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- WORLD, Page 47World NotesBURMATempest in a Begging Bowl
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- Rudyard Kipling notwithstanding, Mandalay has neither flying
- fishes nor even a bay; Burma's second city sits on an arid
- plain. For the clergy of the Phaya-gyi monastery, however, the
- dawn really did come up like thunder one morning last week as
- government troops raided the 206-year-old pagoda and arrested
- about 20 of its monks.
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- In protest against the violent quelling of an antigovernment
- demonstration, some holy men in Mandalay had launched a
- campaign of refusing alms from soldiers and denying them other
- Buddhist sacraments. At times, the monks would overturn their
- alms bowls when a soldier approached. Finally, after the
- government ordered an end to the protest, troops armed with
- bayonets encircled Mandalay's 133 monasteries, then raided and
- ransacked some of the holy places.
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