of drifting between different languages and different continents! Thank goodness.

6.

TUMCHOOQ ARRIVED IN PAGAN IN THE early 1980s, the monastery deputy explained, retracing his story for me. A real vagrant: no one knew where he was from, because he remained utterly silent and had neither a pa.s.sport nor any other administrative papers. At first he was employed in the kitchens, where he chopped vegetables from morning till night, not talking to anyone, so that for a long time he was thought to be mute. early 1980s, the monastery deputy explained, retracing his story for me. A real vagrant: no one knew where he was from, because he remained utterly silent and had neither a pa.s.sport nor any other administrative papers. At first he was employed in the kitchens, where he chopped vegetables from morning till night, not talking to anyone, so that for a long time he was thought to be mute.

A few years later, when the paper mill needed another worker, he was sent there, although no one expected great results, because the process of making paper for sacred books requires exhausting, monotonous work as well as exceptional attention to detail. But people soon realised that the paper pulp obeyed him better than anyone else, from ageing monks to young novices. For three whole years he worked in silence, his hands permanently in water as he made paper, sheet by sheet. Then he was sent to the xylography workshop, where he became an unusually good engraver of texts.

It was here that people realised he understood Pali, had a phenomenal memory, remembered every text (even the most complicated) he engraved and was able to translate them into Burmese, as if born with a Pali-Burmese dictionary in his head. Then one day he finally spoke, expressing himself in elegant, literary Burmese with a rich vocabulary, but also a slight accent and the occasional mistake, which betrayed his foreign origins.

He made his vows after a six-year probationary period spent in the kitchens, the paper mill and the xylography workshop, where he had felt his vocation while observing all the rules of the monastery. He chose Tumchooq as his monastic name, a name which, according to him, appears in one of Buddha's sutras or jatakas jatakas. The magical circ.u.mstances that accompanied his recitation of ”The Path to Purification” (a cla.s.sical work of the Hinayana doctrine) before the a.s.sembled monks was enough to convince them altogether, and the master of the monastery entrusted him with the key to the Cave of Treasure, where they kept all the engraving plates ever made since the establishment began. He shut himself away in there for many years to record and list the five hundred thousand plates and, according to more malicious sources, to look for the sutra that features his own name. A sutra that no one in the area had ever heard of. When the monastery's patriarch embarked on his journey to the beyond, to everyone's surprise, it was to Tumchooq that he handed over his ragged samghati samghati and his alms bowl, asking him to preside over his funeral. And so Tumchooq became the new master of the monastery. and his alms bowl, asking him to preside over his funeral. And so Tumchooq became the new master of the monastery.