Burma - Yunnan - Bay of Bengal (c. 1350-1600)

Rajadhirat, a classic Mon epic

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This is a translation of chapters from the Mon-Burmese epic Razadarit Ayeidawpon. Both the Burmese and an English translation are given.

The epic tale of Rajadhirat records the history of a long war between Mon Lower Burma and Burman Upper Burma (c. 1383-1425). The epic survives to this day in a collection of manuscripts written in three different languages: Mon, Burmese, and Thai:

- Introduction
- Rajadhirat epic translation.
- Condensed version of epic in academic paper.
- Interesting sentences and vocabulary list.

1. The overconfidence of Prince Minyekyawsa

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2. King Mingaung admonishes his son

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3. The Lord of Salin warns Prince Minyekyawswa

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4. An auspicious day is chosen for battle with Minyekyawswa

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5. Emuntaya’s deception to lure Minyekyawswa into battle

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"Rajadhirat then wondered how Minyekyawswa might be advised that he would be in Dala. Emuntaya volunteered to have this accomplished by going over to Minyekyawswa as if he had defected from his side. Asked to furnish further details, he said he would say that he was disenchanted with his monarch for failing to pursue a more aggressive policy and for not taking action to dislodge the besiegers of Dala and with Deinmaniyut for not acting like a general as he was supposed to be; that for speaking out his mind he was threatened with the death penalty and to have his whole family clapped in irons by Deinmaniyut; that the king backed Deinmaniyut so that he had decided to defect and serve under Minyekyaswa; that he would then participate with the prince’s nobles in one or two actions to further gain Minyekyaswa's confidence after which he would return to Dala. The king agreed with this plan and gave him five viss (18 pounds / 8 kg) of gold to be distributed among nobles and citizens of Dala." (edited version of San Lwin's English translation, 141; Binnyadala in Burmese, 315, Note: San Lwin's translation seems to paraphrase and condense a lot here)

6. Emuntaya deserts from the Mon to the Burmese

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Dala was heavily surrounded by Myanma troops on both the river side and the land side. When Emuntaya arrived, at Dala's port Chinthe (lion) they were stopped by the garrison commander of the Panpe garrison (htaung-hmu) and the lord of Myo-taung who were blocking the route through at this point.

When the lord of Myo-taung saw them, he asked them who they were. "I am Emuntaya, and after suffering disappointment at the hands of my lord, I request to be received by the lord of the Golden Palace as a servant," he asked the lord of Myo-taung. Emuntaya spoke in the manner that he had proposed to the king. When they heard this, they gave him find Basoes, fine shirts, wrapped up in a bundle and brought Emuntaya from Myo-taung and presented him to Minyekyawswa. Minyekyawswa questioned him. Emuntaya responded in the same way as he had answered the lord of Myo-taung. After that, when Yazathinkyan had listened to him, he addressed the king.

"Such is the lord Minyekyawswa's great royal glory and power (hpon-daw-gyi) that the royal uncle's minister, the noble (thu-yei-kaung) Emuntaya, has arrived here to be received as a royal servant. If what Emuntaya says is true, when the royal desire for Pegu has been fulfilled (i.e. Pegu has been conquered) he should be given any domain to rule over than he desires (myo-sa)." And when Yazathinkyan had spoken, Emuntaya in turn spoke, "This servant has suffered disappointment at the hands of his lord, and have arrived at the royal feet of the son of the lord of the golden palace. Henceforth, I will bear the burden or royal affairs (enter royal service), and from the time I cut down my own people, the Mons, you will place your royal trust in me," Emuntaya spoke thus. Emuntaya was presented with gifts. ." (edited version of San Lwin’s English translation, 141; Binnyadala in Burmese, 315-316)

7. Emuntaya deserts from the Burmese back to the Mon

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At dawn, some Mons were seen outside the city gate near the palisade erected to prevent elephants from rushing the gate.

Emuntaya accompanied a party of Burmese troops who attacked them with swords, killed a couple of Mons from Dala himself and dragged their bodies back into the stockade. When the Myanma troops saw this they reported it to Minyekyawswa. Minyekyawswa awarded Emuntaya.

On another day Emuntaya was ordered to ride in the front of an elephant, while the lord of Salin rode in the middle. As they rode out of the stockade and drew near to the moat, a contingent of Mons emerged from the town and attacked them. The Myanmar troops accompanying them fled.

Grasping his sword, Emuntaya told the lord of Salin that he was going to attack and, climbing down from the elephant, made as if he was going to attack the Mons and followed in pursuit. He didn't attack them and instead threw away his sword, running into the town to take cover.

When the lord of Salin reported this to Minyekyawswa, he clapped his hands in anger and shouted out across the moat to Banya Dala, son of the Mon king Rajadhirat:

"Emuntaya has tricked us and told us lies. When Emuntaya leaves the city and returns to his king I will see that he is rewarded for this.”

Banya Dala passed the message on to Emuntaya, whose reply in turn was shouted back across the moat to the son of the mighty and powerful king, Minyekyawswa, that tomorrow Emuntaya would, in fact, return to Pegu.

To this the Myanma side shouted back once again a reply, "Emuntaya, do you have wings? Can you fly? Will you dig a tunnel under the earth? You were only able to return because you played a trick on us."

"I will leave the town. Just wait," Emuntaya replied.

The Myanma forces waited for him surrounding the town many levels deep on both the land and water approaches to the town. Minyekyawswa shouted out to his officers to keep guard, "Tommorrow, Emuntaya will try to leave the town. We will wait for him and catch him."

(edited version of San Lwin’s English translation, 141; Binnyadala in Burmese, 316)

8. Emuntaya escapes from Dala

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Meanwhile Emuntaya handed over the gold that he had been entrusted with to Binnya Dala as instructed by the king.

He had a raft constructed of banana stems and hid his sword in one of these. He lay stretched out like a corpse smearing his face with turmeric. Then he was rolled up in a tattered reed mat. Four women with hair unraveled beat their breasts with their fists and cried out in lament:

"Others have their husbands to comfort them in these difficult times but you choose to leave us at a time when the visitation of war brings famine upon us."

This little scene was played out near the Lion Gate where it could be seen by the Burmese on the other side.

He was then placed on the banana stem raft with an earthen plate of rice and a whole chicken near his head lit by a glowing torch. The raft was cast of and the women gave a fearful whoop of lamentation and a final burst of breast beating.

As the raft drifted close to one of the Burmese pickets keeping watch in boats, the small raft was pushed away into the current and carried steadily upstream by the tide. By the time that the village of Tapauk Tanaut was reached the picket boats had been left far behind so that Emuntaya climbed ashore after taking out the hidden sword and proceeded to Pegu.

Around midday back in Dala the Burmese troops called out for Emuntaya to come out if he was to come out at all. From the town came the reply that he had already left at dawn. The Burmese troops that had been waiting for him since dawn let out a string of abuses (laughed derisively).

(edited version of San Lwin’s translation, 142)

Version in Harvey’s History of Burma (1925), taken from the Hmannan Yazawin:

"Then prince Minrekyawswa shouted out to prince Binnyadala "Emuntaya spake untruth and hath done me disrespect. By guile hath he entered the town. But if he can come out and return to his king, I will give him great gifts." When Prince Binnyadala told these words to Emuntaya, he said, "Son of my glorious master, tell them that Emuntaya will go up to Pegu tomorrow." And the Burmese shouted, "Hath Emuntaya wings to fly above? Or is he a snake that can creep beneath? He entered the town by guile only." And Emuntaya answered them, "I shall win forth, keep what guard you please." And prince Minyekyawswa charged his captains saying, "Tommorrow Emuntaya will come forth, saith he. Keep ye watch to take him." And they kept double watch by land and water. But Emuntaya gave unto the king's son Binnyadala the five viss of gold that the king had entrusted unto him, and then he made the counselors and captains go far away, and before dawn he caused men to make a raft of plantain trees, and he thrust his sword in one of the trees. And he made himself appear like a corpse, smearing his cheeks and ears with turmeric, and wrapping his body around with old matting. And four or five women let down their hair and beat their breasts and wept as they wailed "Other husbands cleave to wife and child through good and ill, and forsake them not in war or famine. But thou has forsaken us and gone away. What shall we do, thy wife and orphans in this cruel war, this cruel famine?" Thus wailing they lifted up the corpse, while the Burmese soldiers who were near the Shan-Death gate of the town looked on. Gently the women laid the body on the plantain raft, with an earthen dish and a cup of rice and a chicken; and they lit oil lights and placed them at the head, and pushed forth the raft into the middle of the stream. And the women followed it beating their breasts and weeping and crying aloud Shall thou forsake us tus?" But the raft floated along and came near a Burmese boat, and the Burmese said "See! It is a corpse." and they pushed it away with a bamboo. And the raft was carried up stream by a strong flood tide, and when it had come to Ta-paw-ta-ngauk [in Pegu district near Kyaut-tan] because it was now far from the Burmese boats, Emuntaya took his sword out from the plantain log and went up to Pegu...and Prince Minyekyawswa sent a messenger to Pegu...and the Messenger asked King Razadarit saying "My master asks if it be true that Emuntaya hath returned to thee, as men say." And king Razadarit called Emuntaya and he came before the messenger. And when the messenger saw him, he gave him a horse with golden trappings and a velvet robe from prince Minyekyawswa." (Hmannan II.44, quoted in Harvey, 1925, 84-85)

9. Minyekyawswa sends an envoy to Rajadhirat with gifts

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A fairly literal translation to English:

In the evening Minyekyawswa sent his men to Prince Banya Dala and Awa-na-naing to speak with them.

"We have waited til dusk for Emuntaya to travel up river for Pegu. Why hasn't he left yet?," they asked.

"Doesn't younger brother Minyekyawswa know? Emuntaya left for Pegu at dawn," Prince Banya Dala replied.

When Minyekyawswa's men came back, they related what had happened. When Minyekyawswa had listened to their story, he was quite surprised and because he didn't believe what they had said, he sent a courier with a letter to Pegu. The courier's official position was that of "let-ya thaut-hmu" [leader of the left wing thwei-thauk]. The letter read as follows:
Exceedingly dear and venerable elder uncle, to whom Minyekyawswa addresses this letter, I had heard that you fled to Martaban (Mottama). Since elder uncle has now returned from Martaban to Pegu, my desire to fight elephant to elephant with you (duel) will soon be realized. It is because elder uncle ran away that I have been staying in Dala. Older uncle has chosen neither to come after me from upriver, nor to come after me from downriver.

"Being from a sovereign line of kings, when you see war you feel disheartened? One who acts like older uncle cannot be considered a sovereign king. If elder uncle requests that I travel upriver to Pegu, I will. If elder uncle wants to travel downriver I will likewise welcome him."
Minyekyawswa sent this letter together with one fine horse equipped with gold reins and one set of red ruby bracelets to King Rajadhirat. To the courier Let-ya Thaut-hmu, he gave the order: "If you meet Emuntaya, award him with this fine horse equipped with golden reins and also with this velvet robe."

The courier set off to Pegu and when he arrived there, the lord Rajadhirat was residing at Thebyuchaung. Rajadhirat ordered that the courier be welcomed and when the courier arrived in the presence of Rajadhirat , the courier presented the letter and gifts that had been given to him to present. When Rajadhirat had listened to the letter, he ordered the courier to send the following message in return: "Tell my nephew (Minyekyawswa) not to come up to Pegu, I will come instead to Dala.

Then the courier inquired as to whether Emuntaya had already arrived back at the royal feet or not, whether this was true or not true, the royal nephew (Minyekyawswa) wished to know. The courier addressed the king that he was to inform the royal nephew as to whether he had seen Emuntaya or not.

Emuntaya was called and when he arrived in front of the courier, the courier bestowed upon him the many gifts (su) that Minyekyawswa wished to award him with, including the horse, the golden reins, and the velvet robe. In return the lord Minyekyawswa was given as gifts one green velvet robe and sixteen rolls of cloth for basoes (sarongs).

The courier was rewarded for his efforts and given as gifts a fine basoe and a golden bowl (shwei-hpala). The courier returned to Dala and reported all that had transpired to Minyekyawswa especially the return of Emuntaya" (Banya Dala, Razadarit Ayeidawpon in Burmese, 318).

[Note: There are obviously a lot of issues to be worked out in translating this old text. There is often a tradeoff between literally and rendering exactly what the Burmese text is saying and the way it is saying it and other factors such as readability of the translation and having it make sense to modern-day non-Burmese readers without a lot of cumbersome accompanying footnotes.

In my translation I tried to be more literal but also tried to avoid English idioms which sometimes seem misplaced when translating an ancient text. Sometimes providing the exact Burmese word used can shed light on exactly what was said to those familiar with the Burmese language. For example, "award" as the translation of the Burmese word "su" (award) is often used when the word "gift" perhaps would be more appropriate, since it really seems to be an extension of the practice of gift exchange found in many cultures. In the text above, it does not seem to be correct usage to describe valuable objects given to an enemy king as "awards." "Gifts" seems more appropriate. The use of the word "present" instead of "gift" as seen in some translations also perhaps seems too quaint according to modern usage of the two words.

The theme of rewarding warriors who excel in battle whether they are working for or against you, perhaps with an aim to getting them to desert to your side, is an oft repeated theme in Rajadhirat]

Here is the venerable senior scholar U San Lwin's translation that I used as a guide:

"At dusk Minyekyawswa sent his men to call on prince Binnya Dala and Smin Awananaing to inquire into this matter and they were told by Binnya Dala that did not Minyekyawswa know that he had left at dawn. Accordingly, a courier was sent to Pegu with this letter, "Dear Elder Uncle to Minyekyawswa informs that, I had heard that you ran away to Martaban but now that you are back in Pegu my hopes of jousting with you on elephant will be realised soon. I was in Dala all the time but you chose not to come at me either from upstream or downstream but instead ran away. There is no monarch like you who is so battle-shy. If you would like me to come to Pegu I will gladly do so or should you come down for me I will welcome you." This was carried by the commander of the left wing of blood brothers, together with a steed caparisoned in gold and a pair of ruby bracelets to be presented to Razadarit. He was also given a fine horse caparisoned in gold and a velvet robe with instructions that they were to be awarded to Emuntaya if he happened to meet him at the court of Pegu.

Razadarit was staying at Thebyuchaung when Minyekyawswa's courier arrived and after the message had been conveyed Razadarit told the courier "Tell my nephew that he need not come up to Pegu but that I will be coming down to Dala. Then the courier submitted to the king that he had also been given the task of looking up Emuntaya. Emuntaya was summoned and and Minyekyawswa's presents were duly given to him. King Razadarit then gave a green velvet robe and sixteen bolts of material each enough for a suit as presents for Minyekyawswa and a bowl made of gold and a length of quality cloth for the courier. All these were duly reported on the courier's return" (San Lwin, 142-143).

10. King Mingaung of Ava marches south on Salat

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When king Mingaung heard that King Rajadharit had returned to Pegu, he set off for Salat in the south with prince Minyethihathu and Thado each commanding a column (tat). Thado was accompanied by his deputy (sit-ke) Tu-yin-kyaw. The two columns together consisted of 50 war elephants, 500 horse, and 10,000 troops. At that time Salat was held by Rajadhirat's minister Byat Za with 7,000 men, 5 war elephants, and 30 horse.

At this time King Razadarit was residing in Kyat Zana where he built a pavilion with tiered roofs and held a hair washing ceremony. The ceremony was held on the 5th day of the waxing moon in the month of Tabaung.

The march to Dala began. Razadarit's main force had Deinmaniyut as commander, Re Kaman deputy commander, a column commanded by Prince Dhamma Yaza had Baik-ka-myin as deputy.

Prince Banya Payan on a war elephant that was in musth and harnessed in a red howdah, red saddle flaps, red pennants flying on the howdah and ornamented with red on its forehead and with the elephantry guards holding red lances formed the van together with ten elephants and a unit of 5,000 troops.

The column under Binnya Yaza had thirty elephants and 11,000 troops. The prince was mounted on an elephant in a golden howdah surmounted by a white umbrella with gold howdah flaps, gold ornamenting its forehead and elephantry guards holding gold lances.

Razadarit's force consisted of 30 elephants and 10,000 men with the king shaded by a white umbrella riding the war elephant named Hsin Ye with a black howdah, black howdah flaps, and elephantry bearing black lances.

When Minyekyawswa received reports that Rajadhirat was marching against him, he called a conference. Yaza-thin-gyan spoke up:

"Razadarit is a very brave warrior and will rarely withdraw from an engagement. If he is in command, should we continue to lay siege, we will be attacked from the front and rear. To prevent such a predicament we should lift the siege and combine our land and river commands to establish a strongpoint. At this strongpoint we can go on the defensive if he chooses to attack or mount an offensive if he does not move against us."

Minyekyawswa agreed with Yazathingyan's estimation of the situation and his strategy of lifting the siege and establishing a strongpoint at Thakan, thereby concentrating both land and river forces at this one point.

(edited version of San Lwin's translation, 143-144)

11. A young warrior fails to carry out orders and is punished

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King Rajadhirat erected a stockade at Kyat Le near Dala. From there he mounted the elephant sired by Hsin Ye and escorted by 1,000 troops entered Dala where he was jubilantly received by Prince Binnya Dala, Smim Awananaing and the citizenry of Dala. Rajadhirat showered gifts on them.

Rajadhirat asked Smim Awananaing whether the Burmese prince was given to charging out from his stockaded camp. Awananaing assured the king that Minyekyawswa was like a fighting cock ever eager to launch itself against any rooster it happened to see.

"Then we are certain of getting the Burmese prince," said Rajadhirat.

Turning to Thwe Lagunsan, his personal attendant and bearer of his betel box and water goblet, he issued orders:

"Your elephant is nimble and quick. Go with an escort of 300 warriors to Minyekyawswa's camp and try and draw him out. If he pursues you don't turn and fight but come back with all speed. "

Thwe Lagunsan made the gesture of obeisance and departed on his mission. When they were detected, Minyekyawswa sent the Governor of Kale with 1,000 horsemen after him.

Thwe Lagunsan turned back on seeing the cavalry emerge. The Burmese horsemen pressed on with vigour and started to catch up to them. At this point, Thwe Lagunsan turned and fought back.

Feinting, the elephant turned left and right during the skirmish and suffered around one hundred spear wounds.

When Rajadhirat heard of this, he clapped his hands and slapped his thighs in anger. When Thwe Lagunsan arrived he handed him over to Emuntaya with the orders:

"He has violated my orders. Cut off his arms and legs and throw him away."

Awa-nan-naing protested, "Thwe Lagunsan erred because he is young and not very clever. As a Buddha would, please spare his life." Acceding to this request, Thwe Lagunsan was put in irons instead.

(edited version of U San Lwin's translation, page 144)

12. The elephant Bagamat's mahout refuses to do him harm

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On arriving back at his stockade, Rajadhirat summoned Nga Pyan, the former mahout of the elephant Bagamat. Rajadhirat knew that no other elephant could even challenge this elephant. Bagamat had once been a Mon elephant before being captured by the Burmese. Rajadhirat asked the mahout how this dangerous elephant should be dealt with.

Nga Pyan put forward two plans. The first was for him to head a quartet of she-elephants on which warriors of noble blood who were expert with the spear would be mounted. When they came upon Bagamat, Nga Pyan would call out the elephant’s name

Recognizing his former mahout’s voice Bagamat would not attack them. Then it would be just a matter of disposing of whoever was riding Bagamat and then he, Nga Pyan would take over.

The alternative plan was to enter into the Burmese encampment by stealth late at night and hammer spikes into the elephant's feet, pinning the elephant to the floor so that it could not move or leave the stockade.

King Rajadhirat decided on the second plan and rewarded Nga Pyan for his good ideas. He also selected Bawgati and Mapaing to accompany him on this mission. On the night when the raid was to take place, Nga Pyan peeled three lengths of sugar cane for Bagamat. The party successfully sneaked into the stockade past the dozing Burmese troops.

When they entered the shed where Bagamat was tethered, the elephant recognized the scent of his old mahout and stood quietly. Nga Pyan offered the sugar cane he had brought to Bagamat. He then spoke to the elephant:

"I have come with the king's order to nail your feet to the floor but now that I when I see you, I cannot do that. If you love me, your two brothers and your mother, when the Burmans try to harness you for the coming battle do not let them, go on a rampage within this stockade and then come home to me. My life will be spared only when you come back to me."

Bagamat nodded his head, tears welling up and rolling down his cheeks.

Bawgati and Mapaing remarked that the king had sent them because he was planning to joust on elephants the next day as he did not want Bagamat to be on the other side and if it was not to be done as the king had instructed, the responsibility should be solely on Nga Pyan. Then they left.

Meanwhile, Rajadhirat kept vigil through the striking of the third watch of the night ( ie, about 3 am), waiting for the news of the raid's outcome.

When Nga Pyan and party reached their camp at the stroke of the third quarter of the night, they were asked by the king whether his orders had been carried out. Nga Pyan related to the king what had actually occurred. The king was furious and slapped Nga Pyan:

" I had plans to raise you to noble status (thu-kaung pyu) if you had accomplished your mission. I'll have you and your family burned if your elephant does not come back."

(Slightly edited version of U San Lwin’s translation, 144-145; the Burmese of Banya Dala’s Razadarit Ayeidawpon, 319-320)

13. Preparations for war

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On Wednesday, the 4th waxing day of the moon in the month of Tagu, Rajadhirat readied himself for the coming battle by planning how the troops would be arrayed on the battlefield.

Prince Dhamma Yaza would be riding the elephant Yan-gami escorted by 1,000 elephantry troops dressed completely in black carrying black lances and shields, followed by King Rajadhirat mounted on the war elephant Yan.

Rajadhirat’s elephant was to be harnessed to a gold howdah with ruby studded flaps, bravely flying gold pennants and a white umbrella in accordance with his high status. The son of Rajadhirat’s wet nurse Paik Kaman was to ride in the middle of the elephant guarded by 1,000 elephantry troops carrying gilt lances and shields.

To Rajadhirat's right, Deinmaniyut would ride the war elephant sired by Yaza at the head of 1,000 elephantry. Positioned to his left, the minister Maha Tha-mun would be mounted on the elephant named Maha Peik-toun at the head of 1,000 elephantry troops. The warrior Binnya Ram (Yan) would ride Pa-swe-tha-mun accompanied by Emuntaya with an unsheathed sword.

Prince Binnya Dala accompanied by 1,000 men would ride the war elephant Sri Maran, the white canopy of an umbrella spread above him. He was to be deployed close to the town of Dala. Smim Awananaing, mounted on the elephant Nga Yet-nwe would lead 2,000 troops riding by his side.

Meanwhile, Minyekyawswa had heard they were readying themselves for war and was in conference with his nobles. Yaza-thin-gyan cautioned the prince not to be hasty and to act judiciously as "one knows not the course of war just as one cannot fathom whether a white chick or black chick will hatch from a certain egg." Others agreed with his observation and Minyekyawswa continued to feast and drink with his nobles.

Meanwhile, Rajadhirat reminded Deinmaniyut that he had taken the responsibility to see that Minyekyawswa came out to fight.

Deinmaniyut rode in a gilt basket-like howdah with a red umbrella spread atop. Five female elephants and seven to eight hundred troops followed him with measuring poles, string and picks. Deinmaniyut went over to Minyekyawswa’s stockade at Pethakan and from a respectable distance began to measure and mark out frontages with rope and stakes.

Minyekyawswa saw this from a turret and sent his men to investigate. Asked what they were doing, the Mon troops replied that they had been sent by Deinmaniyut to mark out frontages for each unit that was to participate in laying siege to the fortifications.

(edited version of San Lwin’s translation, in the Burmese of Banya Dala, page 321)

14. On the verge of battle at Dala, 1416

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When Prince Minyekyawswa learned that the Mons were preparing to lay siege to his stockade, he called together his ministers, and addressed them:

"I have marched here planning to get the Mon king. Now, the Mon king is going to surround us.

To be surrounded is not acceptable. We will leave the stockade and attack them."

None of the ministers dared say anything and each returned to his respective tat (unit, company).

Everyday Minyekyawswa gave his elephant Nga Chit Khaing two large bowls of liquor to drink. On that day he treated him to three bowls. Minyekyawswa drank a lot more than he usually did.

Before leaving for war, Minyekyawswa confided with his wife Min Hla as he held her in his embrace:

"I, the northern prince, am on the verge of taking eerything that the royal uncle, the Mon king, possesses and adding it to the tributary domains that I have gained by conquest.

When the royal elephant Nga Chit Khaing whoops like a crane in battle that is a sign that I'm about to win.

At Mohnyin (in the Shan-Tai states) with the whooping sound of a crane the royal desire was fulfilled.
(royal desire fulfilled = victory).

At the capital of Arakan there was the whooping sound of a crane and then the royal desire was fulfilled.

This time Nga Chit Khaing will once again sing like a crane and the capital of Pegu cannot escape from my hands."

[Note: Possible sexual innuendo here since it is really more than "embrace" his wife with
thon:-that = stroke, fondle; wash, bathe (Myanmar Abidan 521]

After confiding in his wife, Minyekyawswa went outside and assigned the lord of Myedu to Bagamat.

He ordered all the ministers, generals, and tat commanders to mount their elephants and horses and letting out a jubilant shout, he ordered them to follow him wave after wave.

He plied the royal elephant (hsin-daw) Nga Chit Khaing with one more round of drink and positioned his retainer (a-htein-daw) Nanda Thuriya on the middle of the elephant's back.

Over one hundred Shans (Tai) from Kale were ordered to wear pitch black robes and armed with spears to form a guard around his elephant.

Over 1000 Mohnyin Shan soldiers were armed with 3 throwing spears each.

Over 1,000 Burmese troops with gilt helmets, their shields of gold ornamented with peacock feathers were armed with 3 throwing spears each.

Noble cavalrymen wearing buffalo horns, wearing gold helmets, and noblemen clad in gold armour, surrounded him as he rode the royal elephant Nga Chit Hkaing.

The royal drum was sounded three times to announce Minyekyawswa's exit from the fort.

He marched forth without hesitation united with with his brave warriors in one group.

When Minyekyawswa left the stockade, the lord of Kale in the Shan states, Kye Taung Nyo also exited the stockade, mounted on the elephant Ye Thaw Boun with 50 elephantry, 700 cavalry and over 5,000 troops.

The king of Arakan followed on the war elephant Ye Myat Ke with 10 elephantry, 500 cavalry and 7,000 troops.

Then as the lord of Myedu climbed up on the elephant Bagamat, the elephant went berserk and started butting and trampling people and smashing things. The lord of Myedu had to dismount quickly.

On the opposite side, ready and mounted on his elephant, on the verge of commencing the battle, lord Rajadhirat poured water from a golden bowl over the front of the elephant and uttered the following vow:

" I call on the gods who safeguard the Teachings of the Buddha for 5,000 years to declare that this land is the domain of my father king Hsinbyushin, that it was so has been affirmed in a treaty (thissa-pyu) between my father king Hsinpyushin (Lord of the White Elephant) and Minyekyawswa's grandfather, Minkyiswasawke made at Thakyin.

If what I have declared is the truth may I be successful and may Minyekyawswa fall into my hands, while if it is not, may I lose the battle to him."

(based on U San Lwin's translation with extensive changes, pages 146-147, the Burmese of Banya Dala, page 322)

15. Prince Minyekyawswa's headlong charge

2008-01-14T00:45:00.000+07:00

Minyekyawswa's headlong charge separated him from the rest of his troops.

The lord of Kale tried to catch up with him, but his elephant was in musth and distracted by the din raised by the saddle flaps on the cavalry and the noise of the elephants and men following him, he turned around and charged at them. (ye-thou-ton-hsin" not translated here? name or description?, ton = alternating cycles of motion and action; heights (MA 189))

This disruption prevented the cavalry and infantry from catching up with Minyekyawswa who was isolated far in front.

As Minyekyawswa and his 1000 brave warriors advanced, they spotted a column out ahead.

Told that it was Banya Dala, Minyekyawswa dismissed it because Banya Dala dared not face him.

Further on, as they came upon Banya Ram (Yan), Minyekyawswa with great disdain also passed him by as a worthy adversary.

Seeing Banya Dhamma Yaza coming up next, he too was dismissed after his men identified him.

Then a dazzlingly resplendent column came into view. Identified as Rajadhirat, Minyekyawswa declared:

"Out of all these it is my Elder Uncle Rajadhirat that I love the most. If I can defeat him, the rest will melt away. "

With the resounding beat of big drums, Minyekyawswa attacked and about a fifth of Rajadhirat's column scattered.

Next he attacked Banya Yaza and scattered the prince and a third of his forces.

Then he turned to Banya Ram's column and broke it up.

Awananaing was next in line but he stood firm and ordered his 7,000 troops to kneel behind their shields and hold their positions.

Rajadhirat, seeing this, turned to him with the deafening sound of war drums.

Banya Dhammayaza, Banya Ram (yan) and Banya Dala also converged on them when they heard the sound of the king's war drums.

Minyekyawswa, having penetrated too far, was isolated and surrounded by enemy elephants while elephantry troops harried his elephant Nga Chit Khaing with spear and sword.

The poor beast shook with pain and dislodged Minyekyawswa from his seat.

(Edited version of U San Lwin’s translation, page 147, the Burmese of Banya Dala, page 323)

16. The search for Minyekyawswa

2008-01-14T00:44:00.000+07:00

In the billowing dust raised by elephant hooves and the feet of men, Minyekyawswa seemed to have vanished.

It was only after the third night watch had struck that the severely wounded Minyekyawswa was found under the asper tree as the royal seer had predicted. The lord Rajadhirat spoke to him:

"My son, that you are a young man does not dishearten me. (note: wun: "ma-nei:-bu:" which means "disheartened" translated as "I am not gloating over this" by U San Lwin?)

When you have been treated with proper medicine and are healthy again, if you wish to return to Ava, I will send you there.

If you wish to live in Pegu, I will marry you to my daughter and raise you to the position of crown prince (ein-shei). Nurse yourself back to health."

He then gave Minyekyawswa medicine but he refused to drink the medicine.

"When I came to make war with you elder uncle, I vowed that if I did not take Pegu that I would not return. I will not take the medicine. Now I have reached the end, as I will be named the slave (kyun) of another."

He did not take the medicine and died at the third stroke of night.

The ministers sent him to the cremation ground (thin-kyaing) and ordered that his bones be properly interred at the Kyat Thale pagoda.

(edited translation of U San Lwin, 147-148; the Burmese of Banya Dala, page 324)

Introduction to Rajadhirat translation

2008-01-01T14:33:00.002+07:00

To date the Rajadhirat epic has not received much attention either as a historical text or as literature. Only the Burmese version, the Razadarit Ayeidawpon, has been translated into English.

An unpublished manuscript of this translation has been available for some time in Bangkok, at the Siam Society library, for instance. Copies of the translation were handed out at the Mon conference at Chulalongkorn University in October, 2007.

The senior Burmese scholar U San Lwin who is now near 80 and who lives in Burma was the translator. His fine translation displays great literary artistry in rendering the events of the epic in English. Unfortunately, the political situation in Burma probably means that this publication will never see the light of day. This project takes U San Lwin's translation as a starting point and makes some important sections of the epic available in English with a discussion of some of the interesting Burmese words and phrases found within it. Going back to the original Burmese, I have changed the translation in several ways. First, quoted speech is rendered as quoted speech and not paraphrased. Second, I have strictly followed the order of the original narrative and try to paraphrase as little as possible. Third, I have used the Burmese names in U Kala's Mahayazawingyi which means substituting a "y" for an "r" in many cases. U San Lwin apparently tried to go back to the original Mon spelling for Mon names. A comparative table of names used in the Burmese, Mon, and Thai versions of the work would definitely be useful. Mon names should be spelled according to their Mon translation and eventually I will extract this out of Nai Maung Toe's edited Mon edition. Fourth, lengthy prose in the original translation has sometimes been shortened if clarity and readability is enhanced. For instance, when the Mon and Burmese sides are shouting over the moat of the Mon stockade, short realistic bursts of spoken English are better. Fifth, idiomatic English words that sound dated or out-of-place has been substituted with more general language. My goal is solely to maintain interest in it and keep the ball rolling so that it does get the last stage of editing and then prompt publication.

The Rajadhirat epic is a huge topic that has hardly been touched on at all by historians or scholars studying Burmese literature.

A version of events quite close to that of the epic can be found in Burmese chronicles such as U Kala's Mahayazawingyi and the Hmannan Yazawin[Glass Palace Chronicle].

I have chosen to start with events near the end of the epic, leading up to what is arguably the climax of the epic, the death of Burmese Prince Min-ye-kyaw-swa. Most Burmese and Mon people know of this tale which reads much like a combination of traditional Buddhist Jataka tale of the Buddha's previous lives on earth and the Buddhist Mahavamsa epic of Sri Lanka.

Min-ye-kyaw-swa was said to be the reincarnation of Rajadhirat's son Baw-law-kyan-taw whom, according to tradition, Rajadhirat himself had murdered because of the perceived threat he posed to his rule.

U San Lwin's translation is also unique in another respect. Along with U Pe Maung Tin and Gordon Luce's translation of portions of the Hmannan Yazawin, his translation stands as a parallel corpus of pre-modern Burmese prose.

Historical works stand as the first real instances of Burmese prose outside of Jataka tales and Mahavamsa translations from Pali into Mon and Burmese. There are a lot of words and phrases in the Rajadhirat epic that are not in any currently available dictionary, so reverse engineering U San Lwin's translation to extract a glossary will hopefully provide an valuable aid to students learning to read Burmese.

The Rajadhirat epic is about warfare plain and simple. The inclination of most people, quite reasonably, is to shun warfare, in real life or in writing. After all, reading about violence perhaps begets more violence.

Anthropologists have even published a very popular manifesto, the Seville Statement on Violence, denying that warfare is an intrinsic part of human nature.

Whether warfare is part of human nature or not, works such as Rajadhirat and the Mahavamsa clearly show that warfare has plagued Burma and Sri Lanka for a long time.

Western historians can be said to have systematically avoided and underplayed the role of warfare in pre-modern Burmese history, despite the fact that warfare dominates the narratives of most indigenous historical chronicles. This is probably due to the increasing popularity of Buddhism in the west creating a focus on this particular dimension of Burmese culture. I am a Buddhist too, so I appreciate this, given the centrality of warfare in Burma's post-WWII political problems the legacy of warfare in Burma's pre-modern history should be dealt with in greater depth.

Towards the end of the Buddha's life in the Mahaparinibbana Sutta itself, the tribal Vajji people were wiped out by the kingdom of Magadha under the rule of Ajattasattu, regicide son of King Bimbisara who ruled during most of the Buddha's life (See Steven Collins, 1998, Nirvana and other Buddhist Felicities, 437-445). Again, most people would probably wish to avoid this unsavory part of the Buddhist scriptures. Contemplating the human activity of warfare in all its terrible detail might, in the final analysis, be likened to meditations on a human corpse in a cremation ground, as found for instance in the Visuddhimagga. It is in this vein and to provide such a lesson that this translation has been done.

Judson's Burmese dictionary free at Google books

2007-12-10T11:59:00.000+07:00

Judson's Burmese to English dictionary, which is still the only dictionary that has some of the archaic vocabulary found in old Burmese writings, is available for free at Google Book Search. you can view it onsite or download a pdf file. There are several editions available:

1. 1826 edition
2. 1852 edition
3. 1849 edition
4. Another 1849 edition

Judson's grammar is also available.
An old Anglo-Burmese dictionary from 1852 is also available.

Keep checking back at the Google Book Search Burmese Language category, since new titles are likely to become available.

Judson's bible translation is also available online. Reading the English with the Burmese in parallel is good language practice.

Why not making Buddhism part of the Thai constitution may actually make Buddhism stronger

2007-04-27T12:12:00.000+07:00

Forest Recollections: Wandering Monks in Twentieth-Century Thailand. By Kamala Tiyavanich. University of Hawaii Press, 1977, xxi + 410 pages, ISBN 0-8248-1781-8, U.S. $29.95. [Book Review]

The question of whether Buddhism should be made the official state religion of Thailand in the new constitution has been raging lately.

Before this time, Buddhism has not been the official state religion in the constitution, even though perhaps about 90% of Thais are Buddhist and the King is required to be Buddhist in the constitution.

The issue became political last week when Thaksin's satellite TV station rather opportunistically adopted the issue as its own for political purposes.

Perhaps slightly paradoxically, there are good reasons for those who want to see Buddhism thrive in the world not to have it written into the constitution as the state religion.

Relaxing state controls over religion, especially Buddhism, encourages local diversity. At the turn of the century (c. 1900) a lot of diversity in Buddhism in Isan and the north was wiped out by tight government regulation of the Buddhist religion as the above book on forest monks demonstrates.

Furthermore, when Buddhism becomes an appendage of Thai nationalism the future doesn't bode well for Buddhism as a world religion. How can a thinking person accept the universal applicability of a religion that exists in many countries from Burma to Sri Lanka to the west when it is tied to the vagaries of secular national politics in Thailand, something that can change rather rapidly as we've seen recently.

World reknown Thai Buddhist thinkers like Buddadhasa Bhikku and Sulak Sivaraksa (his website) seem to be critical of secular trends of nationalistic influence in Buddhism.

John Strong on King Ashoka

2007-04-26T18:58:00.000+07:00

Collection of readings on King Ashoka

This freely downloadable collection of readings on King Ashoka includes an article written by scholar of Buddhism John Strong entitled: Images of Aśoka: Some Indian and Sri Lankan Legends and their Development that discusses the legends associated with King Ashoka.

John Strong's The Buddha, a biography

2007-04-26T18:21:00.000+07:00

John S. Strong. The Buddha: A Short Biography. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2001. xv + 203 pp. Illustrations, tables, Sanskrit glossary, bibliography, notes, index. $15.95 (paper), ISBN 1-85168-256-2. Reviewed by Jessica Main, Faculty of Religious Studies, McGill University. Published by H-Buddhism (September, 2003) [Book Review]

The approach of scholar John Strong's biography of the Buddha has broad applicability to pre-modern Southeast Asian history:

Strong begins with a concise description of the history of scholarship on the Buddha’s life that stretches from the late nineteenth century to the present. Then, he contrasts these academic portraits of the Buddha with "tales that have been remembered and revered, repeated and reformulated" (pp. 1-3) by practitioners of Buddhism throughout its history. Avoiding a strictly factual search for the "historical Buddha," Strong provides "a middle way between remythologizing and demythologizing, between myth-making and history-making" (p. 3). He discusses the human, contextual, and rooted parts of the Buddha’s life as well as the supernatural and mythical ones.

First, there are the visits by the Buddha to various localities that you often find in local chronicles (e.g. Tai state of Kengtung, Eastern Shan States). Second, there are the hagiographic accounts of Burmese kings in Burmese chronicles like U Kala's Mahayazawingyi. This includes descriptions of royal coronations (consecration, bhiseka) ceremonies that one finds in chronicle texts and religious inscriptions:

Next, Strong shows how the Buddha’s biography simultaneously reveals and reinforces the wider dimensions of Buddhist artistic production, ritual, doctrine, and history. In a series of brief sections, he describes the reciprocal relations that link the life story of the Buddha, the practice of pilgrimage, and the worship of relics Strong describes the ways in which sacred biography, art, and ritual reinforce each other.

Strong discusses rituals such as the water pouring ritual accompanies many important historical events in the Burmese chronicle such as Bayinnaung's reconquest of Pegu (Hanthawaddy, Hongsa) after the Mon rebellion of 1550 that deposed Tabinshweihti.

Strong also expands the notion of biography "beyond the one-life paradigm,"not unlike Yukio Mishima's trilogy, to previous lifes by including the Jataka tradition.

Tai Lue script manuscript (NIU)

2007-04-26T16:10:00.000+07:00

Tai Lue manuscript for reading practice

Just spotted a Tai Lue script manuscript that could be used for reading practice.

Linguist John Hartmann of Northern Illinois University has put it online at his Tai Lue site together with a copy of his dissertation on the Tai Lue language.

I personally have many reasons to delve deeper into the Tai Lue script and language. 1) I've been wanting to have more meaningful conversations with my Ta Lue mother-in-law, 2) We have a lot of Tai Lue rock music videos with Tai Lue subtitles at home (long historical folk ballads too), 3) I also have a Tai Lue historical chronicle I want to read, 4) and a book of witty Tai Lue sayings and folk wisdom.

It appears that one can really kill three birds with one stone by learning how to read Tai Lue. The script is a lot like that of Tai Khuen and Tai Yuan (Lanna). Living in Chiang Rai delving deeper into Tai Yuan texts would be a logical thing to do, also the French scholar Anatole Roger Peltier has deposited a wonderful collection of Tai Khuen manuscripts in the Lanna Room (4th floor) of the Chiang Mai University's central library. My friend Peter Koret has probably delved into these. Must contact him.

Upakhut , Upagupta - Saint and Spirit

2007-04-25T17:52:00.000+07:00

Wonderful photographs of spirit and saint Upagupta or Upakhut at Australian National University's New Mandala blog which offers a short decription:

Upakhut is an important figure in local belief in many areas of Burma, northern Thailand and Laos. The stories of his origins are numerous. (For those interested, The Legend and Cult of Upagupta by John Strong has a wealth of detail.) In Sanskrit legend he is the son of a perfume maker and one of the early followers of the Buddha. In northern Thailand, many villagers believe that Upakhut is the son of the Buddha himself. Legend has it that he was conceived when a fish ate some of the Buddha’s semen when he washed his robe (or bathed) in a river. Upakhut was born and lives in a grand palace at the bottom of the ocean. One of his key roles is to provide protection on the occasion of major Buddhist festivals (poi luang) when he is taken from the river and installed in a temporary pavilion in the temple grounds.

Inka (pre-modern macro-) Economics

2007-04-23T18:42:00.000+07:00

"A Network Analysis of Inka Roads, Administrative Centers, and Storage Facilities," by David Jenkins, University of Arizona, Ethnohistory 48.4 (2001) 655-687: .[Extract at Economist's View]

Been ruminating over this blog entry on macroeconomics in the ancient Incan (Inkan) state from Economist's View blogfor almost a week now.

It's like sitting down all by yourself at a banquet, there's a lot there to digest, so I'm going to digest it in serial blog entry fashion.

One might even argue that serial publishing in blogs could attack a subject in bite size increments better than a full blown paper does, a point pertinent to blogging and scholarship, perhaps.

Extract One:

Staple Finance and Wealth Finance

The Inka in the early fifteenth century were a chiefdom or perhaps an anomalous early state (Bauer 1992) of about twenty thousand people with a fairly simple social organization based on kinship ties and ruling hereditary chiefs. Initially their territory was limited, centered on what would become the city of Cuzco. Over the course of a hundred years, from about 1430 until the Spanish arrived in 1532, the Inka dramatically expanded their empire, incorporating by political maneuvering and outright conquest some eighty distinct polities into the Inka state. These conquered groups included other expansive empires, such as the highly socially stratified Chimu on the north coast, as well as small-scale states, chiefdoms, tribes, and autonomous communities scattered throughout the highlands.1

[This sounds a lot like the expansion of some states, especially the Burmese state, during roughly the same period, actually 1534-1581, versus the Inkan 1430-1532. The phrase "anomalous early state" indicates state-like features may have not been present. Will have to determine exactly what these are, since people have been using the notion of "state" in different ways for hundreds of years, something I address for Southeast Asian history in my recent paper. Of course, Peter Turchin at Cliodynamics has some great papers online that addresses the distinction between expansionary warfare and internal warfare (rebellion, revolt, uprising, insurgency), especially this paper.]

The laws of King Mangrai as myth or history? (Kirsch)

2007-04-12T19:29:00.000+07:00

Thomas Kirsch review of: Wichienkeeo, Aroonrut and Gehan Wijeyewardene, translators and editors. The Laws of King Mangrai (Mangrayathammasart). The Wat Chang
Kham, Nan Manuscript from the Richard Davis collection. Canberra: Department of Anthropology, The Australian National University, 1986, in the Asian Folklore Studies, 1987, vol. 46 / 2 (Note: All back issues of this long-running journal appear to be online now)

This book review has a nice parry to a slightly dyspeptic Michael Vickery:

"In addition, the text might be examined for its historical contribution. In this regard, Wijeyewardene supports the caution urged recently by Vickery on the historical value of such documents. Vickery (1979: 170) sees them as a " confused mixture of fact and fancy due to people who were grossly ignorant of the facts of the past." Be that as it may, Vickery's comment suggests another perspective for these texts. If they are mixtures of fact and fancy, they might usefully be viewed from an anthropological framework: as "myth " rather than as "history." The Mangrai code, grounded in the heroic exploits of the founder King and in Buddhist dharma, evokes a Malinowskian " primeval reality " which provides a sanction and charter for the institutions of a dynamic Lanna Thai social order. Viewed as " myth," the text's facticity is irrelevant both from the perspective of the text producer and contemporary analysts. Thus, viewing this volume, we might profit from O'Connor's (1981: 224) suggestion that " law is a culturally constituted mode of analysis that projects an indigenous theory of society." As such, it must be studied symbolically as well as historically."

I would care to differ on one point though. If the text is viewed as myth, i.e. as intellectual history, there is still the issue of what age or era this intellectual history belonged to. Not to ask this question is to presuppose that Lanna's intellectual history was static and unchanging (continuity dominates all change) a big assumption which needs at least to be pulled apart and investigated in further depth. A recent paper by Grabowsky attempts to tackle this sort of intellectual history, when it enumerates and analyses the causes behind the fall of Chiang Mai to the Burmese (c. 1557) given in contemporaneous interpretations of events:

"Which were the deeper causes of Lan Na’s fall that were responsible for the loss of her independence? How far can these causes be dated back? Even the contemporaries gave no rational explanation in a modern sense. They saw first of all that it was the work of the spirits and demons in taking revenge for severe violation of ritual prescriptions (NT: khüt). But economic and ecological reasons were known as well, even if they were mostly mentioned as atypical incidents. A chronicle summarises the complex causes in eleven points ...Seven out of the eleven ... causes are related to violation of ritual regulations, but Cause 4 and Cause 10 cite the unrestrained exploitation of natural resources of the land as the causal factor. The drying up of the Huai Kaeo and other flowing waters hampered the drinking water supply of the town. Moreover, the unscrupulous cutting down of the trees in the forests (deforestation) in areas further away from Chiang Mai city had upset the ecological equilibrium in the plain of the Ping river and, perhaps, also have led to a reduction in rice production." (Grabowksy, 2004, pages 27-29)

The contents of the Lanna law books seems broadly similar to that of Burmese Dhammathats

"The first two sections relate to Mangrai, his accomplishments and the proclamation of his laws, " not contrary to dharma "..., thereby freeing his citizens from previously oppressive rule. ...Broadly, the initial part of the text... seems to be a circumstantial listing of offenses, varying conditions and appropriate punishments, mostly in the vernacular. The final part has a more didactic quality, consisting of parables illustrating pertinent principles and sprinkled with Pali terms."

Not exactly bedtime reading, the most memorable part of my brief perusal of a version of the Mangrai Dhammasat was a long list of different adulterous situations and the legal remedies for each:

"Issues of marriage, separation, divorce, inheritance and sexual behavior seem to be most numerous. Questions of theft, liability and homicide figure prominently. Civic responsibilities, proper official conduct, the status of slaves, ritual offenses, precedence and hierarchy, counterfeiting, trespass and negligence also occur. Fines appear to be the preferred form of punishment though banishment, mutilation and execution are allowed under proper circumstances."

Might be useful comparatively in the writing of social history as scholar of Burmese law Andrew Huxley suggests, particularly of the family:

"Overall, the code evokes an image of a social order grounded in Buddhist principles, hierarchically organized, but composed of individuals responsible for their actions, whose intentions and circumstances must be considered in determining the King's justice. The code is more one of restitution than of repressive sanctions."

Also check out in the same journal Anthony Walker's review of: Premchit, Sommai Amphay Dore. The Lan Na Twelve-Month Traditions. Chiang Mai: Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University, 1992.

References

Grabowsky, Volker (2004). "The Northern Tai Polity of Lan Na (Babai-Dadian). Between the Late 13th to Mid-16th Centuries: Internal Dynamics and Relations with Her Neighbours, Asia Research Institute Working Paper, National University of Singapore, No. 17, January 2004. [Link]

O'Connor, Richard (1981) "Law as indigenous social theory: A Siamese Thai case," American Ethnologist 8: 223-237.

Vickery (1979) "The Lion Prince and related remarks on northern history," Journal of the Siam Society 67: 123-186.

The Northern Group Monthly Talks (Chiang Mai)

2007-04-12T18:53:00.000+07:00

The monthly talks help by the Northern Group in Chiang Mai are Chiang Mai's principal intellectual fare. I've only attended one, by Niels Mulder, discoursing on his scandalous and unpublishable life as a young anthropologist in Bangkok during the 1960s.

The talks are held on the second Tuesday of each month at the Alliance Française across the street from the L'Ecole d'Extreme Orient in Chiang Mai. The history of group began way back in 1972 with the short-lived Northern Thai Society modeled along the lines of the Siam Society. The current group began in 1984. There are synopses of the talks in the Meeting Diary. There is a nice summary of the presentation on Champa by Michael Vickery:

"Introduction to the history and significance of Champa"

A talk by Michael Vickery

254th meeting - Tuesday 9th November 2004

Searchable Greek inscriptions library

2007-04-12T18:28:00.000+07:00

An searchable online library of inscriptions that might serve as an example in some respects for a library of Burmese inscriptions. Part of the Cornell Greek Epigraphy Project. There are no online translation and glossary though.

AEFEK: Association d'Echanges et de Formation pour les Etudes Khmeres

2007-04-12T17:20:00.000+07:00

Site highlights the great amount of research that is currently being written in the French language on Khmer history and culture. Extensive bibliographies and papers freely downloadable. Like most contemporary French work, unique in showing a deep respect and appreciation for the history and traditions of historical research, as opposed to obligatory undiscerning blanket criticism of scientific method and BEFEO research as "Orientalism" [Example]. Such an association for Khmer Studies, which concentrates on Ancient Khmer history rather than contemporary politics, would be nice for Burmese history also.

Content

1. Inventories of Khmer manuscripts in French libraries [Link]

2. Lectures on Angkor and pre-Angkor (c. 1902-1930) [Link]

3. Bulletin de l'AEFEK (since 1999) [Link]

4. A page with biographies of Khmer scholars of Khmer [Link]

5. Links

Vickery on Coedes' history of Cambodia

2007-03-31T19:35:00.000+07:00

Vickery, Michael (2000) "Coedes' histories of Cambodia," Silpakorn University International Journal, 1, 1: 61-108, cited in Baker, Chris (2003) "Ayutthaya Rising: From Land or Sea?," Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 34 (1), pp. 41-62 February 2003. [Sadly, the only paper I can find citing it]

I bought Coedes' The Indianized States of Southeast Asia (1968) a long, long time ago and subsequently lost it and really didn't miss it much at all.

I bumped into it again recently and was quite impressed by its regional approach to history during the Mongol era (c. 1250-1350)(Luce, 1958, 1959). It seemed, to my undiscerning eye, to be striving for some overall cross-regional coherence in the interpretation of this period. It even seemed to me that Vickery might have been adulating Coedes regional perspective, based on the following quote:

"In studying the Hsien-Ayutthaya-Martaban-Pegu-central northern Menampolities and the relations between Ayutthaya and Cambodia, it might be helpful to bracket out entirely conceptions of modern boundaries and think rather of an area of ancient common cosmopolitan culture and constantly shifting alliances." (Vickery,2004, 23-24)

Then it came as quite a surprise to me to find that Vickery had written a whole paper on Coedes where he picked him apart, albeit mercifully, and exposed his faults. So I am beginning to do what I vowed to do (after my work at the newspaper each day):

Start systematizing Vickery's approach to the socio-cultural imformation embedded in inscriptions and apply them to Burmese history.

There seems to be an essence of methodology for dealing with the socio-cultural dimensions of inscriptional evidence in Vickery's work that is applicable to the Burmese history of the Ava period (c. 1364-1555) (that I am working on) as well. There is a wealth of admonitions about the way that sources should and should not be used from a scientific standpoint. The inscriptional evidence should probably in some sense provide a foundation or infrastructure for the abundant chronicle evidence for the Ava period.

I know the word "scientific" would make the more deconstructionist historians bristle with contempt and horror, but Vickery’s work, though based firmly on traditional Rankean "what actually happened" or "the way it actually was" also admits that historical sources are contingent artifacts of their creators that makes historical interpretation for many periods intrinsically indeterminate.

Vickery likes science. He notes, that new information must be integrated and our theories adjusted, even if it forces a change in our preconceptions. (Vickery, 2000, 102) One can even entertain more than one theory, Vickery often does, ranking them relative to their likelihood. This is a Bayesian model of science.

Narrative history can also be adjusted. There is no real reason for narrative history to be a mere linear rendition of battles from the perspective of one court. Braudel by layering history into levels of short-term to long-term causal factors (infrastructure; structure – economics, politics, social organisation; superstructure, see Ferguson, 1998) provides a framework for writing thick history in the sense of Geertz’s thick descriptio, thick narratives of events, thick in the sense that background information about economics, politics, culture, and social organisation are interleaved with the narrative.

Vickery holds that students should be "introduced directly to the primary sources, rather than having to guess at what they record via the interpretation of Coedes [general history]." Translation accompanied by critical assessments and annotations need to be valorized above historical interpretations. “I refer to Coedes but teach original sources," he notes.

The fact that Burmese history still relies on Harvey (1925) and Phayre (19th century) is quite sad. Vickery makes a distinction between "academic works" and "popularizations."

"…popular treatments …should present, in non-specialist language for the general literate public, the results of the best scientific work. They should not simply seek to entertain or be vehicles for speculative reconstructions which would not past muster if presented the same way in an academic journal." (63)

He provides an example of over-synthesis from the history of Funan (page 71-72) that I will have to untangle in the future. Remarking of Coedes' books:

"They are monuments of uncritical synthesisation, some of which belongs in historical romance, not in history. Coedes was a great synthesizer – indeed that may have been his greatest talent when functioning as a writer of historical accounts; and he had to find, or imagine, a connection between every detail and some other detail in time and place." (63)

"The problem was in assumptions and presuppositions, not in any lack of sources. Coedes’ historical syntheses, which were the basis for most subsequent work, including Soviet studies, contains defects which were of course not because he was unaware of the content of the inscriptions, but because of the theoretical framework, possibly unconscious, which he imposed on them. This was a view in which history genealogical, narrowly political, and narrative, and it would not be sufficient, in fact, it would probably be impossible, to extract the additional information from the inscriptions in a coherent manner without a new theoretical framework." (64)

No doubt, he would find my attempts at synthesis too thin on the critical side. Vickery’s work certainly provides an abundant corpus of examples of source criticism. His magnum opus (Vickery, 1998) is the best place to begin.

References:

Coedes, George (1968) The Indianized States of Southeast Asia, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. [Google Books]

Ferguson, Brian R (1999). "A Paradigm for the Study of War and Society," cited in Raaflaub, Kurt and Nathan Rubinstein (eds.). (1999). War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds: Asia, The Mediterranean, Europe, and Mesoamerica, Center
for Hellenic Studies. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Luce, Gordon Hannington (1958). "The Early Syam in Burma’s History." Journal of the Siam Society 46 (1958): 123-214.

Luce, Gordon Hannington (1959). "The Early Syam in Burma’s History: A Supplement." Journal of the Siam Society 47.1 (1959): 59-101.

Vickery, Michael (1998) Society, Economics, and Politics in pre-Angkor Cambodia, Tokyo: Toyo Bunko."

Vickery, Michael (2004) "Cambodia and Its Neighbors in the 15th Century," ARI Working Paper No. 27, June 2004, www.ari.nus.edu.sg/pub/wps.htm.

Bertil Lintner takes Susan Conway's new to task on "Shan" history

2007-03-30T13:44:00.000+07:00

Conway, Susan (2006) The Shan: Culture, Arts, and Crafts, River Books, Bangkok. [Lintner's Review]

The book excels when it covers the author's areas of expertise:

"Conway’s chapters about Shan weaving and dyeing, embroidery, lacquer ware, Shan genealogy and Buddha images, as well as her detailed notes about Shan script and palm leaf manuscripts are extremely informative. Conway also describes in great detail the patterns and meanings of Shan tattoos. So don’t be discouraged by the book’s shortcomings. If you ignore the historical and ethnological parts it’s well worth reading."

But falls short in the areas of history:

"...the Shan do not refer to themselves as Tai Yai—they call themselves Tai, which in China is romanized as Dai. Thaiyai, not Tai Yai, is the name given to them by their ethnic Thai cousins in Thailand who traditionally have believed that the Shan were their ancestors (yai means big or great.)

"Kachin chiefs did nor rule Hkamti Long, which was a Shan state in the Kachin-dominated area of the far north of Burma. The Shan state of Yawnghwe is not “called Nyaungshwe by the Shan and Yawnghwe by the Burmese.” It is the other way round. Yawnghwe is Shan for the valley, or gorge of rice storages. Nyaungshwe is simply a Burmese corruption of the Shan name.

Bertil Linter also whets the readers appetite with tidbits of a topic that has yet to be delved into by historians yet (that I'm aware of) the Kachin expansion into region north of Upper Burma, the modern day Kachin State. The Kachins "migrated less than 300 years ago into the northern parts of what today is Burma, and, according to Ola Hansson, the Swedish-American missionary who managed to convert many Kachins to Christianity and gave them a written language:

“Having obtained a foothold, the conquest of the whole region between the Khamti (Hkamti) and Hukong (Hukawng) valleys, as far south as to the Mogaung river, followed in due time. The Shans and Burmans were driven out, and only the ruins of their pagodas, the trees planted around their monasteries, and the names of their villages remained to tell the story of fierce fighting and wholesale slaughter.”

"The southward movement of the Kachin was halted only when the British colonial power began to subdue the area in the late 19th century. Thus, the question of ethnicity in Burma is not merely, or simply, about the majority Burmans versus the country’s plethora of minorities. Age-old divisions and conflicts also exist between the various non-Burman nationalities, which makes the ethnic issue in Burma far more complex than most foreign analysts assume, and a solution much harder to find than just referring to “the struggle against greater-Burman hegemonism,” as many of the leaders of the minorities often do.

What philology means to some people

2007-03-29T19:33:00.000+07:00

Thomas, Richard G. (2006) "Philology in Viet Nam and its Impact on Southeast Asian Cultural History," Modern Asian Studies, 40, 2, pp. 477-515.

The above paper reads like a witch hunt.

It claims there are problems with the work of the Ecole Francaise d'Extreme Orient and several historians including Michael Vickery, but presents absolutely no evidence to support its contention. The paper merely hurls grandiouse accusations, like this one:

"...those western scientists who cling to the notion that the relationship between signifier and signified is not arbitrary, and therefore that the truth of Southeast Asian archaeology can be grasped in its entirety by the application of hard-nosed philological principles. (98)..."

"98) M Vickery, Society, Economics, and Politics in pre-Angkor Cambodia (Tokyo, 1998)"

Not even a citation of a page!

First of all, the sort of philology that historians like Michael Vickery employ has been the standard historical methodology used since the time of Ranke. It is the same sort of methodology that one finds in the Warring States Project at University of Massachusetts at Amherst, for instance.

A sceptical Rankean approach towards sources with an eye towards finding "what actually happened" is, of course, not the only possible legitimate goal. Historical texts can be appreciated as literature also, the authors of each subsequent text borrowing from previous authors.

It is worth taking a closer look at the Vickery quote above:

1. western scientists who cling to the notion that the relationship between signifier and signified is not arbitrary

[If it was arbitrary, it would be meaningless. People compose and interpret texts with intentions which are not arbitrary.]

3. That the truth of Southeast Asian archaeology can be grasped in its entirety by the application of hard-nosed philological principles.

[Who claims anything can be grasped in its entirety? What Vickery does is hypothesise about the processes that might have been involved in the creation of a text. We are free to disagree with him and present reasons why we disagree.

Philological tools are what one uses to make sense of the way historical texts were constructed from initial authoring through hundreds of years of subsequent copying.

Initially, hypotheses should be stated clearly and without a lot of qualifications. Later on, if the hypothesis does not hold up under the evidence, the hypothesis is qualified. One thing is for sure, the writer of the above does not look at any of the relevant evidence for the claims they are making, namely the actual methods used by actual historians like Vickery.]

Apparently, the reason it was published was that it claimed to be a rebuttal to a previous work which it claims:

"The research [sic] presented here questions Bayly's suggestion that the scholarly output of the EFEO provided positive influences for the thought patterns of young revolutionary Vietnamese intellectuals in their struggle to overthrow the colonial regime." (page 478)

I leave you with one last quote:

"Like Alexander, who showed his love of Pindar, the philologist denied the existence of anything of cultural value in Indo-China except Indo-European culture."

First of all, if translations of texts from non-western cultures and histories were valued more by western academia, then non-western could be contemplated and appreciated more, but finding the universal in the particular does not in itself devalue the particular.

Or this very strange sentence that requres the reader to take an excursion into the very convolutions of the author's brain:

Whether all of them were aware of it or not, the professional philological scientists who worked in Southeast Asia were involved in an experimental project whose goal was to redefine Orientalism as a scientific form of Hellenism." (498)

People like Coedes collected and preserved huge amounts of linguistic, inscriptional, and art historical data. They studied this material in detail and published prolifically. Something that most contemporary scholars don't seem to be able to get up the will power to do. Like Vickery deserve to at least have their work looked at in detail before subjecting it to criticism.

Sealang.net for Burmese language dictionary and corpus

2007-03-28T21:08:00.000+07:00

Includes a Burmese language corpus and dictionary. They are starting to put the papers of the great historian of Burma G.H. Luce online. Right now only the papers regarding Mon linguistics are online.

As far as the language of historical texts goes, the emphasis is on the language of inscriptions in the SEAclassics project (often difficult to figure out, requireing specialised dictionaries):

"Southeast Asia's golden age of epigraphy spans more than a millennium, from the 5th through the 15th centuries. The SEAclassics Library of epigraphic texts, Indic and epigraphic dictionaries, and research-oriented software tools will make this widely scattered body of work, including the Cham, Mon, Khmer, Pyu, Burmese, and Tai inscriptional corpora, accessible to the international scholarly community. A demonstration of the Corpus of Khmer Inscriptions is available on line."

Don't forget to read the intro for students before you begin

Topographical Maps for Burma-Yunnan border area

2007-03-28T18:33:00.000+07:00

Highly detailed topographical maps for Burma and Yunnan:

1. China and Yunnan

Mong Mao is on this map. This set of maps is certainly in need of a better index. Will have to work on one myself. A better map reader than internet explorer's zoom capbility is needed too. Would be nice to make a more detailed map than Wade's Ming Shi-lu map that shows the role that topography played in history.

2. Burma

Maps:
NC 47-2 Bokpyin (4.4 MB)
NC 47-6 Kra Buri (4.6 MB)
ND 46-4 Ama (3.9 MB)
ND 47-2 Ye (6.2 MB)
ND 47-6 Tavoy (5.8 MB)
ND 47-10 Palauk 1959 ed. (5.8 MB)
ND 47-10 Palauk 1962 ed. (4.9 MB)
ND 47-14 Mergui (4.6 MB)
NE 46-3 Kyaukpyu (6.5 MB)
NE 46-4 Thayetmyo (6.6 MB)
NE 46-7 Sandoway (5.0 MB)
NE 46-8 Prome (6.9 MB)
NE 46-12 Henzada (6.6 MB)
NE 46-15 Sinma (3.8 MB)
NE 46-16 Bassein (6.3 MB)
NE 46-16 Bassein and Vicinity [verso] (961K)
NE 47-1 Pyinmana (6.9 MB)
NE 47-5 Toungoo (6.8 MB)
NE 47-9 Pegu (6.3 MB)
NE 47-13 Rangoon (5.6 MB)
NE 47-13 Rangoon and Vicinity [verso] (1.1 MB)
NE 47-14 Moulmein (6.2 MB)
NF 46-3 Mawlaik (6.5 MB)
NF 46-4 Wuntho (6.4 MB)
NF 46-7 Gangaw (6.2 MB)
NF 46-8 Shwebo (5.9 MB)
NF 46-10 Cox's Bazar (5.9 MB)
NF 46-11 Mount Victoria (6.4 MB)
NF 46-12 Myingyin (5.7 MB)
NF 46-14 Akyab (4.1 MB)
NF 46-15 Myohaung (6.6 MB)
NF 46-16 Yenangyaung (6.1 MB)
NF 47-1 Mong Mit (6.6 MB)
NF 47-2 Hsenwi (6.4 MB)
NF 47-5 Maymyo (6.4 MB)
NF 47-6 Mong Yai (6.5 MB)
NF 47-9 Mandalay (6.3 MB)
NF 47-9 Mandalay, Burma and Vicinity [verso] (1.6 MB)
NF 47-10 Lai-Hka (6.2 MB)
NF 47-11 Keng Tung (6.7 MB)
NF 47-11 reliability diagram, notes, glossary [verso] (1.1 MB)
NF 47-13 Yamethin (6.4 MB)
NF 47-14 Mong Pan (6.7 MB)
NG 46-8 Sibsagar (5.7 MB)
NG 46-12 Tamanthi (5.4 MB)
NG 46-16 Paungbyin (5.9 MB)
NG 47-1 Putao (6.1 MB)
NG 47-5 Maingkwan (5.9 MB)
NG 47-9 Myitkyina (5.9 MB)
NG 47-13 Bhamo (5.9 MB)

Pictures of new Myanmar capital Nay-pyi-daw

2007-03-28T12:51:00.000+07:00

Pictures of the new Burmese capital Naypyidaw are to be found in the pages of a blog authored by the deputy editor of the Indian newspaper named The Hindu, Sidharth Varadarajan.

The buildings bear an uncanny resemblance to Mae Fah Luang University in Chiang Rai, Thailand that I taught at for two years, a university that was built by squatter camps full of Burmese migrant workers, by the way.

Varadarajan's blog also has a section devoted to Myanmar.

Money in Yunnan during the Ming (c. 1350-1600)

2007-03-22T15:32:00.000+07:00

Macroeconomics in pre-modern southeast Asian economies besides lacking data can also be quite conceptually complex. Take Yunnan, for instance. Several currencies existed, yet markets hardly existed. The currencies included:

1. The Ming emperor injecting paper money into the economy with the money he gives to the tribute missions of different ethnic groups to the capital. Can be seen in the tribute entries of Wade's (2005) translation of the Ming Shi-lu.

2. The longstanding use of cowries imported from the south until the 1700s. Covered in the work of Vogel (1993).

3. Most importantly silver produced in Yunnan and used throughout China. Covered in detail in Sun Lai-chen's (2000) dissertation.

4. Copper cash also, probably.

Stylized facts provide some hints about the role markets and money played in Yunnan:

"Yunnan has peaks upon peaks of mountain ranges and swift gorges winding through them. In the central region where the capital is, the land is well-watered and abounds in food-stuffs. This place does not rely on merchants, yet merchants gather here because it is a place where cinnabar, red mercury, glittering stones, and precious stones are produced. The lands of Linan, Dali, Yongning, Heqing, and Chuxiong can claim to be fertile, but the merchants are extremely few. Such places as Yuanjiang, Lincang, Yongchang, and Lijiang border on foreign territories; their customs are contrary and different." (Brook, 203)

“Comment: The long and difficult routes from Yunnan to the rest of China made the transport of anything but lightweight luxuries prohibitive. Yunnan was an important source of gems, and there were heavy proscriptions against non-imperial trading in gems with the local people (footnote 35: The involvement in eunuchs in this trade is mentioned in the biography of Wang Shu in the Dictionary of Ming Biography)” (Brook, 203-204)

What was happening with all these moneys is an open historical question and requires getting back to fundamental intuitions about the function of money that Brad DeLong touched upon in his blog recently:

Sam Brittan writes:

FT.com / Columnists / Samuel Brittan - Money is making a comeback: Any IoU that is accepted in payment for services rendered can be regarded as money. There is a legendary exam question about a traveller who paid for a meal on a remote island by cheque. The natives were so impressed by this strange piece of paper that they passed it from hand to hand without anyone attempting to cash it. Who then paid for the traveller’s meal? (Please don’t tell me)...

Ha! I'm going to tell you whether you want me to tell you or not!

There are three possibilities. The check could serve as an expansion of the real money supply, if it is sufficiently easier to carry around and keep track of then previous moneys--previous markers of claims to purchasing power. If so, then nobody pays for the traveller's meal: the traveller's writing the check increased social wealth by more than the resources consumed, and everybody is better off. It is a free lunch.

A second possibility is that the check--being easier to carry around and keep track of--could crowd out and displace some other asset used as money. Say that the nominal (and real) money supplies remain fixed, and that the circulation of the check means that somebody loses their job stringing cowrie shells together, and has to get another lower-paying lower-value job doing something else. In this case, part of the lunch is paid for by the dismissed worker who loses his or her best opportunity. The rest of the lunch, however, is still free.

A third possibility, however, is that the check increases the nominal but not the real money supply. People are happy to hold the check, but the check is no easier to use than other forms of money, which are in fixed supply. In this case the price level rises, and everybody else with money in their pockets finds that their money buys less. In this case their is no free lunch: the lunch is paid for by an inflation tax implicitly levied on other money holders.

Those are the three possible answers. There will be a test.[Source]

References

Brook, Timothy "The Merchant Network in 16th Century China: A discussion and translation of Zhang Han’s 'On Merchants'," Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. XXIV, Part II, pages 165-214.

Sun, Laichen (2000). Ming-Southeast Asian overland interactions, c. 1368-1644. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Michigan.

Vogel, Hans Ulrich (1993). "Cowry trade and its role in the economy of Yunnan: From the ninth to the mid-seventeenth century," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 36, 3 (1993): 211-252; 36, 4 (1993): 309-353.

Wade, Geoff. tr (2005). Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu: an open access resource, Singapore: Asia Research Institute and the Singapore E-Press, National
University of Singapore, [http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl]

Suhkothai history's relevance for Mon history of Lower Burma

2007-03-01T14:21:00.000+07:00

Looking beyond the contemporary nation state is important in writing pre-modern history. That the pre-modern state of Burma was very different from modern states of the 19th and 20th centuries is obvious. Limitations of communication and transportation over inhospitable terrain (with horses, elephants, and footpaths) made political control more difficult in pre-modern eras. This meant that the area of effective direct rule was a lot less and that remoter areas of indirect rule often had dual allegiances to the larger states around them. Despite this geographical separation of peoples, ideas and religious practices spread slowly but surely across regional boundaries.

Last weekend I found a thread of Thai history that touches upon Mon history in Lower Burma via the inscriptional and chronicle history of Sukhothai. Griswold and Prasert na Nagara (1972,40-44) has a long discussion about the founding of Martaban and how Ramannadesa [Mon Kingdom] was "tributary" to Sukhothai citing Rajadhirat texts and the Mulasasana. Griswold and Prasert na Nagara(1975, 41) which has a good overview of Sukhothai history covering all the kings. There certainly seems to be a clear intellectual genealogy from Coedes to Griswold and Prasert na Nagara to Vickery. They are all dealing with the same issues and Vickery seems to be going back to Coedes's more regional approach:

"In studying the Hsien-Ayutthaya-Martaban-Pegu-central northern Menampolities and the relations between Ayutthaya and Cambodia, it might be helpful to bracket out entirely conceptions of modern boundaries and think rather of an area of ancient common cosmopolitan culture and constantly shifting alliances." (Vickery,2004, 23-24)

He poses some textual issues that have yet to be resolved:

"There too, a certain Ba๑a U was ruler in Martaban and moved from there to establish a new dynasty in Pegu just about the same time as Uthong was active inAyudhya, and in some versions this occurred in 1369, also a year of important change in Ayutthaya. Just like the Uthong of Ayudhyan history, he is supposed to have comefrom a provincial town, or former capital, to found what would henceforth be a new political center for his people. According to one Mon chronicle,78 his reign was 19 years like that of Uthong-Ramadhipati, although at slightly different dates (1364-1383), and he was also followed by a king entitled rajadhiraj, although a son, rather than a brother or brother-in-law, who, like the first Param Rajadhiraj of Ayudhya, was involved in a long series of campaigns against rivals to the north. This suggests that the foundation stories in both the Mon and Ayutthayan chronicles derive from a common origin, or have contaminated one another." (Vickery, 2004, 23)

I would just like to note that the period in question was a period of continual endemic warfare, so the fact that both of the two kings above were both engaged in warfare is not really that exceptional, rather something to be expected.

References

Coedes, George (1968) The Indianized States of Southeast Asia, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. [Google Books]

Griswold, A. B. and Prasert na Nagara (1975) "On Kingship and Society at Sukhodaya," In Change and Persistence in Thai Society, ed. by William Skinner and A. Thomas Kirsch, 29-92. Ithaca and London : Cornell University Press.

Griswold, A.B. and Prasert Na Nagara (1972) "King Lodaiya of Sukhodaya and his contemporaries, Epigraphic and historical studies, no. 10," Journal of the Siam Society.

Vickery, Michael (2004) "Cambodia and Its Neighbors in the 15th Century," ARI Working Paper No. 27, June 2004, www.ari.nus.edu.sg/pub/wps.htm.

Michael Vickery's Cambodia And Its Neighbors In The 15th Century (2004)

2007-02-27T19:39:00.000+07:00

Vickery, Michael (2004) "Cambodia And Its Neighbors In The 15th Century," Working Paper, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore (2003)
June 2004, [pdf]

This working paper by historian Michael Vickery touches upon the Mon history of Lower Burma of the 13th-14th centuries. It is also worth readin, like all his works, for the methodology and examples of critical questions to ask of sources.

Abstract:
Cambodia’s 15th century is nearly a blank page: no inscriptions, insignificant architecture, largely fictional chronicles, and little information in the records of other countries. But we may assume that processes similar to what may be ascertained in other parts of Southeast Asia were at work: changes in state formation, shift of political centers, growth of maritime trade and concomitant decline of ruling groups based in agriculture.

To make sense of the ‘Ming Factor’ in Cambodia’s 15th century we must start with the 12th-century ‘Sung Factor’ when the Sung began to encourage direct Chinese participation in overseas trade, leading to changes in the Southeast Asian countries involved. In Cambodia this is reflected in the 12th-century Cambodian attempts to conquer the coast of Champa with its good ports at the same time as relations with China increased.

The Chinese envoy Chou Ta-kuan in 1296 reported a recent war between Angkor and Hsien/Sien on the Gulf coastal area of Thailand which may well have been rivalry over control of the coasts, prefiguring the Ayutthaya-Cambodia rivalry of later centuries. Cambodia’s growing importance in this area is seen in the sudden increase of Chinese records of trade and diplomatic contact between the 1370s and mid-15th century, at the same time as similar developments with Hsien/Ayutthaya.

This implicit rivalry in trade with China may have been an element in the war of mid-15th century during which Ayutthaya occupied Angkor for more than a decade until expelled by Cambodians who moved their political center to the Phnom Penh region, an excellent river port area.

Because of the lack of other documentation for Cambodia, the Chinese records of contact are very important. The titles and royal names in the Ming shi-lu in particular reflect changes in Cambodian royal traditions under the influence of Ayutthaya, at the same time as Ayutthayan royal traditions were changing through relations with the north central Thai polities of Sukhothai, Phitsanulok and Kamphaeng Phetch, and with Chiang Mai in the far North.

In this paper I compare the genuine contemporary titles of these polities from the 12th century to the fifteenth as seen in inscriptions, when they exist, and the titles recorded in Chinese records from the 13th century through the 15th, in particular the abundance of such records in MSL. This demonstrates changes in relative status among these polities, as they developed economies based on sea trade.

The paper ends with study of the single chronicle which seems to provide accurate detail of political events in Cambodia in mid-15th century, and of special relations between Cambodia and Ayutthaya not found in other documents.

Keywords: Cambodia; Ayutthaya; 15th century; Angkor; Ming

Michael Vickery's Champa Revised (2003)

2007-02-27T19:15:00.000+07:00

Vickery, Michael (2003) "Champa Revised," Working Paper 37, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore (2003), March 2005, [pdf]

No matter what region or time period one specializes in, it's worth reading this paper for methodological insights. The paper questions the commonly accepted notion that there was a unified Champa state, proposing instead that the classical history of Champa over-extrapolates.

Abstract:
The name Champa refers to the region along the central and southern Vietnamese coast in which the major population group, identifiable from the 5th century onward by their own architectural and epigraphic remains, was the linguistically Austronesian Cham. The Cham settled mainly in river port deltas, and developed a Hindu and Buddhist religious culture exemplified by impressive brick temples. At its greatest extent, between the 9th and 15th centuries, Champa stretched from Quảng Bình in the North to Phan Thiết and Biên Hòa in the South. As the title of this paper implies, I consider that the history of Champa, which, as a whole, has hardly been given critical study since Maspero's Le royaume de Champa of 1928, is in need of revision.

The important points which require revision are the following:

The origins of the Austronesian-speaking Cham who now live in Vietnam and Cambodia. There is now a consensus among specialists that the Cham arrived on the coast of the mainland from Nusantara, probably Borneo, in the last centuries B.C., although there is not yet agreement among archaeologists about the earliest settlement remains which may be attributable to them.

The Lin Yi problem. Was Lin Yi identical with Champa, from the beginning of records concerning it, or from a later date, or if not, what was it? I argue here that early Lin Yi, known from the 3rd century through Chinese histories, was not Champa.

Relations with Vietnam, in particular the notion that Champa, as well as Lin Yi, was always a victim of expansionism by its northern neighbor.

The narrative history of Champa as conceived by Maspero. Although Maspero's book received critical attention from soon after its publication, and more thoroughly later on by Rolf Stein, Maspero’s main conclusions passed literally into the famous synthesis by Coedès, and have continued to exert strong influence on further work.
There are three types of sources for Champa history (1) Physical remains--brick structures considered to be temples, associated sculpture, and materials obtained from archaeological excavation; (2) Inscriptions in Old Cham and Sanskrit; (3) References in Chinese and Vietnamese histories about relations between those countries and the various polities south of the Chinese provinces in what is now northern Vietnam, and after the late 10th century south of territory claimed by Vietnam.

It is argued here that the classical treatment of Champa begun in Maspero's Le royaume du Champa, and continued in Coedès' Les états hindouisés has been wrong on most of the points listed above. One of their serious mistakes was to take Chinese reports on Champa, usually written long after the events, as the best sources, and to ignore the local inscriptions which contradicted them. In the present paper I have tied to confront Maspero and those who have followed him with the evidence of the Champa, and also the Cambodian, inscriptions to try to reach more accurate conclusions.

Of course, there are large gaps in which there are no inscriptions, and we are forced to rely on Chinese and Vietnamese histories, for example, the period of the Mongol invasions of Vietnam and Champa, the 30-year war at the end of the 14th century when Champa nearly conquered Vietnam, and, of course, the later history of Champa after the end of their inscriptions in the early 15th century. Even here new work is needed by scholars competent in the languages and familiar with advances in Southeast Asian historiography.

Keywords: Champa; Cham; Vietnam; Lin Yi; Southeast Asian History; Maspero

Kleptocracy and Mancur Olson's books

2006-09-17T14:54:00.000+07:00

Looking for the etymology of 'kleptocracy', excessive rent-seeking by those with political power, one source said that it originated in Spain 1819, during the Napoleonic invasions?

Anyway, the growth of the idea of kleptocracy seems to be attributable to the economist Mancur Olson, especially in his last book Power and Prosperity: Outgrowing Communist and Capitalist Dictatorships:

"A central strand is the nature of political power, and how different kinds of power promote different kinds of economic behaviour...Through history, Olson observes, it has been better to live under political tyranny than to be subject to the depredations of roving bands of warrior-thieves...Assuming that tyrants and thieves are alike, in that they are out for whatever they can extract from their subjects, why should one kind of predation be better than the other? The answer, Olson explains, is that the tyrant has a stake, an "encompassing interest", in the domain he is exploiting: if it prospers, he can extract more for himself in taxes and other ways. A roving bandit merely destroys and moves on. A stationary bandit keeps taxes low in the short term in order to spur growth and gather more revenue later; in fact he goes further, and provides growth-promoting public goods, the better to improve his take...Autocracy, then, is usually much better for the victims than anarchy."

Peaceful, settled rule by political elites, even they extract excessive economic rents, is better than a continual, endemic state of warfare and feuding.

Olson also addreses democracy, which I filed away for my work interest in FDI in emerging economies, but I write papers on early modern political history and warfare, so I found this discussion particularly interesting.

Found a reflective essay on the meaning of the term as well as the interesting, but rather pessimistic "Iron Law of Oligarchy", which "states that all forms of organization, regardless of how democratic or autocratic they may be at the start, will eventually and inevitably develop into oligarchies."

Examples from Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel

2006-09-17T14:29:00.000+07:00

Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" chapter on "Kleptocracy" is a good intro to history of non-western political economy and the Maori invasion of Chatham Island is a memorable example of the collision of whole socio-political systems. This book was useful teaching 100 sophomore non-native English speakers in a Thai university economic history since there is a translation in Thai that can be read in parallel.

This newly coined word "Kleptocracy" seems to have been the inspiration behind Acemoglu paper: Kleptocracy and Divide-and-Rule: A Model of Personal Rule (The Alfred Marshall Lecture) Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson and Thierry Verdier April 2004, Journal of the European Economic Association Papers and Proceedings, v.2, 162-192

Brad DeLong's blog today showed how a fantastically inclusive course that includes everything an informed undergraduate should understand can be transformed by the brutish bigotry of conservative journalism. Self-reinforcing idiocy at the Weekly Standard cited the names of courses without the content of the courses to make them sound ridiculous. To anyone with some knowledge who probes a little, the conservative journalists are the ones who end up sounding completely ridiculous. William Kristol, editor and founder of the Weekly Standard, teaches a course on intellectual history at Harvard and he allows this sort of ridiculous article as editor? What a charade! Someone should call him to task on it.

Literary intellectuals and hypocrisy

2006-09-17T12:55:00.000+07:00

From Brad DeLong's blog, nobel prize winning writer Gunter Grass is an ex-nazi and hypocrite.

Hypocrisy and self-contradiction, just another trope on the literary intellectual's palette?

Actually, distortion of historical truth, or at least the mangling of historical truth, is just another higher order truth to be untangled from the historical record. Deconstructionists will, in turn, be deconstructed. A thread of intellectual history yet to be written.

To be fair, the Gunter Grass problem is a problem with history in every culture. In post-WWII Malaysia and Singapore "the problem of 'collaboration' stood in the way of a full reckoning, and the needs of nationhood often demanded amnesia." (Forgotten Armies: Britain's Asian Empire and the War with Japan, 2004, p. 329) See 'War and Memory in Singapore and Malaysia' (2000).

More support for Rankean "what actually happened" in historiography.

Moment of self-reflective terminological angst

2006-09-17T02:40:00.000+07:00

I can already see a problem with the dichotomisation western vs. non-western applied to warfare, politics, or economics. This distinction has a tendency to attribute suboptimal or bad features to the non-western world and optimal 'good' features like democracy, modern technology, and rationalised and fair social institutions to the western world. But that's not what I had in mind.

What I had in mind was drawing attention to a deficit in research and knowledge on the non-western world and the qualitative differences with the west, particularly in the pre-modern era. Whereas the classical Greek and Roman periods have been intensively studied in the west, serious attention to these periods reached a nadir in the colonial period, but this scholarship is embedded in a now discredited colonial approach to the subject matter. New work needs to be done.

In fact, I would eschew much standard terminology such as "democracy" for the idea of "participation" (participation, legality/constitutionality, transparency) because as most people point out places like South Korea or Thailand have democracy, but a home-grown democracy that differs in substantial ways from western democracy practiced in Europe, the US, and Australia. Many point out that longstanding traditional village governance, headmanship, has a high degree of participation (with varying degress of coercive consensus making that violate our notions of democracy).

Economist Avner Greif's theory of endogenous institutional change

2006-09-16T12:14:00.000+07:00

Read "A Theory of Endogenous Institutional Change" by Greif and Laitin last night.

This paper just rang with application to historical data as I read it. The self-enforcing nature of institutions, positive and negative feedback, feedback diagrams, and even human agency has a place in this model. Is it useful The question is whether the model is useful when applied without mathematics to make sense of history, of elite contention for resources. Only one example is presented in any detail. This is a dense paper that requires many readings to make sense of, but the pay-off in deeper understanding of superficial historical data promises to be great.

Other recent Stanford working papers by Greif:

Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade

Institutions and Impersonal Exchange: The European Experience

Avner Greif's personal homepage has additional texts:

Avner Greif and David D. Laitin -- A Theory of Endogenous Institutional Change

1. Introduction to book on institutional economics of medieval trade

2. "Commitment, Coercion and Markets: The Nature and Dynamics of Institutions Supporting Exchange" from the "Handbook of New Institutional Economics"

Small divergences, then larger ones, then the "great divergence"

2006-09-15T18:06:00.000+07:00

If in history the body of the dog is the facts and the tail is the generalization we reach from them, then should the tail be wagging the dog as it often does when historians jump straight into and devote inordinate amounts of time to artificially constructed "great debates".

I would argue that in a history course, and more specifically in an economic history course, large unresolved questions or issues around which debates still swirl should be avoided in favor of detailed case studies from which limited, humble yet powerful generalisations can be made. In other words, teach students the limits of analysis. How to formulate and test small hypotheses and how to, step by step, move from these to larger more inclusive hypotheses.

What I am thinking about here, is life outside of academia. Contrast, for instance, Wolfowitz's promise of quick success in the Iraq War, avoiding Colin Powell with his more experienced Edmund Burke-like "break it you buy it" pottery barn rule, and war correspondent, historian, and British conservative Sir Max Hasting's take on the Iraq war:

The madness of Bush's policy is that he has made a wilful choice to amalgamate the grossly irrational, totalitarian and homicidal objectives of al-Qaida with the just claims of Palestinians and grievances of Iraqis. His remarks on Saturday invite Muslims who sympathise with Hamas or reject Iraq's occupation or merely aspire to grow opium in Afghanistan to make common cause with Bin Laden.

If the United States insists upon regarding all Muslim opponents of its foreign policies as a homogeneous enemy then that is what they become. The Muslim radicals' "single narrative" portrays the entire course of history as a Christian and Jewish plot against Islam.

It is widely agreed among western governments and intelligence agencies that, in order to defeat the pernicious spread of such nonsense, a convincing counter-narrative is needed. Yet it becomes a trifle difficult to compose this when the US president promulgates his own single narrative, almost as ridiculous as that of al-Qaida. (Source: Brad DeLong's Blog)

What I would not teach is the "great divergence" even though it seems to be mandatory now, namely why did the west have the "industrial revolution" while the non-western world was left to play a game of economic catch up? Comments in a Perdue paper provide a little support for this view.

"Writing and teaching world history is not easy. Unavoidably, we must simplify the story by knitting together a few strands of the voluminous historical record. Anyone who tries to draw such a grand picture deserves respect. There is nothing wrong per se with thinking big. But large-scale explanatory schemes are fraught with dangers. Too often the big thinkers merely repeat old stereotypes held by eighteenth and nineteenth century Europeans about classical Asian civilizations. Tired cliches are dressed up as new theories, ignoring recent research."

"A central question for European historians is the origin of the Industrial Revolution. For China, the inverse question is often raised: why did imperial China 'stagnate', or fail to break through to sustained industrial growth by 1800, when it had led the world in economic dynamism and technological innovation at least up to 1200 CE? Both of these questions have generated a great deal
of discussion. We are plagued, however, by 'fast-food' explanations which attempt to take a shortcut through complex empirical and theoretical issues." (Source: China in the Early Modern World: Shortcuts, Myths and Realities Education About Asia, Summer, 1999. Peter C. Perdue)

How could a short survey course provide more than a 'fast food explanation' without almost exlcusively focusing on the problem to the exclusion of everything else, like the western media often does in so-called Media Circuses when it latches on to one story to the exclusion of all else. This mentality does seem to affect academia sometimes. For instance, the Anthropology of War course at MIT, instead of poking around and searching under less visited rocks to expand our corpus of historical knowledge (e.g. the Maori Musket Wars, technological transfer fuelling expansionary warfare), the course chooses to focus exclusively on the Iraq War, as if the rest of the world will not be equally as relevant one day in the future.

Perdue's paper warns us not to enter historical texts with preconceived conclusions. The late nineteenth century sugar industry is used as an example:

"Thus the technological changes in the sugar industry had little or nothing to do with the relative price of labor, but a lot to do with the action of the two states. The colonial Japanese state could enforce social changes that supported a total system of industrial production, from the field to the factory to the ports, but the weakened Qing empire, despite its efforts at self-strengthening, had the will but not the strength to direct change."

Severely dichotomized debates like the "great divergence debate" if they soak too much in the way of pedagogical and research resources can be counterproductive.

Non-western economic history I

2006-09-15T14:50:00.000+07:00

Great thread at Brad DeLong's blog on non-western economic history. Threads like this really provide the motivation to write good economic history of Burma-Yunnan-bay of Bengal (c. 1350-1600). Couldn't resist making an obnoxiously long (but not obnoxious, I hope) comment:

>>Colin Danby: "Can anyone suggest long-scale economic histories of mainland and/or island Southeast Asia?"

Victor Lieberman (2003) Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800-1830, Cambridge University Press covers 1000 years and references all relevant literature. Lieberman also employs the three way model of Smithian, Schumpeterian, and Solovian growth of Joel Mokyr, The Levers of Riches. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

>>Ari Levine; "Timothy Brook's _Confusions of Pleasure_ is more a cultural history of commercialization."

Which makes it very relevant to the Thorstein Veblen conspicuous consumption threads on professor DeLong's blog recently. Much of these luxury goods came from the Tai ethnic regions on the border of Southeast Asia in Yunnan, covered in:
Sun, Laichen. (2000) Ming-Southeast Asian overland interactions, c. 1368-1644. PhD Dissertation, University of Michigan.

Also, the management of China's northern enemies over thousands of years has an economic dimension to it. Arthur Waldron's "The Great Wall of China from History to Myth" covers "trade or raid" and Di Cosmo's online paper below covers the public finance transition from raiding to tribute to settled taxation which leads to the issues of land settlement and peasant mobility, good focal points for cross-cultural comparison: Di Cosmo, Nicola.(1999) “State Formation and Periodization in
Inner Asian History,” Journal of World History, 10:1 (Spring, 1999): 1-40.

Personally, analyzing the dynamics of pre-modern non-western economies on their own terms like Lieberman's book above is going to do more to enlighten students about how non-western economic (and political) systems are radically different and how naive solutions (like transform Iraq into American democracy in 90 days or less) are bound to fail. Better, that is, than broad questions like the Pomeranz what caused the "great divergence" question. Anthony Reid eventually backed off trying to apply a similar broad European-derived thesis (the "17th century crisis") from insular to mainland Southeast Asian history when Lieberman challenged him, see p. 9:
http://www.city.fukuoka.jp/asiaprize/english/lecture/pdf/13_reid.pdf
IMHO the beauty of historical work lies in the details, although it would be nice to see economic theory like Avner Greif's information economics explain more history.

>>Colin Danby: "It would be great if someone could post recommended readings on East Africa's role in the Indian Ocean economy."

Malyn Newitt (1995) A History of Mozambique, Indiana University Press
Covers Portuguese settlement and trade plus climate constraints on ocean travel and trade.

Pre-World War II immigration in the British empire

2006-09-14T15:18:00.000+07:00

The pre-World War II Indian immigration into Burma has always perplexed me.

One the one hand I have met so many Indians who were affected by the post-war backlash against them in Burma. For example, rice mills and property seized and are not recognized as full Burmese citizens. There is a standard condemning story about chettiar money lenders that Michael Adas's book counteracts to a certain extent:

Adas, Michael. The Burma Delta: Economic Development and Social Change on an Asian Rice. Frontier, 1852-1941. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 1974. .

Wouldn't an economist argue that the Burmese as a whole benefited from flows of Indian labor and capital into Burma before the war? Reading this recent book really threw this belief into question:

Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia 1941-1945 (2004) by Christopher Bayly,Tim Harper.

This book looks like only a military history, but it is actually a panoramic social history of the pre-World War II British Empire in Southeast Asia too. It certainly sheds a different, more sinister light on the British empire than, for instance, Niall Ferguson's book.

This book is a near perfect history book. It is well written in an engaging style that has made it very popular. The book is built upon original primary archival sources such as memoirs which make it original, not just another rehash of secondary sources. It combines multiple perspectives from the high level governor or viceroy to the coolies at the waterfront. It gives you a better idea of the impact of war on society as a whole than any other book that I've read.

This book is also a sobering story of free flowing immigration in the British Empire on the eve of of World War II. It shows some of the chaos that this freedom for all to immigrate led to. Massive Indian immigration into Burma overwhelmed the local population, displacing them with cheap labor. In the agricultural sector money lenders foreclosed and seized land, the Japanese invaded, the Indians fled, and a dependence on Burmese rice to the tune of 15% in Bengal contributed to a famine, 3 million people died, who had specialized in jute production before the war. Can one fully predict exogenous shocks? The pre-empire social formations were probably more resilient to them.

The British empire seems to be a test case in many respects for all the arguments of market liberalisation that the discipline of economics presents, such as freedom of immigration.

Open Source GIS: OSGEO.ORG

2006-09-07T20:10:00.000+07:00

Learned about new open source GIS software for map making from an IT writer at my newspaper today. Quite exciting for me since geography is essential to get a handle on the history of Burma-Yunnan-Bay of Bengal (c. 1350-1600).

1. OSGEO.ORG is offering the open source GIS software.

2. Here is the GIS blog Between the Poles of Geoff Zeiss who works for Autodesk working on the project somehow.

3. Also found this open source GIS resource list.

Anyway, one these days, soon, supporting written history with maps will be a lot easier.

Models for academic history journals (+ supporting materials)

2006-09-05T18:07:00.000+07:00

This journal of Tibetan history, religion, and culture is a model for journals devoted to Burmese history or that of ethnic minorities in Southeast Asia like the Tai or Mon.

The format of the articles with abstract and footnotes is nice and uniform and could be easily emulated with Wikipedia fitted with appropriate templates. The site also has nice reference materials such as a primary source document collection, maps, and gazeteer.

OpenCourseWare Consortium

2006-09-05T16:51:00.000+07:00

Free Access to Open Materials for Teaching, Learning and Research, Supported by The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation.

List of open access academic journal resources.

Mong Mao: Mandala, Galactic Polity, or Solar Polity?

2006-09-01T09:59:00.000+07:00

One of three metaphors for political organisation, mandala, galactic polity, or solar polity, might lead to making sense of Mong Mao's history.

It always seemed to me that the use of the concept "mandala" in pre-colonial Southeast Asian history seemed to reduce the complexity of history, the interplay of strategic human agency and more fixed, long-term, deterministic structures, that one finds in well-written narrative histories, to a simple concept, a much too simple concept.

I've grown to appreciate the concept recently, and understand how some historians such as Sunait Chutintaranond, Thongchai Winichakul, and Martin Stuart-Fox have used the idea to pick apart received traditions about unified and centralized rule in their respective time periods and regions.

Sometimes the best way to gain an appreciation of an idea is to go through the laborious process of solving the problem that the idea was created as a solution to. After rereading Martin Stuart-Fox's history of Laos (see bibliography below) that uses the concept of Mandala extensively, I realized that the concept probably applies to nearby Mong Mao also. Furthermore, I read Chris Baker's paper that argues that the northern provinces of Ayutthaya were largely independent of the Ayutthayan center even into the period of Burmese invasions of the 16th century, but when I read Sunait Chutintaranond's paper, I realized that Sunait had already shown how "mandala" was the solution to this problem.

The world historian and historian of Burma Victor Lieberman's rejection of the term mandala in lieu of "solar polity" , "galactic polity" being yet another possible metaphor, is particularly instructive.

I still think that narrative history that closely follows primary sources is the best way to capture the interplay between strategic human action and long-term social and environmental factors in human and plan to follow this course in future research. General models that have been highlighted by Lieberman's Strange Parallels recently, including Gerschenkron's collective problems and advantages to backwardness, O'Connor's agricultural succession in Southeast Asia, and a general political anthropology approach, can clarify and highlight important themes in this narrative (without imputing abolute causal relations of different factors where multicausal factors is the norm).

Anyway, I've been slowly revising the Wikipedia page devoted to "Mandala (Southeast Asian history)". Here are my contributions to-date:

Mandala (Southeast Asian history)

Mandala means "circle of kings". The mandala is a model for describing the patterns of diffuse political power in early Southeast Asian history. The concept of a mandala counteracts our natural tendency to look for the unified political power of later history, the power of large kingdoms and nation states, in earlier history where local power is more important. In the words of O.W. Wolters who originated the idea in 1982:

"The map of earlier Southeast Asia which evolved from the prehistoric networks of small settlements and reveals itself in historical records was a patchwork of often overlapping mandalas"[1]

In some ways similar to the feudal system of Europe, states were linked in overlord-tributary relationships. Compared to feudalism however, the system gave greater independence to the subordinate states; it emphasised personal rather than official or territorial relationships; and it was often non-exclusive. Any particular area, therefore, could be subject to several powers or none.

Intersecting mandalas circa 1360: from north to south Lan Xang, Lanna, Sukhothai, Ayutthaya and Angkor.

Terminology

The term draws a comparison with the mandala of the Hindu and Buddhist worldview; the comparison emphasises the radiation of power from each power centre, as well as the non-physical basis of the system.

Other metaphors such as Tambiah's original idea of a "galactic polity" [2], describe similar political patterns as the mandala. The metaphor of a "solar polity" is preferred by the historian of Southeast Asia Victor Lieberman because in the solar system there is one central body, the sun, and the components or planets of the solar system can be fully enumerated, unlike galaxies. [3]

History

....The historian Stuart-Fox uses the term "mandala" extensively to describe the history of the Lao kingdom of Lan Xang as a structure of loosely held together "meuang" that disintegrated after Lan Xang's conquest by Siam starting in the 18th century [5]

The Thai historian Sunait Chutintaranond made an important contribution to study of the mandala in Southeast Asian history by demonstrating that "three assumptions responsible for the view that Ayudhya was a strong centralized state" did not hold and that "in Ayudhya the hegemony of provincial governors was never successfully eliminated" [6]....

References

Chutintaranond, Sunait, "Mandala, segmentary state, and Politics of Centralization in Medieval Ayudhya," Journal of the Siam Society 78, 1, 1990, p. 1.

Lieberman, Victor Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800-1830, Volume 1: Integration on the Mainland, Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Stuart-Fox, Martin, The Lao Kingdom of Lan Xang: Rise and Decline, White Lotus, 1998.

Tambiah, World Conqueror and World Renouncer, Cambridge, 1976.
Thongchai Winichakul. Siam Mapped. University of Hawaii Press, 1984. ISBN 0-8248-1974-8

Wolters, O.W. History, Culture and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1982. ISBN 0-87727-725-7

Wolters, O.W. History, Culture and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Revised Edition, 1999.

Notes
1. O.W. Wolters, 1999, p. 27
2. Tambiah, 1976, ch. 7, cited in Lieberman, 2003, p. 33
3. Lieberman, 2003, p. 33
4. O.W. Wolters, 1999, pp. 27-40, 126-154
5. Martin-Fox, 1998, pp. 14-15
6. O.W. Wolters, pp. 142-143 citing Chutintaranond, 1990, pp. 97-98

Google to the rescue!(Google island/library of orphaned books)

2006-08-31T13:40:00.000+07:00

Google is creating a library of books with expired copyrights!

Google has realised that books with expired copyrights are a goldmine of information.

Allow me to be Nostradamus for a moment and predict that this move might shift the global techntonic publishing plates and convince the paper obsessed that it's time to change and focus on computer readable books (which you can publish in smaller increments and revise without acknowledging the embarassing fact that you wasted paper the first time round). Once computer readable books overtake paper, the next step is express printing of very limited paper editions, because we still can't lug an expensive computer whereever we go, for instance, to a picnic in the park, without our wives rightly being angry at us for spoiling the picnic. (But we can bring a handheld)

The first thing that came to mind, rather strangely, was the island of misfit toys in the Christmas Special Rudolf the Rednosed Reindeer. Perhaps my brain needs rewiring! Actually, the brain apparently remembers more about this childhood classic then the conscious mind does:

"When there is a strong fog, Santa relies on Rudolph as a beacon, and Rudolph gets them to the Island of Misfit Toys and at the end, the toys are given homes (they are dropped out of the sleigh behind the credits via umbrellas)."

Read The Guardian

Read ZDNet

The Guardian really captures the relevance of this revolutionary move. As a denizen (actually "intense user" is more appropriate since I don't sleep in the library) of U.C. Berkeley's library when I am in the United States, I realize you have to actually stroll through the stacks to understand the vast store of untapped knowledge waiting there to be liberated:

Google says it aims to make the world's books "discoverable online" by offering both well known classics and obscure titles on every conceivable subject. The search engine's foray into the world of books has riled publishers around the world but the company's academic backers were keen to stress yesterday that it had been misunderstood.
Reg Carr, director of Oxford University's Bodleian Library, a partner in the project, said it would open up the world of literature and make available more obscure titles such as scientific tracts and long-forgotten poetry from the 18th century.

"Public domain books, long out of copyright and seen only by the fortunate few in the great research libraries of the world, are about to come out of the closet in their millions and into the homes of internet users all over the world."

Acemoglu: Gerschenkron's successor

2006-08-29T17:06:00.000+07:00

Bumped into the work of Daron Acemoglu who won the 2005 John Bates Clark Medal while I was searching for material on Gerschenkron Gerschenkron was the great 20th-century scholar of economic development and
Acemoglu is the Gerschenkron of present-day economics. Gerschenkron was once cited by Subrahmanyam as being relevant to the "backward" Tai hinterlands of western mainland Southeast Asia (aka Burma aka Myanmar). Acemoglu may be someone with relevance to premodern political economy of mainland Southeast Asia. Can't even access his Wikipedia page, so here is the mirror from Answers.com. In "Why not a Political Coase Theorem" he argues that in politics the Coase Theorem breaks down due to commitment problems. "A Theory of Political Transitions"
(Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson September 2001, American Economic Review, volume 91, pp 938-963) sounds like it might address political succession, mathematically I hope. The paper "Kleptocracy and Divide-and-Rule: A Model of Personal Rule" (Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson and Thierry Verdier April 2004, forthcoming, Journal of the European Economic Association) looks like it might be relevant, since divide and rule is so frequently cited as a method of governance in mainland Southeast Asia and Yunnan. A lot of his papers are online. Here is the blurb from his new book Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Dec 2005):

"This book develops a framework for analyzing the creation and consolidation of democracy. Different social groups prefer different political institutions because of the way they allocate political power and resources. Thus democracy is preferred by the majority of citizens, but opposed by elites. Dictatorship nevertheless is not stable when citizens can threaten social disorder and revolution. In response, when the costs of repression are sufficiently high and promises of concessions are not credible, elites may be forced to create democracy. By democratizing, elites credibly transfer political power to the citizens, ensuring social stability. Democracy consolidates when elites do not have strong incentives to overthrow it. These processes depend on the strength of civil society, the structure of political institutions, the nature of political and economic crises, the level of economic inequality, the structure of the economy, and the form and extent of globalization."

Clearly, relevant to Burma. There is also a good description on his John Bates Clark Medal page. Here are some interesting extracts from an online review:

Extracted from: The Man Who Succeeded Gerschenkron

[Link to whole article]
"...Mathematization conquered the core of economics in the years before, during and after World War II. Then, both because of the power of formal reasoning and the prestige they conferred, those who espoused formal methods tackled the applied fields, one after the other. The mathematizers were not welcomed like so many liberators; acceptance was often grudging."

"Moreover, as mathematical technique was brought to bear, a reduction in detail took place. New insights were more easily transferred from field to field; new tools could be deployed quickly. But the study of institutions, which before mathematization had loomed so large, gradually was eclipsed..."

"...Hence the image of an hourglass that had been suggested by his colleague Paul Romer, with the scope or breadth of topical economics (on the horizontal axis), plotted against time (on the vertical axis). As the language of economics is unified, a dramatic narrowing of topical concerns takes place -- followed in turn by a commensurate widening, as speakers of the language learn to tackle topics that they had been temporarily unable to address. Kreps ventured in 1997, "É[T]he field now seems to be returning to something like the breadth of the discipline before World War II..."

"...He [Gerschenkron] had one big idea, and he made the most of it: the advantages of backwardness in economic development."

"Thorstein Veblen had said as much in telegraphic form in 1915 in Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution: late-adopters could sometimes move out to the frontiers of development more easily than the pioneers of the industrial revolution. Gerschenkron now made various forms of slow economic development his specialty. He himself, with his late start, having had to learn to work in two new languages as an adult, exemplified the possibilities. "The more backward a country," he wrote, "the more complex and exciting its industrial history.""

"...Yale's William Parker said, "The resounding theses of Gerschenkron tell the size and shape and weave of the stockings the family hangs out on Christmas eve, but say nothing of when or why Santa Claus comes down the chimney")...

"...Daron Acemoglu's good fortune was to graduate from the University of York at the very moment that the hourglass of development economics was at its narrowest, when all the complications of economic growth had been briefly reduced to an argument about the causes of "technical change.""

"Like Gerschenkron, Acemoglu had been raised in a developing society -- in Istanbul, a Turk of Armenian descent. His father was a professor of law, later an attorney for banks and corporations. Political economy and development strategy came naturally to the dinner table."

"But his parents died when Acemoglu was in his teens. Political science at York disappointed him; he switched to economics instead. And when MIT admitted him to graduate school but failed to offer a scholarship, he did his doctorate at the London School of Economics instead, writing a dissertation on a variety of labor and macroeconomic topics. A year later, MIT hired him to teach -- an intriguing but unknown quantity at whom they wanted a closer look. Four years later they gave him tenure. He added dual citizenship as well."

"The committee that gave the 38-year-old Acemoglu the Clark medal last week described him as "extremely broad and productive," noting that in the course of a dozen years he had made significant contributions to the study of labor markets before moving on to "especially innovative" ideas about the role of institutions in development and political economy."

"In fact, it was a series of investigations in the history of the European colonization of much of the rest of the world, beginning in the 15th century, that made Acemoglu's reputation, demonstrating that institutions of various sorts were more important to development than economists previously had thought. The "rules of the game" -- the structure of property rights, the presence of markets, and their various frictions, the form that governments take -- are key determinants of what happens next, Acemoglu showed, in some unusually inventive and convincing ways."

"Take the rise of Europe in the first place. The importance of the Atlantic trade had long been noted, and various reasons for it advanced. With Simon Johnson of MIT's Sloan School and James Robinson of the University of California at Berkeley, Acemoglu argued in "The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change and Economic Growth" that England and the Netherlands leapt out front because a newly emergent merchant class benefited most from trade -- and was able to successfully demand institutions to protect their property and commerce. In contrast, although they had been the first to discover the richest lands, Spain and Portugal stagnated because their monarchies had managed to capture the early returns, they argued -- and thus were able to thwart their merchants' drive for power."

"In "Economic Backwardness in Political Perspective," Acemoglu and Robinson argued that political elites can be expected to pursue "blocking" strategies when innovation threatens their monopolies and when there is little threat to their power from politics. External threats reduced the temptation to block, they found -- producing a model that suggested why Britain, German and the United States had industrialized during the 19th century, while the landed aristocracies in Russia and Austria-Hungary sought to hold back the tide."

[Niall Ferguson in Colossus has a nice overview of this in his coverage of post-WWII Japanese and German development]

"In "Reversal of Fortune," Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson argued that colonial powers pursued very different strategies in different lands, with fateful consequences. In rich and densely populated countries such as Mexico and Peru, they extracted wealth; in poor and sparsely settled countries such as British North America and Argentina, they encouraged investment."

"And in "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development" they inventively teased evidence from differing mortality rates faced by Europeans in different countries of how the choices made in those circumstanced gave rise to different institutions and so to different development paths."

"The Clark committee noted that some of the methods and conclusions were still being debated -- but that a broad and substantial rethinking of the development process was underway no matter what. The appearance this summer of Acemoglu's book with Robinson, The Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy will stimulate much further discussion. The MIT course that he teaches with fellow professor Abhijit Bannerjee on development issues is routinely oversubscribed. And a long list of projects underway testifies to his staying power."

Last British ambassador to Burma calls for comparative research

2006-08-28T14:04:00.000+07:00

The Burmese Patient
By Vicky Bowman, British ambassador to Myanmar (2002-2006)
August 2006

Analyzes the current state of economic and political development within Burma using a analogy of disease and treatment of disease. A very balanced assessment and call for more research on Burmese politics and economic development using comparisons with Chile, Vietnam, China, Thailand and Korea.

How a study of pathology helps in an assessment of a sick nation’s problems

"Regardless of the motivation or qualifications of those prescribing the medicine, the main thing to remember is that our goal should be the Burmese patient’s sustainable recovery. This was brought home to me by a presentation at a recent Burma Day conference in Brussels, where one activist produced graphs to show that the campaign objectives of his organization had been increasingly achieved year-on-year. Yet the rest of us at the conference, Burmese and non-Burmese alike, had been standing around the patient’s bed all day unanimously agreeing that he had never looked in a worse state of health."

"It would be a mistake to believe that there can be a miracle or rapid cure. Many other less developed and even better developed countries suffer from the same symptoms as Burma, such as poverty, corruption, inequality, unsustainable natural resource exploitation, lack of freedom, and a growing burden of HIV. Many countries are sicker than Burma on some or all of these counts. Treatment for systemic problems is never straightforward..."

"So we need more research, and more evaluation. In particular, we should review how countries such as Chile, Vietnam, China, Thailand and Korea recovered (or are recovering) from military and one-party dictatorship, and consider the relevance of that experience to Burma. And policies, whether they are implemented by the Burmese government, the international community, opposition or exiles; whether mass planting of physic nut bodies, banking sanctions, or banning ethnic languages from the primary school curriculum, should be openly and honestly evaluated for their short and long-term impacts and effectiveness. Lack of accountability is a big problem inside the country, but it is also a problem with the opposition and exiles. Audit should also include lessons to be learned from success stories, such as the shift in government attitudes to HIV/AIDS, and the boom in beans and pulse exports which has benefited dry zone farmers. In the latter case, an unusually laissez faire approach by the government, which allowed farmers to grow crops freely and respond to market mechanisms and incentives, supported by a domestic banking infrastructure which facilitates the work of brokers across the country, were key factors promoting economic growth....

...Full organ transplantation is a risky last resort. So more needs to be done to heal and strengthen Burma’s existing internal organs such as the education system, the judiciary and the police, through a diet of capacity-building. Unhealthily enlarged organs, such as the military, need to be reduced to the correct size so that they function more efficiently. And the backbone of civil society needs to be strengthened.

Pathology derives from the Greek word pathos, which means "suffering, feeling, emotion." These are common feelings for all who work to try and bring about change in Burma. But I believe we need to put emotions aside, and take a dispassionate look at the evidence, and draw appropriate conclusions.

Marx is intellectual history

2006-08-27T17:10:00.000+07:00

Brad DeLong's blog makes some trenchant criticisms of Marx and Marxists and relegates it to "intellectual history" where it clearly belongs. Once again, I can't resist adding my two cents. I respect Marx as an important part of history, but his ideas resemble someone on hallucinogens. I remember in the German Ideology, his leisurely ideas about labour, fishing in the morning, tending cows in the afternoon,.....I found this very attractive when I was a freshman at university.

Introducing Serious, Permanent Bugs into Your Wetware

From Brad DeLong's blog:

"we find Michael Fitzgerald, a man who has seriously misprogrammed substantial chunks of his frontal lobes by reading Karl Marx's Capital--something that, I am becoming convinced, should only be done by somebody with immunity to the mental virus--by a trained intellectual or social or economic historian, or by a trained neoclassical economist....

Where does one begin? Let me make two observations only:

First, I observe that the idea that the best way to understand the political economy of the 1970s is through intensive, group, line-by-line study of an unfinished, inconsistent, and ambiguous text first drafted in the 1850s by a very smart, sometimes far-sighted, but definitely not divine human being--that that idea is already a delusion peculiar to those who were a little too good in school in seeking truths from reading books rather than seeking truths from facts.

Second, I observe that Marx's claim that the "twofold character of the commodity, as use-value and exchange-value," is a difficulty in need of "exploration" is a claim that can only be made by a deranged Hegelian mystic. Consider the following thought experiment:

Suppose that at my left hand I had a fresh-cooked hard-shell lobster and a lobster cracker. The lobster cracker would have a lot of use value to me right now: If I didn't have one, then half an hour from now my hands would be bleeding and cut--something I would rather avoid. I would be glad that I had it. But the lobster cracker would have little exchange-value: nobody nearby would exchange for it, would trade for it, anything I would particularly need or want.

Suppose that at my right hand I had a financial portfolio long the shares of residential construction companies, and short mortgage-backed securities. At the moment share of residential construction companies are low, but mortgage default premia are also low. If the shares of residential construction companies are fairly priced, than housing construction and housing prices are in free-fall, defaults on mortgages will rise, and the prices on mortgage-backed securities will fall as well--producing profits on the short position. If mortgage-backed securities are fairly priced, then defaults on mortgages will stay low and housing prices and construction will stay healthy, in which case shares of residential construction companies are underpriced--and there are profits to be expected from the long position. Such a portfolio would have no use-value at all. But it could well--if one could get the hedge ratios right--turn out to have a mighty exchange value, in the sense that other people would be willing to exchange for it, to trade for it, a lot of things I would like to have.

What's the mystery here? What's in need of "exploration"? Things are useful for two reasons (A) Because their physical nature is such that you find them directly useful--that's use value. (b) Because we live in a society in which other people will trade you things for them, things that you can use--that's exchange value. This is not hard to grasp. This is not particularly subtle.

Fitzgerald says that Marx's analysis of use-value and exchange-value "reveal[s] in an elementary form the contradictory character of capitalist production" which requires the abolition of private property and market exchange in order for the "mystical veil" of market prices to be stripped off "the life process of material production" and "production by freely associated men... consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan." In what sense is this dual role of commodities a "contradiction"? Marx never offered me a coherent answer. And Fitzgerald does no better. How would eliminating markets and prices help resolve this "contradiction"? That was never explained either

Moreover, in Fitzgerald's phrase "the contradictory character of capitalist production," the adjective "capitalist" is incorrect. A moment's look back at history reveals that the distinction between use-value and exchange-value is not something invented by or peculiar to the capitalist mode of production: it is found in all human societies, no matter how large or small.

The cattle slaughtered and cooked by the thralls of Hrothgar, King of the Geats, have use-value to Hrothgar: He and his family can eat (some of) them. The cattle have exchange-value to Hrothgar as well: He feeds them to his warriors at their nightly banquets in his great hall of Heorot. In exchange for livery and maintenance, the warriors fight Hrothgar's wars. Success in war gains Hrothgar more thralls, more cattle, and a bigger and better reputation as a great Drighten.

If you try to ground an analysis of capitalism-in-particular on a feature (the distinction between objects' direct usefulness and their role in social processes of reciprocity, redistribution, or market exchange) that capitalism shares with every other human social system--well, you won't get anywhere. And those who read Capital "in a group, out loud, line by line, paragraph by paragraph... discussing and arguing over every page, through volumes one, two and three, even unto Theories of Surplus Value" don't get anywhere at all."

My Comment: This sort of Marxist textual study really reminds me of bible study, which might be a good way to gain solidarity and power, something that conservatives seem to be a lot better at, but works against exactly what liberals do best, **questioning the existing order**, to the extent that liberals become doctrinaire, they don't seem to really be liberals anymore (Niall Ferguson in Colossus dares to question the liberal status quo though)

"Intellectual history" seems exactly the right way to read Marx along with the intellectuals who took him too seriously to the point of avoiding obvious signs that all was not what it was cracked up to be in Stalinist Russia (see Simone de Beauvoir's diaries or "Les Mandarins" including fights with a drunk Koestler).

The intellectual history of Marx and Marxists is still at the root of a lot of important ideas in the social sciences like the materialist conception of history, base-superstructure, Althusser's Ideological State Apparatuses, modes of production and the origins of the state, but so is Edmund Burke whose ideas can be seen in the important role Japanese era elites played in post-WWII South Korean economic history for instance. One of the reason's I enjoy reading Brad DeLong's blog is its pulling apart of the strong associations between economics and conservatism, at least here in Asia.

Mong Mao: The multiple senses of the toponym

2006-08-17T11:04:00.000+07:00

Below is copy of the Wikipedia article in which I try to make clear what Mong Mao means. I am just trying to make clear the different ways that people use the often ambiguous, or at least multi-sensed, term "Mong Mao".

Mong Mao

Mong Mao was an ethnically Tai state that controlled several smaller Tai states or chieftainships along the frontier of what is now Myanmar and China in the De-hong region of Yunnan with a capital near the modern-day border town of Ruili. The name of the main river in this region is named the Nam Mao River also know as the Shweli River.

The chronicle of this region, which was written much later, was named the Mong Mao Chronicle. [1]

Mong Mao arose in the power vaccuum left after the Kingdom of Dali in Yunnan fell to the Mongols around 1254. This kingdom had asserted some unity over the diversity of ethnic groups residing along the southwest frontier of Yunnan. (Daniels, 2006, 28)

"Mong Mao" is sometimes used by authors to refer to the entire group of Tai states along the Chinese-Myanmar frontier including Luchuan-Pingmian, Mong Yang (Chinese: Meng Yang), and Hsenwi (Chinese: Mu Bang), even though specific place names are almost always used in Ming and Burmese sources.

The center of power shifted frequently between these different places. Sometimes these were unified under one strong leader, sometimes they were not. As the Shan scholar Sai Kam Mong observes: "Sometimes one of these strove to be the leading kingdom and sometimes all of them were unified into one single kingdom...The capital of the kingdom shifted from place to place, but most of them were located near the Nam Mao [river] (the "Shweli" on most maps today)" [2]

The various versions of the Mong Mao Chronicle provide the lineage of Mong Mao rulers. The Shan chronicle tradition recorded very early and roughly by Elias (1876) provides a long list with the first ruler of Mong Mao dating from 568 A.D. The dates in Elias for later rulers of Mong Mao do not match the dates in Ming dynasty sources such as the Ming Shi-lu (Wade, 2005) and the Bai-yi Zhuan (Wade, 1996) which are considered more reliable from the time of the ruler Si Ke Fa. Kazhangjia (1990), translated into Thai by Witthayasakphan and Zhao Hong Yun (2001), also provides a fairly detailed local chronicle of Mong Mao.

[edit]
List of Monarchs
Chinese name Years Length Succession Death Tai Name Other names
Si Ke Fa 1340-1371 31 years natural Hso Kip Hpa Sa Khaan Pha
Zhao Bing Fa 1371-1378 8 years son natural
Tai Bian 1378/79 1 year son murdered
Zhao Xiao Fa 1379/80 1 year brother of Zhao Bing Fa murdered
Si Wa Fa ? ? brother murdered Hso Wak Hpa
Si Lun Fa 1382-1399 17 years grandson of Si Ke Fa Hso Long Hpa
Si Xing Fa 1404-1413 9 years son abdicated
Si Ren Fa 1413-1445/6 29 years brother executed Hso Wen Hpa Sa Ngam Pha
Si Ji Fa 1445/6-1449 son executed Sa Ki Pha, Chau Si Pha
Si Bu Fa 1449-?
Si Lun Fa ?-1532 murdered Sawlon

References

Daniels, Christian (2006) "Historical memories of a Chinese adventurer in a Tay chronicle; Usurpation of the throne of a Tay polity in Yunnan, 1573-1584," International Journal of Asian Studies, 3, 1 (2006), pp. 21-48.

Elias, N. (1876) Introductory Sketch of the History of the Shans in Upper Burma and Western Yunnan. Calcutta: Foreign Department Press. (Recent facsimile Reprint by Thai government in Chiang Mai University library).

Jiang Yingliang (1983) Daizu Shi [History of the Dai ethnicity], Chengdu: Sichuan Renmin Chubanshe.

Kazhangjia, Z. (1990). "Hemeng gumeng: Meng Mao gudai zhuwang shi [A History of the Kings of Meng Mao]." In Meng Guozhanbi ji Meng Mao gudai zhuwang shi [History of Kosampi and the kings of Meng Mao]. Gong Xiao Zheng. (tr.) Kunming, Yunnan, Yunnan Minzu Chubanshe.

Liew, Foon Ming. (1996) "The Luchuan-Pingmian Campaigns (1436-1449): In the Light of Official Chinese Historiography". Oriens Extremus 39/2, pp. 162-203.
Sai Kam Mong (2004) The History and Development of the Shan Scripts, Chiang Mai; Silkworm Books.

Wade, Geoff (1996) "The Bai Yi Zhuan: A Chinese Account of Tai Society in the 14th Century," 14th Conference of the International Association of Historians of Asia (IAHA), Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand [Includes a complete translation and introduction to the Ming travelogue "Bai-yi Zhuan", a copy can be found at the Thailand Information Center at Chulalongkorn Central Library]]

Wade, Geoff. tr. (2005) Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu: an open access resource, Singapore: Asia Research Institute and the Singapore E-Press, National University of Singapore, http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/
Witthayasakphan, Sompong and Zhao Hong Yun (translators and editors) (2001) Phongsawadan Muang Tai (Khreua Muang ku muang), Chiang Mai: Silkworm. (Translation of Mong Mao chronicle into the Thai language)

Notes

^ Elias, 1876; Daniels, 2006; Kazhangjia, 1990; Witthayasakphan and Zhao Hong Yun, 2001
^ Sai Kam Mong, 2004, p. 10, citing Jiang Yingliang, 1983
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mong_Mao"

Christian Daniels paper on Tai chronicle history (1573-1584)

2006-08-13T12:55:00.000+07:00

Daniels, Christian (2006) "Historical memories of a Chinese adventurer in a Tay chronicle; Usurpation of the throne of a Tay polity in Yunnan, 1573-1584," International Journal of Asian Studies, 3, 1 (2006), pp. 21-48.

This historical analysis is path breaking because it deals with Tai chronicle text on its own terms, taking it for the uniquely different historical source that it is, and showing how the Tai chronicle approach to history helps elucidate Rankean "what actually happened".

Daniels clearly shows that the Ming did use a strategy of divide and conquer in the Tai-Yunnan frontier zone. He also provides convincing evidence that a Mong Mao kingdom (state or polity) was a unifying force among the smaller geographically based chieftainships of the Tai-Yunnan frontier zone. Si Ke Fa (r. 1340-1371) clearly brought these chieftainships together for a time under the umbrella of one ruler and challenged Yuan rule along the frontier.

The paper also includes an important discussion of the "Subordination of Tay polities to the Ming" that is rigorous in both its argument and the evidence that it presents. Since events along the Tai-Yunnan frontier region played an important role in state formation in western mainland Southeast Asia to the south, namely in the formation of a Burmese state (c. 1350-1600), this section of the paper is particularly important for early modern mainland Southeast Asian history.

Tai rule along the Tai-Yunnan frontier: Unified or not unified?

What I take issue with, was how long this unification under a Mong Mao "kingdom" actually lasted. It seems like there was a unified Mong Mao kingdom (polity, state) only for the duration of Si Ke Fa's reign.

This is not to say that various geographically-based chieftainships (Daniels provides a wonderful map) did not rally together under the leadership of one primus-inter-pares Tai ruler during times of crisis when they faced a common threat. This is where the Di Cosmo-Andreski model of military mobilization and centraliation after a crisis (originating in analogous behavior along China's northern frontier) is pertinent (Fernquest, 2005).

It seems that the Mong Mao kingdom may be largely a literary creation of the Tai chronicle writers interpreting historical fact:

"The Mang Maaw Chronicle [Mong Mao Chronicle] referred to this kingdom as unifying force among the Tay, and portrayed it as a sort of ideal age when the Tay enjoyed complete independence, and remained free from intervention by outside regional powers. The chronicler invokes the disintegration and the subsequent subordination of Tay polities to China and Burma as recurring potent images." (Daniels, 2006, p. 28)

There are references to a "Mong Mao" is Burmese inscriptions and the chronicle, but there are also references to a "Syam" and many more references to individual polities, especially as times goes by. If Burmese references to Tai polities on the Yunnan frontier became more geographically specific, this would probably support a hypothesis that Ming split apart a polity or confederation of chieftainships that was previously more unified, or maybe a hypothesis that the Burmese only gradually became aware of who was attacking them. This would not be easy, if a coalition was attacking them. In such a case, local identities might have loomed larger than group identities as they seemed to have done when Si Lun Fa (Burmese: Sawlon) of Mong Yang [Burmese: Mohnyin] conquered Ava in 1524-27.

As Wade (2004, 31) shows, the fact that Ayutthaya and Lang Chang to the south eventually grew to achieve the status of states, has led some intellectuals to produce counterfactual or "virtual" history, suggesting that the chieftainships of the Tai-Yunnan border would have become large and unified states like Ayutthaya or Lang Chang, but didn't, because of Ming expansionism.

After the Tai invasion of the Burmese heartland in 1524-27, it looked like there would be a large Tai territorial state in western mainland Southeast Asia, but the resurgence of the Burmese state under Bayinnaung (r. 1551-1581) put an end to this state-forming momentum. There is always an impulse to look at these events with hindsight bias from the viewpoint of a given modern nation state or ethnic group, to moralize and lament about what could have been, but wasn't. This emic perspective, of historical as seen from inside by actual participants during and afterwards, is certainly one legitimate perspective, history was originally my written from such national or state-centric perspectives, but an emotionally uninvolved etic perspective, that tries to make sense of the events from a "World History" perspective, also seems legitimate in this day and age.

Augmenting the Daniels argument with Burmese sources

Widening the gamut of historical sources used for this period to include Burmese sources reveals some important facts. Take this observation:

"The Mang Maaw kingdom...maintained firm control over all the Tay polities, and it was only after the Ming succeeded in eliminating it in their fourth punitive military campaign of 1444 that Tay polities west of the Salween River emerged as individually prominent political entities." (Daniels, 2006, p. 28)

Evidence from the Burmese chronicle indicates that the Tai chieftainships Hsenwi and Mong Yang acted independently from any unified Mong Mao center in the warfare they engaged in with Burmese Ava to the south.

(Note: Theinni, Hsenwi, and Mu Bang all refer to the same geographically based chieftainship. Mohnyin, Mong Yang, and Meng Yang so as well.)

(Note: I'll make a list of all Burmese chronicle references to Tai polities from the fall of Pagan to the end of the Luchuan-Pingmian campaigns (1444) to demonstrate this point. )

Ava attacked Tai settlements and Tais attacked Ava's capital, far away from their home base in Yunnan, deep in the Burmese heartland. (See Fernquest, 2006)

Tai cavalry contingents also participated in Ava's military expeditions against the Mon kingdom ruled by Rajadharit in the far south. Whether this was a voluntary mercenary type of relationship or coerced troop levies, or a combination of both, is not clear, there is evidence to support both theories (Fernquest, 2006, 17).

The nature of control imposed after military action is also an issue in the warfare the Burmese king Bayinnaung (r. 1551-1581) later waged against Ayutthaya. The Burmese kingdom did not maintain territorial control for any length of time, so the Burmese kingdom could not be called an empire and this warfare really doesn’t warrant the label "expansionary" in that this term implies increased territorial control. The Burmese attacks against Ayutthaya were more like once off "raids" for manpower and plunder. I believe that Prince Damrong makes this point in "Thai Rop Bama" [Thai attacks Burma]. It is only later on in the 1570s that you see Burma trying to assert geographical control over Chiang Mai and Lan Chang. Lieberman makes this point in Burmese Administrative Cycles, I believe.

References

Daniels, Christian (2006) "Historical memories of a Chinese adventurer in a Tay chronicle; Usurpation of the throne of a Tay polity in Yunnan, 1573-1584," International Journal of Asian Studies, 3, 1 (2006), pp. 21-48.

Fernquest, Jon (2005) "Min-gyi-nyo, the Shan Invasions of Ava(1524-27), and the Beginnings of Expansionary Warfare in Toungoo Burma: 1486-1539," SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research 3.2 Autumn. [Addendum]

Fernquest, Jon (2006) "Rajadhirat's mask of command: Burmese military leadership, (c. 1383-1421)," SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research, 4.1 Spring.

Wade, Geoff (2004) "Ming China and Southeast Asia in the 15th Century: A Reappraisal," No. 28 Working Paper Series, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, July 2004.

Myanmar Film Festival and plans for a Bayinnaung film in Burmese

2006-08-11T12:20:00.000+07:00

After reading a bit, I still decided to write a Wikipedia article on cinema of Myanmar.

Many people have apparently been persecuted for their political beliefs in the Burmese film industry, so writing anything about it is like handling dynamite. The recent history reads like something out the McCarthy era in the United States.

Having read Burmese language books on Burma's early film industry though, I know there is a very interesting and positive history to be written here for the earlier periods at least.

A festival of Myanmar films will run from August 17 to 20 in Bangkok at the Major Ramkhamhaeng. All the films were directed by Kyi Soe Tun and have English subtitles.

Read about the film festival in the Bangkok Post (deleted in one week) and the People's Daily Online (see below).

The Burmese filmmaker Kyi Soe Tun has made historical epics on the Pagan and late Konbaung periods and plans to make a film similar to MC Chatreechalerm Yukol's "The Legend of King Naresuan" that will "tell the same story from Burengnong's [Bayinnaung's] point of view." Kyi Soe Tun is friends with MC Chatreechalerm Yukol and the script for his planned film has been finished for three years. He's currently looking for financing for the film.

Note, that I transcribed some classic Burmese film scripts, including one by Kyi Soe Tun I believe, into computer readable form and put them online several years ago. They are a good way to become familiar with the spoken Burmese language and are available online at this rather slow site.

Note also that there are no Wikipedia pages yet for Myanmar cinema. Branching off Southeast Asian cinema would be the right place to begin. Obviously, an entry has to be made for the actor Kyaw Hein. There's an article in the online Irrawaddy Magazine that provides a lot of historical background that could provide the basis for a beginning Wikipedia "stub" on Burmese or Myanmar cinema.

Myanmar film festival to be held in Bangkok

The first ever Myanmar film festival abroad will be held in Bangkok, Thailand in May, aimed at expanding the market for Myanmar films overseas, sources with the film industry circle said Friday.

Five movies will be screened in the Myanmar film festival scheduled for the second week of May, Director U Kyi Soe Tun, who is also Chairman of the Myanmar Motion Picture Organization, told Xinhua in an interview.

The films, all directed by Kyi Soe Tun himself, are titled "No Longer Slaves of Others", "Sacrificial Hearts", "The Upstream", " True Love" and "Hexagon".

Meanwhile, as part of its bid to penetrate the international film industry market, Myanmar entered Chinese film festivals with three Myanmar films during the last six years, namely, "Master of Flowers" screened in 2001, "The Hearts of the Givers" in September 2004's Yinchuan Film Festival and "Mystery of the Snow Story" in November 2005's Chinese Golden Rooster Hundred Flower Film Festival.

In 2004, Myanmar also introduced to Malaysian audience " Kyansittmin", a movie based on the life of the ancient Bagan era monarch King Kyansittha who reigned from 1084 to 1113.

To upgrade Myanmar film, Myanmar, in cooperation with Japan, jointly produced a film titled "Thway" (blood) and released in 2003.

To encourage Myanmar film production and bring up the quality, the Myanmar government presents yearly motion picture academy awards to successful artists and in December last year the government presented 11 such awards for 2004 out of 27 movies produced during the year.

Of the 11 film awards, "Mystery of the Snow Story" received the best film award. The film, which had been presented at film festivals held in Singapore, South Africa and China, was shot at a snow-capped mountain in northwestern Myanmar's Chin state. (Source: Xinhua)

UC libraries join Google's book scanning project

2006-08-10T01:02:00.000+07:00

From Yahoo News:

"UC joins three other major U.S. universities — Stanford, Michigan and Harvard — that are contributing their vast library collections to Google's crusade to ensure reams of knowledge written on paper makes the transition to the digital age. The New York Public Library and Oxford University also are allowing portions of their libraries to be scanned."

"The project is expected to last years and cost tens of millions of dollars — a bill that Google is footing. It's something Google can easily afford, given the nearly 8-year-old company has already amassed nearly $10 billion in cash."

On Google's library partners.

Chinese historical books online

2006-08-09T23:54:00.000+07:00

Apparently it is possible to buy hard to find items in Chinese historical bibliographies online. From Frog in a Well China blog:

"So after getting consumed in the twice weekly book market near 杜甫草堂 Du Fu’s Cottage soon after arriving in Chengdu earlier this year, I was pleasantly surprised that some random, non-linear meandering online brought me to a web resource that has been absolutely invaluable for discovering just what lies within those dusty piles. 孔夫子旧书网 Kongfz (http://www.kongfz.com/index.php) is a bit like Biblio with which many of you might be more familiar. The site claims to be: 全球最大的中文旧书网站 Its constantly growing database renders easily searchable the holdings of literally thousands of bookshops in all corners of the PRC, large and perhaps surprisingly minuscule. Indeed, what I found when I went looking for one of these ’shops’ in Chengdu was the owner and his brother having a quiet lunch in their sparsely furnished flat, while each room in the flat across the landing was overflowing with the books they had for sale. The booksellers themselves maintain their own online databases and many seem to add new books daily, as well as sell books daily, so there’s a bit of urgency sometimes to reserve what interests you the moment you see it as the next day it may already have been sold.

Most of the books on offer are out of print, published over the last two decades or so, (as print runs were generally quite small), but what’s available goes well beyond such more purely secondary sources. Many published collections of archival materials as well as 地方誌 both old and new and other collections of original materials are available for sometimes widely varying prices, as well as reprints of Qing or Republican era books. Among the items I’ve purchased was a 油印本 version of a book which original a certain library in Chengdu was only grudgingly willing to let me see, but certainly not photocopy or even photograph."

Bloodshed in warfare, Statistics

2006-08-09T10:20:00.000+07:00

Selected Death Tolls for Wars, Massacres and Atrocities Before the 20th Century

Casualty statistics for warfare and other forms of collective violence that may be useful for comparing intensity and casualty rates over geography and time.

Obtained from a syllabus for a anthropology of war class.

Area Studies: The challenges

2006-08-08T17:29:00.000+07:00

Area studies as an intellectual focus of scholarship, especially for those areas of the world enmeshed in longstanding conflicts, like the Middle East that the well-known blogger-scholar Juan Cole specializes in or Burma studies presents many challenges.

First of all, one must really approach area studies through one of the established disciplines such as history, political science, sociology, anthropology, or religious studies. Area studies departments themselves are usually virtual departments with no real faculty of their own. The area studies field exerts an influence on what is researched and published, comparisons between mainland and insular Southeast Asia being more common than comparisons with Yunnan or India, for instance, even though the later comparisons may be more germane. Ultimately, the topics and methodologies of research and the forum for publicaiton and peer review will discipline specific. History used to be the most important discipline in area studies but history's influence has been diluted by the post-WWII rise of the social sciences.

If you are European or Japanese or Australian or American scholar and you are writing the history of Southeast Asia, you face many challenges (or constraints if you want to phrase the challenge negatively, which I'd rather not do).

Someone writing the history of a given area of the world, who is not a member of this modern nation state, or ethnic group, must:

1. Maintain objectivity.

Increasingly difficult to do as subjects become politically polarized and academia questions the very idea of objective truth in postmodernism. Nonetheless, journalism and Wikipedia provide models.

2. Represent the interests of the area they are studying in a fair manner to the modern nation state they are a member of (without letting this advocacy reduce their historical scholarship to mere presentism).

3. Remain a loyal, yet critical, citizen of their nation state.

Imperative #2 can sometimes lead one to forget that everyone, including oneself is a citizen of some nation state, and that being a citizen of this state requires loyalty and even laying down one's life to defend it in times of war. These loyalties could obviously pose quite a dilemna sometimes.

I was struck by Juan Cole's Library of Americana Translation Project today. This is the right way to go. An area studies specialist will be familiar with the ways that America's history might be relevant to the area they specialize in, and will also know how to make its presentation politically sensitive.

I have taught in universities overseas for a long time, and while I was teaching and supervising, have been criticized by British and Australians for textbooks, that I didn't even choose, that had extensive references to American culture in them, usually pop culture though, so I have taken extraordinary pains to make my teaching material culturally neutral, but I have also realized that being too zealous in this regard can be viewed by some Americans as being anti-American which is hardly my belief or stance at all. I love my country and I am quite proud of its economic and political institutions, but having lived abroad for a long time, I feel that they are not always suitable in other cultures that differ from the west in important underlying ways.

Translation in the other direction from the area studied to English is not valued nearly enough by academia which valorizes secondary interpretations more. This is really a shame because translations would allow people in the west to familiarize themselves with cultures that are quite alien from theirs for themselves and make their own judgements about them.

3. Making their research relevant to the present.

Direct analogies between current events and the past are often deceiving, deceiving enough to have been labelled the presentist fallacy.

By addressing higher level intellectual categories that are relevant to both the present and the past, such as the notions of "state formation," "state collapse," "just war," or "endemic warfare" to name just a few, a more careful and exact analogies between the present and the past can be made.

Ming-Tai Relations (1369-1398)

2006-08-08T07:07:00.000+07:00

Ming-Tai Relations (1369-1398)

In Ming sources, one man dominates the early history of Ming-Tai frontier relations, the Tai leader Si Lun Fa. We will be looking closely at two of these sources, the Ming Shi-lu and the Bai-yi Zhuan. Most historical interpretations of the period accept the predominance of this Tai leader and what Ming sources have to say about him rather uncritically.

We will compare two possible reconstructions of his life and role in Tai resistance to the Ming conquest of Yunnan. The first reconstruction follows the Ming Shi-lu closely and casts him as a strong ruler of a unified state that often acted in a deceitful manner in the eyes of the Ming court. (role of punitive Ming exploitation?), The second reconstruction takes its cue from some of the observations of theMing envoys to the Tai frontier region who wrote the Bai-yi Zhuan travelogue/ethnography. It casts Si Lun-fa as a weak ruler of a fragmented state who was basically nominated by the Ming to rule as their minion or puppet in the Tai frontier region. Both reconstructions are admittedly extremes, the truth probably lying somewhere in between.

Does the fact that Upper Burma suffered from Tai raids during this time support the contention that the Tais of the frontier region worked together in a unified state? Evidence over the period 1350-1600 indicates that Tai states acted independently often drawing into temporary cooperative confederations and alliances for strength and solidarity (cite my paper). These confederations were fragile and usually only held together for short periods of time. Furthermore, the emergent Mon and southern Ayutthaya states also exhibit this decentralized nature.

The initial Ming attempts to win Yunnan over (1369-1380)

The first communications between the Ming dynasty and Yunnan were prescient of Yunnan’s future. Ritualistic language in formal letters of "instruction" signaled the beginning of Ming rule along the Tai-Yunnan-Burma frontier. Submission to the Ming was the next inevitable step in the cosmological order:

"From ancient times, those who have been lords of all under Heaven have looked on that which is covered by Heaven, that which is contained by the Earth and that on which the sun and moon shine, and regardless of whether the place was near or far, or what manner of people they are, there was no place for which they did not wish a peaceful land and a prosperous existence. It is natural that when China is governed peacefully, foreign countries would come and submit (來附)”…I am anxious that, as you are secluded in your distant places, you have not yet heard of my will. Thus, I am sending envoys to go and instruct you, so that you will all know of this" (14 Jul 1370, my italics).

The Mongol prince Balaswarmi, a remnant of the Yuan dynasty, ruled over Yunnan from the capital in Kunming. He ruled indirectly over an ethnically diverse collection of small polities and chieftainships in Yunnan. The most powerful of these states was controlled by the Tuan family who ruled over the area surrounding Dali (Cambridge History of China, vol. 7, p.143-44).

The Ming Shi-lu reports that envoys were sent to instruct the inhabitants of Yunnan in 1371 (MSL 8 Oct 1371). In 1372 the famous scholar Wang Wei offered terms of surrender to Yunnan as an envoy. The envoy Wang Wei was murdered in 1374 and another mission was sent in 1375. Once again the mission failed. A diplomatic mission was sent to Burma in 1374, but because Annam was at war with Champa the roads were blocked and the mission was recalled (MSL 1 Jan 1374). By 1380 the Ming were no longer wording their communications as if Yunnan was a separate country (Wade, 2004, 4). Initial gentle promptings were soon to be followed by military force.

The Ming invasion and conquest of Yunnan (1380-1383)

In 1380 the Ming emperor changed his policy towards Yunnan. In the founding of the previous Yuan dynasty, Yunnan’s location had been of strategic importance and now figured into Ming geopolitical strategy. The Yuan had conquered the Dali region in Yunnan in order to surround the Southern Song, the last remnants of the Song dynasty. Remnants of the Mongol Yuan dynasty now remained as a threat for the Ming:

"...the Mongols were still occupying the Mongolian Grassland, and could launch southern expeditions at any time they wished. More importantly, the Mongols still occupied Yunnan. If the Mongols attacked Ming China both from the north and from the southwest, the Ming court would have battles on two fronts. Therefore, in the 1370s, the Ming dynasty was facing a situation that was similar to what the Southern Song failed to cope with when Kublai Khan took over the Dali Kingdom. Such an international pattern pushed the Ming ruler to launch a campaign against Yunnan in order to avoid the fate of the Southern Song" (Bin Yang, 2004, Military Campaigns against Yunnan: A Global Analysis, National University of Singapore working paper, 51-52, 54).

Citing a precedent in the Han dynasty for tighter control, a military expedition was organized to conquer Yunnan:

"The Emperor thus ordered the various generals to select and deploy troops and gave them, in advance, cloth and paper money for their clothing needs. A total of 249,100 people were involved and they were provided with 344,390 bolts of cloth and over 408,980 ding of paper money" (MSL 20 Aug 1380).

In September 1381 Fu You-de was appointed commander of Yunnan expeditionary forces with Lan Yu and Mu Ying, well-hardened veterans of early Ming campaigns in the Mongol north, as his assistants. The expeditionary forces amounted to 300,000 troops and were split into a larger force and a smaller diversionary force. Yunnan was quickly taken:

"Fu Yu-te’s army reached Hu-kuang in October. In December he sent the smaller force to Yung-ning and Wu-sa, while he led the larger forces as planned into Yunnan. Balaswarmi sent 100,000 troops to guard Chu-ching, but Fu Yu-te and Mu Ying captured the enemy general and 20,000 of his troops. Fu Yu-te then quickly led a smaller force to aid the army at Wu-sa, while Lan Yu and Mu Ying hastened toward K’un-ming. On 6 January 1382, Balaswarmi, who had fled his city, burned his princely robes, drove his wife to her death in a lake and then committed suicide together with his chief ministers" (Cambridge Ming History, 144-46; Liew Foon Ming, 1986, 162-63; MSL 18 Sep 1381).

By February 1382 the Ming had extended its control over the area surrounding the capital of Yunnan at modern day Kunming and a further expedition was sent to Dali:

"...the Duan family had been semi-autonomous in the Dali area under the Yuan dynasty and thought this was a good opportunity to resume its former independent status. When Fu Youde wrote to ask the Duans to surrender, Duan Shi, the chief of the Duans, cited historical experience to legitimatize his claim of autonomy. He argued that the Dali area was a foreign kingdom during the Tang dynasty, and had been outside of the boundary demarcated by the jade axe during the Song period; furthermore, this region and its population were too small to be a prefecture of China, so there was no benefit for the Ming force to come, neither was there any loss if the Ming state gave up its military campaign. Duan Shi suggested that the Ming court follow the Tang and Song mode of management to rebuild a type of tribute relationship."

"Fu ignored this response and repeated his request. Duan was annoyed, and threatened the Ming generals in the second letter. He emphasized that the geographic and biological advantages for the military defense of Dali were so great that the Ming would likely repeat the disaster of previous Chinese expeditions. Fu was irritated and detained the Duan envoys. Duan Shi then wrote a third letter with a more 'arrogant' tone. Fu realized that a peaceful negotiation did not work, so he launched an attack. The Duan power was eventually destroyed" (Bin Yang, 2004, 52-3, citing as source: Fang, Guoyu (1998) Yunnan Shiliao Congkan (Series of Historical Documents on Yunnan), Kunming: Yunnandaxue Chubanshe, 13 Vols).

The family that had ruled over the Dali region was sent into exile at the Ming capital in Nanjing.

The powerful Tai ruler Si Lun-fa submits (1382)

A powerful Tai chieftain named Si Lun-fa ruled over an area along the Tai-Yunnan frontier which the Chinese called Pingmian:

"From Da-li in Yun-nan, one passes through Jin-chi and then arrives there…During the Yuan dynasty, it was regularly subordinate to Ava-Burma. They have walled towns with outlying suburbs, both containing buildings and houses. The people all live in multi-storied houses. Their products are elephants and horses. Both officials and the people shave their heads like monks. When coming or going, they ride on elephants. In the earlier dynasties, they did not have contact with China. It was only in the Yuan dynasty that an envoy was sent to pacify and instruct them and they came to offer tribute" (MSL 21 Aug 1384).

The political situation along the Tai-Yunnan frontier was chaotic and fragmented. Leadership passed hands frequently and often violently among members of the Tai ruling clans. In 1348-49 the Yuan general Da-shi-ba-du-lu was sent to subdue the Tai ruler Si Ke-fa who was aggressively raiding the domains of neighboring Tai chieftains. The Yuan general was not successful and Si Ke-fa continued his raids, sending his son Man-sa to the Yuan court to pay allegiance, but the court reported that "while he accepted the court’s calendar and offered tribute, his clothing, paraphernalia and systems remained like those of a king" (Wade, 1996, Bai-yi Zhuan, p. 1).

After Si Ke-fa’s death several members of the ruling clan held power for relatively short periods of time. First, leadership passed to Si Ke-fa’s son Zhao Bing-fa. After a relatively long eight year reign, Si Ke-fa’s other son Tai-bian assumed power. Tai-bian was murdered by his paternal uncle after only a year. The uncle, Zhao Xiao-fa, became ruler, but was in turn murdered by bandits just one year later. Si Wa-fa, the younger brother of Zhao Xiao-fa, assumed power. In the year following the pacification of Yunnan in 1382:

"Si Wa-fa attacked Jin-chi [modern-day Bao Shan]. During that winter Si Wa-fa hunted in Zhelan and Nan-dian. His subordinate Da-lu-fang and others abruptly established Si Lun-fa, the son of Man-sa, as ruler, and killed Si Wa-fa while he was away" (Wade’s Bai-yi Zhuan, p. 1, 11; compare MSL 11 Mar 1396 which has Si Lun-fa attack Jin-chi, Jing-dong, and Ding-bian).

Jin-chi had been established as a garrison to control the Tai-Yunnan frontier during the early Yuan dynasty (Wade, 1996, Bai-yi Zhuan, p. 1). Now it played a pivotal role as a staging point for expeditions into the frontier region. In 1382 when Si Lun-fa heard that Dali had been taken, he marched to Jinchi and quickly submitted to the Ming (Liew Foon Ming, 1996, 163). In April 1382 Pingmian was made into an indigenous autonomous region and Si Lun-fa was appointed governor there. In August 1384 Si Lun-fa sent a tribute mission to the Ming court in Nanjing under the leadership of Dao Ling-meng. The seal of authority issued to Pingmian by the previous Yuan court was surrendered and Pingmian was promoted to a higher level of indigenous autonomous region. In September the adjacent Tai state of Luchuan was merged with Pingmian and given to Si Lun-fa. During the Yuan dynasty, Luchuan and Pingmian had been ruled separately (MSL 14 Sep 1384, MSL 21 Aug 1384).

Coinciding with the Ming conquest of Yunnan of 1382, Tai raids on Burmese Ava to the south resumed in the early 1380’s. In 1383 Ava petitioned the Ming to intervene for them to halt the raids. The Ming court intervened on their behalf (Harvey, p. 85). Parker notes that ”the Ming history tells us that ‘in 1384 the appointment of Comforter of Mien chung was made, and as complaints had been made by the chieftain Pu-la-lang of attacks by Sz-lun-fah, a mission was sent to expostulate, and both sides suspended arms’” (Parker, p. 49). The Ming conquest of Yunnan in 1382 brought about other changes: “In 1382 Meng Yang was changed into a prefecture (fu) and two years later into a civilian and military suan-wei-shi paying commuted corvee dues at the rate of taels…750 per year” (Scott, Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States, Mohnyin, p. 346)

Razadarit ascended the throne of the southern Mon kingdom of Pegu in 1385. The ruler of Myaungmya tried to gain Ava’s support to overthrow Razadarit and this started a large-scale war that raged on and off between Upper and Lower Burma for several decades until 1425 (U Kala I: 438-439; Harvey, p. 82). Shan troop levies made by Ava from Shan states such as Mong Yang, Kale, and Yawnghwe formed a large part of Ava’s forces in these wars. Were these troop levies or war captives? These troop levies at least attest to the fact that some power was held by Ava over Tai states on the Tai-Yunnan frontier by this time.

In 1383 the initial conquest of Yunnan was brought to an end and the military commanders Fu You-de and Lan Yu were called back to the capital. Mu Ying was left as the hereditary military governor of Yunnan (Cambridge, 146) and Gao Zheng was stationed with troops at Chu-xiong (MSL 5 Feb 1384). Altogether 160 people were escorted back to the capital including two former officials of the Yuan court in Yunnan, Guan-yin-bao and Liu Che-che-bu-hua together with chieftains from Yunnan including one named Duan Shi. Those escorted back presented 170 horses to the Ming emperor and received paper money and clothing in return. Guan-yin-bao was appointed as commandant of Jin-chi and was given the name Li Guan (MSL 30 Mar 1383).

Steps were also taken to ensure a food supply for the large Chinese garrisons that remained in Yunnan after the campaigns. An envoy was sent from the Ming capital to Annam, in modern-day northern Vietnam, with a request for grain. Grain (5,000 shi) was sent to Shui-wei on the Lin-an border of Yunnan. The Annam ruler Pan, in a display of magnanimity, refused to accept the gifts of gold and silks sent by the Chinese court (MSL 5 Aug 1384). The provincial government of Yunnan used their salt monopoly to ensure that the supply of rice in Yunnan was adequate:

"Under the old precedents, merchants brought rice to Jin-chi [Baoshan] and for every dou, they were given one yin of salt. This was allowed to ensure grain supplies. Thus the merchants collected there and the supplies were more than sufficient. Later, officials did not allow the transport of grain and the merchants rarely went there. Thus, the troops now have no means of ration supply. It is requested that the old system be followed" (MSL 4 Feb 1386, my italics).

The "old precedent" of using salt for military rice procurement must have been effective in the early 1380’s when Ming forces had just newly arrived in Yunnan. The food supply in Yunnan was not sufficient to support the population increase that followed the establishment of Ming garrisons. Yunnan was endowed with a more than adequate salt supply though.

The Chinese court took measures to curb corruption. Chinese administrators who were appointed from outside Yunnan were provided with adequate means of support, so they didn’t have to resort to bribery which could have been a cause of resentment and rebellion among the local inhabitants:

"Those who have inherited posts have long lived in their territories and they have their own stores and means of livelihood. It is thus not necessary to provide them with salaries and allowances. Those who are appointed have generally come to sojourn (流寓) in these areas and because they have won the support of the local people we are employing them for a time. If we do not give them salaries, they will have no means of sustaining a livelihood. The law officials are more likely to accept bribes (MSL 2 Dec 1384).

By 1384 the Ming had established a modicum of control over Yunnan, a control that would soon be challenged by the Tai chieftain Si Lun-fa.

The gradual Ming conquest of the Tai-Yunnan frontier

After the Ming conquest of Yunnan, Tai leaders launched a series of counter-attacks against the Ming at Jin-chi, Jong-dong, and then Ding-bian (MSL 11 Mar 1396). An explicit chronology helps to untangle the complicated series of events that followed the conquest:

1382 - Conquest of Yunnan. Kunming taken.
1382 - Dali taken.
1382 - Tai chieftain Si Lun-fa submits at Jin-chi.
1383 - Jin-chi [Baoshan] attacked by Si Wa-fa.
1384 - Si Lun-fa’s tribute mission to the Ming court. Si Lun-fa is given extensive authority by the Ming over the Tai-Yunnan frontier.
1386/87 - Jing-dong attacked by Dao Si-lang
1386/87 - Ming counterattack defeated by Tai forces
1388 – Tai forces attack Moshale stockade
1388 – Ming counterattack. Tai leader Dao Si-lang defeated
1388 – Tai raids on Ding-bian
1388 – Ming defeat Tais in a decisive battle. Tai side flees towards Dingbian and Jingdong.
1388 – Si Lun-fa is captured and is forced to pay indemnity and join Ming forces in internal police actions against other defiant rulers in Yunnan.

The Ming Shi-lu and official Chinese history attributes these post-conquest conflicts to the actions of the most prominent Tai leader Si Lun-fa. There are clear indications in other sources though that subordinate Tai leaders often acted independently. This interpretation of independent action by secondary Tai states is consistent with the endemic warfare found in the Tai-Yunnan frontier during this period.

In January 1386 Tai forces attacked Ming controlled Jingdong and the newly appointed Jingdong governor E-tao fled to a place named Baiyai Chuan in Dali. After the Tais attacked Jingdong, the governor of Yunnan, Mu Ying, sent the official Feng Cheng to attack the Tai forces, but he was defeated, fog and bad weather playing a role in the defeat (MSL 2 Jan 1391; Liew Foon Ming, 1996, 165). Many of the Tai elite were still not under Si Lun-fa's control: "Zi-qing and other persons in Meng-hua Subprefecture still obstructed culture and would not submit. He thus proposed that these guards be established" (MSL 2 Jan 1391).

Following the humiliating defeat at Jingdong, the Chinese censor Li Yuanming was sent from the capital to Pingmian on the frontier to investigate the situation. Li Yuanming’s report displeased the emperor and in May 1387 claiming that he had been deceived by Si Lun-fa and the Tais and ordered military defences to be prepared and all communications to cease:

"Recently, the Censor Li Yuan-ming returned from Ping-mian. I have listened to his words and know of the deception and deceitfulness of the Bai-yi. Even in tens of thousands of their words, not one can be believed. I have observed that the man and the yi have rebelled and are watching, ready to make use of opportunities. They present a danger to our borders.”

“It is appropriate to build defences in the Jin-chi, Chu-xiong, Pin Dian, Lan-cang and Jiang-zhong circuits. They must have high walls and deep moats, firm palisades and many cannons for defence. When the yi come, they must not be fought with lightly, and deployment must be made as the situations dictate.”

“Last year, the central Yun-nan military commander sent people to the Bai-yi and these people demanded much property and goods. They did not consider the seriousness of the situation and, displaying their power, acted in a martial manner and ridiculed the various man. Also, because the Jing-jiang Prince was without abilities, the Da-li seal was used to issue orders. All of these acts were wrong and even insulting to the Emperor and embarrassing to the Court” (MSL 28 May 1387).

This imperial proclamation makes two assumptions which may not have have held in practice. First, that there was centralized and coordinated control and action among the leaders of the Tai frontier states. Second, it assumes that Ming intentions and expectations about the behavior of Tai states and leaders had been completely communicated from the Ming center to Tai leaders on the periphery. The emperor decides on diplomatic isolation as a solution:

“From now on, no-one is permitted to go to Ping-mian. It should be treated with coolness. If it sends a despatch, a brief response is to be made, but if it does not send any despatches, no actions are to be initiated. If they send tribute products, they are not to be received. Then in a few years, the territory of Lu-chuan will be included on the maps as part of the Empire. Ministers, you must firmly observe my words and must not be remiss in this!" (MSL 28 May 1387).

In the wake of this diplomatic isolation in February 1388, Tai forces attacked and took Mo-sha-le stockade in Malang-talang dian chieftainship, a position of strategic importance along the frontier (in modern-day Xinping, Eshan Yizu or Xinhua). Mu Ying sent Ning Zheng to uproot the Tais. Under the leadership of Dao Si-lang, the Tais gathered over 100,000 soldiers and 100 elephants, but were overwhelmed by the Chinese who killed over 1,500, including two generals, and seized Tai elephants and horses. The remaining troops fled (MSL 3 Jun 1396, MSL 13 Feb 1388, Cambridge; Liew Foon Ming, 1996, 165). After the defeat at Mo-sha-le stockade repeated raids were made on Ding-bian in Chu-xiong prefecture:

"The Xi-ping Marquis Mu Ying punished Si Lun-fa of the Bai-yi and pacified him. At this time, Si Lun-fa had raised a force of 300,000 men and over 100 elephants and had repeatedly attacked Ding-bian. He wanted to gain revenge for the Mo-sha-le campaign and his force was extremely violent. The newly-attached man and yi secretly formed alliances and they all had rebellious inclinations” (MSL 6 May 1388)."

There is evidence that the Tai leader Diao Si-lang acted independently from Si Lun-fa in waging this attack against Dingbian. Two passages from the Bai-yi Zhuan, a late-fourteenth century travel diary of a Ming diplomatic mission travelling through the Tai-Yunnan frontier, support this interpretation:

"In the bing-yin year [1386/87], they again [Tai forces] attacked Jing-dong. The following year, a subordinate named Diao Si-lang attacked Ding-bian. The Son of Heaven ordered the Xi-ping Marquis Mu Ying to take on command of the troops and destroy him. Diao Si-lang was captured and the Yi people submitted through fear…” (Wade, Bai-yi Zhuan, p. 2)."

"…Dao Si-lang did not obey your commands [the emperor] and plundered Ding-bian. While you were unable to bring an end to those hostilities, Heaven provided majesty to our border commanders and thereby Dao Silang and the others were immediately exterminated” (Wade, Bai-yi Zhuan, p. 11)"

Which Tai leaders were individually or collectively responsible for Tai military actions in the period following the Ming conquest (1382-1388) is not entirely clear, but by 1388 different Tai chieftains who may have been acting independently in the past are joining together into a centralized and more coordinated confederation. Along the lines of the Di Cosmo-Andreski model of state formation (see Fernquest, 2005b, 373-377) in the face of a rising crisis, the Tai-frontier is moving from a segmentary decentralized state to a more unified state.

A large Ming punitive expedition to the Tai-Yunnan frontier (1388)

In the period after the Ming conquest of Yunnan (1382-1388), Tai attacks on Ming frontier outposts eventually led to a large-scale Ming punitive expedition. The governor of Yunnan, Mu Ying, was ordered to punish the Tai leader Si Lun-fa and a military training mission was sent to Yunnan. To ensure an adequate food supply for the large expedition, an official was sent to Sichuan with 32,000 ding of paper money to purchase 10,000 head of ploughing buffalo. State farms and grain stores were to be set up in Yunnan to provide a food supply for the increased troops in Yunnan (MSL 1 Oct 1387). Local rulers loyal to the Ming asked for troop reinforcements (MSL 6 Jul 1387). With a cavalry of 30,000 Mu Ying marched towards Dingbian on the Tai frontier. Arriving near the Tai encampment after 15 days, he built defensive fortifications for battle. The Ming Shi-lu relates:

“First 300 light cavalrymen were sent to provoke them [the Tais]. The Bai-yi [Tais] met them with 10,000 men and 30 vanguard elephants to do battle. Zhang Yin, commander of the Yun-nan Forward Guard, led 50-plus cavalrymen as a vanguard, while the chieftains, astride their huge elephants, proceeded forward. Our army let fly with their arrows and these hit an elephant in the left knee and the ribs. The elephant fell to the ground and the chieftain was also hit, but fled. He was pursued and killed with arrows. Then, with great screams, the troops rushed forward and hundreds of heads were taken. The army took advantage of the victory and proceeded forward with a great uproar. The bandit forces thus drew back” (MSL 6 May 1388).

The next morning Mu Ying brought his generals and aides together and addressed them to spur them into battle and brought a special repeating crossbow weapon into the battle:

“[Mu Ying] issued orders to the army to set up guns and 'mystical-mechanism arrows' (神機箭) in three lines within the ranks. Then when the elephants advanced, the front line of guns was to fire its arrows. If the elephants did not retreat, the second line was to fire off its arrows. If the elephants still did not fall back, the third line was to fire its arrows” (MSL 6 May 1388)

The Ming Shi-lu describes the Tai battle array:

“[The Tais] came out of their camp and joined ranks to meet them. The chieftains, local commanders and the zhao-gang all rode on elephants. The elephants were all armoured and on their backs they bore a battle-turret like a parapet, while bamboo tubes hung on the two sides. Short lances were placed between these prepared for attacks. When the forces were about to meet, the massed elephants rushed forward. Our army attacked them and fired off arrows and stones. The sound shook the mountains and valleys and the elephants, shaking with fear, fled” (MSL 6 May 1388)

The Ming forces pursued the Tai forces right up to their stockade and lit the stockade on fire. The Ming Shi-lu describes how discipline increased the intensity of battle:

“From a high vantage point Mu Ying saw that the left force of our army had retreated a little. He thus sent urgent orders that the force commander be beheaded. The force commander was thus frightened and roused and, with a yell, rushed into the fray. The troops followed him and each was worth 100 men” (MSL 6 May 1388).

There were heavy casualties among the defeated Tai forces:

“the bandits' most valiant and powerful fighter was called Xi-la-zhe and he led their troops in fighting to the death…Over 30,000 heads were taken and over 10,000 men were taken prisoner. More than half of the elephants were killed and 37 were taken alive. The remaining bandits all fled. Our army pursued and attacked them, the bandits were unable to eat for days on end, and their corpses were found lying side by side. Si Lun-fa fled” (MSL 6 May 1388).

Mu Ying sent word of the victory to the capital and led his troops back.

The Pursuit

The defeated Tai forces retreated to Jing-dong and Ding-bian and Mu Ying received instructions from the Ming capital to move against them:

"Your report has recently been received and it is known that you have destroyed the Bai-yi [Tais] and that Si Lun-fa has fled. You are now to move the troops and exert gradual pressure on Jing-dong. However, the yi are by nature obstinate and barbaric. If they do not accept guilt and offer to surrender, they will indeed engage in more intrusive attacks” (MSL 25 May 1388).

Particular attention was again paid to ensuring an adequate food supply to support the soldiers on the expedition:

“Ding-bian is distant from the Yun-nan lake by at least 10 days by slow march. If the troops proceed there at a fast march, they will find it difficult to do battle. You should ensure security, state farms should be opened up, and firm walls should be erected so that battle can be done with them. When the Great Army is collected and ready, the advance should begin” (MSL 25 May 1388).

Mu Ying was also instructed to give the Tai leaders the option of paying an indemnity if they wished to surrender:

“If they want to offer tribute and request that the troops be withdrawn, you should instruct them in the Great Precepts of Right Conduct, require them to repay the funds (Alt: food) we have expended and have them present to the Court 15,000 horses and the troops who were killed in Jing-dong. They are also to be instructed to offer as tribute 500 elephants, 30,000 buffalo and 300 elephant attendants. If they listen to orders and offer tribute in the amounts specified, their request to surrender should be allowed” (MSL 25 May 1388).

The Tai leader Si Lun-fa sent a mission to Kunming to submit to the Ming, but blamed two other Tai leaders for the military actions against the Ming:

“Then he [Si Lun-fa] sent his local commanders and pacifiers to Yun-nan [Kun-ming] to advise that plans for rebellion in the past had not been his, and rather had been hatched by his subordinates Dao Si-lang and Dao Si-yang. He requested that his crimes be forgiven and advised willingness to offer tribute.”

Mu Ying sent word of the Tai submission to the capital and an official named Da-yong was sent to deal with the matter. The envoy carried with him a message for Si Lun-fa from the emperor. Si Lun-fa’s domain, Luchuan was seen as a distant and strange place:

"…Lu-chuan is secluded in the South-west, 10,000 li in the distance. It is not in China's maps. Why is Lu-chuan alone like this? Like in Yun-nan's territory, the roads are precipitous, the people make their lairs on cliffs and have to drink their water from the springs and rivers below. They have animal form and yi appearance and their ways are lacking in moral principles.”

The emperor relates the history of the Ming conquest of Yunnan and compares the intransigence of the Tai leader with the “Liang Prince”, the former Mongol-Yuan ruler of Yunnan, Balaswarmi.

“Only you, Si Lun-fa, have imitated and surpassed the Liang Prince. You have taken in our fugitives and have done so for several years. The Jin-chi and Jing-dong campaigns resulted from your actions. I said that you sought more people and wanted to expand your territory, that you wanted to challenge China and it was thus that you dared to create trouble. Therefore I ordered the skilled generals to lead their troops to establish camps and fields where they could both plant crops and protect our territory” (MSL 28 Nov 1389).

The emperor admits that he is not certain that Si Lun-fa was completely in control of the Tai forces that attacked the Ming:

“Now, you have come and claimed that the previous violations on the border were not your doing but rather the acts of Dao Si-lang and so on. I have not examined whether this is so or not” (MSL 28 Nov 1389).

He could be wrong in attributing all the Tai attacks to Si Lun-fa, but he demands that Si Lun-fa pay an indemnity to “assuage the anger of the various generals.” The emperor also demands that Si Lun-fa join with Chinese forces in an expedition against a rebellious Yunnan leader named Zhi-chun.

An alternative interpretation to the traditional interpretation of these events that closely follows the Ming Shi-lu is possible, namely that Si Lun-fa was basically the Chinese emperor’s agent among a Tai leadership that lacked unity and coordination. Ming officials misunderstood the nature of political control in the Tai-Yunnan frontier region, attributing to Si Lun-fa the leadership of a centralized, unified state, and in the end through their support, Si Lun-fa effectively became their agent in the frontier region.

Around 1390 there was an incident that casts in bold relief the different Tai versus Chinese views of gift giving. In 1389-90 the Chinese court appointed an official to deliver credentials and orders of instruction to Luchuan-Lingmian. When he arrived, they presented him with gifts including gold which he refused. According to the Ming Annals, he was told by the Tai "if you do not accept this display of kindness, the man [babrabarian] people may well harbour suspicion and engage in rebellion. It is better to accept the presents," but he quickly handed them over to the Yunnan provincial administration. Following his successful mission, when he returned to the capital he was promoted to his new post (MSL 16 Oct 1390). In 1390 Si-Lun-fa again sent a tribute mission to the capital (MSL 26 Oct 1390). Two garrisons were established in Jing-dong and Meng-hua around 1391 (MSL 2 Jan 1391).

Failed Ming attempts at intervention on the Tai-Yunnan frontier (1390’s)

To recap, after the Ming conquest of Yunnan, intermittent fighting continued along the Tai-Yunnan frontier from 1382 until the major Ming expedition of 1388. In the wake of this large expedition, Tai raids changed direction to the south attacking Ava. These attacks escalated once again in the early 1390’s as they had done during the period of crisis at Ava from 1359 to 1368.

In 1393 Mong Yang attacked Ava territory and the ruler of Legaing [Minbu] led troops against them, but was driven back to Sagaing. Tai forces laid siege to Sagaing, burning buildings, and surrounding the town walls, but Thilawa, ruler of Yamethin to the south of Ava, led troops to Sagaing ending the siege. Thilawa drove the Tai attackers off as far as Shangon, 20 miles to the northwest of Sagaing, were he defeated them in battle (U Kala I: 458-461; Harvey, p.85)

In 1395 Ava sent a mission to the Ming court seeking their support and asking Ming envoys to mediate. In response the Ming established the “Mianzhong” pacification commission at Ava (Sun Lai Chen dissertation, p. 79, 234, citing Chen Yi-sein, “Ming-chu de Zhong Mian guanxi” 2 (1969):14-19, 27, 29; a later Ming geographical treatise provides support for this claiming that in 1393 a tribute mission from Ava was sent to the Ming capital led by “the Burmese chieftain Nansu” and in 1393 the Burmese chieftain “Pulalang” [Minkyiswasawke] was appointed the “Pacification Commissioner” (Liew Foon Ming, 2003, pp. 162, 158, citing Gu Zuyi (1631-1692; reprint 1993) “Du shi fangyu jiyao gaoben,” Shanghai: Guji Chubanshe).

A Ming mission to Burma: An attempt to end the Tai incursions (1396)

Continuing the long succession of missions that had been sent from the Ming capital to the Tai-Yunnan frontier, Li Si-cong and Qian Gu-xun were sent in 1396 on a much longer mission to Burmese Ava and the Tai-Yunnan frontier. At the end of their mission in 1497, Li Si-cong and Qian Gu-xun wrote the now famous account of life in the Tai frontier region, the Baiyi Zhuan, essentially an ethnography or travelogue of their journey. The mission was sent to put an end to warfare in the frontier zone (MSL 11 Mar 1396). Ava had been “engaged in armed conflict” with the Tai for several years and in the winter of 1395-96 Ava made a formal complaint to the Ming court (Wade, 1996, Bai-yi Zhuan, p. 8). There were raids against other locations besides Ava as well, as evidenced in the Ming emperor’s admonitions:

“You should be punished for the crime of taking advantage of weakness to attack an isolated state. Why is this so said? Every year you have used troops in attacking Che-li [Sipsongpanna] and in frequently invading and plundering Ba-bai [Lan Na]. You have also relied on your strength to attack Burma [Ava] and Jia-li [Kale]. They are small states and their people few and now you have taken them” (MSL 11 Mar 1396).

The Bai-yi Zhuan portrays Tai leadership as less unified than the Ming Shi-lu does. Unlike official histories such as the Ming Shi or Ming Shi-lu, the Bai-yi Zhuan was composed on the scene, right on the Tai-Yunnan frontier by the envoys themselves who must have actually talked to the very historical actors who had participated in the Tai-Ming warfare of the 1380’s. The emperor wrote long messages of instruction to both the rulers of Burma and Si Lun-fa for the envoys to take with them on their journey. The imperial message to the Burmese king of Ava describes the distance and separation between the Chinese capital and Burmese Ava quite poetically:

"The roads are long and dangerous, the mountains and rivers present great obstacles and your customs and practices are different. These situations were created by Heaven and fixed by Earth. You have been diligent in sending an envoy on the long and dangerous journey, to cross neighbouring states, to rush through mist and push through fog, to push onward at dawn and not rest till dusk, and to suffer the wind and the cold until he reached China. It is indeed a difficult journey. The ancients had a saying: `When a superior man wishes to undertake some matter at a distant place, even though it be more than a thousand li away, spirit will communicate and intent will be understood.' Now, from 10,000 li distant, you have diligently sent an envoy over such a distance. This demonstration of worthiness would have been extraordinary in the past, and is quite singular today” (MSL 11 Mar 1396).

The Ming emperor envisaged a state of peace between the Burmese and Tais:

“…bring an end to the problems, allowing both sides to be done with warfare, so as to preserve your people's happiness both in the towns and throughout the countryside. The people of your two countries, although living in their separate places, could live in peace with nothing more required than the maintenance of careful inspections at the border passes and markets” (MSL 11 Mar 1396).

The message of instruction that the Ming emperor presented to Si Lun-fa outlined nine kinds of punitive military expedition in Chinese political traditions and finds Si Lun-fa guilty of violating one of them:

“You, Si Lun-fa, are subject to these nine punitive expeditions. You should be punished for the crime of taking advantage of weakness to attack an isolated state. Why is this so said? Every year you have used troops in attacking Che-li and in frequently invading and plundering Ba-bai. You have also relied on your strength to attack Burma and Jia-li. They are small states and their people few and now you have taken them. As for China, its territory extends to the yi in the four directions, and its lands adjoin the territories of the various chieftains and headmen. However, I have never taken advantage of my strength to oppress or bully them or to eliminate their heirs…”

“…You errant fools in Lu-chuan first, without authority, mobilized troops for a campaign against Jin-chi, then made plans to seize Jing-dong and subsequently pillaged Ding-bian. Reason would have permitted me to despatch troops to punish you, but I did not take up this option and did not contest with you. I have not forced you into becoming an obedient state and have allowed you to follow your own devices. This has been so for several years. Recently, I have heard that you have foolishly aggressed against your neighbouring states, with the intention of expanding your territory and illegally gaining more people. Also, you plan to attack our South-west. Verily, this cannot be permitted!”

“The ancient Chinese sages said: `The rivers and mountains, land, territory and the people all inhere in the Imperial throne. They are not things man can possess by force. They can be acquired only through Heaven's bestowal.' You, Si Lun-fa have not maintained good relations with your neighbours, and instead have sent troops in three directions, stupidly annexing other states. Such is your greed and your plotting. The states surrounding Lu-chuan have, from ancient times until now, all had their own rulers. They have never been united. Even if I am unable to stop you acting as you wish, the Way of Heaven will surely achieve that end. However, if you respond in a sensible way, you may still come out alright. But I now warn you to content yourself with what you have at present. If you are not satisfied with what you have at present and move to take more, then you will either lose everything or perish. Thus, would it not be best to just look after that which you have at present?" (MSL 11 Mar 1396).

According to the Ming Annals, on hearing the orders, Si Lun-fa was frightened and quickly agreed to withdraw his troops. At about this time one of Si Lun-fa’s subordinate chiefs Dao Gan-meng rebelled. Si Lun-fa believed that he could use the envoy from the Ming court, Si-cong, to force their submission, so he wouldn’t let him leave and presented him with elephants, horses, gold and precious stones as presents, but Si-cong refused the gifts, rebuffed Si Lun-fa, and asked to be released:

"China does not consider elephants, horses, gold and jade as valuables; what it values is only loyal subjects, noble statesmen, strong soldiers, gallant generals, filial sons and obedient grandsons. You should send us envoys back to the Court and in future should not engage in raiding and trouble-making. Thus will you be showing your spirit as a loyal prince" (MSL 11 Mar 1396).

Si Lun-fa invited Si-cong to a feast and afterwards had them escorted to the border. On his return to the capital, the Emperor was impressed with the work of the envoys and presented them with gifts as a token of his esteem (MSL 11 Mar 1396).

Si Lun-fa deposed by a rival Tai leader (1397)

A year before the first Ming emperor died in 1398, the Tai-Yunnan frontier descends into chaos. After the Ming envoys return to the capital, Si Lun-fa welcomes more outsiders into his domains and his control over the frontier erodes even further. First, he plays host to itinerant Buddhist monks:

“Initially, the people in Ping-mian did not believe in Buddhism. A monk went there from Yun-nan and spoke well about the effects of one's actions in successive lives [karma] . Si Lun-fa placed great trust in his words” (MSL 10 Oct 1397).

Next, fascinated by their mastery over military technologies, Si Lun-fa plays host to renegade Chinese soldiers:

“Also some border troops from Jin-chi fled to his territory. They were familiar with cannons (火砲) and guns (火銃). Si Lun-fa was pleased with their abilities. Thus he gave them gold belts and, with the monk, placed them above the various tribes” (MSL 10 Oct 1397).

Welcoming outsiders and giving them higher status than members of his own court like this, led to enmity and fissions among the Tai leaders surrounding him. In the face of his decreasing power, Si Lun-fa was forced to flee and seek Chinese protection. Dao Gan-meng was the leader of the faction that eventually seized power:

“Dao Gan-meng hated them [the outsiders] and thus, together with his subordinates, rebelled. He then led his troops to attack Teng-chong Prefecture. Si Lun-fa, afraid of Gan-meng's power, fled to Yun-nan and the Xi-ping Marquis Mu Chun sent him to the [Ming] capital” (MSL 10 Oct 1397).

When Si Lun-fa arrived at the Ming capital, the emperor sympathized with him and made military appointments to support him against Dao Gan-meng. The emperor was concerned that the proper steps be taken to thwart the power of Dao Gan-meng:

"A guard will be established at Teng-chong to monitor the situation. Wei-yuan and Yuan-gan have already come to the allegiance of the Court and other places are heeding orders. Thus, the force of Dao Gan-meng's rebellion is growing increasingly less and an increasing number of his supporters are coming to allegiance. Your return to your country can only be a matter of days. However, if the advance is made without caution and Dao Gan-meng's power is still substantial, his supporters in the country will not dare oppose him. Then the territory will never be yours” (MSL 14 Dec 1397)

Si Lun-fa was finally sent back to Yunnan with “one hundred liang of gold, 150 liang of silver and 500 ding of paper money” and a good upbraiding from the emperor. The emperor invokes the natural order once again in his words of admonition as he sends Si Lun-fa on his journey:

"In ancient times, there was a saying: `Find pleasure in that which the people find pleasure in, and hate that which the people hate.' This was said to those who look after the people, and meant that where the people's hearts lie, there also lie the principles of Heaven. Those who are good at ruling the people must seek the people's feelings. Now you, Si Lun-fa, are head of the region of Ping-mian. However, you became divorced from the likes and dislikes of the people. The people under you could not tolerate this and thus you fled to us. I know that your ancestors benefitted the people for generations and thus the people appointed you. However, when you lost the people's support, you turned your back on your country and your ancestor's graves, left your relatives and came here. If you long remain here and do not return, the territory will no longer be yours. However, you must recognize that right and wrong are always clear and Heaven's punishment is always correct. Generals have been sent to punish the crimes of Dao Gan-meng and thus I am ordering you to return to your old state" (MSL 15 Jan 1398).

Blamed for not looking out for the interests of his people, Si Lun-fa seems more the victim of a “unite [under one leader] and conquer” strategy than the “divide and conquer” strategy that historians usually claim to have been the most important strategy used in outside rule (Burmese, Chinese) over Tai socieities. In hindsight, the interests of the Ming emperor and Si Lun-fa’s Tai subjects were irreconcilable and pressed in these two opposing directions, Si Lun-fa met his downfall. Ironically, his loyalty to the Ming emperor sorely tested his allegiance to his own people.

Instructions were also given to a Chinese official, the Xi-ping Marquis Mu Chun to escort Si Lun-fa back to Yunnan and to support him militarily. Nowadays, we might call such an attempt to support the rule of a ruler who had lost his legitimacy, a puppet government.

Dao Gan-meng was quick to seek legitimacy from the Ming. He sent an envoy to Mu Chun requesting permission to offer tribute and before a reply was even received, the rebel leader “sent people with local products and requested that he be appointed as native official. He was then attacked by Dao De-nong of Da-dian. As he was unable to withstand the attack, he sent advice and sought permission to send a memorial to the Court. Chun allowed this” (MSL 15 Jan 1398). Dao Gan-meng’s power was short-lived, already challenged by other Tai leader’s in Si Lun-fa’s clan:

“Hu-du of Si Lun-fa's tribe, has occupied Teng-chong and Nu-jiang, as well as Jing-dong, Yi-wai and Wei-yuan, and all these places have inclined to culture and allied themselves with the Court. Dao Gan-meng is afraid of being attacked and he wants to use the Court's might to repel Hu-du. His claimed desire to come and offer tribute should not, I fear, be too readily believed. The troops which we were ordered to assemble now await deployment" (MSL 11 Mar 1398 - a ).

The emperor, once again interpreted Tai military actions in terms of deceit, rather than an inherent feature of a Tai segmentary state system lacking central-unified order and was willing to allow Dao Gan-ming to submit and offer tribute, if he did so in good faith and followed Chinese traditions in the matter:

"The distant yi are indeed guileful and deceitful. However, I am leniently allowing the request to see if he will change. Those routes occupied by Hu-du you should pacify and instruct as the situations dictate. If Dao Gan-ming is being deceitful, you should make careful preparations and then punish him. Do not lose the opportunity." (MSL 11 Mar 1398).

The reinstatement of Si Lun-fa (1398)

Mu Chun provided a military escort for Si Lun-fa back to Yunnan. Mu Chun stayed with Si Lun-fa in Jinchi and sent a force of 5,000 to attack Dao Gan-meng:

“Fu and so on crossed the Gao-liang-gong Mountains and directly attacked Nan Dian, greatly destroying it and killing the chieftain Dao Ming-meng, and killing or capturing a large number of people. They then took the troops back to attack Jing-han Stockade, but the stockade, relying on its high and dangerous location, held out and did not fall. As the government troops' grain and weapons were nearly depleted and the bandits' strength was growing, he sent a messenger to urgently advise Chun of the emergency.”

“Chun led 500 cavalrymen to relieve them. Taking advantage of the night, they moved to Nu-jiang and the following morning proceeded directly there. He ordered the cavalrymen to gallop to below the stockade and raise dust to scare them. The bandits in their high position saw the dust clouds rising to Heaven and, having not expected the troops of the Great Army to arrive, were greatly shocked and frightened. Thus, they led their troops in surrender. Chun took advantage of the victory to also attack Kong-dong Stockade. The bandits there fled by night” (11 Mar 1398 – b).

Mu Chun died of an illness and the official who replaced him (He Fu) was able to capture Dao Gan-meng and install Si Lun-fa as the ruler once again, however Si Lun-fa died a year later. No cause for his death is given.

In 1399 the ruler of Burmese Ava, Minkyiswasawke, placed an inscription in Toungoo “commemorating his reunification of Burma and saving the country from destruction and invasion” (Bennett, L. 795, B. II, pp. 958-59, cited in p. 25, “L” meaning Duroiselle’s list of inscriptions and “B” meaning “Inscriptions copied from the stones collected by King Bodawpaya”).

At the death of the founding Ming emperor in 1398 the Ming empire was racked by a succession struggle and political instability that was only resolved in 1402 with the accession of the Yung-le emperor (Cambridge History of China, v. 7, Ming Dynasty, pp. 184-204). The expansionist warfare of this emperor into northern Vietnam adjacent to Yunnan would change the historical trajectory of the Tai-Yunnan frontier and Burmese Ava once again.

After almost 20 years of failure in their governance over the Tai-Yunnan frontier officials at the Ming court must have had second thoughts about raising one Tai leader over all the others, so they partitioned the territory of Si Lun-fa’s Luchuan into three pieces which were to become known as the the “three fu’s”: Meng Yang [Mong Yang], Mu Bang [Hsenwi], and Meng Ting. Four smaller Chieftain Commissions, Lujiang, Ganyai, Dahou, and Wandian, were also established under the Jinchi garrison (Sun Lai Chen dissertation, p. 233 citing Jiang Yingliang, Daizu Shi, p. 244 and Chen Yi-sein, “Mingchu de Zhong Mian guanxi," 2 (1969): 15, 20; Liew Foon Ming, 1996, p. 165, footnote 11).

Wikipedia entry for Baña Thau

2006-08-04T15:49:00.000+07:00

Just about finished with a wikipedia entry for the famous Mon queen Baña Thau. I used every source that I know of and backed up every piece of information with citations. Yet, there's still the possibility that a scholar of Mon history will take exception with this Wikipedia article.

The beauty of Wikipedia is that other people can change the article, adding and revising information, if they want. I'm trying to make this entry better than anything in print, yet it isn't the original research that Wikipedia forbids because it only pieces together information from published sources and refrains from interpreting this information. Singer's article on Baña Thau adds a lot of his own interpretations, which is fine, but what I'm seeking here is to get the known facts straight.

Of course, there are probably incommensurable differences between the strictly historical and some interpretations that border on religious beliefs about Baña Thau. Some interpretations seem to go beyond reasonable historical evidence, a sort of folk history that has to be accepted on faith.

In Maesai, Chiang Rai, where I live, there's a similar situation nowadays with a Shan monk on the Burma side who is said to have the power of levitation and flight. Everyone is free to believe or not believe in his powers, I don't think I do, but it seems to fall outside the realm of objective history acceptable to a wide cross-section of people outside the culture. Hope I'm not being insensitive. I believe in the etic as well as emic.

Baña Thau

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(Redirected from Baña Thau (Mon Queen))

Baña Thau is the Mon name for the queen who ruled for around seventeen peaceful years (1453-1470 or 72) over a Mon kingdom in Lower Burma [1]. In the Burmese language, she is famous as Queen Shin Sawbu.

Queen Baña Thau and Queen Camadevi of Haripunjaya were the only two queens to have ruled in mainland Southeast Asia [2] Baña Thau's reign began a 50 year period of peace between Burman Ava in Upper Burma and Mon Pegu in Lower Burma.

Baña Thau was the only daughter of the Mon King Rajadhirat who had two sons as well. At birth she was given the name Viharadevi which means "Divinity of the monastery" in Pali. She married and had children in her early life at the capital of the Mon kingdom at Pegu.

Contents
1 Residence at Ava (1423-30)
2 Reign at Pegu (1453-60)
3 Reign at Dagon (1460-1470 or 72)
4 Stone Inscriptions
5 Mon folk traditions
6 Dispute over how many years Banya Thau reigned
7 Palace and burial locations
8 References
9 Notes
10 External Links

Residence at Ava (1423-30)

Baña Thau was sent north and resided at the court of Ava for many years. This state of affairs came about in the following manner. At the time, Shin Sawbu's brother ruled over Pegu as King Banya Ram I [Burmese: Binnyaran]. Initially, Toungoo and Pegu entered a marriage alliance with the ruler of Toungoo who gave the king of Pegu his daughter in exchange for Pegu's help in winning the throne of Ava.

Toungoo and Pegu laid siege to Prome. Pegu finally made a truce with Ava in which Shin Sawbu was given to the king of Ava and Mohnginthade, a princess of Ava, was sent south to marry Banya Ram I at Pegu. [3] When Banya Thau was sent to Ava she was 29 years old, a widow and a mother with a son and two daughters. During the time she resided at Ava, Baña Thau did not have any additional children. [4]

In 1430, after seven years of living at Ava, at the age of 36, Baña Thau escaped with the help of her Mon monk preceptors Dhammanyana and Pitakahara and returned to Pegu accompanied by them . [5]

Reign at Pegu (1453-60)

All members of Pegu's male line to the throne having been exhausted, Baña Thau ascended the throne as queen in 1453. Two of her brothers, Binnyadammayaza and Banya Ram I, and one of her sons, Binnyawaru, had already ruled as kings of Pegu. [6].

In 1457, shortly after ascending the throne, the Buddhist world celebrated the two thousandth anniversary of the Buddha's Paranirvana which in Southeast Asia is dated to the year 543 B.C.

After ruling Pegu for around seven years, in 1460 Baña Thau decided to abdicate and move from Pegu to Dagon where she could lead a life of religious devotion next to the Shwedagon pagoda [7].

Baña Thau chose a monk to succeed her on the throne of Pegu. The monk Pitakahara, who had helped her escape from Ava, left the sangha, was given the titles Punnaraja and Dhammaceti, and became Baña Thau's son-in-law and a suitable heir to the throne by marrying her younger daughter Mipakathin. [8]

Reign at Dagon (1460-1470 or 72)

Baña Thau lived in Dagon next to the Shwedagon pagoda until the end of her life in 1470 or 1472. [9] Even after she moved to Dagon she is said to have still worn a crown. [10]

The actually handing over of power from Queen Baña Thau to Dhammaceti, who became king under the title Ramadhipati in the year 1457, is commemorated in an inscription written in the Mon language. [11]

In Dagon, Baña Thau devoted her time and attention to the Shwedagon pagoda, enlarging the platform around the pagoda, paving it with stones and placing stone posts and lamps around the outside of the pagoda. She extended the glebe lands supporting the pagoda to Danok. [12] Almost everything that Baña Thau did, she did in multiples of four:

"There were four white umbrellas, four golden alms-bowls, four earthenware vessels, and four offerings were made each day. There were twenty-seven men who prepared the lamps each day. There were twenty men as guardians of the pagoda treasury. There were four goldsmith's shops, four orchestras, four drums, four sheds, eight doorkeepers, four sweepers, and twenty lamp lighters. She built round and strengthened the sevenfold wall. Between the walls Her Majesty Banya Thau had them plant palmyra and coconut trees." [13]

She also had her own weight in gold (25 viss) beaten out into gold leaf and covered the Shwedagon pagoda with this gold leaf. The inhabitants of Dagon donated 5,000 viss of bronze to the pagoda. [14]

Stone Inscriptions

Three inscriptions in stone have been found from Baña Thau's reign.

The first inscription known as Kyaikmaraw I commemorates a land dedication. On 25 September 1455 the queen dedicated land to the Kyaikmaraw pagoda that she had built. The inscription records that jewels, precious objects, and the revenues of a place named "Tko' Mbon" were given to the Moh Smin [Royal Promontory] pagoda at Myatheindan near Martaban. The second part of the inscription provides benedictions for those coming to pay their respects to the pagoda and makes many references to Buddhist scripture. The third part of the inscription outlines the torments of hell. The inscription is rich in linguistic, religious, and historical information with Burmese linguistic influences and the word "caw" or "chao" meaning "lord" from a Tai language used supposedly because "this title had been given to the Wareru dynasty by the Thai king." [15]

Mon folk traditions

At the end of the nineteenth century, some Mons are said to have regarded the British Queen Victoria as the reincarnation of Baña Thau. [16]

The story of how Baña Thau chose a successor runs as follows. After ruling for only seven years, Baña Thau decided to abdicate [17]. She devised a method to choose which one of the two monks had accompanied her during her residence in Ava should succeed her as ruler:

"One morning when they came to receive the royal rice, she secreted in one of their bowls a pahso (layman’s dress) [male sarong, skirt-like dress] together with little models of the five regalia; then having prayed that the lot might fall on the worthier, she returned the bowls. [18] Dammazedi. To whom the fateful bowl fell, left the sacred order, received her daughter in marriage, and assumed the government. The other monk in his disappointment aroused suspicion and was executed in Paunglin, north of Rangoon. The lords also resented the choice at first but became reconciled owing to Dammazedi’s high character; when some of them continued murmuring that he was not of royal race, Shinsawbu had a beam taken out of the and carved into a Buddha image, and showed it to them saying '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 the Lord and do we not bow before it?'." [19]

Singer provides an alternative story with the governor of Bassein, Baña Ain, married to Baña Thau's elder daughter Mipakahtau, rebelling because he was not appointed king ahead of Dhammacedi. This rebellion ends when he is poisoned [20].

Baña Thau means "Old Queen" in the Mon language. Harvey relates the story of how this name originated taken from the "Thatonhnwemun Yazawin" chronicle:

"Once while being carried around the city in her gorgeous 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? I am an old fool, am I? I am not so old that I could not get a child, which is more than your old queen could do!" Thunderstruck at such irreverence, she meekly accepted it as a sign from heaven, and thereafter styled herself 'The Old Queen'." [21]

The Mon history Nidana Ramadhipati Katha provides an alternative story of how Baña Thau ended up living in Ava claiming that she was already ruling at Pegu as queen when she was abducted and brought to Ava and made chief queen. [22]

Dispute over how many years Banya Thau reigned

Some hold that Baña Thau ruled for seven years [23], others seventeen years [24]. Shorto first hypothesized that Banya Thaw might have ruled jointly with Dhammazedi. [25] Guillon holds that Baña Thau and Dhammazedi ruled jointly with Dhammazedi ruling over Pegu and Shinsawbu ruling over Dagon. [26] Dagon had long been the traditional appanage of Mon queens [27].

Palace and burial locations

Furnival claimed that "the ramparts of Baña Thau's residence at Dagon" were the colonial era "bunkers of the golf course near the Prome Road," but others claim these ruins are, in fact, a wall built in 1841. [28]

The stupa that contained her remains is said to be at a monastery in Sanchaung district of modern-day Yangon near the Shwedagon pagoda on the grounds of a monastery once named the Shinsawbu Tomb Monastery, west of the Prome Road (Pyi Lan) on Windsor Road. [29]

References

Forchammer, Notes on the Early History and Geography of British Burma – I. The Shwedagon Pagoda, II. The First Buddhist Mission to Suvannabhumi, publ. Superintendent Government Printing, Rangoon 1884.

Fraser (1920) "Old Rangoon" Journal of the Burma Research Society.

Furnivall, Syriam Gazetteer.

Guillon, Emmanuel (tr. ed. James V. Di Crocco) (1999) The Mons: A civilization of Southeast Asia, Bangkok: The Siam Society.

Halliday, Robert (2000) (Christian Bauer ed.) The Mons of Burma and Thailand, Volume 2. Selected Articles, Bangkok: White Lotus.

Harvey, G.E. (1925) History of Burma: From the earliest times to 10 March 1824 the beginning of the English conquest, New York: Longmans, Green, and Co.

Sayadaw Athwa [The Monk of Athwa], Burmese translation of his Talaing History of Pegu used by Phayre, now in the British Museum, being manuscripts OR 3462-4.

Saya Thein (1912) "Rangoon in 1852" Journal of the Burma Research Society.

Schmidt, P.W. (1906) Slapat ragawan datow smim ron. Buch des Ragawan, der Konigsgeschichte, publ. for Kais. Akademie der Wissenschaften by Holder, Vienna, pp. 133-135

Shorto, Harry Leonard (1958) "The Kyaikmaraw inscriptions," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (BSOAS), 21(2): 361-367.

Shorto (1971) A dictionary of Mon inscriptions from the sixth to the sixteenth centuries. London: Oxford University Press.

Shorto (tr.) (no date) Unpublished typescript translation of pp. 34-44, 61-264 of

Phra Candakanto (ed.) Nidana Ramadhipati-katha (or as on binding Rajawamsa Dhammaceti Mahapitakadhara), authorship attributed to Bannyadala (c. 1518-1572), Pak
Lat, Siam, 1912.

Singer, Noel F. (1992) "The Golden Relics of Bana Thau," Arts of Asia, September-October, 1992. [Contains many interesting and original historical interpretations]
Thaton-hnwe-mun Yazawin, unpublished manuscript cited in Harvey, p. 117.

Notes
^ (Guillon, 1999, p. 173)
^ (Guillon, 1999, p. 169)
^ (Guillon, 1999, p. 166)
^ (Harvey, 1925, p. 116)
^ (Guillon, 1999, p. 166; Singer, 1992, p. 80, says 1429)
^ (Harvey, 1925, 368)
^ (Singer, 1992, p. 81)
^ (Singer, 1992, p. 81)
^ (Halliday, 2000, p. 101; Guillon, 1999, p. 173)
^ (Halliday, 2000, 101)
^ (Shorto, Mon Inscriptions, II, p. 61)
^ (Guillon, 1999, p. 169)
^ (Halliday, 2000, p. 102)
^ (Halliday, 2000, p. 101)
^ (Guillon, p. 171-2; most of this information comes from Guillon, pp. 171-172; also see Shorto, 1958; Than Tun, 1985, Royal Orders of Burma, Part Two, p. x, also describes this inscription)
^ (Guillon, 1999, p. 169)
^ (Halliday, 2000, 101)
^ (Sayadaw Athwa II. 131)
^ (Harvey, 117-8)
^ (Singer, 1992, p. 81)
^ (Harvey, p. 117)
^ (Shorto, no date, pp. 1-7)
^ (Halliday, 2000, p. 101)
^ (Guillon, 1999, p. 169)
^ (Shorto, Dictionary of Mon Inscriptions, 317, Ramadhipati)
^ (Guillon, 1999, 172)
^ (Guillon, 1999, p. 170)
^ (Harvey, 118 citing Furnivall, Syriam Gazetteer; Fraser "Old Rangoon" JBRS 1920)
^ (JBRS 1912 Saya Thein "Rangoon in 1852"; Harvey, p. 118; also see Singer, 1992 for details)

External Links
Photo of the gold crown of Baña Thau
Color imaginative recreation of Baña Thau's picture
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba%C3%B1a_Thau"

What exactly is migration in early modern Burma?

2006-07-30T11:36:00.000+07:00

One of the stock interpretations in the history of Burma that you read over and over again, copied almost verbatim from the original colonial texts, Harvey or Phayre, no doubt runs like this:

The Shans attacked and all the inhabitants of Ava migrated to Toungoo.

(This happens in the early 1400s with Thihathu and the Onpaung sawbwa as well as 1524-27.)

What does "migrate" actually mean? One envisions a long trail of war refugees marching from Ava. What the chronicle actually says, at least in the case of Min-gyi-nyo in 1524-27, is that leaders (patrons) of small groups of peasants in a given locality near Ava (clients) met with the leader of Toungoo and pledged their loyalty, i.e. migration was actually a realignment of political loyalties among the ruling elite. The traditional demographic pressures behind migration, the ravages of warfare, lack of food supply, heavy tax burdens, may have the motivating factor behind these elite political realignments, but the important point here is that they were mediated by socio-political relationships among the ruling elite.

Marc Bloch in his "Feudal Society" has a very poignant description of the medieval European feudal relationship, but I really doubt if it can be carried over in its entirety without adjustment to radically different cultural contexts.

Is it even possible to isolate, let's say, the essence of early modern inter-elite political relationships? A feudal bond?

Brad DeLong's blog this morning discussing feudalism led to a comment on Marc Bloch which led to thinking about migration which led to this migration research objective page at the French Marc Bloch Center in Berlin that called to mind the way that the word "migration" is used in the writing of Burmese history:

Working Group on Migration, State and Society

Research on migration offers a context for studying encounters with both the internal makeup and self-understanding of a range of receiving societies. It facilitates an analysis and critique of institutions tied to state and society. We thus find an expanded, historically oriented form of research on migration being recently defined as the path to a "history of power" (G. Noiriel). An implicit question at work in much recent discussion in the social sciences is whether migration and its "consequences”—integration, segregation, reconstruction of society—understood on a level of social interaction, is capable of illuminating the factors and conditions informing a society’s composition. But the question has rarely been posed in more than fragmentary form—the sort of comprehensive theoretical analysis moving beyond suggestions for solving specific problems has been widely missing. Since 2001 a working group has focused on such themes at the Centre Marc Bloch. The group and its activities are open to all interested researchers; the discussion are oriented around the following questions:

1. What cognitive concepts and discourses about migration exist, and what impact do they have on migrants, on the one hand, and on the societies in which they live, on the other hand? (This is the working group’s main focus in 2005 and 2006.)

2. How do administrative measures for the control of immigration evolve? To what degree do these serve as models for general instruments of political steering? What strategies do migrants develop in face of such measures?

French scholars always seem to pose the question better than scholars from the Anglo-Saxon-American tradition.

The benefits of Wikipedia

2006-07-30T09:07:00.000+07:00

My take on Wikipedia. [Posted at Little Professor who points out some definite shortcomings]

Wikipedia seems to be about no ego and collaboration without authorship per se which is the way that every good computer programmer is taught to work and that's who founded and runs Wikipedia. For example, the recent methdology/philosophy of extreme programming stresses frequent testing and refactoring (rewriting) of the computer code you write as well as peer feedback, an extreme case being where one programmer programs (writes code) while another programmer is staring over his/her shoulder, sort of like a back-seat driver. The programming notion of refactoring has been reapplied by Wikipedia to writing. The ideas of egoless programming and code review by peers goes back to the early days of programming.

Everyone is free to set up a Wikipedia User page, but it has to specifically be about the work that the user is doing on Wikipedia. I set one up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jonfernquest

Despite the no original research rule, anything that would be covered in a review of the literature on a topic is fair game and that can drill pretty deep, like I'd be willing to wager a posting on the author of Signal & Noise, covered in Little Professor's last posting would be legitimate. It seems that the presence of some reasonable constraints does keep Wikipedia focused and productive.

I think that the beauty of Wikipedia is that the no ego/no author rule encourages people to contribute and share information.

Pretty soon it should be better for a cursory view of a subject than any other reference work out there, particularly in areas of the world that are not so well-endowed with books.

Bayinnaung's enshrinement of relics at Pegu (1570s)

2006-07-27T22:39:00.000+07:00

Towards the end of his life, in the 1570s, king Bayinnaung (r. 1551-1581, Pegu) began making religious offerings. In the year 1576-77 [938 BE] he built a stupa at the place where his elephant Uposatha's tooth broke during the battle to retake Pegu in 1552. Particular attention was given to the construction of the floor: "The ground was first leveled and this surface covered with a layer of sand to act as a bed for the bricks and laterite blocks and for the stone slabs of the relic chamber." The piece of elephant tusk was then transferred from the great hall of Kambojasati palace where it had been stored and placed in a pavilion especially constructed for it.

In 1577-78 [939 BE] a tooth relic from the Buddha carried in a golden casket from Sri Lanka arrived in Pegu after a delay of three years. The relic was received in a great ceremony at the gates of Pegu by all the inhabitants of the city including Shans, Mons, and Burmans who all paid their respects to it. The tooth relic was removed from the golden casket and placed high up on the roof of the palace for all to view for a whole week and at the end of each day a festival was held. King Bayinnaung built special structures to house the tooth relic:

"When all had had an opportunity to see it, the King had a pavilion of silver constructed in front of the palace hall, the Vedayanta pavilion, and within it a smaller pavilion of gold like the moon-chariot, for the reception of the relic; inside this the golden relic-casket seemed like an attendant comet. Around the casket were laid gems of great price, the adornments of ancient kings; fascinating pearls and emeralds; rubies like torches in daylight; diamonds, the tribute of the Yawyins from the Shan country; Samphrani emeralds from the king of Pruttikat. A image fashioned from Uposatha's broken tusk [Bayinnaung's elephant] was set beside the relic. The whole beggared description. When the silver pavilion was finished, the gold shrine was installed inside it, and the casket in which the relic reposed deposited inside that. Whenever the king entered or left the palace, he paid homage to the relic" (Shorto, n.d., Nidana Ramadhipati Katha, p. 158).

One thing that is certainly noteworthy in these details is that there are two kinds of relics being enshrined: 1. the Buddha’s tooth, and 2. the tusk of Bayinnaung's war elephant. This mixture of the sacred and what is usually considered profane, warfare, might be of interest to scholars of comparative religion and warfare.

There is another noteworthy instance of this mixture of warfare and the Buddhist religion during the Rajadhirat era around 1356 when his father Binnya U of Martaban repulses a Chiangmai invasion. For the details of this invasion and the role played by a white elephant see Fernquest(2006, p. 4). Guillon notes:

"Binnya U repulsed the invasion in 1356. At any rate it was in that year that he sent a mission from Martaban to Kandy in Sri Lanka, which according to the chronicles was to request some relics that he could enshrine in a stupa erected over the spot of his victory (certainly an odd conception of Buddhism!)" (Guillon, The Mons, 1999, p. 161; my italics).

Life outside the bug jar

2006-07-27T14:01:00.000+07:00

What to do, if you're a mature academic who honestly loves what he/she does, but realizes he/she has overstudied the wriggling bug in the jar, to death, studied maybe, real exotic bugs, malcontent writer revolutionaries, amino acids, history changing Napoleons, or whatever keeps the creative synapses firing, and no longer is he/she a bug in the jar him/herself blogging, painting, writing, creating, has in fact lost the will to wriggle, realizing that there is no Faustian bargains a non-wriggler can strike, to turn back the wriggling clock, to wriggle once more, perhaps it is time to donne the Hawaiian shirt and retire to the beach, or write a First Person confessional in the manner of Sartre's Nausea for the Chronicle of Higher Education, it only takes a few seconds with Little Professor's handy little multiple choice cheatsheet, that makes essay writing as easy as painting by numbers: "How to Write a CoHE "First Person" Essay: A Handy Multiple-Choice Guide"

[P.S. this dissection of lab life is interesting also]

Primary sources geographically organized

2006-07-27T11:51:00.000+07:00

The Edwin C. Bolles Collection: A Digital Archive on the history and Topography of London at Tufts University describes places in an urban environment using literary texts and images.

Recent Web Mash-up technology allows maps to be used as precise geographical indexes.

Burma - Yunnan - Bay of Bengal (c. 1350-1600) begs to be indexed in this fashion.

The greatest obstacle is mapping old place names in texts to modern maps.

(Cited in cited in The Little Professor which was cited in Brad DeLong's Semi Daily Journal)

Public Intellectual Blogging Experts:Blogs and niche scholarship

2006-07-25T15:24:00.000+07:00

A blogger used to be defined as an amateur expressing his opinion rather loudly on an issue.

This definition made blogging an extension of participatory democracy.

Nowadays, arguably, the most truly useful blogs are written by truly informed experts like Juan Cole or Brad DeLong, making blogging an extension of elite educational institutions such as UC Berkeley or University of Michigan .

Apparently, not elite enough though, because Juan Cole was turned down for an academic job at prestigious Yale despite having achieved near household name status throught his blogging.

This week the Chronicle of Higher Education in the US addressed the blogging phenomenon with a series of articles. Brad DeLong quotes twice from them [1,2] in his blog.

The general message of the articles is that blogging is dangerous for your health (the health of your career). If you already have a job in academia or wish to advance into the higher echelons of America's research universities, beware, according to Daniel Drezner.

Maybe blogging needs to be treated like a serious academic subject, a public intellectual breadth requirement, if you will.

As a writing teacher for non-native English speakers, I know that one of the most difficult problems is to get the students to visualize the audience they are writing for and also to provide feedback as a student audience of peers. Blogging software is a step in the right direction towards helping students visualize this audience and seeing a way to get this feedback through comments.

Blogs can be used as a public intellectual tool to disseminate ideas and educate society at large, especially in developing countries far away from ours. This includes debates on controversial topics with western professors, scholars, and graduate students providing expert knowledge.

In the future, hopefully, there will be a public intellectual component necessary to qualify for the PhD degree with blogging being the pillar of this requirement.

Drezner reveals some facts about writing and scholarship in present-day universities:

1. The secret to academic success is: One bad article equals five great ones.

[What about a bad article or book that people respect only because there are no other experts or the experts that exist are too afraid to critically reveal its shortcomings? Blogs can and should critique books that are essentially a waste of paper and rewrite them line-by-line.]

2. The worst thing a scholar can do is to publish too much, as opposed to too little.

[This seems more than a little tragic, not exactly treating the still developing majority of the world to a feast of knowledge. Maybe experts have to be more careful and refine their ideas among their colleagues in restricted peer review blogs first, before going completely public with them. Many niche areas of scholarship, like early modern Burmese history don't even have enough critical mass of activity to really get going, others like Shakespeare, Dickens, or World War II are points of obsessive focus. Blogs can at least help to get ideas moving in the more intellectually stagnant waters.]

3. Any substandard publication creates a black mark that is difficult to erase.

[Again, restricted peer review blogs for experts on training wheels. The real experts, the Napoleon's of the blogosphere, like Brad DeLong or Juan Cole, can strike out on forced march critiques without them, but for us mere mortals they are essential.

What's truly horrible is the substandard scholarship that has been prematurely committed to paper in some fields, scholarship that could have gained from a thorough online blog vetting. When academics commit their ideas to paper and made them indelible and these ideas are simply wrong as they are sometimes in Burmese history, line item criticisms of the paper book can at least be made indelibly ubiquitous online.]

4. Blogs and prestigious university appointments do not mix terribly well. That is because top departments are profoundly risk-averse when it comes to senior hires.

[Maybe Yale will end up studying Juan Cole then, as history, rather than actually becoming part of history by hiring him.]

5. Blogs provoke easy doubts. Blogs are an outlet for unexpurgated, unreviewed, and occasionally unprofessional musings. What makes them worth reading can also make them prone to error.

[Actually published books that haven't been thoroughly vetted by blogs are such an unreviewed outlet in some specialized niches of scholarship. Michael Aung-Thwin's new book The Mists of Ramanna raises questions with almost every sentence and has quite unprofessional musings, claiming that the Mons, a subject people for hundreds of years, were never actually "oppressed" by their overlords, "oppress" being a word easily redefinable to match one's rhetorical purposes]

[Blog entries can be refactored into more refined and polished writing.]

6. Any honest scholar-blogger — myself included — could acknowledge a post or two that they would like to have back. At a place like Yale, one bad blog post can erase a lot of good will very quickly.

[Blogs seem ideally suited to court jester types, Diogenes the Cynic types, hermit scholar types shouting the truth prophetically from mountain tops in the blogosphere.

Blogs allow many to overcome their innate shyness, like the Wizard of Oz projecting his voice through a loudspeaker from behind a curtain. Even if you're an extreme extrovert, a secret hermetic blogging life under a pseudonym might allow one greater independence in certain well-straight-jacketed intellectual spheres. Aren't so many so-called pure ideas really only artifacts of social relationships, obligations, rent-seeking relations of hegemony? When bloggers expose them as such, don't they become the literal embodiment of the late Bourdieu's notion of habitus?]

7. In some ways, this problem is merely the latest manifestation of what happens when professors try to become public intellectuals. Blogging creates new pathways to public recognition beyond the control of traditional academic gatekeepers or even op-ed editors. Any usurpation of scholarly authority is bound to upset those who benefit the most from the status quo.

[Live like a revolutionary. Die like a revolutionary (figuratively speaking, I mean) Like not getting a promotion. What is a martyr anyway? Or a hero? Don't we have them anymore?]

Blogs are the only way to do any worthy scholarship in many niche areas of scholarship, like early modern mainland Southeast Asian history (c 1350-1600), because:

1. To do scholarship in this area you should know how to read and write a foreign language that many consider obscure and useless like Burmese, Mon, Shan, or classical Chinese.

2. When you live in these foreign places, you will not have any money, comparatively speaking.

3. Without money, you will not be able to pay the tuition bills for places like Yale, Stanford, Harvard, or even the cheaper public schools, which would probably consume a lifetime of earnings in the obscure foreign country whose history you've specialized in.

4. Research on the history of the poorer areas of the world moves at a snail's pace.

5. Since there are no resources or funding...

6. Students get distracted and detour into unrelated areas that do have funding and money, like Dickens or Shakespeare, or becoming a lawyer, or some other tiny but heavily valorized plot of land in intellectual space.

7. It is very difficult to maintain research focus or keep your eye on the prize.

8. Which in the final analysis is to: Contribute Knowledge.

9. Which requires: 1. specialized knowledge, related to: 2. the generalist knowledge, that every educated individual has inherited in the west.

10. Blogs are (and increasingly will be) essential to make this contribution to knowledge in niche fields.

Iraq: State formation and collapse, Historical patterns

2006-07-22T11:58:00.000+07:00

The topic of state formation and collapse in Iraq is being addressed at Brad de Long's Semi-Daily Journal blog. Couldn't resist the tempatation of adding a comment:

"But our country had a strong state with secular traditions. That needed to be preserved at all costs. Instead the Americans smashed that state. What did they expect Iraqis would do? It sent people scurrying back to the basic building blocks of our society, which are the clans and tribes."

Historians and hegemonic states have a systematic bias, habitually assuming that states are stronger and more unified than they actually are. In fact, at root, states are just opportunistic alliances of families, clans, lineages, and political organizations.

Ming dynasty Yunnan (c. 1369-1398) is a good example. The Ming emperor picks out one of many Tai chiefs and treats him like a centralized leader. Sub-chiefs assert their independence and he has to flee to the Ming capital in Beijing. They manage to restore him to power, but he's out again in a few years. (http://www.epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/)

My only point here is that the song remains the same. There are a lot of patterns that have been repeated for a very long time in history. Of course, buying a bomb instead of funding more research is easier.

There's a whole literature devoted to state formation and collapse in political anthropology that really provides more insight into the process than Hobbes, into what takes over when a state disintegrates. This is one good review of the literature:

Johnson, Allen W. and Timothy Earle. (2000) The Evolution of Human Societies: From Foraging Group to Agrarian State. Second Edition.Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Tai Lue revival in Sipsongpanna (and Thailand)

2006-07-21T15:11:00.000+07:00

Tai Lue folk music is truly a wonderful thing.

A new book about Tai Lue music Song and Silence published by Silkworm Books in Chiang Mai is just out. Chinese informal folk songs, similar to these Tai Lue songs, is also the topic of discussion over at Frog In the Well blog.

This music brightens my home in Chiang Rai because my family is Tai Lue, our next-door neighbors are too, as well as our whole neighborhood in Maesai). Tai Lues seem to be found everywhere from Chiang Rai to Chiang Kham, where there is an annual Tai Lue festival, all the way to Chiang Mai.

Sadly there doesn't appear to be much information about the Tai Lues or their history online yet. There is a wikipedia entry on Tai Lue language, but not Tai Lue culture or history it seems, except for this a summary article on the Dai people. The historians Volker Grabowsky and Liew Foon Ming have written extensively on Tai Lue history and have a special research project devoted to Tai Lue history. Liew Foon Ming has published a wonderful bibliographical guide to historical resources in Tai and Chinese in the French journal Aséanie published in Thailand.

Here is the announcement for a talk about the new book in Chiang Mai recently:

Northern Group - Chiang Mai
275th meeting - Thursday, July 6th 2006

Song and Silence : Ethnic Revival on China's Southwest Borders
A talk by Sara L. M. Davis

"An exemplary study of cross-border culture. Davis's original and deeply probing account of state-sponsored musical culture and of the musical practices that both transcend and subvert it deserves, like the music it depicts, to travel widely."
James C. Scott, Sterling Professor of Political Science and Anthropology, Yale University

"Song and Silence is a fascinating glimpse at a very interesting part of China that has increasingly become the focus of environmental and minority issues in the ever-evolving multi-ethnic state that is the PRC. Davis presents a well-researched and lucidly written examination of the complex inter-play between Han Chinese and Beijing and the increasingly vulnerable minority communities in the Himalayan foothills of Southern Yunnan whose historic isolation is now being irremediably breached by tourism, commerce and the media." Orville Schell, University of California, Berkeley

In the sunny, subtropical Sipsongpanna region, Tai Lues perform flirtatious, exoticized dances for an increasingly growing tourist trade.

Endorsed by Chinese officials, who view the Tai Lues as a model minority, these staged performances are part of a carefully sanctioned ethnic policy. However, behind the scenes and away from the eyes and ears of tourists and the Chinese government, a different kind of cultural resurgence is taking place.

In this vivid and beautifully told ethnography, Sara L. M. Davis reveals how Tai Lues are reviving and reinventing their culture in ways that contest the official state version. Carefully avoiding government repression, Tai Lues have rebuilt Buddhist temples and made them into vital centers for the Tai community to gather, discuss their future, and express discontent. Davis also describes the resurgence of the Tai language evident in a renewed interest in epic storytelling and traditional songs as well as the popularity of Tai pop music and computer publishing projects.

Throughout her work, Davis weaves together the voices of monks, singers, and activists to examine issues of cultural authenticity, the status of ethnic minorities in China, and the growing cross-border contacts among Tai Lues in China, Thailand, Burma, and Laos.

Sara L.M. Davis earned her Ph.D. at University of Pennsylvania. She was the China researcher at Human Rights Watch for three years. Davis has taught and held postdoctoral fellowships at Yale University and UCLA. She has written for several publications including The Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, and Modern China. She currently lives in New York.

AT THE ALLIANCE FRANCAISE : 138 Charoen Prathet Road - CHIANG MAI - 19:30
Please note: Silkworm Books, the publisher of Song and Silence, will offer snack box and sell the book.

Burma Studies in the United States:A petty game of academic politics?

2006-07-21T11:48:00.000+07:00

Has Catherine Raymond, the current head of the Center for Burma Studies in the United States at Northern Illinois University, achieved anything during her tenure?

Or has this Center of Burma Studies for the whole United States finally reached the status of irrelevance that locating it in the middle of a corn field in DeKalb, Illinois would seem inevitably to consign it to?

For too long, academics in Burma Studies have exploited the obscurity of Burma as a subject and acted as veritable wizards (or wizardesses) of Oz with respect to their subject matter.

Why can they get away with this?

Why can they get away with not having critical scrutiny directed at them?

The limited resources of the field mean:

1. They stick uncritically together in small cliques to protect their resources.

2. Their work is not subject to critical scrutiny because those scholars that do exist in their areas of specialty and who know of serious flaws in their scholarship, are too afraid of speaking out, and instead direct their comments through third party scholars. The real critical scrutiny is never made public. What is the result?

A pitiful simulcrum of scholarship.

Leo Strauss, Carl Schmitt, and Michael Aung-Thwin

2006-07-19T14:27:00.000+07:00

From Wikipedia's article on the neo-conservative political theorist Leo Strauss:

"Strauss noted that thinkers of the first rank, going back to Plato, had raised the problem of whether good and effective politicians could be completely truthful and still achieve the necessary ends of their society. By implication, Strauss asks his readers to consider whether "noble lies" have any role at all to play in uniting and guiding the polis. Are "myths" needed to give people meaning and purpose and to ensure a stable society? Or can men and women dedicated to relentlessly examining, in Nietzsche's language, those "deadly truths", flourish freely? Thus, is there a limit to the political, and what can be known absolutely?"

Why do I bring up Leo Strauss in a blog devoted to Burma? Leo Strauss's notion of political myth helps to make sense of the convoluted and hard to follow arguments made by Michael Aung-Thwin and highlight their inconsistencies.

On the one hand, you have Michael Aung-Thwin in his recent book The Mists of Ramanna pretending that myths for political legitimation are somehow exceptional behaviour, that the Mon king Dhammazedi was doing something unique and exceptional by mapping Buddhist history to the history of his Mon kingdom where in fact this is a universal of politics in all ages. You can even see it in Livy's received history of early Rome.

On the other hand, you have Michael Aung-Thwin defending the current state of Myanmar which habitually uses legitimizing myths. Renaming every road and town in the country and the very name of the country, insisting that everyone outside the country retroactively rename and refer to everything with these names, when the actual people in the country itself often can't or don't want to keep all these name changes straight. In Korea, the English language "Korea" is also different from "Hanguk" the designator for the country in the Korean language, but Koreans don't bizarrely and retroactively insist that everyone change their language and put on an authoritarian linguistic straight-jacket.

Using them when you are writing history would condemn you to an inability to communicate, to be understood by anyone at all, effectively preventing you from talking about the subject, forcing you to talk about it only in their newly created terms, according to their own "interpretive community" (the hegemonic straight-jacket terminology of their own shoosing), as if there was no objective notion of objective historical truth, a very convenient notion for want-to-be dictators.

Then there is the mythology fo all mythologies. Moving the capital to the jungle 26 miles outside of Pyinmana in some mysterious simulcrum of king Thalun's relocation of the capital from Pegu to Ava circa 1630 and then having Pagan Aung-Thwin interpret and explain it to use, how it is natural given their history....in 1630?

That Aung-Thwin sees Dhammazedi's legitimizing myths as exceptional and is blind to the truly exceptional legitimizing myths of Burma's junta is a major inconsistency in his thought.

Leo Strauss in the blogosphere

Leo Strauss as a conservative political theorist in his work provided the arguments that could be used to support military regimes like Burma's junta (See also Balkinization Blog).

Carl Schmitt, one of Strausses associates before he left Germany, is a little scarier, being a precursor of fascism and essentially an advocate of war for war's sake (See Crooked Timber 1 and Crooked Timber 2 and Brad de Long). His political philosophy seems to be a throwback to a much earlier era when war supported by the surplus of subsistence agriculture was economic reality, or opposition to humanism "in favor of an emphasis on the role of power in modern society" (Alan Wolfe). War is the reality that dominates the Burmese chronicle tradition, religion taking a definite secondary role. This historical tradition might be one of the principal factors motivating political decisions by Burma's generals such as the Pyinmana move or name changes.

The political thought of Michael Aung-Thwin seems to steer perilously close to that of the pre-WWII German conservative Carl Schmitt:

Schmitt criticized the institutional practices of liberal politics, arguing that they are justified by a faith in rational discussion and openness that is at odds with actual parliamentary party politics, in which outcomes are hammered out in smoke-filled rooms by party leaders" .

Immediately reminded me of Aung-Thwin's:

"Realise that in Myanmar, anarchy is feared far more than tyranny. Singapore’s system is probably one of the best models: strong, unified leadership without selfish bickering and politicised social issues. In the 50s and 60s, most South-east Asian countries were in the same boat. Singapore and Malaysia are now generations ahead of Myanmar. One of the reasons is leadership — and it was not democratic."(Source)

Singapore and Malaysia were also the last Southeast Asian states to jettison their colonial connections. They never seized and nationalized businesses, schools, and hospitals run by westerners, for instance. Aung-Thwin has spent his whole career criticising colonial era institutions and now he is holding success based on their very persistence up as a model for Burma. It's a little late, isn't it? Why does he pick out the tiny Chinese city state of Singapore as a model for Burma? Thailand is much more similar to Burma than Singapore is and they have clearly rejected the Singapore model. Similar confusing, contradictory, and not very well thought out statements by Aung-Thwin can be found elsewhere: magazine interview, Democracy Jihad, and Singapore Interview. Ultimately, like Carl Schmitt, despite his desire to be the lynchpin of the junta political thought, the ruling junta doesn't really need someone like him.

Some people might object that bringing larger debates from western politics into Burmese politics and political history is either: 1. external interference (Michael Aung-Thwin), or 2. not relevant due to Burma's unique cultural differences.

At the extremes of political argumentation over the current political situation in Burma/Myanmar you rarely see very well reasoned arguments and rarely, if at all, do they have any historical or comparative breadth or perspective.

In fact, by even supposing that there could be a debate, by not presupposing that one side is absolutely right, the left side would already consign you to the status of pro-government apologist. For some, political discourse on contemporary Burma-Myanmar politics is total war. Either choose a side or get shot by both sides. On the right side, the Michael Aung-Thwin side, you also get the belief that debate is bad, there is no need for democratic debate, because it is external interference in Burma's affairs and democracy is not really an institution suited to the Burmese anyway, according to him.

Isolationism in Burma and Burma Studies

Why is there so little solid scholarship on Burma and its history? Isolationism seems to be the core reason. Burma started separating itself from the rest of the world in the 1950s with Burmese state policies of non-alignment (even from the non-aligned movement itself) and western focus on French Indochina. With the virtual closing of the country's doors in 1962, scholars stopped studying the country. Then in 1988 political discourse started becoming more polarized and intense to the point at which there wasn't even a shred of debate left. Eventually, anyone expressing a wish to be objective was ipso facto accused of having some ulterior motive.

Then there is the isolationism of Burma studies itself in the United States. The Burma Studies center for the United States is moved to Northern Illinois University, a second rate university in the middle of a corn field, that attendance at will almost certainly guarantee that you will never be recognized as a scholar of any note or rank. No slight intended to Hsaya U Saw Tun, the best Burmese language teacher in the United States and one of the foremost experts on Burmese language and literature.

Almost none of the professors of Burma Studies themselves give papers at the conferences they hold or publish papers in the journals they publish. There is no peer review, collaboration, or use of the internet. Quite frankly, they need to be subject to a thorough review and audit. After this, their funding will be cut for sure. Someone needs to do some good investigative journalism and uncover the full sorry extent of nepotism, cliqueishness, and incompetence and make it public.

In a shallow contest for prestige, publishing in their own journals seems to be below them. Prestige is more important than the advancement of knowledge, despite the fact that 1. the number of published journal papers is truly deplorable and 2. publishing high quality papers in a timely fashion is the only way that the field of Burmese history will advance.

Guaranteed, if anyone shows individual initiative, tries hard, works hard, works independently, without the sanction of this American Burma Studies group and their minions, there will be academic vultures swarming over him or her.

I'm sure I will also eventually be attacked, because I work hard and publish regularly in the SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research published at the School of Oriental and African Studies at University of London which has a long tradition of scholarly excellence in Burmese history including the greatest of all Burmese historians U Than Tun who throughout his long and productive life staunchly refused to act as an apologist for a authoritarian Burmese state, the perfect role model at a time when we have very few indeed.

The world of business, any world of business, is more productive and attractive than the nepotistic, cliqueish, and tightly controlled world of Burma Studies in the United States. A couple of people hold on to control of the main organizations, journals, and funding, use it to serve their own self-serving ends in a rather pitiful simulcrum of modern day "Myanmar" itself.

Their minions even threaten to sue people, if they act independently and show initiative. No wonder there is no progress in this field. Graduate students have no choice but to fall in line with them, uncritically tow their pitiful party line, and become pitiful automata. The field goes nowhere. The best recipe to do meaningful work is to remain aloof from ths charade.

Given that research funding and academic publishing in the area of Burma Studies in the United States has long been controlled by a small clique which prevents critical and objective history from being written, the best choice is clearly Europe, Australia, Thailand, or Japan.

Well, back to work. In my Mon Paradigm Fallacy Blog I am picking apart piece by piece Michael Aung Thwin's sorry excuse for historical scholarship, surreptitiously presentist promotion of Burmese nationalism, and naked affront to those of Mon ethnicity, his new book: The Mists of Ramanna.

Naresuan: Thai epic historical film

2006-07-17T17:30:00.000+07:00

The Thai movie The legend of King Naresuan is scheduled to be released in December. For an interview with the director see this English reading lesson for last week's Bangkok Post.

The film is sort of a sequel to the film Suriyothai which was more about court intrigue than this film which will be more about warfare. The director talks about how he has tried to avoid Thai nationalism in making the film, but how certain parts of the film like how Naresuan recruits the Mons to be on his side may be controversial to the Burmese government.

Focused literature review for Thai-Burma warfare (c. 1548-1599)

2006-07-15T12:59:00.000+07:00

Sunait Chutintaranond (ed.). Phama an thai: wa duai prawattisat lae sinlapa nai thatsana phama [The Burmese "read" the Thai: On Thai history and art from a Burmese point of view]. Bangkok: Matichon. 4th edition. 2001 (1999).

The period of Thai-Burma warfare (c. 1548-1599) really needs a good literature review.

I've been focusing so much on the more obscure and overlooked periods of history such as Mingyinyo (r. 1486-1531) and Rajadhirat (r. 1383-1421) that I've missed some important sourceslike the book above.

Pamaree Surakiat's recent working paper on Thai-Burmese warfare has an extensive review of the literature and she'll problem have an even more focused review for the period of Thai-Burmese warfare (c. 1548-1599) in her PhD dissertation when it comes out.

The book above, reviewed recently in the SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research, has an important source that is a master's thesis done in Burma:

"The first article is the abridged version of a Master Thesis on Thai-Burmese relations prior to the mid-16th century submitted to the University of Mandalay by the historian and archaeologist U San Nyein."

"Until the reign of King Tabinshwehti (1531–1551) relations between Ayutthaya and the Burmese kingdoms were relatively peaceful, reflecting the common idea of regarding the other side as outside one’s own sphere of influence."

[Comment: Rajadhirat Ayeidawpon records invasions in the Martaban-Tenasserim area by Kamphaengphet and Chiang Mai which I cannot find verified in Tai language sources from Chiang Mai and Ayutthaya, so I don't really know what to make of these references yet. The more peaceful religous exchanges between the Sangha of Chiang Mai and Martaban-Pegu should be verifiable from both the Burmese and Tai side though, so this is probably a better way to begin.]

"U San Nyein convincingly demonstrates that between 1548 and 1569 the Burmese modified their military strategy and tactics after each attack on Ayutthaya, the Siamese capital which was well protected by its geographic location. While not denying the expansionist nature of the military campaigns of Tabinshweti and his successor Bayinnaung (r. 1551–1581), U San Nyein claims that they were motivated by self-defence as it was the Siamese who set in motion the military confrontation by occupying a Burmese township at the Gulf of Martaban (p. 68) which, however, was claimed by Ayutthaya as her own vassal müang.

[Comment: Once some initial incidents trigger an escalaton, a cycle of tit-for-tat long distance warfare like during the Rajadhirat era (c. 1383-1421) determining who is to blame doesn't seem like the right question to ask. Wouldn't it be more useful to unravel the process of escalation. Some periods are peaceful. Some periods suffer from endemic warfare. What gets those periods of endemic warfare going and what stops them? Cross-cultural research using other histories outside the region would be useful here also. The Maori Musket Wars of the early 19th century driven by plentiful supplies of muskets are a good example. James Belich's Making Peoples: A History of the New Zealanders: From Polynesian Settlement to the End of the Nineteenth Century (1996) (at Chulalongkorn Library in Bangkok) gives a good overview.]

Computational historiography?

2006-07-13T17:25:00.000+07:00

Historians breathe life into histories with the narratives and stories they weave.

The glue of historical interpretation, provided by historians, is often necessary to bridge the gaps in historical records where evidence is lacking.

Despite the need for historians to be creative in their interpretations, is there a way to make the writing of history more rigorous and accurate, a way to at least get the basic facts straight before lauching off into a personal interpretation?

WikiTextRose of Wikipedia is doing some interesting work on computational historiography and the citation of historical sources (includes diagram):

"The wiki will support evidentiary citations within historiographical texts at a level usable by the professional historian. That is, in addition to recording citations between secondary sources of interest to the general reader, the wiki can record dependencies on ultimate/primary sources (including unpublished ones such as manuscripts, archival materials, pottery sherds, etc.) and thus provide a catalog of all the ultimate source "texts" within a particular historiographical discipline."

What is WikiTextRose?

"WikiTextrose (a portmanteau of "text" and "(compass) rose") is a text relationship database for mapping the various interactions between interpretable artifacts (i.e. "texts"). Though the project is inspired by long-established theories in the field of citation analysis, it expands upon these by considering all the ways in which one text may interact with another."

Sounds like we might actually get working rigorous working models of computer-based historiography from Wikipedia developers soon.

Burmese language web typewriter

2006-07-13T16:41:00.000+07:00

Finally! A web typewriter for the Burmese language.

You have to download and install the Myanmar 1 font first.

After you type your text, just cut and paste into Microsoft Word or better Open Office.

Burmese and Mon inscriptions, Online open content project

2006-07-13T14:27:00.000+07:00

There are certainly very few Burmese or Mon inscriptions or translations of inscriptions online.

This is an opportunity for an open content project.

There are some excellent Burmese language volumes with inscriptions (Pagan to Ava periods). There is also a well-known list of inscriptions with locations and dates as well as some translations into English by Than Tun and associates. This all could be integrated and put online in an open content project.

Wikipedia as a platform also has a benefit that experts in Burma or Myanmar could easily access them, add to the content, edit, and correct them (even anonymously if they wanted to). Wikipedia also allows you to roll back to previous versions if a vandal who does not really want to cooperate and contribute is bent on destroying your hard work.

One thing for sure is that no one is currently using Wikipedia as a medium for open content history.

If a westerner whose expertise does not match that of a native Burmese scholar, contributes, this might motivate native Burmese scholars to participate and correct them and we can learn. Collaboration and peer review are universal goods.

There is a small repository of Mon inscriptions online at the Euro-Mon Community. The Shwe Dagon Mon inscription is a good model of how inscriptions could be presented online, although a little bit more background information plus a translation into English would also be nice.

Wikibooks is: 1. the most accessible place to start such a project, and 2. requires almost no overhead.
Burmese Wikipedia already has Burmese unicode fonts up and working, though I personally have yet to get it working for me. Will have to work on this.

SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research 4.1 just released online

2006-07-11T11:40:00.000+07:00

The latest edition of the SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research (SBBR), the online journal of research on Burma or Myanmar at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, has just been put online.

There are a lot good book reviews and articles on the history of smallpox vaccinations in colonial era Burma by Atsuko Naono, some colonial era microhistory about some of the rather strange low low level colonial functionaries who inhabited colonial era Burma by Gerry Abbott.

An article on the history of the Mon king Rajadhirat (r. 1383-1421) based on the recent translation of a Burmese classic by U San Lwin, written by me, Jon Fernquest, is also included.

There are also many good book reviews including Shelby Tucker's Burma, The Curse of Independence (2001), Burma at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century (2005) edited by Monique Skidmore (this book review is by the Political Scientist Robert Taylor and has some very important observations about historical accuracy in current Burma research and scholarship), Lord of the Celestial Elephant (1999) by Elaine Halton, and the collection of papers Perspectives on the Yi of Southwest China edited by Stevan Harrell (tis collection of papers is a conceptually interesting collaboration between western and Chinese scholars that finds a compromise in the use of language and approach to subject matter). DIssertation announcements are also included.

Two older texts of historical importance have been published in their entirety including Standford’s Compendium of Geography and Travel: Asia by Augustus H. Keane and An Account of an Embassy to the Kingdom of Ava by Michael Symes.

The Symes work is quite a fascinating read with a detailed description of the southern campaigns during the 1750's of Alaungphaya, the founding king of the Konbaung dynasty of Burma. We're really lucky to have this important historical source for the early Konbaung era available online virtually everywhere.

Wikipedia references are easy

2006-07-09T21:11:00.000+07:00

Operation successful! Posted my first Wikipedia entry on Tabinshwehti.

References are easy. Just enclose every Harvard style reference in a "ref" tag and then at the bottom include a section with a single "references" tag (no matching end tag). The software goes through and inserts note numbers in the text and makes endnotes with the Harvard style citations.

I probably made some little mistakes that I'llhave to correct, but the important thing it is asy to make references and citations which is important becaue that means it's easy for experts to add information when they have a few spare seconds.

Tabinshwehti (Burmese King) - Wikipedia article

2006-07-09T00:25:00.000+07:00

Below is my initial efforts on a Wikipedia article on the Burmese king Tabinshwehti (r. 1531-1550).

[Ruminations and confession for writing a Wikipedia article on Burmese or Myanmar history]

Tabinshwehti (Burmese King)

After the fall of Ava to Tai invasions in 1527 the king of Toungoo Tabinshwehti (r. 1531-1550) rebuilt an ethnic Burmese state at Toungoo (1531-38) and then Pegu (1538-1550) and engaged in long series of military campaigns that ended only with his assassination in 1550:

Pegu (1535-38)

Between 1535 and 1538 Tabinshwehti marched south from Toungoo in a series of four military expeditions against the Mon kingdom of Pegu. A succession of Mon kings had ruled over a united Lower Burma at least since the time of king Rajadhirat (r. 1385-1421). In 1538 after first taking the western delta region around Bassein and augmenting his forces with military manpower and arms, Tabinshwehti overcame the defences of Pegu and occupied the town.

Several factors explain why Toungoo started attacking Pegu shortly after Tabinshwehti became king of Toungoo in 1531. Trade wealth and maritime markets favored coastal Pegu as a military target (Harvey, 1925, 153; Lieberman, 1980, 209; Surakiat, 2006, 17; 2005, 87). Toungoo relied on Pegu for important commodities such as cloth and salt (Lieberman 1984, 209, citing UK III, p. 111). This trade contact brought knowledge of Pegu's wealth.

Another factor was the threat posed by the Tai confederation that ruled over Ava to the north (c. 1527-1555) which conquered Prome to the west of Toungoo in 1532, the year after Tabinshwehti became king of Toungoo. This left Toungoo, the only remaining ethnic Burmese stronghold, as the next logical target for Tai controlled Ava to attack and subjugate. Conquering Pegu first would also augment Toungoo's supply of military man and animal power and weapons, strengthening Toungoo to better face the Tai threat from the north (Fernquest, 2005, 106).

Prome (1540)

Tabinshwehti sent his top general and brother-in-law the future king Bayinnaung north to Prome in pursuit of Takayutpi the Mon king of Pegu (r. 1526-1538) who had fled north to seek refuge at Prome.

In the famous Battle of Naung Yo, Bayinnaung faced a superior force on the other side of a river. After crossing the river on a Pontoon bridge (rafts in another version) Bayinnaung ordered the bridge to be destroyed. This action was taken to spur his troops forward in battle and provide a clear signal that there would be no retreat. Before the battle began Bayinnaung also disregarded a message from king Tabinshwehti ordering him to wait for the main body of troops to arrive. Bayinnaung replied that he had already met the enemy and defeated them. To those who criticized this action, Bayinnaung replied that if they lost, they would all be dead anyway and it wouldn't matter whether they were alive or not (Harvey, 1925, 154-155; U Kala II p. 173, ch. 168).

Tabinshwehti could not take Prome because it was well-defended with strong walls and supported militarily by Tai Ava. When Takayupti died, many of his loyal followers came over to Tabinshwehti's side. Tabinshwehti increased his military strength by employing mercenaries of many nationalities including Portuguese and Muslim. The number of Portuguese in his employ is said to have numbered as many as 700 men (Lieberman, 1980, 209-210).

Martaban (1541-42)

The thriving port of Martaban proved difficult to subdue because it was supported by Portuguese soldiers and arms. On the land side of the town strong fortifications backed by earthwork and on the water side seven Portuguese ships commanded by Paulo Seixas provided a strong defense. When supplies ran out, Martaban tried to negotiate a surrender, but Tabinshwehti would only accept a complete surrender. Martaban tried to draw the Portuguese mercenary Joano Cayeyro who was helping Tabinshwehti away, but these efforts failed. Finally, Tabinshwehti used fire rafts to burn and drive away the ships guarding the water side of the fortifications. A high fortress raft armed with guns and cannons was maneuvered to a position in front of the river side fortifications. The walls were cleared of defenders and a final assault was made on the town (Harvey, 1925, 155-157; Lieberman, 1980, 212-213). The Portuguese writer Pinto records in great detail the pillaging and executions that supposedly took place in the wake of the defeat after seven months of siege (Pinto, 1989, 314-325)

Prome and Upper Burma (1542-45)

After a coronation ceremony and religious donations at the Shwedagon pagoda in 1541 Tabinshweihti led an expedition to the north to subjugate Prome. The first assaults against the walls of Prome failed (UKII:177-178). Prome requested aid from Tai Ava and Arakan. Tai forces arrived first, but Bayinnaung met them in advance before they could arrive to Prome and defeated them.

The siege of Prome dragged on and when the rainy season arrived Tabinshwehti ordered his troops to plant rice and gather manpower and provisions from Lower Burma (UKII:179) The overland contingent of forces sent by Arakan was ambushed by Bayinnaung. This defeat caused both the land and river forces of Arakan to return to Arakan. After five months of siege starvation led to defections and weakened defences which were easily overcome. The sack of Prome and the punishments that were supposedly meted out to the inhabitants are described in great detail by Pinto (1989, 328-333). In 1544 Tai forces led a counterattack but were again defeated by Tabinshwehti's forces. In 1545 Tabinshwehti marched north and took Pagan and Salin, leaving a garrison in Salin (Harvey, 1925, 157-158; Shorto, n.d., 46; UKII:179- 181).Instead of driving northwards and reestablishing an ethnic Burmese state at Ava, Tabinshwehti turned his attention to the coastal polities to his west and east, Arakan and Ayutthaya.

Arakan (1546-7)

The ruler of Sandoway in south Arakan had pledged loyalty to Tabinshwehti in exchange for the throne of Arakan. The fortifications at Mrauk-U the capital of Arakan had been built with the assistance of the Portuguese, so the normal strategies of frontal assault or siege were ineffective against these fortifications. Arakan with the intercession of monks finally convinced Tabinshwehti to give up the siege and return to Pegu (Harvey, 1925, 158; Lieberman, 1980, 213; Charney, 1998, 15; Leider, 1998, 144-159).

Ayutthya (1548)

While Tabinshwehti was campaigning in Arakan, Ayutthaya had sent raiding parties against Tavoy in Tenasserim. Tabinshwehti ordered the lord of Martaban to regain Tenasserim and in 1548 Tabinshwehti himself led a large invasionary force westwards over the Three Pagodas Route to attack Ayutthaya.

Facing strong fortifications and Portuguese mercenaries at Ayutthaya Tabinshwehti decided to move north and attack the weaker towns to the north, Kamphaengphet, Sukhothai, and Phitsanulok (Surakiat, 2005, 79-80; Harvey, 1925, 158-160; Lieberman, 1980, 213).

While Tabinshwehti had been campaigning in the east, a Mon revival had been gathering momentum in Lower Burma. Upon his return Tabinshwehti was assasinated by Mon members of his own court in 1450. A short period of Mon rule ensued while Bayinnnaung fought to restore the kingdom that Tabinshwehti had built (Shorto, 50-60; Pinto, U Kala, Harvey, 1925, 160-162).

Tabinshweihti Nat

The Tabinshwehti Nat is one of the 37 Nat spirits or gods worshipped in Myanmar.

Historical Fiction

One of the first modern novels published in the Burmese language in the early 20th century was a fictional recreation of Tabinshweihti's reign.

Modern Military Operations

The campaign against communist insurgents in 1962 was named Operation Tabinshwehti.

References

Charney, Michael Walter (1998). "Rise of a Mainland
Trading State: Rahkaing Under the Early Mrauk-U Kings, c. 1430-1603." Journal of Burma Studies 3: 1-34.

Fernquest, Jon (2005b) "Min-gyi-nyo, the Shan Invasions of Ava(1524-27), and the Beginnings of Expansionary Warfare in Toungoo Burma: 1486-1539." SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research 3.2 Autumn.

Harvey, G.E. (1925) History of Burma from the Earliest Times to 10 March 1824, The Beginning of the English Conquest, London: Longmans, Green and Co.

Kala, U. 1959-1961. Mahayazawinkyi [The great chronicles]. 3 vols. Burma Research Society,Burmese text series no. 5. vol. 1 (1959) and vol. 2 (1960), edited by Saya Pwa, vol. 3 (1961), edited by Saya U Khine Soe. Rangoon: Hanthawaddy Press. (Kala I, 1959; Kala II, 1960; Kala III, 1961)

Leider, Jacques Pierre. (1998) "Le Royaume D'Arakan (Birmanie): Son Histoire Politique Entre le Debut du XV et la Fin du XVII Siecle," PhD dissertation, Institut
National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris.

Lieberman, Victor B. (1980) "Europeans, Trade, and the Unification of Burma, c. 1540-1620," Oriens Extremus 27 (1980):203-226.

Pinto, Fernão Mendes. 1989. The travels of Mendes Pinto. Translated and edited by Rebecca. D. Catz. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Shorto (tr.) (no date) Unpublished typescript translation of pp. 34-44, 61-264 of Phra Candakanto (ed.) Nidana Ramadhipati-katha (or as on binding Rajawamsa Dhammaceti Mahapitakadhara), authorship attributed to Bannyadala (c. 1518-1572), Pak Lat, Siam, 1912.

Surakiat, Pamaree (2005) "Thai-Burmese Warfare during the Sixteenth Century and the Growth of the First Toungoo Empire." Journal of the Siam Society 93: 69-
100.

Surakiat, Pamaree (2006) "The Changing Nature of Conflict between Burma and Siam as seen from the growth and development of Burmese states from the 16th to the 19th centuries." ARI Working Paper, No. 64, March 2006,
[http://www.ari.nus.edu.sg/docs/wps/wps06_064.pdf]

John Strong on the legendary Asoka

2006-07-09T00:10:00.000+07:00

In the external links section of the Asoka Wikipedia entry there is a wonderful set of articles on Asoka including an article by John Strong entitled "Images of Asoka: Some Indian and Sri Lankan legends" (p. 141) I'm interested in this, because I want to trace back the more legendary parts of the Burmese chronicle to their original sources.

Ruminations and confession for writing a Wikipedia article on Burmese or Myanmar history

2006-07-09T00:01:00.000+07:00

Perhaps because I converted to Catholicism when I was 24, I have a tendency toward guilt, apology, and confession. So here is my guilty confession for writing Burmese history:

Some people might say that I shouldn't write this Wikipedia entry because: 1. I wrote an article that it cites (Fernquest, 2005) in which I make a new point that some might not agree with, so there might be a conflict of interest of me pushing a new point that hasn't been adequately subjected to batteries of peer review yet. 2. I'm not Burmese, although his doesn't seem to be an issue with other histories such as Greek or Byzantine, it does seem to be an issue with the history of Burma. Anyway, I'm planning on specializing in the "history of non-Western and pre-modern warfare" part of world or comparative history and comparing Burma with other times and places. Anyway, I'll give this Wikipedia entry my best shot. I may have to make it more summary.

Writing a Wikipedia article is a good opportunity to summarize and extract, to hone in on the essential, what is important. The process of writing is backwards from where you normally go when you write a long article. Long articles try to draw out causal connections and develop rich contexts and interpretations based on the many factors at play at any historical time and place.

I think using "Tai" is better than "Shan" because it highlights the cross-regional nature of this group which stretched from Yunnan down into what is now Burma and along to Chiang Mai and Lan Chang (Laos). Thank you to Pamaree Suakiat for the perfectly well thought out bibliographical entries.

History of Burma - Living in the past and peer review

2006-07-07T08:54:00.000+07:00

Aye Chan, U. (2006) "Burma: Shan Domination in the Ava Period (c. AD 1310-1555)," Journal of the Siam Society, 2006, Vol. 94

The first sentence of this paper published in the most recent issue of the Journal of the Siam Society reads:

"Whether or not there was a 'Shan Age' in Burma's history has become a matter of debate among the historians of Burma..." (Aye Chan 2006, 27; my italics).

Now look at the distribution of publishing dates in the bibliography:

1876-1950 - 6
1950's - 6
1960's - 10
1970's - 3
1980's - 3
1990's - 1
2000's - 2

If there is a debate, where are the citations to the papers in this debate?

Aye Chan continues with how this debate about a Shan era supposedly arose. It arose...

"...after Michael Aung Thwin in his book, Myth and History in the Historiography of Burma (1998), argued that the notion of there having been three Shan brothers who founded a new dynasty following the fall of the Pagan dynasty in the closing decades of the thirteenth century was only a myth created by the European scholars Arthur Phayre, Edward Huber, G.E. Harvey and G.H. Luce"

Most of the papers cited are from four decades before Aung-thwin's paper was published. Does the Journal of the Siam Society have Peer Review? Should it? Should I be the one pointing this out?

If Aye Chan used Geoff Wade's online English translation of the Ming Shi Lu, as he surely did since I participated in the online forum where he asked me for citations to this work, the work should be cited as such. If Aung-thwin used Shorto's English translation of the Mon Nidana Ramadipati Katha, it should be cited as such. Should I be the one reminding a full professor of Burmese history to do this?

Translations actually take more time and are more valuable than artificial debates such as Aung-thwin's "Three Shan Brothers" debate that focuses on one obscure and complex period of great cultural interaction between Burmese and Tais, a period that lacks evidence, and where Aung-thwin, as usual, attempts to find a colonial era conspiracy whereby three members of the ruling elite are referred to as Shans by the colonial era historians. How convoluted and useless.

I am obviously an interested party here. I published a paper last year on this very topic, where I discussed the very point quoted in the first sentence of Aye Chan's paper above: "Whether or not there was a 'Shan Age' in Burma's history". I used Chinese, Burmese and Tai sources. "Tai" is the way most contemporary scholars refer to "Shans". This usage I discovered from peer review. Despite the certainty that Aye Chan professes on the second Shan period (c. 1527-1555) he bases his certainty on one historical tradition, the Burmese chronicle. The nature of Tai hegemony over Upper Burma during this period is far from clear if you look at all the sources: Burmese, Tai, and Chinese. This is very clear in Sun Lai-chen's dissertation (2000), the most important recent source not cited.

I will cite Aye Chan's paper in the future papers that I write, because that is the standard of scholarship I was taught to observe as a graduate student in Engineering at Stanford, but it will probably be as if I was talking to myself.

In fact, if there are to be no citations, no academic exchange, technically one should work in secluded privacy, not citing anyone who has published recently, pretending that no one else has thought about the issues, engaging in a few pro-forma meaningless skirmishes in the bogus Aung-thwin colonial conspiracy debates and then just publish a book as if no one else existed. This is obviously wrong.

The right way to proceed is probably to publish online a couple of times and then sollow this up with a more summary paper-based journal article that cites the evidence of the more detailed and longer online papers. This is probably the right combination or formula because longer online papers will allow more of the untranslated primary sources for Burmese history like the Burmese chronicle to be prarphrased and made accessible to a historical community that is still all too reliant on colonial era interpretations.

Peer review is essential. Online publishing is also essential so that students in Southeast Asia can actually read your paper about their history without having to rummage around in a remote and inaccessible university library somewhere.

References

Sun, Laichen. (2000) Ming-Southeast Asian overland
interactions, c. 1368-1644. Unpublished PhD Dissertation,
University of Michigan.

War making and state making as organized crime (Charles Tilly)

2006-07-06T23:14:00.000+07:00

It was a joy to find this oft cited paper on state formation by sociologist Charles Tilly online. One online copy is at a regular university archive.

This Tilly paper is widely quoted in the state formation literature and is probably applicable to both pre-modern/ancient as well as nonwestern state formation. It caught my attention in Herman Schwartz's States versus Markets which has very nice summary descriptions of state formation processes. Since he doesn't link them back to the original historical events with citations though, it's difficult to see their full justification. A lot like Reid's magisterial Bruadel-like works for Southeast Asia that I often where the missing sources come from.

Michael Mann's "The Sources of Social Power I: From the Beginning to AD 1760" (Cambridge 1986) is a little bit more widely cited. For instance, being used in Scheidel's class on Ancient State Formation at Stanford.

Spinoza and Buddhism

2006-07-04T18:56:00.000+07:00

Philosophy professor and author of a recent biography of Spinoza, Rebecca Goldstein, explains how Spinoza's philopsophy is similar to and different from Buddhism in a recent interview for the California Literary Review:

Interviewer: "Spinoza's philosophy has strong similarities to Buddhism - most notably the concept that any notion of a separate and distinct self is an illusion. Buddhism's method for understanding that truth is to turn off the mind, while Spinoza's is to rigorously engage the mind.

Goldstein: "The final viewpoint that Spinoza comes to has a great deal in common with Buddhism. (A friend to whom I was once explaining Spinoza quipped, "Oh, you're telling me that Baruch was the first Bu-Jew.") But of course Spinoza's methodology is entirely different, as you point out, placing all its trust in the deductive processes of logic. Since the world itself is woven of logic--really IS logic--then that's the one and only faculty of our minds that can penetrate beyond the appearances into true being. "For the eyes of the mind, whereby it sees and observes things, is none other than proofs." Spinoza's entire system in fact unfolds from what I call his basic Presumption of Reason, the belief that the world is entirely intelligible, that every fact that truly is a fact has an explanation. From this intuition of his (which he seems to regard as itself true by logic) he deduces the full sweep of his system. His system is supposed to be as inextricably woven of pure logic as reality itself."

The author's site has links to online book reviews but I have yet to find this book in Bangkok.

Wikipedia Hypercritique

2006-07-03T18:59:00.000+07:00

Wikipedia is the future of collaborative writing...

...but here's an article that challenges the idea of Wikipedia.

It does suffer from a lot of hand-waving, a lack of examples, and some contradictions (e.g. Wikipedia has heavy editors versus Wikipedia is anarchy).

It shouldn't be a surprise that there are strong-handed editors in some more popular heavy traffic subjects. There probably should be.

Wikipedia's been used for personal vendettas. Juan Cole is a good example. The Juan Cole biographical entry has been refactored leaving the more controversial part in the Views_and_controversies_concerning_Juan_Cole entry.

Wikipedia style seems to always win in the end. It is not that difficult to smell extremism and bias in writing. Right now wikipedia excels at the more superficial: definitions, outlines, timelines, and external links.

In the future there will be more specialized encyclopedias. People are already starting to cite their sources more. In the days before Wikipedia, little spontaneous Wiki documentation systems sprouted up with every new piece of software. This will happen again with specialists forming specialized encyclopedias controlling the information and well they should to some extent.

Good governance is only one third participation. It is also legality (people follow rules to create order) and transparency (people see people following the rules so they have an idea of the bounds within which they can improvise).

Some articles are extremely high quality like Web Crawler or Nicolas Bourbaki or Collaboration or Peer Review. Other articles are the proverbial bathroom wall:

"[H]owever closely a Wikipedia article may at some point in its life attain to reliability, it is forever open to the uninformed or semiliterate meddler… The user who visits Wikipedia to learn about some subject, to confirm some matter of fact, is rather in the position of a visitor to a public restroom. It may be obviously dirty, so that he knows to exercise great care, or it may seem fairly clean, so that he may be lulled into a false sense of security. What he certainly does not know is who has used the facilities before him." (Source: Wikipedia:Wikipedia#Reliability)

The idea of the bathroom wall was created by a former Britannica editor whose livelihood has obviously been threatened. I did have to search forever to find the entry on the what is supposed to be the cornerstone of Wikipedia writing Neutral Point of View (NPOV) based on journalistic objectivity.

Organizing personal libraries of historical sources

2006-07-03T17:36:00.000+07:00

Looking for organizing personal libraries of historical sources stored on one's computer, a presentation by Associate Professor Marti Hearst at U.C. Berkeley's School of Information as part of a course on search engine technology is useful.

Hierarchical faceted metadata represents knowledge so that it "can be understood well by many people when browsing rich collections of information."

Facets are sets of categories each of which describes different aspects of the objects in a collection. Facets can be hierarchical. Facets can also be mutually exclusive and exhaustive so that everything is guaranteed a unique description.

Examples in these Powerpoint lecture slides include organizing an art collection, a biographical site for Nobel Prize winners, and photos in photo collections such as Flickr.

Myanmar bans Google

2006-07-03T15:22:00.000+07:00

YANGON: The Myanmar government has blocked the Google search engine and its mail service Gmail, say Internet users.

Users in the country have not been able to access the Google site for more than a week, reported the Mizzima News.

Those attempting to view either Google or Gmail are confronted with a message saying "Access Denied".

An official from Bagan Cybertech, the country's only Internet service provider, confirmed that both Google and gmail were inaccessible but declined to comment further.

In an effort to control the flow of information in and out of the country, the military government has banned several websites, including Yahoo and Hotmail.

Open Source Software and Open Standards for Archaeology (IOSA.it)

2006-07-03T00:36:00.000+07:00

Found references to Open Source archaeology site at Digg.com tonight.

One of the links led to an interesting site:

"IOSA stands for Internet and Open Source in Archaeology. It is a research group of young archaeologists within grupporicerche. The aim of the web site and of IOSA research team is to promote the use of open source software and open stardards in archaeological computing. Any help is welcome and users are encouraged to register and contribute through discussion forums. IOSA.it is open to all who are interested in archaeology and free software (free as in freedom)."

I don't do archaeology, but being a specialist in ancient texts I'm interested in historical geography and maps, a shared interest with archaeologists. The links section of the site has a GIS and cartography, open access, and epigraphy sections.

Historical chronologies : Web technology for visualizing parallel events (Ajax)

2006-07-01T11:32:00.000+07:00

Check out Timeline which allows you to visualize historical events occurring in parallel in your web browser using Ajax technology (Ajax can effectively turn your web browser into something as quick a desktop computer application but using data from web databases). Ajax is used by most new Google desktop Apps.

The particular events used in the example are the Kennedy assassination, and it really seems effective in historical situations where there is a lot of action going on in parallel, so the chronicle history that I specialize in which is pretty linear may not be able to exploit it. Also you need extensive dating of events, although I guess if you know the sequence you could space events out logically along the chronology too.

The future lies in search engines that know linguistics

2006-07-01T09:56:00.000+07:00

An article on Wikipedia 3.0: The end of Google? has leaped to popularity overnight. I think they miss the point that Google and the Semantic Web will not ultimately be two different things. They will converge to the same thing as we learn to parse the meaning out of the language we write in. People are lazy and this is the laziest alternative. It can even be donw while they write.

Ontologies should be built from the bottom up with linguistic raw material as new search engine capabilities.

Realistically people don't have enough time to organize their ideas by constructing folksonomies and Wikipedia's folksonomy is only going to capture how a fraction of the world sees a given topic.

The semantic web will eventually be built from the bottom up by semantically decoding the ideas tht people are expressing in their writing.

Making their writing clearer is where people should put their efforts, not social bookmarking .

Sure they should link to sites, but link to them in a way that is accessible to search engines and which clearly labels and identifies what the link is about Google Bomb

The semantic web can only be defined from the bottom up

2006-06-29T17:41:00.000+07:00

Can web surfers collectively define the Semantic Web from the top down by social bookmarking, tagging, folksonomies, and outliners?

Let them become better writers and express their ideas more clearly, then... Once they can communicate what they actually mean, that is the time to create a Semantic Web. Create it by going backwards, extracting the semantics out of what they wrote and then indexing it. Ultimately the semantic web will defined from the bottom-up, linguistically.

In all the online discussion of Web 3.0 nowhere is the key word "linguistics"
to be found [Phil Wainwright (ZDNet), International Herald Tribute, A List Apart].

This is really strange since the two founders of Google where graduate students at Stanford Unversity's computer science department which specializes in Computational linguistics (aka natural language processing) and information retrieval(search engine design) promises to reduce largely to computational linguistics in the future.

The MUC (Machine Understanding) conferences of the 1990s had different academic teams competing to create software programs that extract information and summarize the meaning of different kinds of articles, for instance reports of terrorist acts(See example MUC-6 conference).

Fernando Pereira, an important Stanford Alumni and professor of Computer Science at the University of Pennsylvania is doing research on information extraction.

Stanford professor Christopher Manning's authoritative
Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing (1999)

There's a long way to go before before even the syntax of natural languages can be parsed correctly much less decoding semantics or pragmatics, but the HPSG project at Stanford has an impressive list of syntactic constructions that it can handle (but the program is written in the rather infrequently used (but fascinating) COMMON LISP).

Biography of Spinoza (intriguing book review)

2006-06-29T17:03:00.000+07:00

Rarely does a book review spur me to go and buy a book about a subject that I don't already have an interest in.

This book review of a new Spinoza biography makes you want to start reading Spinoza as well as read about his life.

The secret behind this book review's success is probably its concise summaries of ideas.

One might call this a Richard Rortyeffect ("arguing within a given language game" which in itself sounds very Spinoza-like). In his lectures Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity Rorty repeatedly summarizes the ideas of major figures in the intellectual history of the west like Plato, Kant, Marx, Nabokov, Nietszche Dewey, Proust in only a few sentences. Regarding "Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity":

"...[the book] was published in 1989. In it, Rorty abandons the attempt to explain his theories in analytic terms and creates an alternative conceptual schema to that of the 'Platonists' he rejects. This schema is based on the belief that there is no 'truth' higher than one's ability to (re)create her/himself, a view adapted from Nietzsche and which Rorty also identifies with the novels of Proust and Henry James. This book also marks his first attempt to specifically articulate a political vision consonant with his philosophy, the vision of a diverse community bound together by opposition to cruelty, and not by abstract ideas such as 'justice' or 'common humanity' policed by the separation of the public and private realms of life.

Research folksonomies as library card catalogue extensions

2006-06-27T15:34:00.000+07:00

The Penn Tags project is going to add social bookmarking and folksonomies to university library card catalogues. From Corante.com

As a rather intensive user of university library card catalogues, it seems like this development is a little premature. Since it is a university, why not open source it? Hold a competition and see which budding programmer / software designer comes up with the most useful tool.

It's the individual paragraphs of books that should be tagged. Intellectual property laws still prevent the direct citation, linking, and access to sources that you really need to actually index the information in books.

The current scheme of licensing journals doesn't help either. At U.C. Berkeley only users with student or staff ids can get access to online journals, although a lot of other people make use of the U.C. Berkeley libraries such as journalists or specialists in certain areas. You can only assume a small fraction of the public is going to have access to expensive academic journals.

The right scale for such a project is the whole web not an individual university library. Google Book Search is the right place to begin. (See universal library)

Also tags are just keywords that summarize and identify content. Tag creation should be driven by search. This is something I've realized everyday in my job as I scan articles for vocabulary to define and more importantly terminology to define. Unique and often low frequency terminology (concrete nouns) are the best subject/topic identifiers, the natural tags for newspaper articles which are a lot shorter than books.

Vocabulary profilers will give you a color coded frequency ranked vocabulary list for any article that helps identify the right tags. Just look at the low-frequency red words.

One nice difference between Penn Taggs and tags at places like Flickr that I see is the underscore to bridge words "shih_tzu" is used at Penn Tags not the "shih tzu" I always see at Flickr. Languages that don't use spaces (Thai, Hindi, Chinese, Arabic,....) are at advantage over English here because they are forced to use some objective statistical measure of co-occurence to define what exactly a word is. In English the convenient space just encourages people to be lazy in their parsing.

Book reviews for a book are another thing you want to link in to the card catalog. Usually you can find a few high quality ones generally available online. You could almost define a good book review as one that gives you the right tags for the article. Book reviews for books of the past are a useful construct.

Wikipedia + Editing + Hierarchy does-not-equal Wikipedia's death

2006-06-26T18:10:00.000+07:00

There is an interesting thread/debate on the Death of Wikipedia over at Corante.com that I found via BBC's Bill Thompson's article on tagging.

Far from spelling the death of Wikipedia, editing will make it stronger.

Where there is a lot of participation on a topic, the luxury of editing becomes an opportunity to 1. improve the quiality of the information and 2. to learn.

Everyone is not equally qualified to comment on or write on a subject.

Under the traditional Wikipedia anyone could comment and write.

Now a light hierarchy of editors has is forming spontaneously over some Wikipedia topics.

Some people think this means the death of Wikipedia.

The policy of making everything freely editable allowed Wikipedia to succeed where over-edited alternatives like original Nupedia failed from imposing too much editing from the beginning.

If Wikipedia writers stick to a philosophy of ego-free wikipedia writing then the experience of being edited becomes like learning and improving your writing and ideas through peer review and collaboration.

The absence of authorship and explicit names attached to texts helps to make Wikipedia writing ego-free.

Just like volunteerism is a good thing to do in parallel with normal for money life-sustaining work, writing anonymously for Wikipedia is a good supplement for authored/named writing that you get recognition for. It seems like this is what is driving a lot of the better entries.

Initially I thought that Wikipedia could not survive contentious issues like the recent US - Iran Nuclear controversy, but Wikipedia polarized into two articles with opposing viewpoints in this case: 1. Iran's nuclear program, and 2. Iran and weapons of mass destruction. The issue even affects Thailand (See my article)

It will definitely be worth watching the way that Wikipedia evolves. It may be prescient of all our intellectual futures. There might even be topically highly specialized Wikipedia's for research in the future and highly personalized if opinion is a large factor in the research (in pure math it isn't).

In general, tools that help you make links to Wikipedia articles quicker and reliably are needed. Without them finding relevant Wikipedia articles and linking text to them can be quite a drag on the writing process. The Google search "wikipedia name-of-topic" tells you what terms/entries are important for that topic. Tools to automatically determine which Wikipedia articles provide background on an topic you are writing about and what words in the article a link to the wikipedia article should be placed on would be nice. This last item is called a Google Bomb that would help associate search terms with a Wikipedia topic. A search that pulls up articles link to a Wikipedia entry would be nice.

Here are some right on the mark quotes from the Corante.com article:

"If no one cared about Wikipedia, semi-protection would be pointless, but with Wikipedia being used as reference material in the Economist and the NY Times, the incentive for distortion is huge, and behavior that can be sensibly described as vandalism, outside scare quotes, is obvious to anyone watching Wikipedia. The rise of governance models is a reaction to the success that creates incentives to vandalism and other forms of attack or distortion."

[My comment: editing = governance of information, democracy is not necessarily the full answer here, after some kinds of truth are only possessed by experts, a quote from a resigning minister in Thaksin's cabinet today says it all, basically: governance = 1. participation, 2. legality , and 3. transparency, or in this case the proper flow of information needs: 1. participation and freedom (because there are going to different and opposing perspectives on a wide range of issues) 2. legality or truth (because some experts know some truths that no majority democracy can vote down) and 3. transparency (who claims what and is important if you ever want to improve the information and make it more accurate and reliable))]

More from the Myanmar trash travel literature genre

2006-06-25T09:50:00.000+07:00

Land of a Thousand Eyes: The Subtle pleasures of everyday life in Myanmar, by Peter Olszewski, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2005. P253

"But that's the only sort of book that sells."

Trashy travel books on Myanmar seem to be popping up like mushrooms in a dank forest while books on Burma's rich history like San Lwin's translation of Razadarit Ayeidawpon remain in unpublished manuscript form.

Yet another item in the trash travel literature genre for Myanmar. Like exploitation films that "sacrifice traditional notions of artistic merit for a sensational display, often featuring sex, gore, and violence" or paracinema trash travel literature sells like hot cakes and masquerades as profound truth as the author takes a swig of beer at the local brothel. Here's another horrible specimen that has yet to be reviewed by Irrawaddy Magazine.

Running the risk of criticism for being a foreigner who lived in Burma, not as a foreign aid worker helping the poor, but largely trying to make money the same way Burmese people make money with a Burmese family, speaking Burmese everyday, not even speaking to a fellow foreigner for more than a year.

"What were you doing there?" my politically correct interrogator asks.

"Reading history books in Burmese," the slightly eccentric expat replies.

"What right do you have to do this while Burma suffers?" my interrogator asks.

"Why is this even an issue? When I personally choose to do this in other places no finds an issue in this. Why is this an issue in Burma?" the eccentric expat observes.

"You are like the author of the travel book who 'moves through the expatriate and local elites scene of Rangoon with the moral immunity enjoyed by many foreigners who frivolously retain their freedoms at the expense of a people largely deprived of rights.'"

"How could I have removed my freedoms to please you?"

The implicit assumptions in the book review seems to be that a foreigner living in or travelling to Burma has to have a certain correct attitude to everything and a correct way of doing everything. This simply does not wash in the real world, any real world, even Burma.

One day, hopefully, Burma will be a normal country. We might as well start practicing for that now. That's means applying the same criteria to Burma as you would to other countries. Like this sort of travel book is trashy whether the author was doing all his dirty travel stuff in Kathmandu, Goa, or Beijing as well. What does Burma really have to do with why this book is trash.

In defense of the book (which I personally hate) if you are a travel writer this is what you have to write to survive because that's what the great mass market wants. The plentitude of books of this ilk is the single best argument for funding more ivory tower academic work on Burma so people can the understand the place, its history and culture better. Travel literature will always be travel literature. Personally, I can rarely get through the first page.

Quotes from the review:

"The book’s narrative structure is like being cornered by a stoned, middle-aged hippie at a party who starts to mumble inanely: you are never too sure where the story is going or what, if any, point there is to it. One minute we are at a beach in Arakan, the next at a Thingyan water festival."

"There are dozens of descriptions of shopping expeditions, Olszewski’s favorite cafes and feeling homesick. He complains about the food, the problems of finding hot water in Kengtung and Shan virgins."

"He caps off this 'tour de farce' with 50 pages of a love story as he finally meets a Burmese woman who can stand his obnoxious Australian sense of humor."

"He provides us with his odious views on female social subservience as equality and strength, on modest clothing as sexually alluring, and on the virtues of certain points of the female Burmese anatomy. It is in descriptions such as these that the book descends sharply to misogyny, and transforms from boring autobiography to Bangkok go-go bargirl literature."

"The book’s most revealing passage is when the author refuses to help the sick street child he patronizingly pretends to care for. He has been giving her pocket change for months for helping him to carry his shopping and to bargain for him at the market. But when she falls painfully ill with stomach worms he refuses to help her get hospital treatment because —under what he terms 'the unwritten law that forces people to ignore the suffering'— assistance could have jeopardized his own position."

It's sad, but this is what sells.