By Myint Zan
THE writer Shwe U Daung (real name U Pe Thein) (24 October 1889-10 August 1973) is a contemporary literary figure of great significance. The 24th of October 2025 is the 136th birth anniversary of Sayagyi Shwe U Daung.
Among many of the literary genres Shwe U Daung produced is his skilful adaptation of Sherlock Holmes’ detective stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (22 May 1859- 7 July 1930) (hereafter occasionally referred to as CD).
Ninety-five years ago, on 8 July 1930, The New York Times (NY Times) published an obituary of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The NY Times obituary mentioned Sherlock Holmes as well as the statement that Sir Arthur was ‘tired of hearing about his celebrated character Sherlock Holmes’. Still, since 1887, when his first Sherlock Holmes novel A Study in Scarlet was published, up to now, about five generations of at least millions of readers throughout the world continue to read and enjoy reading CD’s ‘stories’ featuring Sherlock Holmes.
Conan Doyle’s ‘spiritism’ and communication with the dead: a few juxtapositions
In the later parts of his life, Sir Arthur was preoccupied, almost obsessed with what is called ‘spiritism’ and his efforts to -indeed claims of - communicating with the dead. The NY Times obituary mentioned that CD had ‘for the past few years .. devoted virtually all his time to the propagation of spiritism’, Conan Doyle claimed ‘to have had conversations with the spirits of many great men, including Cecil Rhodes, Earl Haig, Joseph Conrad and others’.
The ‘whistling Nat spirit’ and the whereabouts of the spirit of Abraham Lincoln I might add that such claims of communicating with the dead can be found in many different cultures. In mid-1986, together with a cousin of mine and a niece, I attended a ‘communicate with the dead’ session conducted in a place near Prome (now Pyay). The séance or medium was a woman. For a fee, the séance communicated through whistles with the ‘spirit’ ‘whistling Nat (spirit)’. The communication was through layers or stages, so to speak. First, the deceased’s relatives had to verbally give the names of the deceased and how long they had been dead. And then the séance whistled her communication to the Nat ‘spirit’. After a pause, the Nat spirit replied in whistles. Parts of the ‘whistling back’ are discernible in the Burmese language. The séance interpreted verbally what the Nat spirit said. Mainly, they were brief utterances. Most of the Nat spirit’s response was that the deceased were in ‘good abodes’. My cousin suggested that I ask the ‘whereabouts’ of my late father, Dr San Baw (29 June 1922,-7 December 1984), through the séance to the ‘whistling Nat spirit’. Mischievously, I said that I would ask about the whereabouts of the ‘spirit’ of Abraham Lincoln (12 February 1809-15 April 1865). My cousin begged me not to do so. So, I did not make my query. If I had continued my query, I would have said Lincoln (as of mid-1986 when I attended the session) has been dead for 121 years. It did not occur to me in 1986 that I could also have asked the spirit-medium about Conan Doyle or the spirit of Conan Doyle’s whereabouts!
I would briefly add that communicating with the dead and belief in afterlife or afterlives are two different, albeit related, ‘genres’, so to speak. In Christianity and Islam, after death, I would submit, there are ‘two-way streets’. The deceased persons either go to hell or heaven and stay there ‘forever’. (I recall a Thai Buddhist monk in a Thai Buddhist monastery near Los Angeles asked me rhetorically in 1984 ‘After you go to heaven, you go where? The answer would be “you” stay ‘there’.) In some Christian sects, there is a third ‘category’ of purgatory between heaven and hell, so to speak. In Hinduism and Buddhism, ‘sentient beings’ go through both ‘before lives’ and ‘after lives’ till liberation (moksha or Nibbana) is achieved.
Afterlife in Plato’s Phaedo and Conan Doyle’s spiritism The ancient Greek philosopher Plato (427 BCE-347 BCE), in his overrated and long-winded Phaedo, discussed the afterlife in the form of a dialogue between Socrates (469 BCE-399 BCE) (‘lead discussant’) and his disciples. Plato’s dialogue Phaedo mainly deals with the existence and ‘proofs’ of the afterlife. Plato was ill, so to be mischievous again, he took an MC (Medical Certificate) and did not attend his Master Socrates’ last discussion with or rather discourse to his disciples. Yet through another of Socrates’ disciples, the person Phaedo, Plato learned about Socrates’s discussions and discourse as produced in the dialogue Phaedo. (Here, Phaedo is in bold to distinguish it from the person Phaedo).
During Conan Doyle’s lifetime, the English translations of Phaedo by classicist Benjamin Jowett (15 April 1817-1 October 1893) were available. Sir Arthur could have read it. Sir Arthur claimed (according to the NY Times obituary) he had ‘communicated’ with quite a few others with the ‘spirit’ of deceased writer Joseph Conrad (3 December 1857- 3 August 1924). Note that Conrad pre-deceased CD by less than six years. Incidentally. When I posted on social media about my unasked question to the ‘whistling nat spirit’ as to the whereabouts of the spirit of Abraham Lincoln, a commentator remarked that Lincoln has been dead for so long that the particular spirit-medium could not have communicated with Lincoln.
I will now encapsulate and discuss Sir Arthur’s belief in fairies (in this life, so to speak and not ’dead fairies’) as narrated by the polymath and pseudo-science debunker Martin Gardner (21 October 1914- 22 May 2010).
Conan Doyle’s ‘belief in fairies’ In 1976, Martin Gardner published his article ‘The Irrelevance of Conan Doyle’ in the book Beyond Baker Street, an anthology of Sherlock Holmes (edited by Michael Harrison). Gardner included his essay in The Night is Large, Collected Essays, 1939-1995 (Penguin 1997, pp. 183-192). Writing parodically, he stated that Conan Doyle could not have written the Sherlock Holmes stories. Why? Mainly because apart from his spiritism as stated above, Conan Doyle believed in the existence of (live) fairies.
Gardner wrote, and many other sources confirmed that in the year 1917 then two teenage girls, Elsie Wright (1901-1988) and Frances Griffiths (1907-1986), made an elaborate hoax that they had photographed fairies. The two girls were cousins. They lived in Cottingley near the British city of Bradford. The two girls were 16 and 9, respectively. Using cardboard cutouts of the pictures from coloured fairy tale books about elves, the two precocious girls declared that they had photographs of fairies!
Elsie’s father was a keen amateur photographer. He developed the film from the camera Elsie had borrowed from him and taken the photos. Elsie’s father knew that Elsie was good at drawing, and she had worked in a photographic studio. Elsie’s father knew from the start that they were fakes. The two (mischievous!) (or were they incorrigible or persistent?) girls borrowed Elsie’s father’s camera again, and this time they photographed Elsie sitting on the lawn and reaching out to a foottall elf. To cut a long story short, what came to be known as the ‘Cottingley fairies’ hoax came to the attention of Conan Doyle. And the creator of the logical, brilliant Sherlock Holmes believed that these photos prove the existence of fairies!
I have seen a video of Sir Arthur stating that he had received many letters from people who wanted to meet his character, Sherlock Holmes, thinking that Sherlock Holmes was real. Sir Arthur stated that his own fictional creation, Dr John Watson, was ‘stupid’. Sir Arthur has been very critical of his own character, John Watson, MD. Can we venture to say now that Sir Arthur, as far as his belief in the existence of fairies, elves, spirit mediums, and communication with the dead was concerned, was naïve? Gardner reported that when another person in 1920 lent the two girls his camera and said that he would accompany them to see the fairies, the girls replied that the fairies were extremely shy and would not come out for another person! (The Night is Large, p. 188). Paraphrasing William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar … (‘ and Brutus is an honourable man’ which Shakespeare’s character Mark Antony repeated several times), I would say ‘and yet Conan Doyle still believed in fairies’ (several times).
In his second postscript in 1995 of his article ‘The Irrelevance of Conan Doyle’, first published in 1976, Gardner stated that
QUOTE .. in 1983 Frances (then 75), and Elsie then 80) made a full confession … Elsie had drawn the little people on card board sheets, which the girl cut and stuck in the shrubbery [in the gardens] with long pins… the girl intended their pictures to be short lived practical jokes but they felt so sorry for poor Doyle that to protect his reputation they kept silent …I thought it was a joke but every one keep it going. It should have died a natural death sixty years ago.
UNQUOTE (The Night is Large, p.191) Conan Doyle did write the Sherlock Holmes stories: Trying to explain Gardner’s parody and Conan Doyle’s anomaly. The earlier part of Gardner’s essay ‘The Irrelevance of Conan Doyle’ states that Conan Doyle could not have written the Sherlock Holmes stories. Gardner also states the claim that it was
QUOTE ‘Holmes and Watson, [themselves who were] intent on guarding their privacy, [they] permitted Sir Arthur to take the credit for inventing them. In doing so, it conferred on [Doyle] that earthly immortality that his authentic but his undistinguished writings [on spiritism] could have provided’.
UNQUOTE Here, Gardner cleverly made the fictional characters of Holmes and Watson real. Holmes and Watson were (in Gardner’s words) not ‘immortalized’ by Doyle but the other way round. That was a clever, almost brilliant parody or ‘tease’ by Martin Gardner. Was there any evidence that Holmes and Watson really existed? Are there records of their rental payments to the landlady (Mrs Hudson) for their rooms at 221 B Baker Street, London? Of course not. Still, quite a few, including on social media, thought that Gardner really claimed that Conan Doyle did not write the Sherlock Holmes stories. Of course, Doyle did.
Then the ‘spirited’ (pun intended) question of why Conan Doyle, the creator of the rational Sherlock Holmes, was so naïve and, in Gardner’s words, so ‘irrelevant’?
A few eminent scientists, Isaac Newton (25 December 1643- 20 March 1727) and Johannes Kepler (27 December 1571-15 November 1630) had stated the erroneously, gloriously wrong view that the Earth is around 6,000 years old. Notwithstanding these ‘irrelevancies’ of Newton and Kepler, can we question or doubt how they could have written such true scientific and astronomical discoveries abundantly shown in their writings?
I am not comparing the naivete, ‘irrelevance’ of Conan Doyle in his beliefs regarding fairies, spiritism, mediums, seances, communicating with the dead, with the understandable mistakes of Newton and Kepler. Conan Doyle’s mistakes and, in Gardner’s word, ‘irrelevancies’ are, one readily admits, more anomalous, and to be uncharitable, more pitiable than those of Newton and Kepler.
Talking of Newton, I understand that he had also written many volumes on the occult, Biblical chronology and other non-scientific items. I do not defend Conan Doyle’s naivete and ‘irrelevancies’. It is an attempt to explain the anomaly, if you will, that the believer of spiritism, fairies, etc., could also have written the Sherlock Holmes stories.
Translations and adaptations of Sherlock Holmes stories into Burmese There have been adaptations and translations of Sherlock Holmes’ novels, novellas and short stories into Burmese, mainly by Shwe U Daung.
In Shwe U Daung’s skilful pen, the character Sherlock Holmes became detective (Maung) (honorific) San Shar, and John Watson became Thein Maung. The streets of London and places in England were transformed into the streets of Rangoon. I have read some of the adapted San Shar short stories of Shwe U Daung. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Shwe U Daung adapted and published perhaps most of the 56 short stories of Sherlock Holmes. Shwe U Daung adapted Conan Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet, into Burmese. Shwe U Daung also directly translated The Hound of the Baskervilles into Burmese.
As Shwe U Daung’s adaptation of Sherlock Holmes was one of the most prominent of the veteran writer’s achievements, another veteran writer, Maung Htin ( 20 March 1908-29 January 2006) wrote a tribute to Shwe U Daung with the title ‘The Last of Maung San Shar’ in The Working People’s Daily when Shwe U Daung passed away.
Sudden ‘stoppage’ of U Pe Thein’s columns in the Loke Tha Pyithu Nayzin In 1964 the Revolutionary government invited or perhaps co-opted U Pe Thein (Shwe U Daung) to be the Chief Editor of the new Burmese language Loke Thar Pyithu Nayzin (The Working People’s Daily). Chief Editor Shwe U Daung had a regular column with the title ‘From a Buddhist Perspective’. Later, he changed the heading of his column to’ From a Metta (‘loving kindness’) perspective’. The columns were in the form of a discussion between him and ‘a pensioner’. Shwe U Daung’s columns suddenly stopped around 1967, and just after about three years as Chief Editor, he was ‘permitted to retire’. Now, what I would state here is hearsay, but at least about four persons had separately told me that in one of his last columns, Shwe U Daung, wrote that in one previous life he was a guru (teacher) to then Revolutionary Council Chairman General Ne Win (6 July 1910-5 December 2002). Perhaps that displeased the strong man General Ne Win, or at least his underlings. And that might have been the main reason why Shwe U Daung’s columns stopped and why he ‘retired’ as Chief Editor. (Since I do not know the exact year far let the month and date the article appeared I am, up to now, unable to retrieve that particular article of Shwe U Daung from the libraries). Of course, past lives and future lives form an integral part of elemental Buddhism.
Conan Doyle, perhaps like (dare I mention it?) Socrates and Plato believed in ‘future life‘ (not necessarily ‘future lives’) as part of their spiritism. But did CD believe in ‘before lives’? What would he have said to Shwe U Daung’s supposed statement that he was the teacher of General Ne Win in a previous life, if CD were to come back?
‘Silly’ Sherlock Holmes stories? Above, I have elaborated on Sherlock Holmes stories. Of course, there are detractors even to the Sherlock Holmes stories. Sir Arthur’s younger compatriot, the evolutionist Richard Dawkins (born on 26 March 1941) wrote in one of his articles that Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories are ‘silly’. I disagree. I have read more of the works of Dawkins than those of Conan Doyle. I have learned a lot from them. I could not say that I have gained concrete knowledge from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s books, as I indeed have from Professor Richard Dawkins’ books. Still, I enjoyed reading some of Sherlock Holmes’ detective stories even after I read Martin Gardner’s perceptive and compelling critique of Conan Doyle’s ‘spiritism’. If Dawkins were to comment on CD’s obsession with fairies, ‘communicating with the dead’, etc., he undoubtedly would have stated that they were also ‘silly’.
I would now say that I have learned from books written by both Martin Gardner and Richard Dawkins. I found their books to be more relevant in the contemporary era for the purpose of enhancing knowledge than any of Arthur Conan Doyle’s books.
