Dr Maung Maung: Gentleman, Scholar, Patriot

I Discovered Greatness

45 Section II, D. I DISCOVERED GREATNESS “I Discovered Greatness” reproduced from Maung Maung, Burma’s Teething Time (Rangoon: Burma Publishers, 1949) pp. 9–12; first broadcast 18 November 1948, by permission of Daw Khin Myint (wife of the late Dr Maung Maung). Of course, it is all a matter of opinion, and opinions, as we know are so susceptible to change. Everyone has his or her own idea of greatness. I remember well how, as a young fellow with too much of romance in my head and heart, I used to wield my toy sword and galloping hard on my wooden horse hacked my way through the armies of the enemy to the rescue of the fair. Inevitably I would win through in the end and get my well-earned reward of the smile of the damsel in distress. I was a great guy, the greatest in fact of all warriors who took the field. My idea of greatness at that stage of my growth was therefore courage and chivalry. After I had outgrown that stage, my idea underwent a change. I started writing silly short stories and composing unmetered rhymes and I thought I had a great writer and poet in me. Some of my stories managed to slip the editor in his busy moment and come out in print, and that was, for me, sufficient confirmation that I 02D฀DrMaung.indd฀฀฀45 1/25/08฀฀฀12:05:23฀PM 46 DR MAUNG MAUNG: Gentleman, Scholar, Patriot was a great writer after all. The sword and the wooden horse fell out of my favour — they were childish pastimes, I thought. How foolish I was to think that to ride a horse and brandish a sword were the essence of greatness — anyone could do that! So ideas went on changing until today I have come to hold a different opinion of myself which is no longer as complimentary as it used to be before. My discovery of true greatness was intimately connected with my frequent visits to the Burmese villages. I like the life there in the villages where things are beautiful in their technicolour and there is peace, but my appreciation of the life did not, during my early visits to the village, go much further than an admiration of the beauty and an immense enjoyment of the peace. It was only when I began to think and to know a little that I discovered that there was not only colour and beauty and peace in our village, but also a greatness, an awe-inspiring greatness of the human mind, strength and form, which one can hardly find anywhere outside the village fence. The greatness is of an unobtrusive character and a casual observer will find it difficult if not impossible to notice it. It is not the kind of greatness that declares itself in public, that parades itself in all manners in order to catch the eye. It is a greatness that is silent that feels happy in its aloofness, that does not worry when it does not win notice. And that is why I think it is the true kind of greatness. A visit to the village always helps me by wearing down whatever conceit I might be suffering from before the visit. I might go thinking I knew too much, thinking that I was a living bank of knowledge, but inevitably I would come back with the realization that I knew too little. The farmer gets his early tutoring in the three “Rs” from the village phongyi. He does not get an opportunity to go to an English School leave alone a College or a University. He does not know when Queen Victoria was born and what her consort’s name was. He does not know how the Roman Empire rose and fell, nor does he have even a vague idea of what Plato thought of the ideal State. I happen to know these little things because my books taught me and because I had to swallow the knowledge in order to pass examinations. Whether I can digest the knowledge so swallowed is a different matter. The farmer has never read Shakespeare while I have read Shakespeare partly because it is fashionable to have read Shakespeare, and partly because he is a compulsory subject in the examinations. So when I first spent my holidays in the village, I 02D฀DrMaung.indd฀฀฀46 1/25/08฀฀฀12:05:23฀PM [3.17.150...