In 1870, in the stifling heat and noisy stalls of the Rahine market in Mandalay, there was a public alms-house where a theological discussion took place. (Or at least that is what the sole surviving account — a preface by the Venerable Samvadi Sayadaw to Htoo Gyi Sayadaw’s book — tells us.)
The central figure in this conflict was U Po, an elderly, widely known physician from the Alon village in Monywa. Famous all around for his extraordinary mastery of traditional medicine, U Po was now involved in an intense debate which would soon prove to be fatal for him. His opponent was Ma Soe, a highly erudite thilashin (a precept-keeping Buddhist nun, different to bhikkhuni, only found in Burmese Theravada Buddhism), who also turned out to be the daughter of the King’s Forest Minister, Min Kyaw Sithu Panya.
For ordinary market spectators, the whole discussion might have looked like just another abstract dispute regarding holy time periods.
Nevertheless, under the absolute monarch, King Mindon of Konbaung dynasty, the market argument was going to inevitably become a conflict with the state as the sovereignty of the king was based completely on his image as the main protector of the scriptures, which was established during the hosting of the Fifth Buddhist Council. U Po’s claim that only the first 500 years were the teaching of the Buddha and that all modern monks were “counterfeits” could not simply be considered a scriptural debate; he was undermining the very pillar of religion supporting the rule of the king.
The 500-Year Limit of Buddhism: Canon Versus Commentary
It all came down to an utterly radical question: For how long is the true teaching of the Buddha valid?
For many centuries, the orthodox school of Theravada Buddhism had been based on the commentaries by a fifth-century scholar called Venerable Buddhaghosa, who guaranteed the faithful that the sasana, or time of availability of the Buddha’s teachings, would be 5,000 years. Ma Soe had referred to a well-structured chronology of enlightenment mentioned in the Maha Aṭṭhakatha and other commentaries.
U Po was an exegetical fundamentalist who saw no truth beyond the canon. By going back in time centuries ago, he referred to the Cuḷavagga volume from the Vinaya Piṭaka, namely the Bhikkhuni Khandhaka, which said in its Pali version that the true sasana can only last for five hundred years.
For U Po, it was a mathematical calculation, both fatal and literal. He believed that the order had long been extinct since more than two thousand years had passed after the Buddha’s death. He bluntly disregarded all the commentaries used by Ma Soe as mere interpretations of Buddhaghosa.
The Wrath of the Righteous King
But Ma Soe did not ignore such an affront. She prepared an official petition to the king on the heretical statements of U Po and gave it to the Chief Queen. Since the Chief Queen was concerned about U Po’s statement, that monks in orange robes of the nineteenth century practicing the precepts were counterfeits and not the genuine followers of the tradition, she escalated the issue with King Mindon.
King Mindon (1853-1878) was a ruler for whom all the justification for his sovereignty was based on the fact that he was a defender of Buddhism. He’d held the Fifth Buddhist Council in Mandalay, sealing his reputation as a protector of the scriptures. In his opinion, the heretical preaching of U Po was not only some intellectual eccentricity but also an existential threat to the Triad of the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha.
Faced with such a challenge, the preface records King Mindon as declaring that he would prefer to bear any kind of revolt against him over such revolt against the Buddha. Thus, the king ordered an urgent investigation. All the judges and scribes of the city were urgently instructed to arrest the grand physician and his heretical followers.
A Climate of Fear and the Hluttaw Trial
With royal agents raiding all of Mandalay, fear engulfed the followers and disciples of U Po. The state’s policy for enforcing doctrinal purity was immediate and absolute. Fearing for their lives, many fled south, crossing the frontier into British-occupied Lower Burma.
Others tried to disassociate themselves from their master after being captured by the municipal authorities during interrogation. Some said that they’d simply used the medicines that had been prescribed by the great physician, U Po, because they wanted to get well from their illnesses, trying to separate his medicine from his doctrine and stating that they never believed in his doctrine. The others declared that they were just the hearers of his preachings and did not believe his doctrine at all, seeking refuge under the reverend monks
But U Po did not flee nor deny his views. He was brought in front of the Hluttaw, or the royal parliament of ministers, where he was questioned by the Chief Minister Maha Sithu, the Lord of Lemyo. While junior officials surrounded him, pleading to the old physician to just retract his statement and save his life, U Po remained inflexible.
Here, during his interrogation in the court of the empire’s highest authority, being threatened with torture, U Po, according to the preface, made his legendary defiant statement: that he could never subscribe to what he regarded as the mere commentary of Venerable Buddhaghosa over the Pali Canon itself, and that he would rather die than change his interpretation.
Death and the River’s Mercy
King Mindon made no exception for the obstinate literalist. After U Po’s refusal to change his ways, he was beaten to death with a rattan stick.
As an awful warning to anyone who would dare defy his religious views again, King Mindon had a ghastly fate bestowed on U Po’s corpse. His body was carried to the Punna Cemetery, near the western end of the royal capital, was nailed to a cross, and left exposed to the elements.
The Legacy in the Elements
However, despite the Konbaung state’s efforts to erase U Po from Mandalay physically, his thought of course remained beyond their power.
U Po had been practicing special elemental medical practices that originated from the Puggala Pannatti — a set of ancient folklore knowledge shared by other prominent figures of that time, such as the Ohtawo Sayadaw and poet Sale U Pounnya. U Po was known to be skilled in the knowledge of these treatises.
When his students fled the royal anger in search of refuge in British-controlled Lower Burma, they took these esoteric physical-elemental practices with them. Being outside of the reach of King Mindon’s inquisitors, these exiles managed to lay foundations for alternative practices of occult and traditional medicine. The knowledge of U Po formed the basis of such famous traditions of Ne-la Wizza (in English translation: Sun-Moon occult medicine). These traditions exist nowadays as flourishing branches of Burmese folk medicine. U Po’s name, far from being remembered for his heretic Buddhism, became the name of one of the most valuable pioneers of traditional Burmese medicine.
The most striking element of U Po’s life is how much he has been forgotten when it comes to Buddhist history. The oppression of his reform movement by the Konbaung monarchy was very effective, and there is virtually no further evidence in the form of official documentation of his trial and his broader interpretation of Buddhism.
