ABSTRACT

A way was opened to the solution of the first of these problems when in 1963 Dr. E. M. Mendelson suggested that the traditional list of the 37 was evolved by a royal priesthood under the Pagan empire, in an accommodation of local cults to an ideal political organization of a microcosmic kind.2 In an article published in the same year I noted the existence of a cult of the kind postulated by Dr. Mendelson in the independent Mon kingdom, advancing the view that it inspired the Burmese synthesis.s The exploration of these two hypotheses goes far to explain the lacunae in the accounts we have of the nats, and I shall now examine the evidence for their supposed prototype at greater length.