The 32 Myos in the Medival Mon Kingdom

H. L. Shorto

doi:10.1017/S0041977X00070336

The 32 Myos in the Medival Mon Kingdom

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009

H. L. Shorto

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He hunted the valley till it was midday. Moreover, there were with him two-and-thirty crowned kings, his vassals at that time. Not for the joy of hunting did the emperor hunt with them so long, but because he had been made a man of such high dignity that he was lord over all those kings.

‘The dream of Macsen Wledig’

That the three provinces which constituted Rāmaññadesa, the Mon kingdom in Lower Burma, were divided into 32 townships is one of those acknowledged crumbs of fact which, passed down from historian to historian, never seem to excite more specific inquiry. The institution has suggestive parallels and analogues elsewhere in South East Asia, to the study of which Sir Richard Winstedt, in the ‘History of Perak’ which he wrote with R. J. Wilkinson, himself contributed almost thirty years ago.

Type: Research Article
Information: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , October 1963 , pp. 572 - 591

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X00070336 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1963

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References

^{page 572 note 1} ‘History of Perak’, JMBRAS, XII, 1, 1934 Google Scholar.

^{page 572 note 2} Harvey, G. E., History of Burma, 1925, 115 Google Scholar. Cf. also Furnivall, J. S., Notes on the history of Hanthawaddy, JBRS, iv, 1, 1914, 46 Google Scholar, from which is probably derived the statement in Hall, D. G. E., Burma, 1950, 34–5Google Scholar, that the whole kingdom consisted of 32 districts. Phayre is silent on this point.

^{page 572 note 3} Sudhammavatīārājāvaṁsa; Sīharājādhirājāvaṁsa, ed. Phra Candakanta, Pak Lat, 1910 (hereafter cited as SR), 354, 398. Usually known as Rājādhirāj, this is the Mon original from which the better-known Burmese version, Razadirit ayedawbon, was made.

^{page 573 note 1} Face A, 11. 18–19, 70–1. I am indebted to U Tin Hla Thaw for bringing this inscription to my notice and for providing readings.

^{page 573 note 2} James Low reported that Ye and Lamaing formed a separate province, subordinate to Tavoy: cf. History of Tennasserim, JRAS, First Series, II, 1835, 251 Google Scholar; report on Tenasserim in the CalcuttaGazette, 2 March 1826, reproduced in Wilson, H. H., Documents illustrative of the Burmese war, Calcutta, 1827, liii–livGoogle Scholar. But the land roll of 1766 includes these districts in Martaban.

^{page 573 note 3} (roll, Hanthawaddy land) Furnivall, J. S. (ed. and tr.), Some historical documents …, JBRS, VI, 3, 1916, 214 Google Scholar. References to the Martaban roll are based on the present author's transcript of a MS in the possession of the Librarian of the Mon Library, Moulmein.

^{page 573 note 4} Wilson, op. cit., xliv.

^{page 574 note 1} A translation of the relevant part of the text, based on MS readings by C. 0. Blagden, appears in Shorto, ‘The Gavampati tradition in Burma’, Dr. R. G. Majumdar felicitation volume, Calcutta, in the press.

^{page 574 note 2} In SR, 51–2. The story is also recorded in the Thaton chronicle Uppanna Sudhammawatīrājāwaṁsa-kathā (Ibid., 13–14).

^{page 574 note 3} SR, 319. In the Glass Palace Chronicle(tr. Pe Maung Tin and G. H. Luce, 1923, 78, 79) the number is given as 32. The Thaton chronicle (SR, 25) allots Manuhaw 30, while Gawampati gives this number to the last 19 kings (Ibid., 61). Doubtless these figures are an approximation, by authors who failed to take the allusion; does the same apply to the figures of 30 districts subject to Martaban and 30 up-country districts quoted on p. 572 ?

^{page 575 note 1} Epigraphia Birmanica, III, Pt. 2.

^{page 576 note 1} JBRS, vi, 3, 1916, 214.

^{page 576 note 2} Furnivall, J. S. (ed. and tr.), The history of Syriam, JBRS, v, 1915, 7, 56, 144Google Scholar. The last passage is mistranslated and should be compared with the text on pp. 133–4.

^{page 576 note 3} cf. p. 584 below.

^{page 577 note 1} Arthaśāstra, n, 4. There are traces also in Burma of the oval or round ‘Fu-nan’ city which further east preceded a square ‘Khmer’ type. A ramparted enclosure at Wagaru, Amherst district, usually identified with the old myo, is of this kind, while the legendary account of the foundation of Pegu describes Indra laying out the circuit with a rope attached to an indakhīla; pillar which became the symbolic Meru at the centre of the city. Later the indakhīlā, like the Burmese mawgun taing, were placed at the 12 gates.

^{page 577 note 2} Bayinnaung's Pegu, with 20 gates, was an exception.

^{page 577 note 3} Martaban land roll. The enclosure in 1766 was much as shown on Low's plan in the Tenasserim atlas published in Calcutta in 1826, except that it excluded the Myatheindan pagoda.

^{page 577 note 4} Outline of Burmese history, Calcutta, 1929, ch. ix Google Scholar.

^{page 577 note 5} MS list of officers and fiefs appended to the Martaban land roll.

^{page 578 note 1} Nidāna ārambhakathā, in Nidāna Rāmādhipatikathā, ed. Phra Candakanta, Pak Lat, 1912 (hereafter cited as NR), 13; Gawampati, in SR, 61.

^{page 578 note 2} Travels of Fray Sebastien Manrique, i (Hakluyt Society, Second Series, LIX), Oxford, 1927, 365–78Google Scholar.

^{page 578 note 3} Rājādhirāj, in SR, 158–9.

^{page 578 note 4} Inscription published in RSASB, 1939–40, 23–4.

^{page 578 note 5} Wilson, op. cit., liv.

^{page 578 note 6} Taking gna kyāk ‘queen’ as a caique on mahādevī. The word gna does not occur outside these two phrases.

^{page 579 note 1} SR, 188.

^{page 580 note 1} Hsin-t‘ang-shu, ch. 222C. I am indebted to Professor D. C. Twitchett for a discussion of this text, which is summarized in Luce, G. H., The ancient Pyu, JBRS, XXVII, 3, 1937, 250 Google Scholar.

^{page 580 note 2} Luce, op. cit., 243–4; Ccedes, G., Lès états hindouisés d'Indochine et d' Indonésie, Paris, 1948, 151 Google Scholar.

^{page 580 note 3} Glass Palace Chronicle, 14.

^{page 580 note 4} Weltbild und Bauform in Südostasien, Wiener Beitrdge zur Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte Asiens, iv, 1930, 48–50 Google Scholar.

^{page 580 note 5} Chit Maung, Shuginihaya Shan pyihma, Rangoon, n.d., 6.

^{page 580 note 6} Scott, J. G. and Hardiman, J. P., Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States, II, 1, Rangoon, 1901, 373–5Google Scholar.

^{page 581 note 1} Oudheidkundige opmerkingen, BTLV, LXXIV, 1918, p. 149 Google Scholar, II. 1.

^{page 581 note 2} Hindoe-javaanschegeschiedenis, The Ha, gae, 1926, 161Google Scholar.

^{page 581 note 3} Schrieke, B. , Indonesian sociological studies, II, The Hague/Bandung, 1957 Google Scholar, 222, citing de Haan, F., Priangan, Batavia, 1910–12, III, 200 Google Scholar.

^{page 581 note 4} Mhv. 25.7 ff., 55, 75; The legend of the topes, tr. Law, Bimala Churn, Calcutta, 1945, 60–2Google Scholar.

^{page 581 note 5} ‘…la fioraison… des systèmes à cinq et à neuf unités dans le monde indochinois (centre + 4/8 unités environnantes), et par système j'entends aussi bien des structures sociales que des constructions religieuses’ ( Notes sur la claustration villageoise dans l'Asie du Sud-Est, JA, CCXLV, 2, 1957, 204 Google Scholar).

^{page 572 note 1} de Josselin de Jong, P. E., Minangkabau and Negri Sembilan, Leiden, 1951, 99, 105–6Google Scholar.

^{page 582 note 2} Schrieke, op. cit., II, book 2, ch. iii, sec. 1, esp. pp. 178 ff.

^{page 582 note 3} Ibid., 161.

^{page 582 note 4} Berg, C. C., De geschiedenis van pril Majapahit, Indonesië, iv, 1950–1, 493–4Google Scholar; Schrieke, op. cit., II, 15.

^{page 582 note 5} Schrieke, op. cit., n, 16 ff., and book 1, ch.ii, n. 16.

^{page 582 note 6} ‘De oorsprong van het javaansche begrip Montjå-pat…’, Verslagen en Mededeelingen der Kon. Akad. v. Wetenschappen, Afd. Letterkunde, 5de Reeks, III, 1917, 6–44.

^{page 583 note 1} De Josselin de Jong, op. cit., 106, citing van Vollenhoven, C., Het adatrecht van Nederlands-Indië, i, Leiden, 1918, 258–9Google Scholar.

^{page 583 note 2} Mrs. Milne, L. and Cochrane, W. W., Shuns at home, London, 1910, 131 Google Scholar.

^{page 583 note 3} Winstedt, and Wilkinson, , JMBRAS, xII, 1, 1934, 137 Google Scholar ff.; Schrieke, op. cit., II, esp. pp. 164–8.

^{page 583 note 4} The Golden Khersonese, Kuala Lumpur, 1961, 17–30 Google Scholar, 286, 292.

^{page 584 note 1} History of Syriam, JBRS, v, 1915, p. 146 Google Scholar and n. 63.

^{page 584 note 2} op. cit., 148–51.

^{page 584 note 3} Is there an echo of this phraseology in the saying in Rājādhirāj (SE, 406) that Ava ‘is at the end of the road, you might say it was the porch (muk) of Hanthawaddy’?

^{page 584 note 4} De Josselin de Jong, op. cit., 166.

^{page 584 note 5} Gerini, G. E., Historical retrospect of Junkceylon island, JSS, II, 2, 1905, 191-2Google Scholar.

^{page 585 note 1} JBRS, v, 1915, 142.

^{page 585 note 2} Leach, E. R., The frontiers of “Burma”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, III, 1, 1960, 60–1Google Scholar. An earlier Shan federation was the Nine Provinces of Maw, mentioned in the Glass Palace Chronicle, 83, 84–5, 96.

^{page 585 note 3} Martaban land roll; SR, 37–44.

^{page 585 note 4} NR, 28.

^{page 586 note 1} cf. Halliday, R., The Talaings, Rangoon, 1917, 2–3 Google Scholar; Stewart, J. A., ‘The song of the Three Mons’, BSOS, ix, 1, 1937, 33–9CrossRef Google Scholar. In references in early Mon inscriptions to ‘the men of the four kirkūl (descent-groups)’ in Pagan, the key word has customarily been translated as ‘castes’; it might with some plausibility be rendered ‘clans’. There are totemic clans among the Mon-Khmer-speaking Lamet: Isikowitz, K. G., Lamet(Etnologiska Studier, 17), Göteborg, 1951, 85 Google Scholar ff.

^{page 586 note 2} For this conception of kingship cf. Shorto, , ‘A Mon Genealogy of kings …’, Historians of South East Asia, ed. Hall, D. G. E., 1961, 68 Google Scholar, 70.

^{page 587 note 1} op. cit., 6–3.

^{page 587 note 2} ’amba goḥ das nor ’ ׀’ambo’ goḥ das nor tuṁh’āy ma tāw pḍey dūñ (Epigraphia Birmanica, I, 2, No. vi, 23–5). This reading is confirmed by the corresponding Pali passage, No. vII, B 16: veḷubabbaṇṇajā (sc. veḷu-pabb’-aṇḍa-jā !) mātā ׀ pitā