However, the stockade was
strong and the defenders beat off all attacks with boiling oil.
strong and the defenders beat off all attacks with boiling oil.
Cambridge History of India - v4 - Mugul Period
The chiefs presented daughters
to the rival harem, sent their sons to be brought up in the palace,
and paid periodic tribute; Momeik, the most valuable of all, paid
rubies; Chiengmai paid elephants, horses, lacquer and silks. Every-
where he deported numbers of the people in order to populate his
homeland. From Chiengmai he took artisans, especially her famous
lacquer workers; it is probably these who introduced into Burma
the finer sort of lacquer ware called yun, the name of the Yun or
Lao Shan tribes round Chiengmai. ?
In the 1556 campaign he went by river as far as Katha district,
accompanied by his harem and worshipping at the principal pagodas
on the way. On the return journey in 1557 he set up at the Shwezigon
pagoda, Pagan, the great bronze bell bearing in Pali, Burmese and
Talaing an inscription every line of which breathes imperial pride
in his conquests and in the steps he took to promote religion among
the Shans, building monasteries, and suppressing funeral sacrifice.
It had been customary to bury with a major sawbwa (Shan chief)
as many as ten elephants, a hundred horses, and a hundred each of
men and women slaves, the numbers being less for minor sawbwas.
He also suppressed the sacrifice of white animals (buffaloes, kine,
goats, pigs, fowls) to the Mahagiri spirit on Popa Hill;3 hitherto
these animals had been killed for a feast, and their skulls were hung
in strings all round the shrine; the worshippers drank intoxicants at
the feast, and once a year the king and court shared in it as an act
of state worship. Bayinnaung introduced prohibition and punished
drunkenness with death. He enforced the divine command against
taking life even to the extent of abolishing the Baqr 'Id among Muslim
settlers.
The king of Ayuthia, styled Lord of the White Elephants, had
recently possessed no fewer than seven; it was the glory of these
1 See vol. II, p. 555.
2 Morris, “Lacquerware industry of Burma", in Journal Burma Research
Society, 1919; Kyaw Dun, "Lacquerware called Yun", in ibid. 1920.
3 Hmannan, I, 312; Wawhayalinatta, p. 69.
## p. 488 (#528) ############################################
188
BURMA (1531-1782)
elephants which attracted white merchants from the ends of the
carth and brought Siam unprecedented prosperity; there could be
no other cause, for in the days of his predecessors, who had far fewer,
there was less trade and European merchants had not come. He
still had four, and Bayinnaung's soul was stirred to its depths at not
having so many himself. He was considering not only his own glory
but also the interests of his people; he believed it to be essential to
their prosperity that he should acquire these elephants. Therefore
he invaded Siam. As he had a much larger area from which to get
levies, his task was easier than Tabinshwehti's.
In 1563–64 the huge host captured Kampengpet and Sukhotai and
then swarmed down on Ayuthia, losing considerably from the Siamese
and their feringhi gunners, but capturing stockades, war canoes and
three foreign ships. The city quickly yielded in quite unnecessary
terror of Bayinnaung's Portuguese artillery, which though noisy
was too light to do real damage to the walls. The terms were the
surrender of four white elephants, the captivity of the king and some
princes as hostages, the presentation of a daughter, the cession of
Tenasserim shipping tolls, and annual tribute of thirty war elephants.
Bayinnaung left the Siamese king's son to rule as vassal with a
Burmese garrison of 3000 men, and went home with the captive
king and court, and with thousands of the population roped together
in gangs with wooden collars; among them were actors and actresses,
and it is probably these who introduced into Burma the songs and
dances called Ayuthia. The loot included thirty crude images of
men and elephants in bronze.
The captive princes of Ayuthia, Ava and Chiengmai were kept
at Pegu and given reasonable treatment, even being allowed to live
in double-roofed houses painted white, the prerogative of royalty. ?
But Siam was not settled with the fall of Ayuthia. Till the end of
the reign the armies were constantly campaigning all over the
country from the northern Laos downwards. Year after year Bayin-
naung led a weary chase through trackless hills where his men were
reduced to eating grass and died in thousands of starvation and
disease. Year after year there was cruel fighting against the Siamese
stockades, against their war-canoes and flaming rafts. He usually
succeeded in occupying towns, setting his puppet with a Burmese
garrison on their little thrones, and dragging away the population
when it had not hidden in the jungle, to work as slaves in Burma
if they survived the long march. But he could do little more than
this, he could give no settled government to the surviving victims,
and some of the chiefs he never caught. He generously allowed the
captive king of Siam, who had become a monk, to return home on
1 For the significance of the White Elephant, see Harvey, History of Burma,
2 For Burmese sumptuary laws, see Shway
Yoe, The Burman, his Life and Notions.
p. 274.
## p. 489 (#529) ############################################
THE CEYLON TOOTH
489
pilgrimage; no sooner had he arrived than he flung off the robe and
so another siege of Ayuthia became necessary. It lasted ten months
(1568-69). The Burmese losses were so heavy that the men used to
take shelter under the piles of their comrades' corpses. The troops
sickened of the carnage and officers were executed right and left
for failure. The town could not be taken by storm and, although
short of food, held its own until Bayinnaung employed treachery.
He promised large rewards, and one of his prisoners, a Siamese lord,
entered the town saying he had escaped from the Burmese. The
Siamese gave him high command, and one night he opened the gates.
In 1560 the Portuguese captured the Buddha Tooth of Ceylon 1 and
took it to Goa. Bayinnaung sent envoys on a Portuguese ship to
Goa, offering, in return for the Tooth, eight lakhs of rupees and,
whenever needed, shiploads of rice to provision the fortress of
Malacca. Other Buddhist and Hindu kings made offers. The Portu-
guese wished to accept but were overridden by their archbishop who,
in the presence of a large assembly including the Burmese envoys,
ground the Tooth to powder, burnt the powder, and cast the ashes
into the river. But soon men said that the Tooth was miraculously
restored to its temple at Kandy.
Learning from his astrologers that he was destined to wed a prin-
cess of Ceylon, Bayinnaung sent envoys to find her. They went to
Colombo and told of their master's glory. The chief there had no
daughter, but his chamberlain had one whom the chief cherished
as his own. He had no authority over the Temple of the Tooth at
Kandy, where another chief ruled, but he showed the envoys a
shrine which he said contained the Tooth. The envoys took the
daughter and the Tooth. Bayinnaung sent gorgeous presents in
return. The Tooth reached Bassein in 1576. Bayinnaung went to
meet it in a great procession of magnificent canoes crowded with
lords and ladies clad in court dress. He bathed ceremonially, scented
himself, and bowed before the shrine. Princes waded into the river
and bore it ashore at Pegu, walking over the state vestments which
the lords took off and spread before them. It was encased in a
golden casket studded with the gems of Dammazedi and the kings
of old, and of Momeik and of Ayuthia, the vassal kings, and finally
it was deposited at the Mahazedi pagoda, Pegu. This was the day
of days in Bayinnaung's life; his wide conquests, even the white
elephants from Siam, faded into insignificance; he said: "Heaven is
good to me. Anawrahta could obtain only a replica Tooth from
Ceylon, Alaungsithu went to China in vain, but Ī, because of my
piety and wisdom, I have been granted this ! ”2
1 See vol. II, p. 548.
2 Linschoten, Voyage to the East Indies, I, p. 293; Faria y Sousa (Stevens),
The Portuguese Asia, II, 207-9, 251-2; Hmannan, m, 8, 33-35; Gerson da Cunha,
“Memoir on the History of the Tooth Relic of Ceylon", in Journal Bombay
branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1875.
## p. 490 (#530) ############################################
490
BURMA (1531-1782)
2
3
Bayinnaung's great Talaing officer, the wungyi (minister) Binnya
Dala, compiled the Razadarit Ayedawpon chronicle. Bayinnaung
introduced a measure of legal uniformity by summoning distinguished
monks and officials from all over his dominions to prescribe an
cfficial collection of law books; they prescribed the Wareru dham-
mnathat ? and compiled the Dhammathatkyaw and Kosaungchok. The
decisions given in his court were collected in the Hanthawaddy
Hsinbyumyashin pyatton. He also tried to standardise weights and
measures, such as the cubit, tical, and basket, throughout the realm.
Styling himself the king of kings, he governed only Pegu and the
Talaing country directly, leaving the rest of the realm to vassal
kings with palaces at Toungoo, Prome, Ava and Chiengmai. He
regarded Chiengmai as the most important, having fifty-seven pro-
vinces; these, like the thirty-two provinces of Pegu,' were big villages.
Chiengmai was a Shan state, and when he spoke of having twenty-
four crowned heads at his command, he was referring to sawbwas.
Each of the twenty gates of his new city at Pegu was named after
the vassal who built it, such as the Prome gate, the Chiengmai gate,
the Toungoo gate, the gates of Salin, Dalla, Mohnyin, Tavoy, Hsenwi,
Linzin, Tenasserim, Ayuthia, Martaban, Pagan—it was the men of
Pagan who had to plant the toddy palms all along the walls and at
the street corners. As a model Buddhist king he distributed copies
of the scriptures, fed monks, and built pagodas in Chiengmai, Koshan-
pye and other conquered states. Some of these pagodas are still
to be seen, and in later ages the Burmese would point to them as
proof of their claim to rule those countries still. He supervised mass
ordinations at the Kalyani thein. " Following a royal custom he would
break up his crown and use its jewels to adorn the spire of a pagoda;
he did this for the Shwedagon, the Shwemawdaw, and the Kyaiktiyo
in Thaton district. Again, as at the Shwemawdaw, he would build
as many surrounding monasteries as they were years in his life
at the time, fifty-two; or he would bear the cost of ordaining a
similar number of monks. After the 1564 earthquake, which coin-
cided with his queen's death, he repaired the Shwedagon, and added
a new spire. His chief foundation was the Mahazedi at Pegu, at
which he enshrined a begging bowl of supernatural origin sent him
in 1567 by some Ceylon kinglet, the Tooth (p. 489) and golden images
of himself, the royal family, and such of the great officers of state
as were in his inner circle.
Bayinnaung made no distinction of race in appointment to office.
His best commander was a Talaing, Binnya Dala. As his predecessors
had doubtless done for ages, he entered into artificial blood-brother-
hood (thwethauk) with over a score of his principal officers, and the
1 See vol. m, p. 553.
2 See vol. m, pp. 551-2.
8 Forchammer, Jardine Prize Essay on Burmese Law,
4 See vol. I, p. 553.
o Ibid. p. 556.
## p. 491 (#531) ############################################
MAJESTY OF BAYINNAUNG
491
list includes Talaings. They penetrated his entourage to such an
extent that the word used by European travellers for a court grandee
is semini, an Italianisation of smim, the Talaing for lord. Such being
his methods, he might have reconciled both races and founded a
national dynasty. He failed to do so because he alienated human
nature by his wars. The brunt fell on Talaings; hence while at first
they followed him because they believed he could give them settled
government, at last the only ones who followed him were hardy
spirits desirous of foreign loot.
Unlike most Burmese kings, who lived in the backwoods (pp. 496,
513), Bayinnaung lived in a seaport and came into contact with the
outer world. The extent to which overseas traders frequented the
Delta indicates that his trade regulations were reasonable. Merchants
sailing from India first sighted Negrais and saw there, as we see now,
the superb Hmawdin pagoda flashing on the headland, a landmark
for a whole day's sail. They went upstream to Bassein and then,
turning east, passed through the Myaungmya creeks to Pegu. Those
creeks were, at least on the main route, crowded with villages almost
touching each other, a teeming hive of happy people. Customs
officers, though strict, were not obstructive, and there was free export
of such commodities as jewels and rice, a thing subsequently forbid-
den by the benighted kings of Ava (p. 501). Bassein is scarcely men-
tioned, the chief ports being on the eastern side, Syriam, Dalla,
Martaban, and above all Pegu, where the merchants were allowed,
by special privilege, to have brick warehouses, the populace being
restricted to houses of bamboo or timber. Ralph Fitch and the
merchants of Venice never tire of describing Pegu city, the long moat
full of crocodiles, the walls, the watch-towers, the gorgeous palace, the
processions with elephants and palanquins and grandees in shining
robes, the shrines filled with images of massy gold and gems, the
unending hosts of armed men, and the vision of the great king himself
receiving petitions as he sat throned on high amid his lords.
Yet despite its splendour, the kingship was not loved. Bayinnaung
and the princes risked their lives freely at the head of the hosts con-
spicuously on elephants, and Bayinnaung shared many a hardship
with his men. But what was sport to him was death to the common
people. The disorganisation caused by his wars was such that Pegu
sometimes starved. Even the fertile Delta cannot grow rice without
men to plant it, and they were not there to plant it, having all been
dragged away on foreign service. Of those that went, few returned,
for if battle casualties were great, the wastage from hunger and
dysentery was even greater. Even if they were not sent to fight,
they were herded together and led away in one of the everlasting
deportations which the kingship found necessary to re-populate
ravaged areas.
1 Hakluytus Posthumus, x, 150.
## p. 492 (#532) ############################################
492
BURMA (1531–1782)
a
At least once Bayinnaung had to hurry home from a Siamese
campaign to deal with rebellion at his own capital. He had settled
in the neighbourhood some twenty thousand Shans and Siamese.
Talaings made common cause and led them when in 1564 they rose
and burnt his palace, the palace which the Portuguese regarded as
in itself a city, with roofs of solid gold. He penned thousands of the
rebels in bamboo cages to be burnt alive according to immemorial
custom, but ended by burning only seventy leaders, with their
families, because the monks protested and popular feeling supported
them.
His campaigns were the price men had to pay for the unification
of Burma. Thus far he succeeded. Beyond that he failed, because,
like his age, he was not constructive. Every other year throughout
his reign he was hastening somewhere to maintain himself in power.
A ruler without an administration, he could not be everywhere at
once, and no sooner did he turn his back than the chances were even
that a rebellion would break out. The unity he gave was artificial
and within a few years of his death it collapsed. If it rose again and
endured for another century and a half, this was because his im-
mediate successors happened to be men of character and because
the listlessness of the people prevented organised opposition.
Bayinnaung died at the age of sixty-six leaving ninety-seven
children. Although he already had more territory than he could
hold, he was actually sending an expedition to annex Arakan when
he died.
Rebellion at home compelled his son, Nandabayin (1581-99), to
recall the expedition against Arakan. There was scarcely a year in
which he was not campaigning from Mogaung in the north to Hmawbi
in the south. He used his father's methods of terrible executions and
wholesale conscription. Life was unbearable and men flocked to
become monks, partly to seek religious consolation in their misery,
partly to evade conscription.
The crown prince used Talaings for forced labour on his land,
stored the crop, and made people buy from him alone. The king
deported people from all over the country to populate Pegu. Dis-
trusting the Talaings, he executed them in numbers; he branded
them on the right hand with their name, rank and village, and sent
those who were too old for service to be exchanged for horses in
upper Burma; he exiled their monks to Ava and the Shan States.
It is at this period that the periodic migrations of the Talaings to
Siam begin, migrations which lasted until the English conquest in
1824 and were due to the sustained severity of the Burmese.
1 Hakluytus Posthumus, x, 160; Hmannan, m, 78.
2 Halliday, The Talaings; and his "Immigration of the Mons [Talaings) into
Siam", in Journal Siam Society, 1913; Ravenswaay, “Translation of Van Vliet's
description of Siam", in ibid. 1910.
## p. 493 (#533) ############################################
SACK OF PEGU
493
The one hope of keeping the country together was to evacuate
Siam and retrench in every direction. But neither Bayinnaung nor
his son could see it. The only method by which the king could control
remoter areas was by fighting them periodically, a process which
used up the only people he could really call his own, the population
round the capital. There were not sufficient left alive to till the soil
there, and remoter areas would not send food. In 1596 a plague of
field rats destroyed what little crop had been planted; there was a
terrible famine, and it was only one of a series; wide stretches of
country in lower Burma became a desert.
Nandabayin might have held the rest of his kingdom, but it was
Ayuthia that ruined him. She found a leader in the famous prince
Pra Naret. Year after year Nandabayin led his men into Siam; each
incursion further reduced his remaining man-power but none suc-
ceeded in taking Ayuthia. He could never raise 25,000 men-a mere
third of the number his father had led-and these were too few to
surround Ayuthia, so that instead of the besieged it was the besiegers
who starved. In 1593 his son was killed in hand-to-hand combat with
Pra Naret; the Burmese fled in panic at the sight and were once more
cut to pieces in a long and terrible retreat. After that there were no
men left to invade Siam; indeed it is Ayuthia which invades Pegu. 1
And now, in the hour of his utmost need, not one of the king's sons
or brothers rallied to his side. If the king was not satisfactory they
could have combined to set up someone who was; but instead of
trying to keep the country together, each was out entirely for him-
self-it is dubtful how far the concept of a kingdom ever penetrated
in a country where any brigand, who levied blackmail as far as eye
can reach, was, within living memory, styled a king. The prince
of Toungoo, first cousin to the king, actually wrote to Arakan pro-
posing a joint attack on the king and a division of the spoil. He chose
Arakan because it was farthest, and after getting its loot it would
return home and not be a rival for the throne. The Arakanese
shipped a force which occupied Syriam, effected a junction with the
Toungoo levies, and with them besieged Pegu in 1599. The townsfolk
and officers deserted. The king and a faithful son surrendered on a
promise of good treatment and were put to death.
Hearing that there was a carcass, the king of Ayuthia came swoop-
ing down to see what he could get. As the victors would not share
with him, he ravaged the country up to Toungoo and went home.
The Arakanese deported 3000 households of the wretched Pegu
folk and went off with a white elephant and a daughter of the fallen
1 Faria y Sousa (Stevens), The Portuguese Asia, 11, 120; Peter Floris (More-
land, Hakluyt Society, 1934), pp. 52-5; Frankfurter, "Events in Ayuddhya 686-
966", in Journal Siam Society, 1909; Jones, “Siamese History", in the Chinese
Repository, 1836-38; Saulière, “Jesuits on Pegu", in Bengal Past and Present,
1919; Hmannan, m, 97.
## p. 494 (#534) ############################################
494
BURMA (1531-1782)
king for their royal harem; they also took brazen cannon and the
thirty bronze images of Ayuthia (p. 488); and retaining Syriam they
left it in charge of one of their Portuguese mercenaries, De Brito.
The prince of Toungoo took away the Ceylon Tooth and begging
bowl (p. 490) with more than twelve caravan-loads of loot.
Pegu was burnt. Bayinnaung's palace, his radiant buildings decked
with the spoil of conquered kings, went up in flames. It was a pitiful
ending. The misery in lower Burma beggared description : the bodies
of those who died of wounds or starvation filled the rivers and im-
peded the passage of boats, and men ate human flesh.
The country south of Martaban paid homage to Ayuthia. Burma
was once more a series of petty states, held by princes of the royal
house. The best was the prince of Ava; a son of Bayinnaung, he
reduced upper Burma and the Shan States; he induced China to
extradite the fugitive Bhamo sawbwa, and the Chinese themselves
admit that after 1628 Burma sent no more "tribute" missions. His
son Anaukpetlun (1605-28), having the north on which to draw for
levies, found little difficulty in annexing the depopulated land of
lower Burma. In 1607 he took Prome. In 1610 he took Toungoo,
carrying home to Ava the Ceylon Tooth and begging bowl, two-thirds
of the cattle, and many people, including all who had been deported
from Pegu, Prome and Ava.
De Brito (p. 478) had made himself independent at Syriam,
defeating all attacks whether by his old Arakanese master or by other
chiefs. He had a hundred Portuguese, some negro and Indian slaves,
and the Talaings who came in from the neighbourhood. He was
liked, because he gave folk settled government. He had several ships
cruising round the coast to prevent merchant vessels from putting
in save at Syriam, where he could make them pay customs duty.
He became so successful that the Portuguese viceroy at Goa acknow-
ledged him as official Portuguese governor of Syriam. But he con-
tinued to do as he pleased, and he did wrong in pillaging pagodas.
He would scrape the gold off images and beat it into gold-leaf for
sale to pilgrims; and he melted down some of the beautiful bronze
bells at the Shwedagon to save himself the expense of_importing
bronze to make cannon. He was allied to Martaban and Toungoo.
In 1613 Anaukpetlun advanced on Syriam. Success had made
De Brito so careless that he had allowed himself to run out of powder
when the king arrived with 12,000 men.
However, the stockade was
strong and the defenders beat off all attacks with boiling oil.
Natshinnaung, the fallen prince of Toungoo and cousin to the king,
was inside, having taken refuge with De Brito. The king especially
desired to capture him, and offered De Brito friendship if he would
surrender him. But De Brito replied: “We Portuguese keep faith.
1 Burney, “Wars between Burma and China", in Journal Asiatic Society of
Bengal, 1837.
## p. 495 (#535) ############################################
DE BRITO
495
I have given my word to Natshinnaung and do not break it. ” The
king cut off a prisoner's ears and sent him to De Brito saying: "Look
at this, and consider whether it will pay thee to harbour mine enemy. "
But De Brito never wavered. Once, when all the Portuguese were
in church, the Burmese broke into the stockade, but the Portuguese
came rushing out and none of the Burmese escaped alive. At the
end of six weeks the Burmese mined the stockade and managed to
pull out two of the posts; they poured in and captured the town.
The king offered the two leaders their lives if they would beg pardon,
but they refused, Natshinnaung saying: "You can kill my body, but
my soul never. De Brito and I are brothers for we have entered into
the thwethauk (p. 490) bloodbond. We have lived one life. Let us
die one death. ” His wish was granted. De Brito was crucified and
lingered three days. Perhaps he was still alive when some Portuguese
relief ships arrived but went back, seeing that the town had fallen.
The Portuguese, with Eurasians, women, and children, a total of
400, were enslaved and sent to live in the Shwebo villages called,
after them, bayingyi (feringhi) villages. They were used as hereditary
gunners to the king and were in charge of such cannon as he possessed.
Their numbers were occasionally increased, as every white man who
came into the power of the Burmese was sent there (p. 506), and by
1800 their descendants numbered two thousand, including women
and children. Their chaplains were Goanese until 1721, when Italian
Barnabites founded the European mission.
From about 1627 the Dutch, from 1647 the English, East India
Companies had branches in Burma under junior representatives.
These branches were closed from time to time, and, although profits
were occasionally considerable, the disturbed state of the country
made steady trade impossible. Both factories were at Syriam, and
in 1677 the Dutch finally withdrew. ?
Anaukpetlun tried to take Tenasserim, but the Siamese, aided by
forty Portuguese, drove him off with heavy loss. He regained control
down to Chiengmai and to Ye in Moulmein district. His methods
were those of Nandabayin, and of many an energetic Burmese king.
His people in delighted terror said that he had only to wave his sword
and the tide would stop. Yet outside his palace at Pegu there hung
a bell with an inscription in Burmese and Talaing calling on all who
had a grievance to strike the bell and he would hear (p. 479).
When in his palace on the west side of the river at Pegu he detected
his son Minredeippa in a love intrigue with one of the harem ladies,
and told him he deserved roasting alive. Such punishment was not
unusual, and Minredeippa, fearing it would really be inflicted, col.
1 Faria y Sousa (Stevens), The Portuguese Asia, m, 191; Pawtugi Yazawin
and Furnivall, “A Forgotten Chronicle", in Journal Burma Research Society,
1912; ibid. 1926, pp. 101 sqq. ; Hmannan, 1, 118; Dinnyawadi Yazawinthit, p. 210.
7 Hall, Early English Intercourse with Burma.
## p. 496 (#536) ############################################
496
BURMA (1531-1782)
lected some friends, entered the king's room at night, and did him
to death.
At once the ministers summoned a general assembly of the court.
Early action was necessary, and they took it: they elected the parri-
cide to the throne. Their reasoning was that the king's brothers, his
natural successors, were away campaigning in the Shan States-at
one time they had gone as far as Kenghung north-east of Kengtung-
and the kingdom would be in turmoil before they could be recalled.
Public morality apart, the reasoning was invalid, for young Minre-
deippa had not the wit to hold a throne, whereas his two uncles were
mature men, each in command of an army, and the news reached
them easily in nine days. So far from avoiding disorder, the court's
decision caused it. The country respected the uncles, for they were
men of authority; it knew nothing of Minredeippa, and half a dozen
governors took the opportunity to revolt. Deprived of support from
lower Burma, the two uncles had to waste sixteen months reducing
the north country. Meanwhile they seized the families of the upper
Burma companies in the palace guard, making the fact known in
Pegu, and thus shaking the allegiance of Minredeippa's guards. He
had not the courage to leave his palace and attack them. Town after
town in upper Burma fell to them, and when they surrounded Ava,
Minredeippa, foreseeing their success, decided to flee to Arakan; but
his own followers, in disgust at his cowardice and tyranny, seized
him and sent a deputation to Ava asking Thalun, one of the uncles,
to take the throne. He did so, and immediately on arriving in Pegu
executed Minredeippa, sternly rejecting his plea to be allowed to
become a monk.
Thalun (1629–48) reigned with the help of his brother until the
latter's death some years later. His coronation was scarcely over
when Talaings rushed the palace; they were driven out, fled to
Moulmein, and held it for some time before they migrated to Siam
in large numbers. He moved the capital back to Ava and there it
stayed. The Delta had lost its advantages now that the idea of
attacking Ayuthia was dead, and Pegu ceased to be a seaport when,
about 1600, the silting up of the river was complete. The proper site
to move to was Syriam, but the court did not realise that the country's
future lay on the sea coast (p. 513). The return to Ava signified the
abandonment of Tabinshwehti's dream of a national kingship. The
attempted union with the Talaings had failed, and the court relapsed
into its tribal homeland, upper Burma.
The return to upper Burma restored Kyaukse to the importance
it had lost so long as the kingship was situated among the Delta rice
fields. Instead of dedicating prisoners of war as slaves to pagodas,
Thalun found a new use for them : he settled them as tenants at
Kyaukse, where their families supplied labour for the canals and
they themselves served in the guard at court.
## p. 497 (#537) ############################################
DOMESDAY BOOK
497
Indeed Thalun must rank as one of the best kings. The wars of
his predecessors left the country bloodless for a century. He kept the
peace and reorganised the administration. He may not have created,
but at least he revived the old village and district administration
which had been shattered; and he placed it on record in the great
revenue inquest of 1638, the first in Burmese history. None of the
record has been found, but probably it resembled Bodawpaya's 1784
inquest 1 and consisted of the sworn statements of every village head-
man throughout the country as to the number of people in his village,
the area of cultivated land, the crops grown, the revenue paid, etc.
How destructive was the disorder which overwhelmed Burma is
shown by the history of the Shwesettaw shrine in the Minbu district.
It is one of the holiest imaginable, containing two of Buddha's reputed
footprints. Yet, during the depopulation caused by the Siamese wars,
so little was the intercourse with Arakan over the An Pass, the
approach to which runs through Shwesettaw, that even this famous
spot was forgotten. In 1638 a party of monks sent by the king suc-
ceeded in finding the footprints amid the jungle which enveloped
them, and the shrine was restored. 2
Thalun's minister Kaingsa Manu compiled the Manusarashwemin
or Maharaja dhammathat, the first law book written in Burmese instead
of Pali. It is based on Bayinnaung's compilations (p. 490) and on
the still earlier Talaing dhammathats, but it substitutes Burmese ideas
on, for instance, inheritance, for theirs, which are largely Hindu.
Thalun's principal pagoda is the Yazamanisula (Kaunghmudaw)
(
at Sagaing, of Cingalese pattern; here he enshrined the Ceylon Tooth
and begging bowl (p. 494), dedicating Shan slaves from Chiengmai
and elsewhere.
His son Pindale (1648–61) built the Ngatatkyi pagoda, Sagaing
district, containing a very large sitting Buddha.
When the Ming dynasty of China was overthrown, Yung-li, the
last Ming emperor, tried to maintain himself in Yünnan. But in
1658 he was defeated and fled to Bhamo with his family and seven
hundred followers. He gave the Bhamo sawbwa 100 viss (1 viss =
3. 65 lb. ) of gold to send the king with a petition asking leave to live
in Burma, and the king permitted him to live at Sagaing with his
followers.
A plague of freebooter armies broke out in China during the change
of dynasty. They swarmed over the provinces but, finding by bitter
experience that it did not pay to plunder the Manchus, the new
conquerors of China, they looked for easier prey. They occupied
Mone and Yawnghwe and ravaged up to Ava, plundering the vil-
lages, killing men, carrying off women and burning monasteries,
while the monks fled in terror to the woods. They could not take
Ava, for it was a walled town, and one of their leaders was even
1 Harvey, History of Burma, p. 269.
2 Duroiselle, Notes on the Ancient Geography of Burma
32
## p. 498 (#538) ############################################
498
BURMA (1531-1782)
killed by a shot from the feringhi gunners from the wall. But for
the next three years they ravaged upper Burma from Yawnghwe,
occupying Wundwin in Meiktila district, raiding Pagan, defeating
every army, and even capturing some of the princes.
The king ruled over much the same area as Bayinnaung and had
the same resources at his disposal. Bayinnaung would have found
a speedy remedy; he would have marched with a large force and
taken such reprisals that no Chinaman would have dared show his
face inside the frontier for a generation. But the king was spiritless
and commanded no following outside his homeland.
He did indeed send for a levy of 3000 men from Martaban, but
the Talaings had no heart in the business and deserted on the march.
The punishment for desertion was burning alive in batches. Their
indignant kinsmen rose, fired Martaban, drove the Burmese out, and
went off into Siam, 6000 souls in all, including families and prisoners.
The frontier guards reported to the king of Siam, who sent lords
(smim) to greet them, men of their own race who had long since
settled in Siam. He granted gracious audience to their eleven leaders
in the palace at Ayuthia, and allotted them lands.
The Talaings had fled into Siam because they could not stand
aganst Burmese vengeance. Thus, though there is some excuse for
the king's failure to get levies from the Delta, there is none for his
failure to get its rice, which could easily have been brought upstream.
He needed that rice, for Kyaukse, the granary of upper Burma, was
in the hands of the Chinese.
But he sat with folded hands while they roamed the land at will,
the crops could not be sown, the city granaries ran low, and the
guards and the palace staff were plunged into mourning by the
massacre of their kinsmen in the villages. The guards could get no
food to eat, and finally they found that the royal concubines had
cornered what rice there was and were selling it at iniquitous prices.
The king exercised no control and when they appealed to him he
mournfully said he could not help them. They approached his
brother Pye, who at once marched on the palace. Hearing the drums,
the king sent eunuchs to see what was happening. They told him,
and he went to hide while the queen with her son aged eight and
grandson aged four remained on the couch of state. Pye and his
men entered the palace cutting down some twenty men and women.
Pye said: "Brother, I wish thee no harm, but these things cannot
be. Many a time have the ministers called me, and now I must do
as they say. " The queen entreated him, saying: "Be king but spare
our lives. We will end our days in religion. Let the children become
monks. ” But Pye shook his head, saying : "When have our families
been monks? They will only throw off the robe. Yet will I do you
no harm, remembering the oath of brotherly love I took to our
father. ” He kept them in a royal house, sending them food daily.
But after a few weeks the court said: "There cannot be two suns in
1
## p. 499 (#539) ############################################
YUNG-LI
499
the sky', and he drowned the king, queen and their son and grand-
son in the Chindwin river.
Pye (1661-72) was troubled in heart over these terrible events and
after summoning the monks and listening to the scriptures he said to
them : "I had no wish to be king but the ministers and captains in-
sisted that they had no refuge but me. Even as the Lord himself is
bound by his clergy, so must I hearken to the voice of my people. ”
The monks did not gainsay him, for he spoke the truth. They repre-
sented the public conscience, and every good king strove to win their
approval.
Pye stopped profiteering among the harem women, so that his
guards did not have to go without food for three days at a time as
under his predecessor. But otherwise his success was not perceptibly
greater. The Siamese, with Martaban, Tavoy and Chiengmai levies
in their army, raided Syriam and Pegu, carrying off the population in
crowds. ? The Chinese ravages continued with undiminished intensity.
Yung-li and his followers were helpless fugitives who only wished
to be left in peace. But the court believed them to be implicated in
the Chinese ravages, and summoned the followers to the Tupayon
pagoda at Sagaing intending to split them into small parties and
scatter them in distant villages. When they were being led away
from the pagoda, the Chinese grew frightened and, though unarmed,
resisted; they were slain to a man. Yung-li apologised pitifully
saying he was sure they were wrong.
In time, the Chinese freebooters wore themselves out and the iron
hand of the Manchu dynasty fell on the remnants. In 1662 the Yünnan
viceroy came with 20,000 men and, halting at Aungbinle in Mandalay
district, he sent a herald summoning the king to surrender Yung-li
or take the consequences. This was the pass to which things had come
through lack of judgment in admitting Yung-li and lack of manhood
in repelling the Chinese. The king called a council. He pointed out
that there were precedents to show that fugitives ought to be sur-
rendered and accordingly Yung-li must be given up. The ministers
agreed and, disregarding the solemn fact that Yung-li had been
admitted to allegiance, they delivered him up to meet his doom.
The reigns of Narawara (1672–73), Minrekyawdin (1673-98), Sane
(1698-1714), and Taninganwe (1714-33), were uneventful save for
the usual rebellions and frontier raids. When the Ava palace was
rebuilt in 1676, human victims were buried as a foundation sacrifice. "
In 1721 two Italian priests came to Ava and founded the Catholic
1 For the taboo on shedding royal blood, and the convention whereby princes
were drowned, see Harvey, History of Burma, p. 339.
2 S. Smith, History of Siam, 1657-1767, pp. 22-30.
3 See p. 494, vol. III, . 547, and vol. v, p. 558.
4 Hmannan, ni, 261-82; Warry, Précis; Parker, Précis; and his "Letters from
a Chinese Empress", in Contemporary Review, 1912; Anderson, Expedition to
western Yünnan, pp. 19-20; Cordier, Histoire générale de la Chine, III, 240-4.
* See also vol. II, p. 551, and p. 509 below and Harvey, History of Burma, p. 320.
3
## p. 500 (#540) ############################################
500
BURMA (1531-1782)
Mission;' hitherto the only clergy in the country had been the
Goanese chaplains of the feringhi villages (p. 495), whose character
may be inferred from the fact that it was largely at their instigation
that two devoted priests of the Société des Missions Etrangères de
Paris were martyred in 1693. The Jatapon, a collection of royal
horoscopes, was compiled about 1680; it is of high chronolgical
value as its dates are more reliable than those of the chronicles. In
1724 Nga Kala compiled the Yazawwingyi chronicle; it is an im-
portant work, based on earlier sources, and similarly large portions of
its text are incorporated in the Hmannan chronicle. European trade
centred in Siam and Malaya at places such as Tenasserim 2 (p. 488)
which, save under Bayinnaung (1551-81), was in Siamese hands till
1760. The Portuguese ceased to count after 1641, when they were
expelled from Malacca by the Dutch, but there is still a colony of
their descendants, with high-sounding names they cannot pronounce,
round the Catholic church at Mergui. The merchants of Golconda
carried the India trade thither; the king of Siam and his minister,
Phaulkon, a Greek, wishing to oust them and get the carrying trade
for their own ships, employed English interlopers. Thus Burneby
figures as governor of Mergui among the seven commissioners ap-
pointed by the king of Siam in 1686 to administer the port and pro-
vince, and Samuel White, another of the commissioners, was port
officer 1683–87. But the East India Company depended for its security
on the king of Golconda, and persuaded its principal shareholder,
James II, to claim Mergui in 1687. White outwardly professed com-
pliance while secretly preparing to resist, but he had betrayed his
Siamese employers as well as the East India Company, and the
townsfolk now rose against him as well as against James II's frigate,
drove them both out and massacred sixty other English who were
ashore. James II was also actuated by a desire to forestall Louis XIV.
Four companies of French infantry built a fort and garrisoned Mergui
during 1688 by arrangement with the king of Siam, who played off
the European nations against each other. The name French Bay,
on the eastern side of King Island, the largest island in the Mergui
group, commemorates the fact that it was for a few years about this
time the rendezvous of French warships. With the death of the
Siamese king and the murder of Phaulkon in 1688, the Siamese ceased
to favour the French, and in any case the French before long had no
energy to spare for the farther east. 3
Alter 1687 the English continued to trade in Mergui. The Dutch
remained predominant; they had the tin monopoly but based their
1 Purchas his Pilgrimage or Relations of the world, p. 507; Herbert, Some
years travels into Africa and Asia, p. 318; Launay, Mémorial de la Société des
Missions Etrangères, II, 274, 332; Hamilton, New Account of East Indies, II, 63;
Bigandet, History of the Catholic Burmese Mission. 2 See vol. II, p. 556.
3 Furnivall, From China to Peru; and his "Samuel White, Port Omicer of
Mergui", in Journal Burma Research Society, 1917; Anderson, English Inter-
course with Siam; Collis, Siamese White.
## p. 501 (#541) ############################################
MARINERS ENSLAVED
601
trade on Malacca, and Mergui declined. Sea piracy was rife every-
where, some of the worst rogues being renegade Dutchmen.
The French Compagnie des Indes had a branch at Syriam in 1688;
its existence continued intermittently for nearly a century. The
Burmese tried to make the English re-establish the branches which
had been closed for many years (p. 495); as their efforts failed, they
seized St Antony and St Nicholas, a ship affiliated to the English,
which put into Syriam for wood and water in 1692. Thereupon gov-
ernor Higginson of Madras consented to re-establish private trade,
but a resident chief was not appointed to Syriam till 1722. The imports
were firearms for the Burmese government, piece-goods, hats and
other European wares, areca, and coconuts from the Nicobars; the
exports were ivory, lac, pepper, cardamum, beeswax, fur, cutch, large
quantities of raw cotton and silk, together with such jewels, silver,
lead, copper, iron, tin and earth-oil as could be got in spite of the
highly protectionist system of the Burmese, which prohibited the
export of precious metal, jewels, rice, and indeed of most commodities.
Moreover, they were allowed to use as much teak as they liked for
building ships at Syriam, and they built many, the favourite type
being brigantines of 40-50 tons.
The seizure of a ship was in accordance with Burmese customary
law, which gave the king absolute rights over everything in his
dominions. Seafaring men avoided Burmese ports. Although a ship-
master never pays his crew all the wages due to them before letting
them go ashore in a foreign port, and naval regulations forbid it,
the governor of Syriam would insist on crews being paid in full before
landing, in order that he might encourage them to desert. If a sailor
married a woman of the country, the governor would claim him as
a Burmese subject, alleging that the husband takes the wife's
nationality. If a ship was driven onto the coast by weather, the
Burmese confiscated her and enslaved the crew, arguing that under
their law anyone who saved another from drowning had the right
to possess him as a slave. Nay, if a ship merely touched at a Burmese
port for water, without being expressly consigned there, she was
enslaved on the same reasoning.
to the rival harem, sent their sons to be brought up in the palace,
and paid periodic tribute; Momeik, the most valuable of all, paid
rubies; Chiengmai paid elephants, horses, lacquer and silks. Every-
where he deported numbers of the people in order to populate his
homeland. From Chiengmai he took artisans, especially her famous
lacquer workers; it is probably these who introduced into Burma
the finer sort of lacquer ware called yun, the name of the Yun or
Lao Shan tribes round Chiengmai. ?
In the 1556 campaign he went by river as far as Katha district,
accompanied by his harem and worshipping at the principal pagodas
on the way. On the return journey in 1557 he set up at the Shwezigon
pagoda, Pagan, the great bronze bell bearing in Pali, Burmese and
Talaing an inscription every line of which breathes imperial pride
in his conquests and in the steps he took to promote religion among
the Shans, building monasteries, and suppressing funeral sacrifice.
It had been customary to bury with a major sawbwa (Shan chief)
as many as ten elephants, a hundred horses, and a hundred each of
men and women slaves, the numbers being less for minor sawbwas.
He also suppressed the sacrifice of white animals (buffaloes, kine,
goats, pigs, fowls) to the Mahagiri spirit on Popa Hill;3 hitherto
these animals had been killed for a feast, and their skulls were hung
in strings all round the shrine; the worshippers drank intoxicants at
the feast, and once a year the king and court shared in it as an act
of state worship. Bayinnaung introduced prohibition and punished
drunkenness with death. He enforced the divine command against
taking life even to the extent of abolishing the Baqr 'Id among Muslim
settlers.
The king of Ayuthia, styled Lord of the White Elephants, had
recently possessed no fewer than seven; it was the glory of these
1 See vol. II, p. 555.
2 Morris, “Lacquerware industry of Burma", in Journal Burma Research
Society, 1919; Kyaw Dun, "Lacquerware called Yun", in ibid. 1920.
3 Hmannan, I, 312; Wawhayalinatta, p. 69.
## p. 488 (#528) ############################################
188
BURMA (1531-1782)
elephants which attracted white merchants from the ends of the
carth and brought Siam unprecedented prosperity; there could be
no other cause, for in the days of his predecessors, who had far fewer,
there was less trade and European merchants had not come. He
still had four, and Bayinnaung's soul was stirred to its depths at not
having so many himself. He was considering not only his own glory
but also the interests of his people; he believed it to be essential to
their prosperity that he should acquire these elephants. Therefore
he invaded Siam. As he had a much larger area from which to get
levies, his task was easier than Tabinshwehti's.
In 1563–64 the huge host captured Kampengpet and Sukhotai and
then swarmed down on Ayuthia, losing considerably from the Siamese
and their feringhi gunners, but capturing stockades, war canoes and
three foreign ships. The city quickly yielded in quite unnecessary
terror of Bayinnaung's Portuguese artillery, which though noisy
was too light to do real damage to the walls. The terms were the
surrender of four white elephants, the captivity of the king and some
princes as hostages, the presentation of a daughter, the cession of
Tenasserim shipping tolls, and annual tribute of thirty war elephants.
Bayinnaung left the Siamese king's son to rule as vassal with a
Burmese garrison of 3000 men, and went home with the captive
king and court, and with thousands of the population roped together
in gangs with wooden collars; among them were actors and actresses,
and it is probably these who introduced into Burma the songs and
dances called Ayuthia. The loot included thirty crude images of
men and elephants in bronze.
The captive princes of Ayuthia, Ava and Chiengmai were kept
at Pegu and given reasonable treatment, even being allowed to live
in double-roofed houses painted white, the prerogative of royalty. ?
But Siam was not settled with the fall of Ayuthia. Till the end of
the reign the armies were constantly campaigning all over the
country from the northern Laos downwards. Year after year Bayin-
naung led a weary chase through trackless hills where his men were
reduced to eating grass and died in thousands of starvation and
disease. Year after year there was cruel fighting against the Siamese
stockades, against their war-canoes and flaming rafts. He usually
succeeded in occupying towns, setting his puppet with a Burmese
garrison on their little thrones, and dragging away the population
when it had not hidden in the jungle, to work as slaves in Burma
if they survived the long march. But he could do little more than
this, he could give no settled government to the surviving victims,
and some of the chiefs he never caught. He generously allowed the
captive king of Siam, who had become a monk, to return home on
1 For the significance of the White Elephant, see Harvey, History of Burma,
2 For Burmese sumptuary laws, see Shway
Yoe, The Burman, his Life and Notions.
p. 274.
## p. 489 (#529) ############################################
THE CEYLON TOOTH
489
pilgrimage; no sooner had he arrived than he flung off the robe and
so another siege of Ayuthia became necessary. It lasted ten months
(1568-69). The Burmese losses were so heavy that the men used to
take shelter under the piles of their comrades' corpses. The troops
sickened of the carnage and officers were executed right and left
for failure. The town could not be taken by storm and, although
short of food, held its own until Bayinnaung employed treachery.
He promised large rewards, and one of his prisoners, a Siamese lord,
entered the town saying he had escaped from the Burmese. The
Siamese gave him high command, and one night he opened the gates.
In 1560 the Portuguese captured the Buddha Tooth of Ceylon 1 and
took it to Goa. Bayinnaung sent envoys on a Portuguese ship to
Goa, offering, in return for the Tooth, eight lakhs of rupees and,
whenever needed, shiploads of rice to provision the fortress of
Malacca. Other Buddhist and Hindu kings made offers. The Portu-
guese wished to accept but were overridden by their archbishop who,
in the presence of a large assembly including the Burmese envoys,
ground the Tooth to powder, burnt the powder, and cast the ashes
into the river. But soon men said that the Tooth was miraculously
restored to its temple at Kandy.
Learning from his astrologers that he was destined to wed a prin-
cess of Ceylon, Bayinnaung sent envoys to find her. They went to
Colombo and told of their master's glory. The chief there had no
daughter, but his chamberlain had one whom the chief cherished
as his own. He had no authority over the Temple of the Tooth at
Kandy, where another chief ruled, but he showed the envoys a
shrine which he said contained the Tooth. The envoys took the
daughter and the Tooth. Bayinnaung sent gorgeous presents in
return. The Tooth reached Bassein in 1576. Bayinnaung went to
meet it in a great procession of magnificent canoes crowded with
lords and ladies clad in court dress. He bathed ceremonially, scented
himself, and bowed before the shrine. Princes waded into the river
and bore it ashore at Pegu, walking over the state vestments which
the lords took off and spread before them. It was encased in a
golden casket studded with the gems of Dammazedi and the kings
of old, and of Momeik and of Ayuthia, the vassal kings, and finally
it was deposited at the Mahazedi pagoda, Pegu. This was the day
of days in Bayinnaung's life; his wide conquests, even the white
elephants from Siam, faded into insignificance; he said: "Heaven is
good to me. Anawrahta could obtain only a replica Tooth from
Ceylon, Alaungsithu went to China in vain, but Ī, because of my
piety and wisdom, I have been granted this ! ”2
1 See vol. II, p. 548.
2 Linschoten, Voyage to the East Indies, I, p. 293; Faria y Sousa (Stevens),
The Portuguese Asia, II, 207-9, 251-2; Hmannan, m, 8, 33-35; Gerson da Cunha,
“Memoir on the History of the Tooth Relic of Ceylon", in Journal Bombay
branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1875.
## p. 490 (#530) ############################################
490
BURMA (1531-1782)
2
3
Bayinnaung's great Talaing officer, the wungyi (minister) Binnya
Dala, compiled the Razadarit Ayedawpon chronicle. Bayinnaung
introduced a measure of legal uniformity by summoning distinguished
monks and officials from all over his dominions to prescribe an
cfficial collection of law books; they prescribed the Wareru dham-
mnathat ? and compiled the Dhammathatkyaw and Kosaungchok. The
decisions given in his court were collected in the Hanthawaddy
Hsinbyumyashin pyatton. He also tried to standardise weights and
measures, such as the cubit, tical, and basket, throughout the realm.
Styling himself the king of kings, he governed only Pegu and the
Talaing country directly, leaving the rest of the realm to vassal
kings with palaces at Toungoo, Prome, Ava and Chiengmai. He
regarded Chiengmai as the most important, having fifty-seven pro-
vinces; these, like the thirty-two provinces of Pegu,' were big villages.
Chiengmai was a Shan state, and when he spoke of having twenty-
four crowned heads at his command, he was referring to sawbwas.
Each of the twenty gates of his new city at Pegu was named after
the vassal who built it, such as the Prome gate, the Chiengmai gate,
the Toungoo gate, the gates of Salin, Dalla, Mohnyin, Tavoy, Hsenwi,
Linzin, Tenasserim, Ayuthia, Martaban, Pagan—it was the men of
Pagan who had to plant the toddy palms all along the walls and at
the street corners. As a model Buddhist king he distributed copies
of the scriptures, fed monks, and built pagodas in Chiengmai, Koshan-
pye and other conquered states. Some of these pagodas are still
to be seen, and in later ages the Burmese would point to them as
proof of their claim to rule those countries still. He supervised mass
ordinations at the Kalyani thein. " Following a royal custom he would
break up his crown and use its jewels to adorn the spire of a pagoda;
he did this for the Shwedagon, the Shwemawdaw, and the Kyaiktiyo
in Thaton district. Again, as at the Shwemawdaw, he would build
as many surrounding monasteries as they were years in his life
at the time, fifty-two; or he would bear the cost of ordaining a
similar number of monks. After the 1564 earthquake, which coin-
cided with his queen's death, he repaired the Shwedagon, and added
a new spire. His chief foundation was the Mahazedi at Pegu, at
which he enshrined a begging bowl of supernatural origin sent him
in 1567 by some Ceylon kinglet, the Tooth (p. 489) and golden images
of himself, the royal family, and such of the great officers of state
as were in his inner circle.
Bayinnaung made no distinction of race in appointment to office.
His best commander was a Talaing, Binnya Dala. As his predecessors
had doubtless done for ages, he entered into artificial blood-brother-
hood (thwethauk) with over a score of his principal officers, and the
1 See vol. m, p. 553.
2 See vol. m, pp. 551-2.
8 Forchammer, Jardine Prize Essay on Burmese Law,
4 See vol. I, p. 553.
o Ibid. p. 556.
## p. 491 (#531) ############################################
MAJESTY OF BAYINNAUNG
491
list includes Talaings. They penetrated his entourage to such an
extent that the word used by European travellers for a court grandee
is semini, an Italianisation of smim, the Talaing for lord. Such being
his methods, he might have reconciled both races and founded a
national dynasty. He failed to do so because he alienated human
nature by his wars. The brunt fell on Talaings; hence while at first
they followed him because they believed he could give them settled
government, at last the only ones who followed him were hardy
spirits desirous of foreign loot.
Unlike most Burmese kings, who lived in the backwoods (pp. 496,
513), Bayinnaung lived in a seaport and came into contact with the
outer world. The extent to which overseas traders frequented the
Delta indicates that his trade regulations were reasonable. Merchants
sailing from India first sighted Negrais and saw there, as we see now,
the superb Hmawdin pagoda flashing on the headland, a landmark
for a whole day's sail. They went upstream to Bassein and then,
turning east, passed through the Myaungmya creeks to Pegu. Those
creeks were, at least on the main route, crowded with villages almost
touching each other, a teeming hive of happy people. Customs
officers, though strict, were not obstructive, and there was free export
of such commodities as jewels and rice, a thing subsequently forbid-
den by the benighted kings of Ava (p. 501). Bassein is scarcely men-
tioned, the chief ports being on the eastern side, Syriam, Dalla,
Martaban, and above all Pegu, where the merchants were allowed,
by special privilege, to have brick warehouses, the populace being
restricted to houses of bamboo or timber. Ralph Fitch and the
merchants of Venice never tire of describing Pegu city, the long moat
full of crocodiles, the walls, the watch-towers, the gorgeous palace, the
processions with elephants and palanquins and grandees in shining
robes, the shrines filled with images of massy gold and gems, the
unending hosts of armed men, and the vision of the great king himself
receiving petitions as he sat throned on high amid his lords.
Yet despite its splendour, the kingship was not loved. Bayinnaung
and the princes risked their lives freely at the head of the hosts con-
spicuously on elephants, and Bayinnaung shared many a hardship
with his men. But what was sport to him was death to the common
people. The disorganisation caused by his wars was such that Pegu
sometimes starved. Even the fertile Delta cannot grow rice without
men to plant it, and they were not there to plant it, having all been
dragged away on foreign service. Of those that went, few returned,
for if battle casualties were great, the wastage from hunger and
dysentery was even greater. Even if they were not sent to fight,
they were herded together and led away in one of the everlasting
deportations which the kingship found necessary to re-populate
ravaged areas.
1 Hakluytus Posthumus, x, 150.
## p. 492 (#532) ############################################
492
BURMA (1531–1782)
a
At least once Bayinnaung had to hurry home from a Siamese
campaign to deal with rebellion at his own capital. He had settled
in the neighbourhood some twenty thousand Shans and Siamese.
Talaings made common cause and led them when in 1564 they rose
and burnt his palace, the palace which the Portuguese regarded as
in itself a city, with roofs of solid gold. He penned thousands of the
rebels in bamboo cages to be burnt alive according to immemorial
custom, but ended by burning only seventy leaders, with their
families, because the monks protested and popular feeling supported
them.
His campaigns were the price men had to pay for the unification
of Burma. Thus far he succeeded. Beyond that he failed, because,
like his age, he was not constructive. Every other year throughout
his reign he was hastening somewhere to maintain himself in power.
A ruler without an administration, he could not be everywhere at
once, and no sooner did he turn his back than the chances were even
that a rebellion would break out. The unity he gave was artificial
and within a few years of his death it collapsed. If it rose again and
endured for another century and a half, this was because his im-
mediate successors happened to be men of character and because
the listlessness of the people prevented organised opposition.
Bayinnaung died at the age of sixty-six leaving ninety-seven
children. Although he already had more territory than he could
hold, he was actually sending an expedition to annex Arakan when
he died.
Rebellion at home compelled his son, Nandabayin (1581-99), to
recall the expedition against Arakan. There was scarcely a year in
which he was not campaigning from Mogaung in the north to Hmawbi
in the south. He used his father's methods of terrible executions and
wholesale conscription. Life was unbearable and men flocked to
become monks, partly to seek religious consolation in their misery,
partly to evade conscription.
The crown prince used Talaings for forced labour on his land,
stored the crop, and made people buy from him alone. The king
deported people from all over the country to populate Pegu. Dis-
trusting the Talaings, he executed them in numbers; he branded
them on the right hand with their name, rank and village, and sent
those who were too old for service to be exchanged for horses in
upper Burma; he exiled their monks to Ava and the Shan States.
It is at this period that the periodic migrations of the Talaings to
Siam begin, migrations which lasted until the English conquest in
1824 and were due to the sustained severity of the Burmese.
1 Hakluytus Posthumus, x, 160; Hmannan, m, 78.
2 Halliday, The Talaings; and his "Immigration of the Mons [Talaings) into
Siam", in Journal Siam Society, 1913; Ravenswaay, “Translation of Van Vliet's
description of Siam", in ibid. 1910.
## p. 493 (#533) ############################################
SACK OF PEGU
493
The one hope of keeping the country together was to evacuate
Siam and retrench in every direction. But neither Bayinnaung nor
his son could see it. The only method by which the king could control
remoter areas was by fighting them periodically, a process which
used up the only people he could really call his own, the population
round the capital. There were not sufficient left alive to till the soil
there, and remoter areas would not send food. In 1596 a plague of
field rats destroyed what little crop had been planted; there was a
terrible famine, and it was only one of a series; wide stretches of
country in lower Burma became a desert.
Nandabayin might have held the rest of his kingdom, but it was
Ayuthia that ruined him. She found a leader in the famous prince
Pra Naret. Year after year Nandabayin led his men into Siam; each
incursion further reduced his remaining man-power but none suc-
ceeded in taking Ayuthia. He could never raise 25,000 men-a mere
third of the number his father had led-and these were too few to
surround Ayuthia, so that instead of the besieged it was the besiegers
who starved. In 1593 his son was killed in hand-to-hand combat with
Pra Naret; the Burmese fled in panic at the sight and were once more
cut to pieces in a long and terrible retreat. After that there were no
men left to invade Siam; indeed it is Ayuthia which invades Pegu. 1
And now, in the hour of his utmost need, not one of the king's sons
or brothers rallied to his side. If the king was not satisfactory they
could have combined to set up someone who was; but instead of
trying to keep the country together, each was out entirely for him-
self-it is dubtful how far the concept of a kingdom ever penetrated
in a country where any brigand, who levied blackmail as far as eye
can reach, was, within living memory, styled a king. The prince
of Toungoo, first cousin to the king, actually wrote to Arakan pro-
posing a joint attack on the king and a division of the spoil. He chose
Arakan because it was farthest, and after getting its loot it would
return home and not be a rival for the throne. The Arakanese
shipped a force which occupied Syriam, effected a junction with the
Toungoo levies, and with them besieged Pegu in 1599. The townsfolk
and officers deserted. The king and a faithful son surrendered on a
promise of good treatment and were put to death.
Hearing that there was a carcass, the king of Ayuthia came swoop-
ing down to see what he could get. As the victors would not share
with him, he ravaged the country up to Toungoo and went home.
The Arakanese deported 3000 households of the wretched Pegu
folk and went off with a white elephant and a daughter of the fallen
1 Faria y Sousa (Stevens), The Portuguese Asia, 11, 120; Peter Floris (More-
land, Hakluyt Society, 1934), pp. 52-5; Frankfurter, "Events in Ayuddhya 686-
966", in Journal Siam Society, 1909; Jones, “Siamese History", in the Chinese
Repository, 1836-38; Saulière, “Jesuits on Pegu", in Bengal Past and Present,
1919; Hmannan, m, 97.
## p. 494 (#534) ############################################
494
BURMA (1531-1782)
king for their royal harem; they also took brazen cannon and the
thirty bronze images of Ayuthia (p. 488); and retaining Syriam they
left it in charge of one of their Portuguese mercenaries, De Brito.
The prince of Toungoo took away the Ceylon Tooth and begging
bowl (p. 490) with more than twelve caravan-loads of loot.
Pegu was burnt. Bayinnaung's palace, his radiant buildings decked
with the spoil of conquered kings, went up in flames. It was a pitiful
ending. The misery in lower Burma beggared description : the bodies
of those who died of wounds or starvation filled the rivers and im-
peded the passage of boats, and men ate human flesh.
The country south of Martaban paid homage to Ayuthia. Burma
was once more a series of petty states, held by princes of the royal
house. The best was the prince of Ava; a son of Bayinnaung, he
reduced upper Burma and the Shan States; he induced China to
extradite the fugitive Bhamo sawbwa, and the Chinese themselves
admit that after 1628 Burma sent no more "tribute" missions. His
son Anaukpetlun (1605-28), having the north on which to draw for
levies, found little difficulty in annexing the depopulated land of
lower Burma. In 1607 he took Prome. In 1610 he took Toungoo,
carrying home to Ava the Ceylon Tooth and begging bowl, two-thirds
of the cattle, and many people, including all who had been deported
from Pegu, Prome and Ava.
De Brito (p. 478) had made himself independent at Syriam,
defeating all attacks whether by his old Arakanese master or by other
chiefs. He had a hundred Portuguese, some negro and Indian slaves,
and the Talaings who came in from the neighbourhood. He was
liked, because he gave folk settled government. He had several ships
cruising round the coast to prevent merchant vessels from putting
in save at Syriam, where he could make them pay customs duty.
He became so successful that the Portuguese viceroy at Goa acknow-
ledged him as official Portuguese governor of Syriam. But he con-
tinued to do as he pleased, and he did wrong in pillaging pagodas.
He would scrape the gold off images and beat it into gold-leaf for
sale to pilgrims; and he melted down some of the beautiful bronze
bells at the Shwedagon to save himself the expense of_importing
bronze to make cannon. He was allied to Martaban and Toungoo.
In 1613 Anaukpetlun advanced on Syriam. Success had made
De Brito so careless that he had allowed himself to run out of powder
when the king arrived with 12,000 men.
However, the stockade was
strong and the defenders beat off all attacks with boiling oil.
Natshinnaung, the fallen prince of Toungoo and cousin to the king,
was inside, having taken refuge with De Brito. The king especially
desired to capture him, and offered De Brito friendship if he would
surrender him. But De Brito replied: “We Portuguese keep faith.
1 Burney, “Wars between Burma and China", in Journal Asiatic Society of
Bengal, 1837.
## p. 495 (#535) ############################################
DE BRITO
495
I have given my word to Natshinnaung and do not break it. ” The
king cut off a prisoner's ears and sent him to De Brito saying: "Look
at this, and consider whether it will pay thee to harbour mine enemy. "
But De Brito never wavered. Once, when all the Portuguese were
in church, the Burmese broke into the stockade, but the Portuguese
came rushing out and none of the Burmese escaped alive. At the
end of six weeks the Burmese mined the stockade and managed to
pull out two of the posts; they poured in and captured the town.
The king offered the two leaders their lives if they would beg pardon,
but they refused, Natshinnaung saying: "You can kill my body, but
my soul never. De Brito and I are brothers for we have entered into
the thwethauk (p. 490) bloodbond. We have lived one life. Let us
die one death. ” His wish was granted. De Brito was crucified and
lingered three days. Perhaps he was still alive when some Portuguese
relief ships arrived but went back, seeing that the town had fallen.
The Portuguese, with Eurasians, women, and children, a total of
400, were enslaved and sent to live in the Shwebo villages called,
after them, bayingyi (feringhi) villages. They were used as hereditary
gunners to the king and were in charge of such cannon as he possessed.
Their numbers were occasionally increased, as every white man who
came into the power of the Burmese was sent there (p. 506), and by
1800 their descendants numbered two thousand, including women
and children. Their chaplains were Goanese until 1721, when Italian
Barnabites founded the European mission.
From about 1627 the Dutch, from 1647 the English, East India
Companies had branches in Burma under junior representatives.
These branches were closed from time to time, and, although profits
were occasionally considerable, the disturbed state of the country
made steady trade impossible. Both factories were at Syriam, and
in 1677 the Dutch finally withdrew. ?
Anaukpetlun tried to take Tenasserim, but the Siamese, aided by
forty Portuguese, drove him off with heavy loss. He regained control
down to Chiengmai and to Ye in Moulmein district. His methods
were those of Nandabayin, and of many an energetic Burmese king.
His people in delighted terror said that he had only to wave his sword
and the tide would stop. Yet outside his palace at Pegu there hung
a bell with an inscription in Burmese and Talaing calling on all who
had a grievance to strike the bell and he would hear (p. 479).
When in his palace on the west side of the river at Pegu he detected
his son Minredeippa in a love intrigue with one of the harem ladies,
and told him he deserved roasting alive. Such punishment was not
unusual, and Minredeippa, fearing it would really be inflicted, col.
1 Faria y Sousa (Stevens), The Portuguese Asia, m, 191; Pawtugi Yazawin
and Furnivall, “A Forgotten Chronicle", in Journal Burma Research Society,
1912; ibid. 1926, pp. 101 sqq. ; Hmannan, 1, 118; Dinnyawadi Yazawinthit, p. 210.
7 Hall, Early English Intercourse with Burma.
## p. 496 (#536) ############################################
496
BURMA (1531-1782)
lected some friends, entered the king's room at night, and did him
to death.
At once the ministers summoned a general assembly of the court.
Early action was necessary, and they took it: they elected the parri-
cide to the throne. Their reasoning was that the king's brothers, his
natural successors, were away campaigning in the Shan States-at
one time they had gone as far as Kenghung north-east of Kengtung-
and the kingdom would be in turmoil before they could be recalled.
Public morality apart, the reasoning was invalid, for young Minre-
deippa had not the wit to hold a throne, whereas his two uncles were
mature men, each in command of an army, and the news reached
them easily in nine days. So far from avoiding disorder, the court's
decision caused it. The country respected the uncles, for they were
men of authority; it knew nothing of Minredeippa, and half a dozen
governors took the opportunity to revolt. Deprived of support from
lower Burma, the two uncles had to waste sixteen months reducing
the north country. Meanwhile they seized the families of the upper
Burma companies in the palace guard, making the fact known in
Pegu, and thus shaking the allegiance of Minredeippa's guards. He
had not the courage to leave his palace and attack them. Town after
town in upper Burma fell to them, and when they surrounded Ava,
Minredeippa, foreseeing their success, decided to flee to Arakan; but
his own followers, in disgust at his cowardice and tyranny, seized
him and sent a deputation to Ava asking Thalun, one of the uncles,
to take the throne. He did so, and immediately on arriving in Pegu
executed Minredeippa, sternly rejecting his plea to be allowed to
become a monk.
Thalun (1629–48) reigned with the help of his brother until the
latter's death some years later. His coronation was scarcely over
when Talaings rushed the palace; they were driven out, fled to
Moulmein, and held it for some time before they migrated to Siam
in large numbers. He moved the capital back to Ava and there it
stayed. The Delta had lost its advantages now that the idea of
attacking Ayuthia was dead, and Pegu ceased to be a seaport when,
about 1600, the silting up of the river was complete. The proper site
to move to was Syriam, but the court did not realise that the country's
future lay on the sea coast (p. 513). The return to Ava signified the
abandonment of Tabinshwehti's dream of a national kingship. The
attempted union with the Talaings had failed, and the court relapsed
into its tribal homeland, upper Burma.
The return to upper Burma restored Kyaukse to the importance
it had lost so long as the kingship was situated among the Delta rice
fields. Instead of dedicating prisoners of war as slaves to pagodas,
Thalun found a new use for them : he settled them as tenants at
Kyaukse, where their families supplied labour for the canals and
they themselves served in the guard at court.
## p. 497 (#537) ############################################
DOMESDAY BOOK
497
Indeed Thalun must rank as one of the best kings. The wars of
his predecessors left the country bloodless for a century. He kept the
peace and reorganised the administration. He may not have created,
but at least he revived the old village and district administration
which had been shattered; and he placed it on record in the great
revenue inquest of 1638, the first in Burmese history. None of the
record has been found, but probably it resembled Bodawpaya's 1784
inquest 1 and consisted of the sworn statements of every village head-
man throughout the country as to the number of people in his village,
the area of cultivated land, the crops grown, the revenue paid, etc.
How destructive was the disorder which overwhelmed Burma is
shown by the history of the Shwesettaw shrine in the Minbu district.
It is one of the holiest imaginable, containing two of Buddha's reputed
footprints. Yet, during the depopulation caused by the Siamese wars,
so little was the intercourse with Arakan over the An Pass, the
approach to which runs through Shwesettaw, that even this famous
spot was forgotten. In 1638 a party of monks sent by the king suc-
ceeded in finding the footprints amid the jungle which enveloped
them, and the shrine was restored. 2
Thalun's minister Kaingsa Manu compiled the Manusarashwemin
or Maharaja dhammathat, the first law book written in Burmese instead
of Pali. It is based on Bayinnaung's compilations (p. 490) and on
the still earlier Talaing dhammathats, but it substitutes Burmese ideas
on, for instance, inheritance, for theirs, which are largely Hindu.
Thalun's principal pagoda is the Yazamanisula (Kaunghmudaw)
(
at Sagaing, of Cingalese pattern; here he enshrined the Ceylon Tooth
and begging bowl (p. 494), dedicating Shan slaves from Chiengmai
and elsewhere.
His son Pindale (1648–61) built the Ngatatkyi pagoda, Sagaing
district, containing a very large sitting Buddha.
When the Ming dynasty of China was overthrown, Yung-li, the
last Ming emperor, tried to maintain himself in Yünnan. But in
1658 he was defeated and fled to Bhamo with his family and seven
hundred followers. He gave the Bhamo sawbwa 100 viss (1 viss =
3. 65 lb. ) of gold to send the king with a petition asking leave to live
in Burma, and the king permitted him to live at Sagaing with his
followers.
A plague of freebooter armies broke out in China during the change
of dynasty. They swarmed over the provinces but, finding by bitter
experience that it did not pay to plunder the Manchus, the new
conquerors of China, they looked for easier prey. They occupied
Mone and Yawnghwe and ravaged up to Ava, plundering the vil-
lages, killing men, carrying off women and burning monasteries,
while the monks fled in terror to the woods. They could not take
Ava, for it was a walled town, and one of their leaders was even
1 Harvey, History of Burma, p. 269.
2 Duroiselle, Notes on the Ancient Geography of Burma
32
## p. 498 (#538) ############################################
498
BURMA (1531-1782)
killed by a shot from the feringhi gunners from the wall. But for
the next three years they ravaged upper Burma from Yawnghwe,
occupying Wundwin in Meiktila district, raiding Pagan, defeating
every army, and even capturing some of the princes.
The king ruled over much the same area as Bayinnaung and had
the same resources at his disposal. Bayinnaung would have found
a speedy remedy; he would have marched with a large force and
taken such reprisals that no Chinaman would have dared show his
face inside the frontier for a generation. But the king was spiritless
and commanded no following outside his homeland.
He did indeed send for a levy of 3000 men from Martaban, but
the Talaings had no heart in the business and deserted on the march.
The punishment for desertion was burning alive in batches. Their
indignant kinsmen rose, fired Martaban, drove the Burmese out, and
went off into Siam, 6000 souls in all, including families and prisoners.
The frontier guards reported to the king of Siam, who sent lords
(smim) to greet them, men of their own race who had long since
settled in Siam. He granted gracious audience to their eleven leaders
in the palace at Ayuthia, and allotted them lands.
The Talaings had fled into Siam because they could not stand
aganst Burmese vengeance. Thus, though there is some excuse for
the king's failure to get levies from the Delta, there is none for his
failure to get its rice, which could easily have been brought upstream.
He needed that rice, for Kyaukse, the granary of upper Burma, was
in the hands of the Chinese.
But he sat with folded hands while they roamed the land at will,
the crops could not be sown, the city granaries ran low, and the
guards and the palace staff were plunged into mourning by the
massacre of their kinsmen in the villages. The guards could get no
food to eat, and finally they found that the royal concubines had
cornered what rice there was and were selling it at iniquitous prices.
The king exercised no control and when they appealed to him he
mournfully said he could not help them. They approached his
brother Pye, who at once marched on the palace. Hearing the drums,
the king sent eunuchs to see what was happening. They told him,
and he went to hide while the queen with her son aged eight and
grandson aged four remained on the couch of state. Pye and his
men entered the palace cutting down some twenty men and women.
Pye said: "Brother, I wish thee no harm, but these things cannot
be. Many a time have the ministers called me, and now I must do
as they say. " The queen entreated him, saying: "Be king but spare
our lives. We will end our days in religion. Let the children become
monks. ” But Pye shook his head, saying : "When have our families
been monks? They will only throw off the robe. Yet will I do you
no harm, remembering the oath of brotherly love I took to our
father. ” He kept them in a royal house, sending them food daily.
But after a few weeks the court said: "There cannot be two suns in
1
## p. 499 (#539) ############################################
YUNG-LI
499
the sky', and he drowned the king, queen and their son and grand-
son in the Chindwin river.
Pye (1661-72) was troubled in heart over these terrible events and
after summoning the monks and listening to the scriptures he said to
them : "I had no wish to be king but the ministers and captains in-
sisted that they had no refuge but me. Even as the Lord himself is
bound by his clergy, so must I hearken to the voice of my people. ”
The monks did not gainsay him, for he spoke the truth. They repre-
sented the public conscience, and every good king strove to win their
approval.
Pye stopped profiteering among the harem women, so that his
guards did not have to go without food for three days at a time as
under his predecessor. But otherwise his success was not perceptibly
greater. The Siamese, with Martaban, Tavoy and Chiengmai levies
in their army, raided Syriam and Pegu, carrying off the population in
crowds. ? The Chinese ravages continued with undiminished intensity.
Yung-li and his followers were helpless fugitives who only wished
to be left in peace. But the court believed them to be implicated in
the Chinese ravages, and summoned the followers to the Tupayon
pagoda at Sagaing intending to split them into small parties and
scatter them in distant villages. When they were being led away
from the pagoda, the Chinese grew frightened and, though unarmed,
resisted; they were slain to a man. Yung-li apologised pitifully
saying he was sure they were wrong.
In time, the Chinese freebooters wore themselves out and the iron
hand of the Manchu dynasty fell on the remnants. In 1662 the Yünnan
viceroy came with 20,000 men and, halting at Aungbinle in Mandalay
district, he sent a herald summoning the king to surrender Yung-li
or take the consequences. This was the pass to which things had come
through lack of judgment in admitting Yung-li and lack of manhood
in repelling the Chinese. The king called a council. He pointed out
that there were precedents to show that fugitives ought to be sur-
rendered and accordingly Yung-li must be given up. The ministers
agreed and, disregarding the solemn fact that Yung-li had been
admitted to allegiance, they delivered him up to meet his doom.
The reigns of Narawara (1672–73), Minrekyawdin (1673-98), Sane
(1698-1714), and Taninganwe (1714-33), were uneventful save for
the usual rebellions and frontier raids. When the Ava palace was
rebuilt in 1676, human victims were buried as a foundation sacrifice. "
In 1721 two Italian priests came to Ava and founded the Catholic
1 For the taboo on shedding royal blood, and the convention whereby princes
were drowned, see Harvey, History of Burma, p. 339.
2 S. Smith, History of Siam, 1657-1767, pp. 22-30.
3 See p. 494, vol. III, . 547, and vol. v, p. 558.
4 Hmannan, ni, 261-82; Warry, Précis; Parker, Précis; and his "Letters from
a Chinese Empress", in Contemporary Review, 1912; Anderson, Expedition to
western Yünnan, pp. 19-20; Cordier, Histoire générale de la Chine, III, 240-4.
* See also vol. II, p. 551, and p. 509 below and Harvey, History of Burma, p. 320.
3
## p. 500 (#540) ############################################
500
BURMA (1531-1782)
Mission;' hitherto the only clergy in the country had been the
Goanese chaplains of the feringhi villages (p. 495), whose character
may be inferred from the fact that it was largely at their instigation
that two devoted priests of the Société des Missions Etrangères de
Paris were martyred in 1693. The Jatapon, a collection of royal
horoscopes, was compiled about 1680; it is of high chronolgical
value as its dates are more reliable than those of the chronicles. In
1724 Nga Kala compiled the Yazawwingyi chronicle; it is an im-
portant work, based on earlier sources, and similarly large portions of
its text are incorporated in the Hmannan chronicle. European trade
centred in Siam and Malaya at places such as Tenasserim 2 (p. 488)
which, save under Bayinnaung (1551-81), was in Siamese hands till
1760. The Portuguese ceased to count after 1641, when they were
expelled from Malacca by the Dutch, but there is still a colony of
their descendants, with high-sounding names they cannot pronounce,
round the Catholic church at Mergui. The merchants of Golconda
carried the India trade thither; the king of Siam and his minister,
Phaulkon, a Greek, wishing to oust them and get the carrying trade
for their own ships, employed English interlopers. Thus Burneby
figures as governor of Mergui among the seven commissioners ap-
pointed by the king of Siam in 1686 to administer the port and pro-
vince, and Samuel White, another of the commissioners, was port
officer 1683–87. But the East India Company depended for its security
on the king of Golconda, and persuaded its principal shareholder,
James II, to claim Mergui in 1687. White outwardly professed com-
pliance while secretly preparing to resist, but he had betrayed his
Siamese employers as well as the East India Company, and the
townsfolk now rose against him as well as against James II's frigate,
drove them both out and massacred sixty other English who were
ashore. James II was also actuated by a desire to forestall Louis XIV.
Four companies of French infantry built a fort and garrisoned Mergui
during 1688 by arrangement with the king of Siam, who played off
the European nations against each other. The name French Bay,
on the eastern side of King Island, the largest island in the Mergui
group, commemorates the fact that it was for a few years about this
time the rendezvous of French warships. With the death of the
Siamese king and the murder of Phaulkon in 1688, the Siamese ceased
to favour the French, and in any case the French before long had no
energy to spare for the farther east. 3
Alter 1687 the English continued to trade in Mergui. The Dutch
remained predominant; they had the tin monopoly but based their
1 Purchas his Pilgrimage or Relations of the world, p. 507; Herbert, Some
years travels into Africa and Asia, p. 318; Launay, Mémorial de la Société des
Missions Etrangères, II, 274, 332; Hamilton, New Account of East Indies, II, 63;
Bigandet, History of the Catholic Burmese Mission. 2 See vol. II, p. 556.
3 Furnivall, From China to Peru; and his "Samuel White, Port Omicer of
Mergui", in Journal Burma Research Society, 1917; Anderson, English Inter-
course with Siam; Collis, Siamese White.
## p. 501 (#541) ############################################
MARINERS ENSLAVED
601
trade on Malacca, and Mergui declined. Sea piracy was rife every-
where, some of the worst rogues being renegade Dutchmen.
The French Compagnie des Indes had a branch at Syriam in 1688;
its existence continued intermittently for nearly a century. The
Burmese tried to make the English re-establish the branches which
had been closed for many years (p. 495); as their efforts failed, they
seized St Antony and St Nicholas, a ship affiliated to the English,
which put into Syriam for wood and water in 1692. Thereupon gov-
ernor Higginson of Madras consented to re-establish private trade,
but a resident chief was not appointed to Syriam till 1722. The imports
were firearms for the Burmese government, piece-goods, hats and
other European wares, areca, and coconuts from the Nicobars; the
exports were ivory, lac, pepper, cardamum, beeswax, fur, cutch, large
quantities of raw cotton and silk, together with such jewels, silver,
lead, copper, iron, tin and earth-oil as could be got in spite of the
highly protectionist system of the Burmese, which prohibited the
export of precious metal, jewels, rice, and indeed of most commodities.
Moreover, they were allowed to use as much teak as they liked for
building ships at Syriam, and they built many, the favourite type
being brigantines of 40-50 tons.
The seizure of a ship was in accordance with Burmese customary
law, which gave the king absolute rights over everything in his
dominions. Seafaring men avoided Burmese ports. Although a ship-
master never pays his crew all the wages due to them before letting
them go ashore in a foreign port, and naval regulations forbid it,
the governor of Syriam would insist on crews being paid in full before
landing, in order that he might encourage them to desert. If a sailor
married a woman of the country, the governor would claim him as
a Burmese subject, alleging that the husband takes the wife's
nationality. If a ship was driven onto the coast by weather, the
Burmese confiscated her and enslaved the crew, arguing that under
their law anyone who saved another from drowning had the right
to possess him as a slave. Nay, if a ship merely touched at a Burmese
port for water, without being expressly consigned there, she was
enslaved on the same reasoning.
