Pau Cin Hau was the founder and the name of a religion followed by some
Tedim
Tedim (, , (Tedim language, Zo: ''Tedim Khuapi'', pronounced ; is a town and the administrative seat of Tedim Township in Chin State, Myanmar. It is the second largest town in Chin State, after Hakha (the capital city of Chin State). The town's f ...
,
Hakha in Chin state and Kale in Sagaing division in the north-western part of
Myanmar
Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and has ...
.
Pau Cin Hau was born in the Tedim (Tiddim) in 1859; and lived until 1948.
Religion
He claimed to have a series of dreams in 1900 in which an elderly saintly man instructed, later identified as the creator god, handled him a book with symbols and taught him certain shapes. He started a religious movement based on the worship of a god known as , or (the word for "god" in the
Tedim language).
While earlier traditional
Chin religion sacrificed to the tribal god / and other spirits (similar to the Burmese ), from 1902 Pau Cin Hau reserved the sacrifices to
one
1 (one, unit, unity) is a number, numeral, and glyph. It is the first and smallest positive integer of the infinite sequence of natural numbers. This fundamental property has led to its unique uses in other fields, ranging from science to sp ...
creator god
A creator deity or creator god is a deity responsible for the creation of the Earth, world, and universe in human religion and mythology. In monotheism, the single God is often also the creator. A number of monolatristic traditions separate a ...
.
Initially the Chin accepted neither Pau Cin Hau's religion nor
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, which states that Jesus in Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God (Christianity), Son of God and Resurrection of Jesus, rose from the dead after his Crucifixion of Jesus, crucifixion, whose ...
, which arrived in 1899.
The first Christian conversion is from 1904 and Pau Cin Hau got his first follower in 1906.
By the 1930s, all the Chin followed either Christianity or Pau Cin Hau's monotheism.
The missionaries rejected the traditional alcoholic drink contrasting with its permission by Pau Cin Hau.
It can be said that Pau Cin Hau's preaching opened the Chin to Christianity in spite of the differences among religions.
became the
name for the Christian god.
Missionaries did not agree whether Pau Cin Hau's preach was an introduction or an obstacle to Christianization.
Some scholars have considered it a local version of Christianity, but others have noted the differences and Pau Cin Hau's opposition.
The religion is outlined in six books written in Pau Cin Hau script.
It is framed as
healing
With physical trauma or disease suffered by an organism, healing involves the repairing of damaged tissue(s), organs and the biological system as a whole and resumption of (normal) functioning. Medicine includes the process by which the cells ...
in a physical and spiritual way.
It entails faith in and practicing "justice, harmony, discipline, peace and hygiene".
It has passed from 37,500 followers in 1931 to around 5,000 in 2024.
Christianity and the Latin script have been taken by the majority of the Chin.
Pau Cin Hau's religion is also known as ('script religion') and Laipianism, and Pau Cin Hau is also known as ('script religion creator').
He also invented two
scripts based on the revealed shapes, known as ('local script') or ,
now called
"Zotuallai".
The initial 1902 version was logographic and a later version is an alphabet.
The script is not only a vehicle for the message but also an icon of the religion.
See also
*
Pau Cin Hau script
References
*
External links
ScriptSource page on the Pau Cin Hau alphabet
Burmese religious leaders
Founders of new religious movements
1859 births
1948 deaths
Pau Cin Hau script
Creators of writing systems
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