Book
Review
On
Michael Aung-Thwin’s The Mists of Ramanna: The Legend that was Lower Burma
Reviewed
for H-ASIA by Michael W. Charney, Department of History,
The Study of Myths in Burmese History
Michael Aung-Thwin is Professor of Asian Studies at the
"In the nineteenth century
... Dhammazedi's fifteenth-century claim that the ancient Suvannabhumi was Ramannadesa and U Kala's eighteenth-century
account of the conquest of Thaton--two temporally, causally, and textually unrelated narratives--were combined for the
first time by colonial scholarship and synthesized into a new theory that the Mon Theravada Buddhist culture of Lower
Burma 'civilized' Burman Upper Burma. This is the thesis that I call the Mon Paradigm.... Because Pagan is considered to
have been the 'Golden age' of Burma's culture and therefore also the foundations upon which the country's subsequent
culture was built, the Mon Paradigm implies that the Mon people and the culture of Lower Burma were the ultimate origins
not only of Pagan civilization, but also of Burma's culture in general" (p. 2).
This paradigm was maintained,
Aung-Thwin argues, because specialists on the country did not heed the reservations of non-specialists on
The present reviewer has examined
Burmese myths, also using a textual approach as well as the same indigenous chronicles used here regarding the Abhiraja
myth.[1] Thus, he is in a position to comment on the merits of Michael Aung-Thwin's analysis of the emergence of one of
the "myths"--the Thaton conquest story in Burmese history--which was integrated into Aung-Thwin's Mon
paradigm. This story or "myth" holds that upon the advice of his teacher, Shin Arahan, the eleventh-century
Burmese king, Anawrahta, marched against and took the town of
culture from the
An important problem with this
work is that Aung-Thwin, likely unwittingly, selectively presents part of the historical context that would support his
claims, but remains silent on changing aspects of this context that would work against them. A good example, one that
would call the entire argument of this book into question, was the alternating mood of Bodawhpaya (r. 1782-1819).
Certainly, Bodawhpaya did favour the Thaton story--initially. However, when he and the monastic order were at odds
concerning his claims regarding the religion, he attempted to undercut their position by making a similar claim as that
made by Aung-Thwin in the present book, that Ramannadesa was not an ancient country, in order to challenge the
authenticity of the religious texts taken from from Thaton.[2] Bodawhpaya thus had his own special reasons to obstruct
the historical record regarding Thaton. This is important, as Bodawhpaya--who spent much of his reign collecting extant
copies of chronicles, religious texts, and other works, as well as inscriptions, and then culled them to support his
views on the religion and society--presents a serious obstacle to our understanding of what was written (or inscribed)
before his time. While Bodawhpaya could not collect and correct everything, it makes it extremely difficult to
say--concerning views not shared by Bodawhpaya--what did not exist prior to his time, as asserted in the present study.
Thus, while one might be able to confidently trace the Abhiraja myth, a myth supported by the court at this time, one
wonders whether the argument can really be made that the Thaton story definitely did not exist. Certainly, this problem
should have been discussed. The Twinthin taik-wun is clearly an exception and an understandable one. As one of the men
put in charge of collecting and revising, the Twinthin taik-wun wrote his chronicle, which was not officially sanctioned
by the court, prior to Bodawhpaya's shift regarding the Thaton story and after much of the text collecting had been
completed. This cannot be said of earlier manuscripts.
The discussion of Bimala Churn
Law's translation of Shin Pannasammi's Sasanavamsa is also problematic for several reasons.[3] First, the translation is
frequently poor. Grammatical errors, contradictions, and the like, pepper the book. For those of us unable to read Pali,
understanding what the translation is supposed to say, requires examining Shin Nyanabhivamsa's
“Thathanalinkaya-sadan” (from which the Sasasanavamsa borrows extensively verbatim) for sections on which they share
coverage. A re-translation is necessary from the original Pali (which the present reviewer is not able to read). Pending
that re-translation, the passage cited does not clearly show a contradiction with a later passage, as argued by
Aung-Thwin, regarding the Thaton 'myth.' Admittedly, it is under the heading of Ramanya, but the paragraph in which is
included is less geographically circumspect than this heading would suggest:
"the king named Anuruddha of
the town of
No mention is made of the place
to which Anuruddha (Anawrahta) brought the pitakas--although Aung-Thwin inserts "Pagan" within brackets to
make it so--"from there" could refer to either Pagan or to Thaton (the subject of the previous paragraph), or,
given the problematic translation (or of the Pali original, if a new translation demonstrates this), it could refer to
any range of places (Aung-Thwin, p. 146).
Pannasammi actually includes two
accounts of the "Thaton Conquest" episode. The second is a full elaboration of the story, as rejected by
Aung-Thwin. The first, quoted by Aung-Thwin, is a nearly verbatim repetition of the version of the episode found in the
Pali section of the Kalyani Inscriptions, probably preserved in an intermediary text.
[Kalyani] "King Anuruddha,
the Lord of Arimaddanapura, brought a community of priests together with the Tipitika (from Ramannadesa), and
established the Religion of Arimaddanapura, otherwise called Pugama" (Kalyani, p. 49).[4]
[Pannasammi A]: "the king
named Aniruddha of the town of
[Aung-Thwin quotation of
Pannasammi A]: "the king named Aniruddha of the town of
Clearly, Aung-Thwin's adjustment
of the sentence has the effect of single-handedly replacing Ramannadesa with Pagan, not presenting new evidence that
contradicts the Kalyani Inscription. As demonstrated above, the Pannasammi story [version A] is not an entirely
different version of the episode, but the same Mon version of the story datable at least to 1476, and, certainly, it can
be read any way that one wishes to, depending on which name they insert into the brackets, even as evidence supporting
the Thaton conquest account. What makes this problem important is that Aung-Thwin then makes a jump, by ignoring the
more reliable account [Pannasammi B] and then telling his readers that Pannasammi (A) provides a unique third version of
events, that Anawrahta "took the scriptures to Thaton" (p. 147), which is only conjecture on the part of
Aung-Thwin. In fact, the only precolonial tradition (Aung-Thwin cites three competing traditions) that offers an
alternative story is derived from a text that can be reliably dated only to the nineteenth century.
The overall argument of the book
is sometimes not supported by the evidence cited. Oddly, Aung-Thwin expends a considerable amount of effort discussing
chronicles and other texts that would not logically mention the Thaton story in an effort to demonstrate that their
failure to include the Thaton story constitutes some sort of proof that the story did not exist at the time they were
written. ‘Zatatawpon Yazawin’ and ‘Yazawinkyaw’ are not histories per se, but deal almost exclusively with royal
lineage (and the latter, especially with horoscopes), with little discussion of anything but regnal titles, dates, and
filial relations. ‘Razadhirat Ayeidawhpon’ as well was not intended to cover the Pagan era (pp. 133-135). Further,
one, the ‘Zambu Kungya’, cannot be dated to the pre-nineteenth century period, although its contents can be traced
in part to U Kala in the early eighteenth century and to the ‘Maniyadanabon’ in the late eighteenth century, but is
nonetheless presented as evidence that the earliest Burmese chronicles had a different version of the Thaton story than
that provided in U Kala (p.123).
The author also fails to put his
work into the broader range of literature on myths and their emergence in Burmese history. In neglecting related work in
the field, _Mists of Ramanna_ remains only important to those concerned with the relevance of the
As Aung-Thwin explains, his study
is "not an indictment of evidence but of methodology; of the way data have been assessed and used to conform to a
preconceived notion" (p. 3). This criticism was directed at colonial scholars, but might be appropriately
redirected at the present study. The case against the Mon paradigm remains unproven. The data is sometimes poorly
handled in the present volume; vague references and observations by the author based on equivocal evidence he mobilizes
in defense of his thesis represent questionable methodology.
In sum, “Mists of Ramanna”
presents an interesting journey through a particular set of indigenous source materials and is easy reading. An
unconvincing analysis of the chronicles and a failure to place the current study into the broader context of research on
myths in Burmese history, however, hinder the book's value. Perhaps a revised edition will help the author make _Mists
of Ramanna_ a stronger contribution to the body of research on premodern Burmese history.
Notes
[1]. Michael Walter Charney, "Centralizing Historical Tradition in Precolonial Burma: the Abhiraja/Dhajaraja Myth
in Early Kon-baung Historical Texts, "South East Asia Research” 10, no. 2 (2002): pp. 185-215.
[2]. Royal Edict, 7 August 1817,
in Than Tun, ed., _The Royal Orders of Burma, A.D. 1598-1885_ (Tokyo: Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto
University, 1988), 7: p. 390.
[3]. Shin Pannasammi. “The
History of Buddha's Religion (Sasanavamsa)”, trans. Bimala Churn Law (Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1952).
[4]. The full citation is The
Kalyani Inscriptions Erected by King Dhammaceti at Pegu in 1476 A.D. Text and Translation (Rangoon: Superintendent,
Government Printing, Burma, 1892).
________________________________
H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published for H-Asia@h-net.msu.edu
(February 2006)
Michael Aung-Thwin. _The Mists of
Ramanna: The Legend that was