Shin Maharattathara (1468-1529), a
descendant
of the Thihathu,
the Shān Brother, wrote, Koganpyo and other poems.
the Shān Brother, wrote, Koganpyo and other poems.
Cambridge History of India - v3 - Turks and Afghans
2Parker, ‘Précis'.
3 He merges with Minrekyawswa to form the Minkyawswa Nai spirit ;
Temple, Thirty Seven Nats, p. 56.
## p. 541 (#591) ############################################
XXI ]
THE THREE SHĀN BROTHERS
541
with the sword. Either throw me into the river or strangle me';
so they strangled and cremated him and cast his remains into the
Irrawaddy? They killed also his son, his monk and principal
followers, and seized the harem.
Survivors of the dynasty appealed to Yunnan. The Yünnan
commandant obtained the Emperor's sanction, and with 12,000
men besieged the Brothers in three walled towns at Myinsaing.
On their walls the Brothers mounted balistae, and in one assault the
Tartars lost 500 men from the arrows blocks of stone, and beams
which rained down on the stormers. Finding the climate hot and
malarious, the Chinese accepted the bribe, 800 taels (63 lb. ) of gold
and 2200 taels (183 lb) of silver, and withdrew to Yunnan after let.
ting their men help on the Kyaukse irrigation works, constructing
the Thindwe canal. This is the end of Chinese interference in
Burma resulting from the expedition of 1287.
Whether Pagān had hitherto been fertile or not? , it was certainly
unfertile now, and the soil of the Myingyan district assumed its
present desolate and barren aspect. Denudation of the forests to
provide fuel for pagoda bricks had doubtless lessened the rainfall, and
extersive irrigation at Kyaukse
at Kyaukse might attract rainfall thither
from Pagān. Crops grow there, but not in such quantity as to
supply a city of 50,000 inhabitants who eat rice. Probably this
was the reason, in addition to the belief that the luck of the site
was exhausted, which now led to the removal of the palace from
Pagān.
There was rice in the Delta but it was far away and the Delta
was now under a hɔstile chief. There was rice in Kyaukse, but the
capital could not be put there, so far from the country's own high-
way, the Irrawaddy. It was necessary to find a site which should
be on the Irrawaddy and accessible to the rice of Kyaukse. The
obvious site was Ava, in the Sagaing district, where the Myitnge
river brought down the grain boats from Kyaukes. But as the
omens were adverse to Āva, Thihathu, the surviving Shān Brother,
in 1312 set up his palace at Pinya, a bad site near by, for which the
omens were favourable.
The Pagān dynasty continued to exist as myosa (governors)
of Pagān until 1369 and then ceased save where it had merged, on
1 For the taboo on shedding royal blood, and the convention whereby princes
were drowned, see Harvey, History of Burma, p. 339.
2 Huber, ‘Fin de la dynastie de Pagan' in Bulletin de l'Ecle Francaise d'Extreine
Orient, 1909.
3 Mekenzie, 'Climate in Burmese History' in Journal of the Burma Research
Society, 1913,
## p. 542 (#592) ############################################
542
[CH.
BURMA A. D. 1287–1531
:
>
the distaff side, with the lineage of the Shān Brothers. The only
specific mention of the Ari' after their overthrow by Anawrahta is
that Sawyun, lord of Sagaing, a son of Thihathu, in 1314 enume.
rated Ari among his armed retainers ; apparently they were like the
warrior abbots of contemporary Christendom.
Even in its limited area the Upper Burma state was loosely knit,
towns such as Sagaing, Sagu and Taungdwingyi doing as they
pleased. The confusion was something more than brigandage : it
was the result of a racial movement, nothing less than the Shān
migration into the plains of Burma. In 1364 the Maw (Mogaung)
Shāns took Sagaing and Pinya, carrying off the princes, the white
elephants, and numbers of the townsfolk. To escape being driven
off in Shān raiders' slave gangs, the population of Upper Burma
took to migrating to Toungoo.
After the Maw Shāns had departed, Thadominbya (1364–8), one
of the Sagaing fansily, killed off such of his kinsmen as stood in his
way there and at Pinya, drained the swamps round Āva, and built
the town. It was usually the Burmese capital for the next five
centuries ; till two generations ago the English, like the Chinese,
referred to Burmah as Āva, and for the Shāns the king of Burma
was to the end 'The Lord of the Golden Palace at Āva'. On his
mother's side Thadominbya was descended from the Three Shān
Brothers, and his father was a Shān notable who claimed descent
from the primitive Pyusawti lineage. His habits were sufficiently
primitive-thus, after killing a Toungoo rebel he ate a meal on the
corpse's chest. Whilst trying to subject Sugu he was seized with
small-pox. As he lay dying, a pagan who had no respect for Buddh.
ism, he told an officer to return to the palace and kill his queen
lest she should pass to his successor. The officer entered the palace
and told her his errand so she then and there married him. As part
of the regalia she had already been queen to four successive chiefs
of Pinya, and her union with the officer raised him to the throne.
The pair massacred the royal kinsmen but the ministers would not
accept them and hawked round the crown until finally Minkyiswas.
awke accepted it.
Minkyiswasawke (1368 - 1401) was descended from the union of
the Shān sister with the son of the Pagān dynasty, and as a child
1 Douroiselle, 'The Ari of Burma and Tantric Buddhism' in Annual Report of the
Archaeological Survey of India, 1915-16.
2 For Maw, Mogaung, Pong, etc. , see Harvey's History of Burma, p. 322.
3 For the custom whereby queens passed to the next king, see Harvey's History of
Burma, p. 324.
## p. 543 (#593) ############################################
XXI ]
THE KINGDOM OF ĀVA
543
he had been carried off into captivity with his father, the lord of
Thayetmyo, when Minhti, king of Arakan, raided it in 1333. On
his release he became thūgyi (village headman) of Amyin in the
Sagaing district and on becoming king he made an Arakanese
monk his primate. He built the Zidaw weir in Kyaukse district
and repaired the embankment of Meiktila lake.
Laukpya, lord of Myaungmya, hated his nephew Razadarit, and
when Razadarit succeeded to the throne of Pegū in 1385, Laukpya
wrote to Minkyiswasawke offering to hold Pegů as a vassal if Minky-
iswasawke would help him to oust Razadarit. This started a war
between Upper and Lower Burma which lasted till 1422. The
fighting was almost entirely in the Delta and probably the war
was a war of migration, Shān saturation of Upper Burma being
sufficiently complete for Āva to swarm down on Pegū. The Burmese
advance base was Prome, and their usual line of advance was down
the Hlaing river to Dāgon (Rangoon), sometimes with another
string of levies going down the Sittang valley from Toungoo. With
them marched contingents from allied states, Mohnyin, Kale, and
Yawnghwe ; indeed, the Talaing chronicles sometimes refer to the
invaders as simply 'the Shāns. ' Their total strength would usually
be some 12,000 and the advance took place every year or so, both
sides going home for the rains (June-November). The invaders
would sit down in large stockades, and sally forth headhunting and
slave raiding, sometimes besieging Hmawbi, Dalla, Dāgon (Rangoon),
and other towns, or being besieged themselves. Occasionally some
determined leader would bring about a battle, but the casualties
mentioned are seldom a decimal per cent of the numbers engaged,
and it is difficult to avoid the impression that most of the fighting
was of the type not uncommon in mediaeval countries when there
was as much shouting as killing and the wretched villagers were
the chief sufferers.
In addition to raiding the Delta, Āva had to defend herself
against attacks from the Shān hill states and sometimes they tried
to get her to join in their own quarrels. Thus in 1371 the sawbwas
(chiefs) of Kale and Mohnyin each asked Minkyiswasawke to help
oust the other, promising to become tributary in return, but he let
them exhaust each other, and thus secured a nominal supremacy
over both for a few years. But in 1373 Mohnyin raided the frontier
at Myedu in Shwebo district and the king had so much trouble that
in 1383 he sent an embassy to Yunnan. China thereupon graciously
appointed him governor of Āva and ordered Mohnyin to behave,
But Mohnyin in 1393 ravaged up to the walls of Sagaing.
## p. 544 (#594) ############################################
544
[CH.
BURMA A. D. 1287–1531
In 1374 Arakan was distracted with civil war and some of the
people asked Minkyiswasawke to send them a king; he sent them
his uncle, Sawmungyi. Sawmungyi ruled well, and on his death a
few years later the Arakanese asked Minkyiswasawke to select a
successor. Minkyiswasawke sent one of his sons but this son
oppressed the people and soon fled to Āva.
Finding Pyānchs, chief of Toungoo, becoming friendly with Pegū
in 1377, Minkyiswasawke told his brother, the lord of Prome, to
inveigle Pyānchi into a visit and kill him. The king's brother wrote
to Pyānchi : 'Come and marry your son to my daughter. Pyānchi
accepted the invitation and came with his son to Prome where,
during the night, his host did him to death and seized his retinue
with much booty. The king rewarded this exploit with rich presents.
and the chroniclers' who record the incident describe him as a
king with a most upright heart. He died in the odour of sanctity
at the age of 70 and after some palace murders was succeeded by
a younger son, Minhkaung.
Minhkaung (1401--22) had been married by his father to a
daughter presented by the chief of the Maw Shāns during a friendly
mood about the same time as Razadarit put to death his own son,
Ban lawkyantaw. A year later during her first pregnancy, she longed
for strange food from the Delta, and the family asked Razadarit,
though a foe, to send some. Razadarit consulted his ministers and
they perceived that the unborn child was Bawlawkyantaw himself
taking flesh again according to his dying prayer ; they sent mangoes
from Dalla and other food, having bewitched it.
The child, prince Minrekyawswa, born in 1391, was already
campaigning at the age of thirteen; he accompanied the 1404
expedition which, in retaliation for an Arakanese raid on Yaw and
Laungshe in the Pakokku district, marched over to the An Pass and
occupied Launggyet while the raja, Narameikhla, fled to Bengal.
The Burmese left behind as regent Anawrahtaminsaw, to whom next
year
sent a bride aged thirteen, sister to Minrekyawswa,
together with the five regalia (white umbrella, yaktail, crown, sword,
sandals).
In 1406 the Burmese overran Mohnyin and killed the chief ;
China expostulated and they withdrew, as they would doubtless
have done in any case. In 1407 they sent an embassy to Yunnan.
In 1413 the northern Shān state of Hsenni ravaged the Āva villages
was
1 Hmannan, Vol. i, pp. 420, 440.
2 Parker, ' Précis'; Huber, 'Une ambassade chinoise en Birmanie en 1406' in
Bulletin de l'Ecole Francaise d'Extreme Orient, 1934.
## p. 545 (#595) ############################################
XXI )
ÅVA AND PEGŰ
545
and sent some prisoners to Pekin, but Minrekyawswa shattered
the Hsenwi host at Wetwin near Maymyo, killing their leader in
single combat. In 1414 Hsenwi again raided Āva at the instigation
of Razadarit, whose envoys travelled viā Chiengmai carrying a con-
siderable weight of gold as an inducement.
Taking advantage of the usual palace troubles which attended
Minhkaung's accession, Razadarit made several raids, and in 1406
he came up the Irrawaddy river. It is characteristic of Burmese
warſare that though he failed to reduce the Burmese garrisons at
Prome, Myede and Pagān, he simply left them in his rear, pressed
on to Sagaing, and camped there, raising the white umbrella and
beating his drums in triumph. There was only the palace guard
in Āva, and although there were plenty of men in the villages, it
was not possible to summon them with the Talaings surrounding
the city. Taken at a loss, Minhkaung called a great council. Nobody
dared speak, for there was nothing to be said. But at last an
eminent monk of Pyinya came forward saying he had eloquence
enough to persuade any king in the universe. Minhkaung con-
sented, and the monk went forth riding a tall elephant with a
golden howdah, attended by 300 thadinthon (fasting elders) robed
in white, 300 old men bearing gifts, and many elephants loaded
with silks and rich presents. They met Razadarit on his great
barge and the monk spoke holy words on the sin of bloodshed
while Razadarit inclined his ear. He could not reduce a walled
town, he could not remain for ever in a hostile country, and he
consented to withdraw; he even rebuked his men for taking the
heads of forty pagoda slaves.
On returning home, Razadarit besieged Prome, and when
Minhkaung came down to relieve it, defeated him so severely
that he sued for terms. The two kings swore eternal friendship,
mounting the steps of the Shwehsandaw pagoda, Prome, together
hand in hand, and entering into a marriage alliance. Razadarit
granted Minhkaung the customs revenue of Bassein ; this, and the
fact that throughout the fifteenth century Tharrawaddy was subject
to Prome and was held by a governor who was appointed, at least
nominally, by Āva, suggest that one cause of the fighting was the
need of Āva to trade along the Irrawaddy river as far south as
possible.
But in 1407 Razadarit, having intercepted a letter from Minh-
kaung asking Chiengmai to join him in attacking Pegū and share
the booty, supported a fugitive Arakanese prince, son of Nara-
meikhla ; the prince marched into Arakan, gathering strength
;
35
C. HI. III.
## p. 546 (#596) ############################################
546
( CH.
BURMA A. D. 1287 - 1531
a
from his fellow countrymen as he went, occupied Launggyet, and
captured the Burmese garrison, 3000 strong Anawrahtaminsawi
was executed and his little queen, Sawpyechantha, passed into
Razadarit's harem.
The news so enraged Minhkaung that he insisted on invading
the Delta in the rains, with the natural result that he was severely
defeated at Pankyaw, north of Pegū. He fled to Āva, leaving his
men to be cut to pieces and his Maw Shān queen’ to be captured ;
she joined her daughter Sawpyechantha in Razadarit's harem.
Now that both his mother and sister were captives, Minre-
kyawswa became a fiend. “As a crocodile eats his victims, so will
I rend the flesh of the Talaings,' he said'. His father Minhkaung
went no more to war, for his nerves were shattered after the fight
at Pankyaw. But Minrekywswa took charge. Year after year he
carried fire and sword into the hapless Delta, defeating all comers,
deporting the population wholesale, and making life so unbearable
that in Myaungmya and Bassein men dared not work their fields,
and in 1415 the whole west side paid him homage. Things came
to such a pass that a hundred Talaings would run at sight of
a couple of Shān-Burmans.
But in 1417 the vengeful re-incarnation of Bawlawkyantaw came
to an end. Razadarit, trusting to Minrekyawswa's impetuosity, lured
him out of his camp at Dalla until he was separated from his men,
and dashed out on him at the head of some thirty Talaing lords on
elephants. Minrekyawswa's elephant, maddened by a hundred gashes,
shook him off and crushed his thigh ; he crawled away under a bush,
but was found and taken to Razadarit's camp. There he repelled
Razadarit's chivalrous advances and died during the night, uttering
hatred with his last breath. He is now worshipped as the Minky.
awswa spirit.
At the news of his death, the Burmese Delta garrisons fled in
panic, and the war soon came to an end, for men were weary:
Minhkaung, broken-hearted at his brave son's death, spent his
declining years in piety ; the Ari-gyi-do-ahnwe (descendants of
the great Ari) frequented his palace and drank there, sometimes
10 such
excess that they had to be carried back to their
monasteries.
1 He is worshipped at the Shwenawrahta Nat spirit ; Temple, Thirty-Seven Nats,
P. 56.
2 She is worshipped as the Anaukmibaya Nat spirit; Temple, Thirty-Seven Nats,
p. 56.
3 Hmannan, Vol. ii, p. 12. The Burmese used to eat portions of the flesh of
their prisoners of war alive, ad terrorem; see Harvey, History of Burma, p. 298.
## p. 547 (#597) ############################################
*x1 )
NICOLO DE CONTI
547
He was succeeded by his son Thihathu (1422-26), who took his
father's queen
Shin-Bo-me and was so fond of her that his first wife
retired into religion. But during a raid on the Delta he did so
much damage that the Talaing chief presented him with his sister
Shinsawbu to buy him off; he brought her to Āva and crowned
her queen consort in great state, so Shin-Bo-me had him assassi-
nated. The court set up his nine-year-old son ; Shin-Bo-me poisoned
him and brought in a cousin of the royal house, Kalekyetaungnyo
(1426-27), and when he was supplanted by a kinsman she married
the kinsman Mohnyinthado (1427-40); this was her fifth crowned
consort, but she died childless. Mohnyinthado's reign was spent in
striving, with tolerable success, 10 retain his throne against the
principal fiel-holders and the Shān states of Hsipaw and Yawnghwe ;
Hsipaw once drove him out of his palace for eight months, with-
drawing only on payment of a large sum. It was in his reign that
the first European wandered into Burma-Nicolo de' Conti, a mer-
chant of Venice ; Conti visited Tenasserim, Mrohaung and Āva. His
notel is brief, but its references to the white elephant, to tattooing
the thighs, and to what he imagined was a prayer to the Trinity
(the Buddhist invocation of the 'Three names of Refuge'), suggest
that Burmese civilisation was then the same as in the nineteenth
century.
Mohnyinthado's sons, Minrekyawswa (1440—43) and Narapati
(1443—69), overran Kale and Mohnyin for a time, and captured
the Maw Shān chief Thonganbwa when he was being hard pressed
by Yunnan. Narapati refused to surrender him and in 1445 drove
off the Yunnan levies at Kaungton in the Bhamo district. But
when in 1446 they appeared in strength before Āva, he yielded,
Thonganbwa committed suicide, so only his dead body could be given
up; the Chinese removed the intestines, dried the body in the sun
and at the fire, thrust an iron spit through it and took it away.
In 1451 they sent Narapati a golden seal as governor of Āva,
and in 1454 they gave him some Shān territory in return for the
surrender of a Mohnyin chief. At this time China enumerated in
and near Burma eight states held by what she was pleased to con-
sider her 'comforters' or governors, of which five can be identified-
Āva, Kenghung, Hsenwi, Pegū, and the country round Viengchang.
Narapati was succeeded by his son Thihathura (1469-81), who
fought Toungoo, Pegū, Prome and Yawnghwe. In 1474 he and his
Major, India in the Fifteenth Century.
2 Hmannan, Vol. ii, p. 97 ; Parker, Burma, relations with China, p. 44, and ‘Précis',
Pemberton, Report on Eastern Frontier, pp. 111-12.
35-2
## p. 548 (#598) ############################################
548
[CH.
BURMA A. D.
1287-1531
queen made their hair into a broom, studded the handle with gems
and sent it to sweep the floor of the Temple of the Tooth at Kandy
in Ceylon'. In 1472 he asked China to give him Mohnyin. China
warned Mohnyin not to obstruct the road between China and
Burma, but she would not give his territory to Āva, as he had done
nothing to merit eviction. Mohnyin remained on good terms with
the Chinese frontier eunuch, presenting him with a jewelled girdle.
Jewels also helped the expansion of Momeik, the ruby mine
state ; founded in 1238, the town was part of Hsenwi but in 1420
it received thirteen villages as a reward for helping Yunnan to
raid Chiengmai. In 1465 its chieftainess Nang-han-lung sent ruby
tribute separately from Hsenwi and her present of jewels com-
pletely won over the frontier eunuch. She even tried to ally herself
with Annam. She seized most of Hsenwi, and when China remon-
strated, she said : ‘Momeik is the baby elephant which has outgrown
the mother elephant Hsenwi and can never enter the womb again,'
and as, in addition to talking, she presented more rubies to the
enquiring officers, they reported sympathetically on her case and
she was leſt in possession.
Conceivably the continuance of Chinese interest in Burma is
due to the fact that after Kubla Khan's dynasty (1206—1368) had
passed away, China lost control of the route across Asia to Europe.
She had to look for other outlets, and the trade route down the
Irrawaddy was perhaps one of them. Chinese porcelain of the
Afteenth century had been found in the bed of the Bassein river
near Negrais, and it is recorded that in 1450 the chief of Āva gave
to a favourite 'the Chinese customs revenue,' probably Yunnan
frontier tolls.
Hitherto writing had been in Pali and Sanskrit but in this
age vernacular literature makes its appearance. Its rise exposes
the inadequacy of our material-pagoda inscriptions and court
chronicles which, in their present form, are not even contemporary.
a
1 Religious missions with Ceylon are also mentioned in 1430 and 1456. The Tooth
had been at Kandy since 1286. Gerson da Cunha, Memoir of the History of the
Tooth Relic of Ceylon' in Journal of the Bombay branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1875,
gives the history of the Tooth. The silver gilt caskets in which it now rests are not
unlike a Burmese pagoda in shape ; the metal of which they are made and the
gems which encrust them are largely Burmese.
2 For Chinese sea trade, see Chau Ju-kua ; Mayer's 'Chinese Explorations of the
Indian Ocean during the Fiftecnth Century' in China Review, Vol. iii; Rockhill,
'Trade of China with the Coast of the Indian Ocean during the Fifteenth Century'
in T‘oung Pao, 1914 1915.
3 Report of the Superintendent, Archaeological Survey Burma, 1915, p. 35.
4 Hmannan Vol. ii, p. 99.
4
## p. 549 (#599) ############################################
XXI )
BURMESE LITERATURE
549
Away from the track of the chiefs and their rabble, people were
probably happy enough, and in many a monastery life must have
been calın and beautiful. As is usual in secluded countries, Bur-
mese literature is narrow in range and, though quite voluminous
according to mediaeval standards, small in quantity. It shows litile
development and no improvement has been made on the earliest
poets. The prose consists largely of translations and paraphrases
from scripture stories. The verse is more original and includes
minor poetry of a high order but the condensation of its style and
the obscurity of its dialect militate against its having a wide appeal.
The usually accepted view, that the following are the first vernacular
writers, is probably correct, but the finish of their style indicates
that the vernacular had been practised for some generations pre-
viously. The earliest writers are three monks, Shin Uttamagyaw,
Shin Thilawuntha, and Shin Maharattathara. Shin Uttamagyaw,
the author of Tawla, a celebrated poem, was a valued councellor
in the Ava palace. He was born on the same day as Shin Thilaw-
Āva
untha (1453—1520) and together they entered a monastery school
at Taungdwingyi, Magwe district. Shin Thilawuntha was expelled
for writing Paramiganpyo, as the monk considered poetry sinſul ;
he continued writing in a fine monastery built for him at Āva
by the chief, Minhkaung (1401—22); Yazawing gaw, the earliest
chronicle extant, is his ; it is a disappointing work, for instead
of recording what went on round him-it would have been an
invaluable picture-he merely reproduced scriptural traditions.
Shin Maharattathara (1468-1529), a descendant of the Thihathu,
the Shān Brother, wrote, Koganpyo and other poems. Probably
it is in this period that Yaweshinhtwe lived ; she was a maid of
honour and wrote verse on the 55 styles of hairdressing used by
maids of honour in the Āva palace, styles some of which are still
in popular use.
Thihathura was succeeded by his son Minhkaung (1481—1502),
who, hearing that Bimbisara, the king of Buddha's period, had
raised his son to the throne as joint king, decided to follow the
precedent, gave his son the white umbrella, and shared the throne
with him. He was continually attacked by Hanthawaddy and
Prome in the south, and by the Shāns above Shwebo in the north.
When his vassal of Toungoo was assassinated, he recognised the
assassin as king, sending him the white umbrella, an act which
the 1829 chroniclers cite as an instance of statesmanship.
He was succeeded by his younger son Shwenankyawshin (1502-
1 Hmannan, Vol. ii, pp. 127, 185,
## p. 550 (#600) ############################################
550
[CH
BURMA A. D. 1287 - 1531
27), as the elder son, the joint king, had died. Shwenankyawshin
already had a wife whose sister was consort to the dead joint king;
yet now, on coming to the throne, it was not his own wife, but the
joint king's widow, who became his chief queen, as she was already
part of the regalia. His life was attempted by kinsmen who fled to
Toungoo. He thereupon gave his daughter in marriage to Minkyinyo
of Toungoo with the villages from Kyaukse to Toungoo as dowry;
he was giving his daughter to the harbourer of his assassins, and in
giving away the rice area of Kyaukse he was giving away his crown.
But he could not help himself-Prome and Salin were in revolt,
Mohnyin was attacking the Shwebo border, and his own brothers
were in the field against him. In 1527 Mohnyin encamped under
the walls of Āva, the Shāns in the Āva garrison deserted to him,
and Shwenankyawshin fell fighting on his elephant. The population
fled in large numbers to Toungoo.
Mohnyin set up his son Thohanbwa (1527–43) as king in Āva.
Thohanbwa said: 'Burmese pagodas have nothing to do with religion.
They are simply treasure chambers,' and proceeded to plunder such
as were in reach. Probably, as in 1756 and 1885, the monks led the
people in resistance; he said: 'Monks surround themselves with
followers and could rebel if they liked. They ought to be killed'; in
1540 at Taungbalu, just outside Āva, he covered a field with huts,
slaughtered buffaloes, cows, pigs and fowls and invited the monks
to feast. When they were all in the huts, he surrounded them with
his braves and massacred them to the number of 360. The survivors
fled to Toungoo. He then seized the manuscripts in the monasteries
and made bonfires of them. Finally he was assassinated by one
of his Burmese ministers who thereupon, though of royal blood,
retired into a monastery rather than take the throne.
It therefore passed to Hsipaw, who ruled as Hkonmaing (1543 - 46).
He joined six other sawbwas in the attack on Prome and was suc-
ceeded by his son Mobye Narapati (1546-52), who, weary of attacks
from Mohnyin, fled to Bayinmaung, leaving Āva to its last sawbwa,
Sithukyawhtin (1552—55), a nominee of Mohnyin.
Indeed for two and a half centuries the ruler of Āva had been
sawbwa in all but name ; yet there was this difference between
Āva and the other Shān states, that whereas they were so wild as
to leave not even a record, the tradition of the Burmese palace
gave
Āva a veener of civilisation, and her numerous monasteries
contained monks who, if not learned, were at least literate; and to
them it is due that though the lamp of civilisation flickered and
burnt low, it never went out;
## p. 551 (#601) ############################################
XXI ]
PEGO
551
(b) Pegu 1287-1539.
Wareru (1287-96), a Shān pedlar born at Donwun in the Thaton
district, took service in the elephant stables of the chief of Sukhotai,
became Captain of the Guard, eloped with the chief's daughter and
set up as lord of his native village.
He had a fair sister, and Aleimma, the Burmese governor of
Martaban, wished to marry her. Wareru prepared a wedding feast
and when Aleimma came to get his bride, Wareru assassinated him,
seized his governorship, and so became lord of Martaban in 1281.
When he built its walls in 1287, a pregnant woman
was crushed
under the gate post as a foundation sacrifice.
The Pagān kingdom was now breaking up, and Wareru made
common cause with Tarabya, the revolting governor of Pegū, each
marrying the other's daughter. But in 1287, after they had expelled
the Burmese governors and occupied the country south of Prome
and Toungoo, Tarabya tried to ambush Wareru. He failed. Wareru,
calling the spirits of earth and air to witness his innocence, and
pouring libations of water from a golden bowl, mounted his elephant,
fought with Tarabya in single combat, and took him prisoner. At
the intercession of the monks he spared his life. Tarabya again
plotted, but his wife warned her father Wareru in time. So Tarabya
was executed, although she twined her tresses with his and dared the
executioners to cut off his head.
Wareru now became sole prince of the Talaing state in Lower
Burma which lasted till 1539. In 1298 it received recognition from
China, which henceforth chose to regard its rulers as governors
appointed by herself. Its capital was Martaban till 1369, when a
palace was set up at Pegū.
Wareru received recognition from his old master and father-in-
law, the chief of Sukhotai, who in 1293 sent him a white elephant
because it chose to eat Martaban grass ; no sooner did they hear
of its arrival than the Shān Brothers of Kyaukse came raiding
Martaban to get it, but were driven off.
To Wareru we owe the earliest law book in Burma that now
survives. The Hindu colonists who came to the Delta a thousand
years before had brought with them traditional laws ascribed to
the ancient sage Manu; these law books were handed down in
the Talaing monasteries, and Wareru commissioned his monks
1 Paklat Talaing chronicle.
2 Razadarit Ayedawpon. The practice survived in Burma till a century ago ;
sec History of Burma, p. 320.
3 Halliday, The Talaings.
## p. 552 (#602) ############################################
552
(CH.
BURMA A. D. 1287–1531
to produce the standard collection called after him, the Wareru
dhammathat. It forms the basis of Burmese law literature? .
The Siamese kingdom, founded in 1350, included in its list of
provinces Tenasserim, Moulmein and Martaban ; it certainly held
Tenasserim, founding the town in 1373, and building the Wutshin-
taung pagoda there in 1380; but it did not hold Moulmein save
through some nominal tribute-offering, and Pegū held the country
down to Tavoy. There was little established government. If it was
not dacoits it was royal kinsmen who revolted, and sometimes bands
of Shān immigrants from Siam would add to the disorder.
Binnya U (1353-85) repaired the Shwedāgon pagoda, raising its
height to 66 feet. He repelled raiders from Chiengmai who destroyed
several towns in Thaton district; on the site of his victory he built
a pagoda, enshrining relics obtained by sending a mission to Ceylon.
But his white elephant died, after being 61 years in the palace, and
while he was devoutly searching the forests for a successor, his kins-
men seized the palace and invited the Chiengmai chief to join them.
For six years he maintained himself at Donwun, and then, being
driven out, he moved to Pegū and repaired its walls.
His eldest son Razadarit (1385–1423) was the greatest of Wareru's
lineage. Fighting for his existence since the age of sixteen, with but
little assistance from his father, who could not control the family
feuds, Razadarit succeeded in seizing Pegū town soon after his
father's death, subjected Bassein, and repelled successive Burmese
invasions. Finally, in 1390, he captured Myaungmya with Laukpya
inside ; in thank-offering he built shrines at the Shwemawdaw
pagoda, Pegū feeding a thousand monks throughout a seven days'
festival and offering his weight in gold.
Hearing that his son Bawlawykantaw was practising horseman-
ship and sharpening his elephant's tusks, Razadarit feared he was
about to rebel, and sent two lords to slay him. They announced
their duty to the lad, who replied : 'I do but follow the custom of
young princes in manly exercise. I do not plot against my father
and there is no fault in me. Give me time to prepare for death. '
They gave him time, and for three days at the Shwemawdaw pagoda
he listened to the reading of Abidhamma, the holy scriptures.
When it was finished, he offered his ruby bracelets and earrings to
the pagoda, and thus he prayed : 'If I have wished ill to my father,
:
1 Forchammer, Jardine Prize Essay on Burmese Law.
2 Pallegoix, Description du Royaume Thai ou Siam, Vol. ii, p. 75.
3 For the eult of the white elephant, see Harvey, History af Burma, pp. 274, 361.
## p. 553 (#603) ############################################
XXI )
RAZADARIT
553
on my
yea though it be a little, then may I lie in Hell' for ever, and never
behold the coming Buddha. But if I have not wished ill to my
father, then may I be born again among the kings of Burma and
be the scourge of the Talaings. ' Then he took the poison that had
been prepared, and drank it and died.
When this was reported to Razadarit, he said : 'It was a terrible
prayer,' and. gilding the pagoda from top to bottom, he prayed : 'If
he become a prince in Burma and make war on me, may I
elephant vanquish him. '
During the war that followed, though he ultimately repulsed
them, the Burmese sometimes left Razadarit in possession of little
but Pegū town itself. In 1414 he gained a brief respite by stirring
up Hsenwi to attack Āva, but was himself never free from the fear
of Shān inroads, as on several occasions when he was hard pressed
from the north the princes of Ayuthia, Kampengpet and Chiengmai
would raid him from the south.
He built the Danok pagoda near Twante, and to him is ascribed
the traditional division of each of the Three Lands of the Talaings'
(Pegū, Myaungmya, Bassein) into 32 'provinces,' i. e. village circles.
He was of great strength and personal courage, and several
times killed his man in single combat. The chief of Āva never
dared accept his challenge and meet him hand to hand.
When the news of Minhkaung's death in 1422 reached Pegū,
the queens jeered, saying to Razadarit : 'Now you can pounce
down on his palace and capture all his women. ' But he rebuked
them, saying: 'My sweet enemy is dead. It will fight no more, but
spend my declining years in piety. ?
A year later, at the age of fifty-four, while snaring elephants
with his own hand in the Labut-tha-lut forest at the foot of the
Pegū Yomas, north of Pegū, he was caught in the rope and
injured so that he died on the way home. His queens came out
to meet the body and buried it at Kamathameinpaik (Minkanyo);
near Payagyi, north of Pegū. He has a chronicle all to himself,
the Razadarit Ayedawpon, which ends with the word : ' This Lion
King, so wise, so generous, so mighty in word and deed, could
overcome all his enemies, but he too at the last must bow before
King Death. '
Binnyakyan (1450-53) raised the height of the Shwedāgon
pagoda to 302 feet. At his death, as a result of palace massacres,
there was no male of the family left alive. The throne then passed
by general consent to Razadarit's daughter Shinsawbu (1453-72).
Village headmanships have been known tº descend in the female
## p. 554 (#604) ############################################
554
[ CH.
BURMA A. D. 1287–1531
line? , and · Shān hill states have been held by chieftainesses, but
this is the only instance of a major state in Burma being held by
a woman. Daughter, sister, wife and mother of kings, she ruled
well, leaving behind so gracious a memory on earth that four
hundred years later the Talaings could think of no fairer thing
to say of Queen Victoria than to call her Shinsawbu re-incarnate.
Once, while being carried round the city in her great palanquin,
sword in hand and crown on head, she heard an old man exclaim,
as her retinue pushed him aside, 'I must get out of the way, must I ?
You call ine an old fool, do you? I am not so old that I could not
get a child, which is more than your old queen could do! Thunder-
struck at such irreverence, she meekly accepted it as a sign from
heaven, and thereafter styled herself 'The Old Queen? '
When young she had been given in marriage to the then chief
of Āva and two Talaing monks had gone there to teach her letters.
As she was not happy in a Burmese palace, she ran away, and fled
down the river to Pegū. Her flight was successful because the
two monks helped her, and, by benefit of clergy, a boat carrying
monks could not be challenged. She admired the two monks
beyond all other men, and when, after being queen of Pegū seven
years, she wished to retire, it was one of them that she chose as
successor. But she did not know which to choose. Therefore one
day, when they entered the palace as usual to receive the royal
rice in thein alms bowls, she secretly put into one of the bowls not
rice but a layman's dress, together with little models of the five
regalia; then, having prayed that the lot might fall on the worthier,
she returned the bowls. Dammazedi, to whom the fateful bowl
fell, abandoned the Order, received her daughter in marriage, and
assumed the government. The other in his disappointment took
to plotting, and was executed. The ambitious lords also objected,
but in the end became reconciled to Dammazedi because of his
wisdom and justice; and when some of them continued to murmur
that he was not of royal blood, she took a beam out of a bridge in
the city and had it made into a Buddha image, and said : ‘Ye say
he is of common blood, he cannot be your king. See here this
common wood-yesterday it was trodden in the dust of your feet,
but to-day, is it not Lord and do ye not bow before it ? '
Shinsawbu spent the remaining years of her life in retirement
at the Shwedāgon. Successive princes had added to the original
.
1 Furnivall, ‘Matriarchy in Burma' in Journal of the Burma Research Society, 1912.
2 Thatonhnwemun Yazawin.
3 Sayadaw Athwa, Vol. ii, p. 131,
## p. 555 (#605) ############################################
XXI)
REVIVAL OF RELIGION
555
set up
structure, and she made it practically what we see to-day. Round
it she banked up the terrace fifty feet high, nine hundred feet
wide, with a great stone balustrade and encircling walls, between
which she planted palm trees ; she kept forty-four people con-
tinually tending the sacred lamps, dedicated five hundred prisoners
of war as slaves, and offered her own weight (91 lb. ) in gold for
gilding the dome. When, at the age of seventy. eight, she felt her
end approaching, she had her bed placed where her eyes could rest
on that wondrous spire, and thus she breathed her last.
Dammazedi (1472—92) gave four times the weight of himself
and his queen in gold to the Shwedāgon as compensation for re-
voking some of its lands, which Shinsawbu had extended to Danok.
At Pegū he built the Shwekugyi and Kyaikpon pagodas, and west
of the Shwemawdaw he built a new stockaded town, and
his palace and elephant stable there. The masonry of his reign
is excellent, and a mass of pious edifices sprang up on the beautiful
plateau between the old and the new town, men vying with each in
works of merit, for it was an age of religious revival.
Dammazedi himself sent a mission to Buddhagaya? in Bengal
to take plans of the Holy Tree and of the temple as models for his
buildings at Pegū. But his most important work was his mission
of twenty-two monks to Ceylon' in 1475. It was a long and
a
dangerous journey, and several died in shipwreck or during their
wanderings when cast away on the coast of Madras. To the Tooth,
the Footprint, and the Holy Trees, at Kandy, they presented a
stone alms bowl studded with sapphires, and reliquaries of gold
and crystal ; to the Cingalese monks, cloths and Chiengmai lacquer
boxes; to the king of Ceylon, rubies, sapphires, Chinese silks, fine
mats, and a letter on gold leaf. Their object was to secure valid
ordination from the clergy of the Mahāvihāra, the great monastery
in Ceylon which, founded in 251 B. C. still exists. On their return
they proceeded to transmit this ordination to the clergy throughout
Lower Burma : it was so generally accepted as valid that monks
flocked to receive it from all over Burma and even from Siam ;
and thus religion in Burma, which for three centuries had been
split into sects each with its own ordination, received a measure
of unity from the standard Kalyāni ordination. It was and is
1 Halliday, 'Slapat Rajawan Datow Smin Ron' in Journal of the Burma Research
Society, 1923; Forchammer, ‘Notes on Early History and Geography. '
2 Shwemawdaw Thamaing.
Report of the Supt. Archaeological Survey, Burma, 1914, p. 11.
4 Taw Sein Ko, ‘Kalyāni Inscriptions' in Indian Antiquary, 1893, 1894,
3
## p. 556 (#606) ############################################
556
(ch.
BURMA A. D.
1287-1531
granted at the Kalyāni thein (ordination hall) near Pegū, so called
because the original monks were ordained on the banks of the
Kalyāni stream in Ceylon. Dammazedi recorded these events on
ten inscribed stones at the thein, called the Kalyāni Inscriptions.
One of the principal monks in the mission was Buddhaghosa,
who translated the wareru dhammathat into Bur. nese; later gene.
rations confused him with his namesake, the Father of the Church
who lived a thousand years previously. Dammazedi himself was a
wise judge, and a collection of his rulings survives, the Dammızedi
pyatton. He died at the age of eighty and was succeeded by his
son Binnyaran.
Binnyaran (1492–1526) was beloved for his kindness, although,
like others before and after, he enforced the Massacre of the Kins-
men, making a clean sweep of all his brothers. His son Takayutpi
(1526—39) was the last king of Pegū.
Soon after 1500 the opening of the sea routes brought the
Talaings great prosperity. Burma lay off the beaten track and
her goods could be bought in Malacca. Her spices were few,
and her finished articles crude. But two places in Burma lay
near the track : Martaban and Tenasserim. These commanded
short cuts over the hills to Siam, saving a dangerous sea voyage.
Martaban sold the produce brought down the Salween and Irra.
waddy rivers, and in 1519 the Portuguese founded a trading
station there which lasted till 1613. T'enasserim”, which belonged
to Siam till 1760, commanded an even better overland route, and
the Portuguese had a settlement there till 1641. The Portuguese
imported European clothes and velvets, and exported rubies, lac,
wax, ivory, horn, lead, tin, Pegū jars (“Martabans'), and long
pepper, which grew in the moist forests of Tenasserim; they
exported also pepper from Achin, camphor from Borneo, and
porcelain and scented woods from China, brought by the junks
for sale in the Talaing ports. There was no coinage, but goods
.
were weighed against lumps of ganza, an alloy of lead and tin
which passed as currency. Nikitina, a Russian from Tver, who
travelled in the East about 1470, mentions Pegū as ‘no inconsider.
able port, inhabited principally by Indian dervishes. The products
derived from thence are sold by the dervishes,' which indicates
that then, as now, the merchant community was largely foreign.
1 Faria y Sousa (Stevens), The Portuguese in Asia ; Couto, Da Asia ; Whiteway,
Rise of the Portuguese Power in India.
2 Anderson, English Intercourse with Siam.
3 Major, India in the Fifteenth Century.
## p. 557 (#607) ############################################
XXI )
YOUNGOO
557
a
Pegū had peace between Razadarit's death in 1423 and the end
of the monarchy in 1539. The dynasty was mild. The kings could
indulge their peaceful proclivities because the Upper Burma hordes
found all the fighting they wanted among themselves, and the states
of Prome and Toungoo acted as a buffer. An Italian traveller in
1505 describes the reigning king, Binnyaran, as so gentle that a child
might speak to him, and as wearing so many jewels that at night he
shone like the sun! It was the golden age of Pegū, and there can be
little doubt that its civilisation was higher than that of the savage
north. If few traces remain, that is because it was a simple
civilisation, the steaming climate of the Delta hastens decay, and
the Burmese conquerors touched nothing which they did not destroy.
(c) TOUNGOO 1280--1531.
In 1280 two brothers built a stockade round their viHage on
the hill-spur (taunggnu), and thus founded Toungoo ; the stockade
;
was probably a necessity against the ferocious slave-raiders of
Karenni. The Pāgān kingdom was then on its death-bed, and
Toungoo grew up without even such slight traditions of loyalty as
other towns possessed. In the next two centuries she was ruled by
twenty-eight chiefs, of whom fifteen perished by assassination.
Other places, notably Prome, were equally independent, but
Toungco differed in this, that she remained predominantly Burmese.
The Shāns made life so unbearable in Upper Burma that every now
and then crowds of Burmese families would flock south and setile
round Toungoo with its stronghold on the hill. The first migration
took place when Pyanchi (1368–77) was lord of Toungoo ; he joined
the chiefs of Āva and Pegü in making offerings at Pagān, and in an
inscription at the Shwezigon he and his lady record with natural
pride that they gave refuge to the Burmese who fled after the Shān
sack of Sagaing and Pyinya. These twain prayed that in their next
existence they might be man and wife together again, and dwell in
the land of Toungoo, and once more rule the people they loved
so well.
The lords of Toungoo styled themselves kings and had a golden
palace at Gyobinzeik village, with elephant stables, and even an
occasional white elephant. And indeed the little throne sometimes
descended from father to son. But as often as not they paid
1 Badger, The Travels of Ludovico di Varthema, p. 219.
3 He merges with Minrekyawswa to form the Minkyawswa Nai spirit ;
Temple, Thirty Seven Nats, p. 56.
## p. 541 (#591) ############################################
XXI ]
THE THREE SHĀN BROTHERS
541
with the sword. Either throw me into the river or strangle me';
so they strangled and cremated him and cast his remains into the
Irrawaddy? They killed also his son, his monk and principal
followers, and seized the harem.
Survivors of the dynasty appealed to Yunnan. The Yünnan
commandant obtained the Emperor's sanction, and with 12,000
men besieged the Brothers in three walled towns at Myinsaing.
On their walls the Brothers mounted balistae, and in one assault the
Tartars lost 500 men from the arrows blocks of stone, and beams
which rained down on the stormers. Finding the climate hot and
malarious, the Chinese accepted the bribe, 800 taels (63 lb. ) of gold
and 2200 taels (183 lb) of silver, and withdrew to Yunnan after let.
ting their men help on the Kyaukse irrigation works, constructing
the Thindwe canal. This is the end of Chinese interference in
Burma resulting from the expedition of 1287.
Whether Pagān had hitherto been fertile or not? , it was certainly
unfertile now, and the soil of the Myingyan district assumed its
present desolate and barren aspect. Denudation of the forests to
provide fuel for pagoda bricks had doubtless lessened the rainfall, and
extersive irrigation at Kyaukse
at Kyaukse might attract rainfall thither
from Pagān. Crops grow there, but not in such quantity as to
supply a city of 50,000 inhabitants who eat rice. Probably this
was the reason, in addition to the belief that the luck of the site
was exhausted, which now led to the removal of the palace from
Pagān.
There was rice in the Delta but it was far away and the Delta
was now under a hɔstile chief. There was rice in Kyaukse, but the
capital could not be put there, so far from the country's own high-
way, the Irrawaddy. It was necessary to find a site which should
be on the Irrawaddy and accessible to the rice of Kyaukse. The
obvious site was Ava, in the Sagaing district, where the Myitnge
river brought down the grain boats from Kyaukes. But as the
omens were adverse to Āva, Thihathu, the surviving Shān Brother,
in 1312 set up his palace at Pinya, a bad site near by, for which the
omens were favourable.
The Pagān dynasty continued to exist as myosa (governors)
of Pagān until 1369 and then ceased save where it had merged, on
1 For the taboo on shedding royal blood, and the convention whereby princes
were drowned, see Harvey, History of Burma, p. 339.
2 Huber, ‘Fin de la dynastie de Pagan' in Bulletin de l'Ecle Francaise d'Extreine
Orient, 1909.
3 Mekenzie, 'Climate in Burmese History' in Journal of the Burma Research
Society, 1913,
## p. 542 (#592) ############################################
542
[CH.
BURMA A. D. 1287–1531
:
>
the distaff side, with the lineage of the Shān Brothers. The only
specific mention of the Ari' after their overthrow by Anawrahta is
that Sawyun, lord of Sagaing, a son of Thihathu, in 1314 enume.
rated Ari among his armed retainers ; apparently they were like the
warrior abbots of contemporary Christendom.
Even in its limited area the Upper Burma state was loosely knit,
towns such as Sagaing, Sagu and Taungdwingyi doing as they
pleased. The confusion was something more than brigandage : it
was the result of a racial movement, nothing less than the Shān
migration into the plains of Burma. In 1364 the Maw (Mogaung)
Shāns took Sagaing and Pinya, carrying off the princes, the white
elephants, and numbers of the townsfolk. To escape being driven
off in Shān raiders' slave gangs, the population of Upper Burma
took to migrating to Toungoo.
After the Maw Shāns had departed, Thadominbya (1364–8), one
of the Sagaing fansily, killed off such of his kinsmen as stood in his
way there and at Pinya, drained the swamps round Āva, and built
the town. It was usually the Burmese capital for the next five
centuries ; till two generations ago the English, like the Chinese,
referred to Burmah as Āva, and for the Shāns the king of Burma
was to the end 'The Lord of the Golden Palace at Āva'. On his
mother's side Thadominbya was descended from the Three Shān
Brothers, and his father was a Shān notable who claimed descent
from the primitive Pyusawti lineage. His habits were sufficiently
primitive-thus, after killing a Toungoo rebel he ate a meal on the
corpse's chest. Whilst trying to subject Sugu he was seized with
small-pox. As he lay dying, a pagan who had no respect for Buddh.
ism, he told an officer to return to the palace and kill his queen
lest she should pass to his successor. The officer entered the palace
and told her his errand so she then and there married him. As part
of the regalia she had already been queen to four successive chiefs
of Pinya, and her union with the officer raised him to the throne.
The pair massacred the royal kinsmen but the ministers would not
accept them and hawked round the crown until finally Minkyiswas.
awke accepted it.
Minkyiswasawke (1368 - 1401) was descended from the union of
the Shān sister with the son of the Pagān dynasty, and as a child
1 Douroiselle, 'The Ari of Burma and Tantric Buddhism' in Annual Report of the
Archaeological Survey of India, 1915-16.
2 For Maw, Mogaung, Pong, etc. , see Harvey's History of Burma, p. 322.
3 For the custom whereby queens passed to the next king, see Harvey's History of
Burma, p. 324.
## p. 543 (#593) ############################################
XXI ]
THE KINGDOM OF ĀVA
543
he had been carried off into captivity with his father, the lord of
Thayetmyo, when Minhti, king of Arakan, raided it in 1333. On
his release he became thūgyi (village headman) of Amyin in the
Sagaing district and on becoming king he made an Arakanese
monk his primate. He built the Zidaw weir in Kyaukse district
and repaired the embankment of Meiktila lake.
Laukpya, lord of Myaungmya, hated his nephew Razadarit, and
when Razadarit succeeded to the throne of Pegū in 1385, Laukpya
wrote to Minkyiswasawke offering to hold Pegů as a vassal if Minky-
iswasawke would help him to oust Razadarit. This started a war
between Upper and Lower Burma which lasted till 1422. The
fighting was almost entirely in the Delta and probably the war
was a war of migration, Shān saturation of Upper Burma being
sufficiently complete for Āva to swarm down on Pegū. The Burmese
advance base was Prome, and their usual line of advance was down
the Hlaing river to Dāgon (Rangoon), sometimes with another
string of levies going down the Sittang valley from Toungoo. With
them marched contingents from allied states, Mohnyin, Kale, and
Yawnghwe ; indeed, the Talaing chronicles sometimes refer to the
invaders as simply 'the Shāns. ' Their total strength would usually
be some 12,000 and the advance took place every year or so, both
sides going home for the rains (June-November). The invaders
would sit down in large stockades, and sally forth headhunting and
slave raiding, sometimes besieging Hmawbi, Dalla, Dāgon (Rangoon),
and other towns, or being besieged themselves. Occasionally some
determined leader would bring about a battle, but the casualties
mentioned are seldom a decimal per cent of the numbers engaged,
and it is difficult to avoid the impression that most of the fighting
was of the type not uncommon in mediaeval countries when there
was as much shouting as killing and the wretched villagers were
the chief sufferers.
In addition to raiding the Delta, Āva had to defend herself
against attacks from the Shān hill states and sometimes they tried
to get her to join in their own quarrels. Thus in 1371 the sawbwas
(chiefs) of Kale and Mohnyin each asked Minkyiswasawke to help
oust the other, promising to become tributary in return, but he let
them exhaust each other, and thus secured a nominal supremacy
over both for a few years. But in 1373 Mohnyin raided the frontier
at Myedu in Shwebo district and the king had so much trouble that
in 1383 he sent an embassy to Yunnan. China thereupon graciously
appointed him governor of Āva and ordered Mohnyin to behave,
But Mohnyin in 1393 ravaged up to the walls of Sagaing.
## p. 544 (#594) ############################################
544
[CH.
BURMA A. D. 1287–1531
In 1374 Arakan was distracted with civil war and some of the
people asked Minkyiswasawke to send them a king; he sent them
his uncle, Sawmungyi. Sawmungyi ruled well, and on his death a
few years later the Arakanese asked Minkyiswasawke to select a
successor. Minkyiswasawke sent one of his sons but this son
oppressed the people and soon fled to Āva.
Finding Pyānchs, chief of Toungoo, becoming friendly with Pegū
in 1377, Minkyiswasawke told his brother, the lord of Prome, to
inveigle Pyānchi into a visit and kill him. The king's brother wrote
to Pyānchi : 'Come and marry your son to my daughter. Pyānchi
accepted the invitation and came with his son to Prome where,
during the night, his host did him to death and seized his retinue
with much booty. The king rewarded this exploit with rich presents.
and the chroniclers' who record the incident describe him as a
king with a most upright heart. He died in the odour of sanctity
at the age of 70 and after some palace murders was succeeded by
a younger son, Minhkaung.
Minhkaung (1401--22) had been married by his father to a
daughter presented by the chief of the Maw Shāns during a friendly
mood about the same time as Razadarit put to death his own son,
Ban lawkyantaw. A year later during her first pregnancy, she longed
for strange food from the Delta, and the family asked Razadarit,
though a foe, to send some. Razadarit consulted his ministers and
they perceived that the unborn child was Bawlawkyantaw himself
taking flesh again according to his dying prayer ; they sent mangoes
from Dalla and other food, having bewitched it.
The child, prince Minrekyawswa, born in 1391, was already
campaigning at the age of thirteen; he accompanied the 1404
expedition which, in retaliation for an Arakanese raid on Yaw and
Laungshe in the Pakokku district, marched over to the An Pass and
occupied Launggyet while the raja, Narameikhla, fled to Bengal.
The Burmese left behind as regent Anawrahtaminsaw, to whom next
year
sent a bride aged thirteen, sister to Minrekyawswa,
together with the five regalia (white umbrella, yaktail, crown, sword,
sandals).
In 1406 the Burmese overran Mohnyin and killed the chief ;
China expostulated and they withdrew, as they would doubtless
have done in any case. In 1407 they sent an embassy to Yunnan.
In 1413 the northern Shān state of Hsenni ravaged the Āva villages
was
1 Hmannan, Vol. i, pp. 420, 440.
2 Parker, ' Précis'; Huber, 'Une ambassade chinoise en Birmanie en 1406' in
Bulletin de l'Ecole Francaise d'Extreme Orient, 1934.
## p. 545 (#595) ############################################
XXI )
ÅVA AND PEGŰ
545
and sent some prisoners to Pekin, but Minrekyawswa shattered
the Hsenwi host at Wetwin near Maymyo, killing their leader in
single combat. In 1414 Hsenwi again raided Āva at the instigation
of Razadarit, whose envoys travelled viā Chiengmai carrying a con-
siderable weight of gold as an inducement.
Taking advantage of the usual palace troubles which attended
Minhkaung's accession, Razadarit made several raids, and in 1406
he came up the Irrawaddy river. It is characteristic of Burmese
warſare that though he failed to reduce the Burmese garrisons at
Prome, Myede and Pagān, he simply left them in his rear, pressed
on to Sagaing, and camped there, raising the white umbrella and
beating his drums in triumph. There was only the palace guard
in Āva, and although there were plenty of men in the villages, it
was not possible to summon them with the Talaings surrounding
the city. Taken at a loss, Minhkaung called a great council. Nobody
dared speak, for there was nothing to be said. But at last an
eminent monk of Pyinya came forward saying he had eloquence
enough to persuade any king in the universe. Minhkaung con-
sented, and the monk went forth riding a tall elephant with a
golden howdah, attended by 300 thadinthon (fasting elders) robed
in white, 300 old men bearing gifts, and many elephants loaded
with silks and rich presents. They met Razadarit on his great
barge and the monk spoke holy words on the sin of bloodshed
while Razadarit inclined his ear. He could not reduce a walled
town, he could not remain for ever in a hostile country, and he
consented to withdraw; he even rebuked his men for taking the
heads of forty pagoda slaves.
On returning home, Razadarit besieged Prome, and when
Minhkaung came down to relieve it, defeated him so severely
that he sued for terms. The two kings swore eternal friendship,
mounting the steps of the Shwehsandaw pagoda, Prome, together
hand in hand, and entering into a marriage alliance. Razadarit
granted Minhkaung the customs revenue of Bassein ; this, and the
fact that throughout the fifteenth century Tharrawaddy was subject
to Prome and was held by a governor who was appointed, at least
nominally, by Āva, suggest that one cause of the fighting was the
need of Āva to trade along the Irrawaddy river as far south as
possible.
But in 1407 Razadarit, having intercepted a letter from Minh-
kaung asking Chiengmai to join him in attacking Pegū and share
the booty, supported a fugitive Arakanese prince, son of Nara-
meikhla ; the prince marched into Arakan, gathering strength
;
35
C. HI. III.
## p. 546 (#596) ############################################
546
( CH.
BURMA A. D. 1287 - 1531
a
from his fellow countrymen as he went, occupied Launggyet, and
captured the Burmese garrison, 3000 strong Anawrahtaminsawi
was executed and his little queen, Sawpyechantha, passed into
Razadarit's harem.
The news so enraged Minhkaung that he insisted on invading
the Delta in the rains, with the natural result that he was severely
defeated at Pankyaw, north of Pegū. He fled to Āva, leaving his
men to be cut to pieces and his Maw Shān queen’ to be captured ;
she joined her daughter Sawpyechantha in Razadarit's harem.
Now that both his mother and sister were captives, Minre-
kyawswa became a fiend. “As a crocodile eats his victims, so will
I rend the flesh of the Talaings,' he said'. His father Minhkaung
went no more to war, for his nerves were shattered after the fight
at Pankyaw. But Minrekywswa took charge. Year after year he
carried fire and sword into the hapless Delta, defeating all comers,
deporting the population wholesale, and making life so unbearable
that in Myaungmya and Bassein men dared not work their fields,
and in 1415 the whole west side paid him homage. Things came
to such a pass that a hundred Talaings would run at sight of
a couple of Shān-Burmans.
But in 1417 the vengeful re-incarnation of Bawlawkyantaw came
to an end. Razadarit, trusting to Minrekyawswa's impetuosity, lured
him out of his camp at Dalla until he was separated from his men,
and dashed out on him at the head of some thirty Talaing lords on
elephants. Minrekyawswa's elephant, maddened by a hundred gashes,
shook him off and crushed his thigh ; he crawled away under a bush,
but was found and taken to Razadarit's camp. There he repelled
Razadarit's chivalrous advances and died during the night, uttering
hatred with his last breath. He is now worshipped as the Minky.
awswa spirit.
At the news of his death, the Burmese Delta garrisons fled in
panic, and the war soon came to an end, for men were weary:
Minhkaung, broken-hearted at his brave son's death, spent his
declining years in piety ; the Ari-gyi-do-ahnwe (descendants of
the great Ari) frequented his palace and drank there, sometimes
10 such
excess that they had to be carried back to their
monasteries.
1 He is worshipped at the Shwenawrahta Nat spirit ; Temple, Thirty-Seven Nats,
P. 56.
2 She is worshipped as the Anaukmibaya Nat spirit; Temple, Thirty-Seven Nats,
p. 56.
3 Hmannan, Vol. ii, p. 12. The Burmese used to eat portions of the flesh of
their prisoners of war alive, ad terrorem; see Harvey, History of Burma, p. 298.
## p. 547 (#597) ############################################
*x1 )
NICOLO DE CONTI
547
He was succeeded by his son Thihathu (1422-26), who took his
father's queen
Shin-Bo-me and was so fond of her that his first wife
retired into religion. But during a raid on the Delta he did so
much damage that the Talaing chief presented him with his sister
Shinsawbu to buy him off; he brought her to Āva and crowned
her queen consort in great state, so Shin-Bo-me had him assassi-
nated. The court set up his nine-year-old son ; Shin-Bo-me poisoned
him and brought in a cousin of the royal house, Kalekyetaungnyo
(1426-27), and when he was supplanted by a kinsman she married
the kinsman Mohnyinthado (1427-40); this was her fifth crowned
consort, but she died childless. Mohnyinthado's reign was spent in
striving, with tolerable success, 10 retain his throne against the
principal fiel-holders and the Shān states of Hsipaw and Yawnghwe ;
Hsipaw once drove him out of his palace for eight months, with-
drawing only on payment of a large sum. It was in his reign that
the first European wandered into Burma-Nicolo de' Conti, a mer-
chant of Venice ; Conti visited Tenasserim, Mrohaung and Āva. His
notel is brief, but its references to the white elephant, to tattooing
the thighs, and to what he imagined was a prayer to the Trinity
(the Buddhist invocation of the 'Three names of Refuge'), suggest
that Burmese civilisation was then the same as in the nineteenth
century.
Mohnyinthado's sons, Minrekyawswa (1440—43) and Narapati
(1443—69), overran Kale and Mohnyin for a time, and captured
the Maw Shān chief Thonganbwa when he was being hard pressed
by Yunnan. Narapati refused to surrender him and in 1445 drove
off the Yunnan levies at Kaungton in the Bhamo district. But
when in 1446 they appeared in strength before Āva, he yielded,
Thonganbwa committed suicide, so only his dead body could be given
up; the Chinese removed the intestines, dried the body in the sun
and at the fire, thrust an iron spit through it and took it away.
In 1451 they sent Narapati a golden seal as governor of Āva,
and in 1454 they gave him some Shān territory in return for the
surrender of a Mohnyin chief. At this time China enumerated in
and near Burma eight states held by what she was pleased to con-
sider her 'comforters' or governors, of which five can be identified-
Āva, Kenghung, Hsenwi, Pegū, and the country round Viengchang.
Narapati was succeeded by his son Thihathura (1469-81), who
fought Toungoo, Pegū, Prome and Yawnghwe. In 1474 he and his
Major, India in the Fifteenth Century.
2 Hmannan, Vol. ii, p. 97 ; Parker, Burma, relations with China, p. 44, and ‘Précis',
Pemberton, Report on Eastern Frontier, pp. 111-12.
35-2
## p. 548 (#598) ############################################
548
[CH.
BURMA A. D.
1287-1531
queen made their hair into a broom, studded the handle with gems
and sent it to sweep the floor of the Temple of the Tooth at Kandy
in Ceylon'. In 1472 he asked China to give him Mohnyin. China
warned Mohnyin not to obstruct the road between China and
Burma, but she would not give his territory to Āva, as he had done
nothing to merit eviction. Mohnyin remained on good terms with
the Chinese frontier eunuch, presenting him with a jewelled girdle.
Jewels also helped the expansion of Momeik, the ruby mine
state ; founded in 1238, the town was part of Hsenwi but in 1420
it received thirteen villages as a reward for helping Yunnan to
raid Chiengmai. In 1465 its chieftainess Nang-han-lung sent ruby
tribute separately from Hsenwi and her present of jewels com-
pletely won over the frontier eunuch. She even tried to ally herself
with Annam. She seized most of Hsenwi, and when China remon-
strated, she said : ‘Momeik is the baby elephant which has outgrown
the mother elephant Hsenwi and can never enter the womb again,'
and as, in addition to talking, she presented more rubies to the
enquiring officers, they reported sympathetically on her case and
she was leſt in possession.
Conceivably the continuance of Chinese interest in Burma is
due to the fact that after Kubla Khan's dynasty (1206—1368) had
passed away, China lost control of the route across Asia to Europe.
She had to look for other outlets, and the trade route down the
Irrawaddy was perhaps one of them. Chinese porcelain of the
Afteenth century had been found in the bed of the Bassein river
near Negrais, and it is recorded that in 1450 the chief of Āva gave
to a favourite 'the Chinese customs revenue,' probably Yunnan
frontier tolls.
Hitherto writing had been in Pali and Sanskrit but in this
age vernacular literature makes its appearance. Its rise exposes
the inadequacy of our material-pagoda inscriptions and court
chronicles which, in their present form, are not even contemporary.
a
1 Religious missions with Ceylon are also mentioned in 1430 and 1456. The Tooth
had been at Kandy since 1286. Gerson da Cunha, Memoir of the History of the
Tooth Relic of Ceylon' in Journal of the Bombay branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1875,
gives the history of the Tooth. The silver gilt caskets in which it now rests are not
unlike a Burmese pagoda in shape ; the metal of which they are made and the
gems which encrust them are largely Burmese.
2 For Chinese sea trade, see Chau Ju-kua ; Mayer's 'Chinese Explorations of the
Indian Ocean during the Fiftecnth Century' in China Review, Vol. iii; Rockhill,
'Trade of China with the Coast of the Indian Ocean during the Fifteenth Century'
in T‘oung Pao, 1914 1915.
3 Report of the Superintendent, Archaeological Survey Burma, 1915, p. 35.
4 Hmannan Vol. ii, p. 99.
4
## p. 549 (#599) ############################################
XXI )
BURMESE LITERATURE
549
Away from the track of the chiefs and their rabble, people were
probably happy enough, and in many a monastery life must have
been calın and beautiful. As is usual in secluded countries, Bur-
mese literature is narrow in range and, though quite voluminous
according to mediaeval standards, small in quantity. It shows litile
development and no improvement has been made on the earliest
poets. The prose consists largely of translations and paraphrases
from scripture stories. The verse is more original and includes
minor poetry of a high order but the condensation of its style and
the obscurity of its dialect militate against its having a wide appeal.
The usually accepted view, that the following are the first vernacular
writers, is probably correct, but the finish of their style indicates
that the vernacular had been practised for some generations pre-
viously. The earliest writers are three monks, Shin Uttamagyaw,
Shin Thilawuntha, and Shin Maharattathara. Shin Uttamagyaw,
the author of Tawla, a celebrated poem, was a valued councellor
in the Ava palace. He was born on the same day as Shin Thilaw-
Āva
untha (1453—1520) and together they entered a monastery school
at Taungdwingyi, Magwe district. Shin Thilawuntha was expelled
for writing Paramiganpyo, as the monk considered poetry sinſul ;
he continued writing in a fine monastery built for him at Āva
by the chief, Minhkaung (1401—22); Yazawing gaw, the earliest
chronicle extant, is his ; it is a disappointing work, for instead
of recording what went on round him-it would have been an
invaluable picture-he merely reproduced scriptural traditions.
Shin Maharattathara (1468-1529), a descendant of the Thihathu,
the Shān Brother, wrote, Koganpyo and other poems. Probably
it is in this period that Yaweshinhtwe lived ; she was a maid of
honour and wrote verse on the 55 styles of hairdressing used by
maids of honour in the Āva palace, styles some of which are still
in popular use.
Thihathura was succeeded by his son Minhkaung (1481—1502),
who, hearing that Bimbisara, the king of Buddha's period, had
raised his son to the throne as joint king, decided to follow the
precedent, gave his son the white umbrella, and shared the throne
with him. He was continually attacked by Hanthawaddy and
Prome in the south, and by the Shāns above Shwebo in the north.
When his vassal of Toungoo was assassinated, he recognised the
assassin as king, sending him the white umbrella, an act which
the 1829 chroniclers cite as an instance of statesmanship.
He was succeeded by his younger son Shwenankyawshin (1502-
1 Hmannan, Vol. ii, pp. 127, 185,
## p. 550 (#600) ############################################
550
[CH
BURMA A. D. 1287 - 1531
27), as the elder son, the joint king, had died. Shwenankyawshin
already had a wife whose sister was consort to the dead joint king;
yet now, on coming to the throne, it was not his own wife, but the
joint king's widow, who became his chief queen, as she was already
part of the regalia. His life was attempted by kinsmen who fled to
Toungoo. He thereupon gave his daughter in marriage to Minkyinyo
of Toungoo with the villages from Kyaukse to Toungoo as dowry;
he was giving his daughter to the harbourer of his assassins, and in
giving away the rice area of Kyaukse he was giving away his crown.
But he could not help himself-Prome and Salin were in revolt,
Mohnyin was attacking the Shwebo border, and his own brothers
were in the field against him. In 1527 Mohnyin encamped under
the walls of Āva, the Shāns in the Āva garrison deserted to him,
and Shwenankyawshin fell fighting on his elephant. The population
fled in large numbers to Toungoo.
Mohnyin set up his son Thohanbwa (1527–43) as king in Āva.
Thohanbwa said: 'Burmese pagodas have nothing to do with religion.
They are simply treasure chambers,' and proceeded to plunder such
as were in reach. Probably, as in 1756 and 1885, the monks led the
people in resistance; he said: 'Monks surround themselves with
followers and could rebel if they liked. They ought to be killed'; in
1540 at Taungbalu, just outside Āva, he covered a field with huts,
slaughtered buffaloes, cows, pigs and fowls and invited the monks
to feast. When they were all in the huts, he surrounded them with
his braves and massacred them to the number of 360. The survivors
fled to Toungoo. He then seized the manuscripts in the monasteries
and made bonfires of them. Finally he was assassinated by one
of his Burmese ministers who thereupon, though of royal blood,
retired into a monastery rather than take the throne.
It therefore passed to Hsipaw, who ruled as Hkonmaing (1543 - 46).
He joined six other sawbwas in the attack on Prome and was suc-
ceeded by his son Mobye Narapati (1546-52), who, weary of attacks
from Mohnyin, fled to Bayinmaung, leaving Āva to its last sawbwa,
Sithukyawhtin (1552—55), a nominee of Mohnyin.
Indeed for two and a half centuries the ruler of Āva had been
sawbwa in all but name ; yet there was this difference between
Āva and the other Shān states, that whereas they were so wild as
to leave not even a record, the tradition of the Burmese palace
gave
Āva a veener of civilisation, and her numerous monasteries
contained monks who, if not learned, were at least literate; and to
them it is due that though the lamp of civilisation flickered and
burnt low, it never went out;
## p. 551 (#601) ############################################
XXI ]
PEGO
551
(b) Pegu 1287-1539.
Wareru (1287-96), a Shān pedlar born at Donwun in the Thaton
district, took service in the elephant stables of the chief of Sukhotai,
became Captain of the Guard, eloped with the chief's daughter and
set up as lord of his native village.
He had a fair sister, and Aleimma, the Burmese governor of
Martaban, wished to marry her. Wareru prepared a wedding feast
and when Aleimma came to get his bride, Wareru assassinated him,
seized his governorship, and so became lord of Martaban in 1281.
When he built its walls in 1287, a pregnant woman
was crushed
under the gate post as a foundation sacrifice.
The Pagān kingdom was now breaking up, and Wareru made
common cause with Tarabya, the revolting governor of Pegū, each
marrying the other's daughter. But in 1287, after they had expelled
the Burmese governors and occupied the country south of Prome
and Toungoo, Tarabya tried to ambush Wareru. He failed. Wareru,
calling the spirits of earth and air to witness his innocence, and
pouring libations of water from a golden bowl, mounted his elephant,
fought with Tarabya in single combat, and took him prisoner. At
the intercession of the monks he spared his life. Tarabya again
plotted, but his wife warned her father Wareru in time. So Tarabya
was executed, although she twined her tresses with his and dared the
executioners to cut off his head.
Wareru now became sole prince of the Talaing state in Lower
Burma which lasted till 1539. In 1298 it received recognition from
China, which henceforth chose to regard its rulers as governors
appointed by herself. Its capital was Martaban till 1369, when a
palace was set up at Pegū.
Wareru received recognition from his old master and father-in-
law, the chief of Sukhotai, who in 1293 sent him a white elephant
because it chose to eat Martaban grass ; no sooner did they hear
of its arrival than the Shān Brothers of Kyaukse came raiding
Martaban to get it, but were driven off.
To Wareru we owe the earliest law book in Burma that now
survives. The Hindu colonists who came to the Delta a thousand
years before had brought with them traditional laws ascribed to
the ancient sage Manu; these law books were handed down in
the Talaing monasteries, and Wareru commissioned his monks
1 Paklat Talaing chronicle.
2 Razadarit Ayedawpon. The practice survived in Burma till a century ago ;
sec History of Burma, p. 320.
3 Halliday, The Talaings.
## p. 552 (#602) ############################################
552
(CH.
BURMA A. D. 1287–1531
to produce the standard collection called after him, the Wareru
dhammathat. It forms the basis of Burmese law literature? .
The Siamese kingdom, founded in 1350, included in its list of
provinces Tenasserim, Moulmein and Martaban ; it certainly held
Tenasserim, founding the town in 1373, and building the Wutshin-
taung pagoda there in 1380; but it did not hold Moulmein save
through some nominal tribute-offering, and Pegū held the country
down to Tavoy. There was little established government. If it was
not dacoits it was royal kinsmen who revolted, and sometimes bands
of Shān immigrants from Siam would add to the disorder.
Binnya U (1353-85) repaired the Shwedāgon pagoda, raising its
height to 66 feet. He repelled raiders from Chiengmai who destroyed
several towns in Thaton district; on the site of his victory he built
a pagoda, enshrining relics obtained by sending a mission to Ceylon.
But his white elephant died, after being 61 years in the palace, and
while he was devoutly searching the forests for a successor, his kins-
men seized the palace and invited the Chiengmai chief to join them.
For six years he maintained himself at Donwun, and then, being
driven out, he moved to Pegū and repaired its walls.
His eldest son Razadarit (1385–1423) was the greatest of Wareru's
lineage. Fighting for his existence since the age of sixteen, with but
little assistance from his father, who could not control the family
feuds, Razadarit succeeded in seizing Pegū town soon after his
father's death, subjected Bassein, and repelled successive Burmese
invasions. Finally, in 1390, he captured Myaungmya with Laukpya
inside ; in thank-offering he built shrines at the Shwemawdaw
pagoda, Pegū feeding a thousand monks throughout a seven days'
festival and offering his weight in gold.
Hearing that his son Bawlawykantaw was practising horseman-
ship and sharpening his elephant's tusks, Razadarit feared he was
about to rebel, and sent two lords to slay him. They announced
their duty to the lad, who replied : 'I do but follow the custom of
young princes in manly exercise. I do not plot against my father
and there is no fault in me. Give me time to prepare for death. '
They gave him time, and for three days at the Shwemawdaw pagoda
he listened to the reading of Abidhamma, the holy scriptures.
When it was finished, he offered his ruby bracelets and earrings to
the pagoda, and thus he prayed : 'If I have wished ill to my father,
:
1 Forchammer, Jardine Prize Essay on Burmese Law.
2 Pallegoix, Description du Royaume Thai ou Siam, Vol. ii, p. 75.
3 For the eult of the white elephant, see Harvey, History af Burma, pp. 274, 361.
## p. 553 (#603) ############################################
XXI )
RAZADARIT
553
on my
yea though it be a little, then may I lie in Hell' for ever, and never
behold the coming Buddha. But if I have not wished ill to my
father, then may I be born again among the kings of Burma and
be the scourge of the Talaings. ' Then he took the poison that had
been prepared, and drank it and died.
When this was reported to Razadarit, he said : 'It was a terrible
prayer,' and. gilding the pagoda from top to bottom, he prayed : 'If
he become a prince in Burma and make war on me, may I
elephant vanquish him. '
During the war that followed, though he ultimately repulsed
them, the Burmese sometimes left Razadarit in possession of little
but Pegū town itself. In 1414 he gained a brief respite by stirring
up Hsenwi to attack Āva, but was himself never free from the fear
of Shān inroads, as on several occasions when he was hard pressed
from the north the princes of Ayuthia, Kampengpet and Chiengmai
would raid him from the south.
He built the Danok pagoda near Twante, and to him is ascribed
the traditional division of each of the Three Lands of the Talaings'
(Pegū, Myaungmya, Bassein) into 32 'provinces,' i. e. village circles.
He was of great strength and personal courage, and several
times killed his man in single combat. The chief of Āva never
dared accept his challenge and meet him hand to hand.
When the news of Minhkaung's death in 1422 reached Pegū,
the queens jeered, saying to Razadarit : 'Now you can pounce
down on his palace and capture all his women. ' But he rebuked
them, saying: 'My sweet enemy is dead. It will fight no more, but
spend my declining years in piety. ?
A year later, at the age of fifty-four, while snaring elephants
with his own hand in the Labut-tha-lut forest at the foot of the
Pegū Yomas, north of Pegū, he was caught in the rope and
injured so that he died on the way home. His queens came out
to meet the body and buried it at Kamathameinpaik (Minkanyo);
near Payagyi, north of Pegū. He has a chronicle all to himself,
the Razadarit Ayedawpon, which ends with the word : ' This Lion
King, so wise, so generous, so mighty in word and deed, could
overcome all his enemies, but he too at the last must bow before
King Death. '
Binnyakyan (1450-53) raised the height of the Shwedāgon
pagoda to 302 feet. At his death, as a result of palace massacres,
there was no male of the family left alive. The throne then passed
by general consent to Razadarit's daughter Shinsawbu (1453-72).
Village headmanships have been known tº descend in the female
## p. 554 (#604) ############################################
554
[ CH.
BURMA A. D. 1287–1531
line? , and · Shān hill states have been held by chieftainesses, but
this is the only instance of a major state in Burma being held by
a woman. Daughter, sister, wife and mother of kings, she ruled
well, leaving behind so gracious a memory on earth that four
hundred years later the Talaings could think of no fairer thing
to say of Queen Victoria than to call her Shinsawbu re-incarnate.
Once, while being carried round the city in her great palanquin,
sword in hand and crown on head, she heard an old man exclaim,
as her retinue pushed him aside, 'I must get out of the way, must I ?
You call ine an old fool, do you? I am not so old that I could not
get a child, which is more than your old queen could do! Thunder-
struck at such irreverence, she meekly accepted it as a sign from
heaven, and thereafter styled herself 'The Old Queen? '
When young she had been given in marriage to the then chief
of Āva and two Talaing monks had gone there to teach her letters.
As she was not happy in a Burmese palace, she ran away, and fled
down the river to Pegū. Her flight was successful because the
two monks helped her, and, by benefit of clergy, a boat carrying
monks could not be challenged. She admired the two monks
beyond all other men, and when, after being queen of Pegū seven
years, she wished to retire, it was one of them that she chose as
successor. But she did not know which to choose. Therefore one
day, when they entered the palace as usual to receive the royal
rice in thein alms bowls, she secretly put into one of the bowls not
rice but a layman's dress, together with little models of the five
regalia; then, having prayed that the lot might fall on the worthier,
she returned the bowls. Dammazedi, to whom the fateful bowl
fell, abandoned the Order, received her daughter in marriage, and
assumed the government. The other in his disappointment took
to plotting, and was executed. The ambitious lords also objected,
but in the end became reconciled to Dammazedi because of his
wisdom and justice; and when some of them continued to murmur
that he was not of royal blood, she took a beam out of a bridge in
the city and had it made into a Buddha image, and said : ‘Ye say
he is of common blood, he cannot be your king. See here this
common wood-yesterday it was trodden in the dust of your feet,
but to-day, is it not Lord and do ye not bow before it ? '
Shinsawbu spent the remaining years of her life in retirement
at the Shwedāgon. Successive princes had added to the original
.
1 Furnivall, ‘Matriarchy in Burma' in Journal of the Burma Research Society, 1912.
2 Thatonhnwemun Yazawin.
3 Sayadaw Athwa, Vol. ii, p. 131,
## p. 555 (#605) ############################################
XXI)
REVIVAL OF RELIGION
555
set up
structure, and she made it practically what we see to-day. Round
it she banked up the terrace fifty feet high, nine hundred feet
wide, with a great stone balustrade and encircling walls, between
which she planted palm trees ; she kept forty-four people con-
tinually tending the sacred lamps, dedicated five hundred prisoners
of war as slaves, and offered her own weight (91 lb. ) in gold for
gilding the dome. When, at the age of seventy. eight, she felt her
end approaching, she had her bed placed where her eyes could rest
on that wondrous spire, and thus she breathed her last.
Dammazedi (1472—92) gave four times the weight of himself
and his queen in gold to the Shwedāgon as compensation for re-
voking some of its lands, which Shinsawbu had extended to Danok.
At Pegū he built the Shwekugyi and Kyaikpon pagodas, and west
of the Shwemawdaw he built a new stockaded town, and
his palace and elephant stable there. The masonry of his reign
is excellent, and a mass of pious edifices sprang up on the beautiful
plateau between the old and the new town, men vying with each in
works of merit, for it was an age of religious revival.
Dammazedi himself sent a mission to Buddhagaya? in Bengal
to take plans of the Holy Tree and of the temple as models for his
buildings at Pegū. But his most important work was his mission
of twenty-two monks to Ceylon' in 1475. It was a long and
a
dangerous journey, and several died in shipwreck or during their
wanderings when cast away on the coast of Madras. To the Tooth,
the Footprint, and the Holy Trees, at Kandy, they presented a
stone alms bowl studded with sapphires, and reliquaries of gold
and crystal ; to the Cingalese monks, cloths and Chiengmai lacquer
boxes; to the king of Ceylon, rubies, sapphires, Chinese silks, fine
mats, and a letter on gold leaf. Their object was to secure valid
ordination from the clergy of the Mahāvihāra, the great monastery
in Ceylon which, founded in 251 B. C. still exists. On their return
they proceeded to transmit this ordination to the clergy throughout
Lower Burma : it was so generally accepted as valid that monks
flocked to receive it from all over Burma and even from Siam ;
and thus religion in Burma, which for three centuries had been
split into sects each with its own ordination, received a measure
of unity from the standard Kalyāni ordination. It was and is
1 Halliday, 'Slapat Rajawan Datow Smin Ron' in Journal of the Burma Research
Society, 1923; Forchammer, ‘Notes on Early History and Geography. '
2 Shwemawdaw Thamaing.
Report of the Supt. Archaeological Survey, Burma, 1914, p. 11.
4 Taw Sein Ko, ‘Kalyāni Inscriptions' in Indian Antiquary, 1893, 1894,
3
## p. 556 (#606) ############################################
556
(ch.
BURMA A. D.
1287-1531
granted at the Kalyāni thein (ordination hall) near Pegū, so called
because the original monks were ordained on the banks of the
Kalyāni stream in Ceylon. Dammazedi recorded these events on
ten inscribed stones at the thein, called the Kalyāni Inscriptions.
One of the principal monks in the mission was Buddhaghosa,
who translated the wareru dhammathat into Bur. nese; later gene.
rations confused him with his namesake, the Father of the Church
who lived a thousand years previously. Dammazedi himself was a
wise judge, and a collection of his rulings survives, the Dammızedi
pyatton. He died at the age of eighty and was succeeded by his
son Binnyaran.
Binnyaran (1492–1526) was beloved for his kindness, although,
like others before and after, he enforced the Massacre of the Kins-
men, making a clean sweep of all his brothers. His son Takayutpi
(1526—39) was the last king of Pegū.
Soon after 1500 the opening of the sea routes brought the
Talaings great prosperity. Burma lay off the beaten track and
her goods could be bought in Malacca. Her spices were few,
and her finished articles crude. But two places in Burma lay
near the track : Martaban and Tenasserim. These commanded
short cuts over the hills to Siam, saving a dangerous sea voyage.
Martaban sold the produce brought down the Salween and Irra.
waddy rivers, and in 1519 the Portuguese founded a trading
station there which lasted till 1613. T'enasserim”, which belonged
to Siam till 1760, commanded an even better overland route, and
the Portuguese had a settlement there till 1641. The Portuguese
imported European clothes and velvets, and exported rubies, lac,
wax, ivory, horn, lead, tin, Pegū jars (“Martabans'), and long
pepper, which grew in the moist forests of Tenasserim; they
exported also pepper from Achin, camphor from Borneo, and
porcelain and scented woods from China, brought by the junks
for sale in the Talaing ports. There was no coinage, but goods
.
were weighed against lumps of ganza, an alloy of lead and tin
which passed as currency. Nikitina, a Russian from Tver, who
travelled in the East about 1470, mentions Pegū as ‘no inconsider.
able port, inhabited principally by Indian dervishes. The products
derived from thence are sold by the dervishes,' which indicates
that then, as now, the merchant community was largely foreign.
1 Faria y Sousa (Stevens), The Portuguese in Asia ; Couto, Da Asia ; Whiteway,
Rise of the Portuguese Power in India.
2 Anderson, English Intercourse with Siam.
3 Major, India in the Fifteenth Century.
## p. 557 (#607) ############################################
XXI )
YOUNGOO
557
a
Pegū had peace between Razadarit's death in 1423 and the end
of the monarchy in 1539. The dynasty was mild. The kings could
indulge their peaceful proclivities because the Upper Burma hordes
found all the fighting they wanted among themselves, and the states
of Prome and Toungoo acted as a buffer. An Italian traveller in
1505 describes the reigning king, Binnyaran, as so gentle that a child
might speak to him, and as wearing so many jewels that at night he
shone like the sun! It was the golden age of Pegū, and there can be
little doubt that its civilisation was higher than that of the savage
north. If few traces remain, that is because it was a simple
civilisation, the steaming climate of the Delta hastens decay, and
the Burmese conquerors touched nothing which they did not destroy.
(c) TOUNGOO 1280--1531.
In 1280 two brothers built a stockade round their viHage on
the hill-spur (taunggnu), and thus founded Toungoo ; the stockade
;
was probably a necessity against the ferocious slave-raiders of
Karenni. The Pāgān kingdom was then on its death-bed, and
Toungoo grew up without even such slight traditions of loyalty as
other towns possessed. In the next two centuries she was ruled by
twenty-eight chiefs, of whom fifteen perished by assassination.
Other places, notably Prome, were equally independent, but
Toungco differed in this, that she remained predominantly Burmese.
The Shāns made life so unbearable in Upper Burma that every now
and then crowds of Burmese families would flock south and setile
round Toungoo with its stronghold on the hill. The first migration
took place when Pyanchi (1368–77) was lord of Toungoo ; he joined
the chiefs of Āva and Pegü in making offerings at Pagān, and in an
inscription at the Shwezigon he and his lady record with natural
pride that they gave refuge to the Burmese who fled after the Shān
sack of Sagaing and Pyinya. These twain prayed that in their next
existence they might be man and wife together again, and dwell in
the land of Toungoo, and once more rule the people they loved
so well.
The lords of Toungoo styled themselves kings and had a golden
palace at Gyobinzeik village, with elephant stables, and even an
occasional white elephant. And indeed the little throne sometimes
descended from father to son. But as often as not they paid
1 Badger, The Travels of Ludovico di Varthema, p. 219.
