Wungyi Padethayaza was a Burmese poet, born in Ava in 1672 and died in Syriam in 1752. He flourished at the Court of Ava during the reign of King Sane (1698-1714 C.E.). His tomb stands on the northern slopes of Kyaikkhauk Pagoda in Syriam.

Read one of his poems, “Peasant,” translated by Friedrich V. Lustig, a Buddhist archbishop of Latvia. 

Rainy season it is!

And when it rains

Happily, husband and wife—

In red cotton turbans,

And tattered pasohs and aingyis—

Carry along their children

Rain-wet and without clothes

Body warm in their arms.

A short pipe between his teeth—

The peasant ploughs his field;

And in his rice fields

A re water-filled holes

Homes of many small crabs.

Tossing these into his shoulder basket

Together with frogs, snails,

Supon plants, kazoon and kin-bon leaves,

And pilo— all for his curry—

Stoopingly he goes back home.

Sweet and juicy is the curry

Cooked on arrival and laid out quickly

With kyan-hing and kywet-nci vegetables.

The rice is hot

And the curry is hot

With pungent Shan chillies

That makes one suck that, that, that.

Scooping sizable handfuls,

Bending, he eats—

Surrounded on all sides

By robust sons and grandsons

Of these happy parents.

(Pasoh is another word for longyi, which is the tubular skirt worn by both men and women in Burma. Aingyis are the blouse-like jackets worn by the Burmese.)