"The importance attached to the possession of a white elephant," says Captain Yule, "is traceable to the Buddhist system. A white elephant of certain wonderful endowments is one of the seven precious things the possession of which marks the _Maha chakravartti Raja_, 'the great wheel-turning king,' the holy and universal sovereign, a character who appears once in a cycle, at the period when the waxing and waning term of human life has reached its maximum of an _asanhkya_ in duration. Hence the white elephant is the ensign of universal sovereignty." FOOTNOTES: [3] Narrative of a Mission to the Court of Ava, in 1855. By Captain Henry Yule, Secretary to the Envoy. [4] Western foreigner. [5] Priest; literally, "Great Glory." [6] Yule's Narrative. [7] 1. Charity; 2. Religious Observances; 3. Self-denial; 4. Learning; 5. Diligence; 6. Patience; 7. Truth; 8. Perseverance; 9. Friendship; 10. Impartiality. [8] _Athenkhya_ is a corruption, or Burmese pronunciation, of _asankhya_, Sanscrit, from the negative _a_ and _sankhya_, "number,"--literally, "innumerable"; but as a Buddhist period, it is expressed by a unit and _one hundred and forty ciphers_. Yule. [9] Yule's Narrative. [10] "Amid lovely prospects of rich valleys, and wooded hills, and winding waters, almost every rock bore on its surface the yellow gleam of gold. True, according to the voyager, the precious metal was itself absent; but Sir Walter [Raleigh], on afterward showing the stones to a Spaniard of the Caracas, was told by him that they were _madre del oro_, mother of gold, and that the mine itself was further in the ground."--_Hugh Miller._ [11] A sort of demon-monkeys, grotesquely hideous and fearfully funny,--generally depicted as black Calibans, with tusks. Judson defines them as "monsters which devour human flesh, and possess certain superhuman powers." According to a Buddhist legend, Guadma, when he attempted to land at Martaban, was stoned by the Nats and Biloos, who then inhabited that country, as well as Tavoy and Mergui; and Captain Yule imagines there may be some dim tradition here of an alien and savage race of aborigines (akin, perhaps, to the quasi-negroes of the Andamans), who have become the Biloos, or Ogres, of Burman legend, "just as our Ogres took their name, probably, from the Ugrians of Northeastern Europe." The description of the Andaman negroes by the Mohammedan travellers of the ninth century, as quoted by Prichard, would answer well for the Biloos of Burmah: "The people eat human flesh quite raw; their complexion is black, their hair frizzled, their countenance and eyes frightful; their feet are almost a cubit in length, and they go quite naked." The comic element, however, always enters into the Burmese conception of a Biloo. On the pavement of a royal monastery at Amarapoora is a set of bas-reliefs representing Biloos in all sorts of impish attitudes and antics.