H-ASIA
February 6, 2006

Book Review by Michael W. Charney of Michael Aung-Thwin, _The Mists of
Ramanna: The Legend that was Lower Burma_
**********************************************************************
From: "Cummings, William" <cummings@cas.usf.edu>

H-NET BOOK REVIEW

Published for H-Asia@h-net.msu.edu (February 2006)

Michael Aung-Thwin. _The Mists of Ramanna: The Legend that was Lower
Burma_. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. 2005. xi + 433 pp. Maps,
photographs, notes, bibliography, index. $59.00 (cloth), ISBN
0-8248-2886-0.

Reviewed for H-ASIA by Michael W. Charney, Department of History, School
of Oriental and African Studies

The Study of Myths in Burmese History

Michael Aung-Thwin is Professor of Asian Studies at the University of
Hawai'i (Manoa) and has published extensively on Burmese history. The
present work is divided into thirteen chapters, including the
introduction and the conclusion ("Without the Mon Paradigm"). The main
goal of the book is to debunk what Aung-Thwin calls the "Mon paradigm,"
which, he argues, was the result of the work of colonial historians who
combined two indigenous myths into one interpretation of Burmese
history. As the author explains:

"In the nineteenth century ... Dhammazedi's fifteenth-century claim that
the ancient Suvannabhumi was Ramannadesa and U Kala's eighteenth-century
account of the conquest of Thaton--two temporally, causally, and
textually unrelated narratives--were combined for the first time by
colonial scholarship and synthesized into a new theory that the Mon
Theravada Buddhist culture of Lower Burma 'civilized' Burman Upper
Burma. This is the thesis that I call the Mon Paradigm.... Because Pagan
is considered to have been the 'Golden age' of Burma's culture and
therefore also the foundations upon which the country's subsequent
culture was built, the Mon Paradigm implies that the Mon people and the
culture of Lower Burma were the ultimate origins not only of Pagan
civilization, but also of Burma's culture in general" (p. 2).

This paradigm was maintained, Aung-Thwin argues, because specialists on
the country did not heed the reservations of non-specialists on Burma,
especially of those external specialists not trained in indigenous
languages, such as Pierre Dupont. In other words, had scholars on the
country not been trapped by their own historiography and been able to
view Burmese history without knowledge of it, they might have seen the
inconsistencies of the paradigm (pp. 4, 6). This sets up a demanding
case for Aung-Thwin to demonstrate, but unfortunately, the present study
fails to convince the present reviewer, as discussed below.

The present reviewer has examined Burmese myths, also using a textual
approach as well as the same indigenous chronicles used here regarding
the Abhiraja myth.[1] Thus, he is in a position to comment on the merits
of Michael Aung-Thwin's analysis of the emergence of one of the
"myths"--the Thaton conquest story in Burmese history--which was
integrated into Aung-Thwin's Mon paradigm. This story or "myth" holds
that upon the advice of his teacher, Shin Arahan, the eleventh-century
Burmese king, Anawrahta, marched against and took the town of Thaton in
Lower Burma. From Thaton, Anawrahta took back to Pagan thirty sets of
the Pali Canon (the Pitakas) and they were used to instruct Burmese
monks in the correct religious teachings. Aung-Thwin argues that this
myth does not appear in its full form until the twentieth century in Mon
texts and only in the 1730s in Burmese texts. Thus, he argues, the
story's acceptance represents a Mon paradigm used by colonial historians
and others later to understand Burmese history in a particular way that
allowed them (and the Mons) to view the Burmese as the recipients of
culture from the Mons. Aung-Thwin draws attention to the lineage of the
story and to the fact that inscriptions do not support it and thus draws
the Mon paradigm into question. He makes use of a limited number of
indigenous texts, some translated into English and some into Burmese. It
is unclear if Aung-Thwin understands Mon, but other than Burmese
chronicles, he relies on translated versions of a small sampling of Mon
texts and a translated version of a Pali chronicle.

An important problem with this work is that Aung-Thwin, likely
unwittingly, selectively presents part of the historical context that
would support his claims, but remains silent on changing aspects of this
context that would work against them. A good example, one that would
call the entire argument of this book into question, was the alternating
mood of Bodawhpaya (r. 1782-1819). Certainly, Bodawhpaya did favour the
Thaton story--initially. However, when he and the monastic order were at
odds concerning his claims regarding the religion, he attempted to
undercut their position by making a similar claim as that made by
Aung-Thwin in the present book, that Ramannadesa was not an ancient
country, in order to challenge the authenticity of the religious texts
taken from from Thaton.[2] Bodawhpaya thus had his own special reasons
to obstruct the historical record regarding Thaton. This is important,
as Bodawhpaya--who spent much of his reign collecting extant copies of
chronicles, religious texts, and other works, as well as inscriptions,
and then culled them to support his views on the religion and
society--presents a serious obstacle to our understanding of what was
written (or inscribed) before his time. While Bodawhpaya could not
collect and correct everything, it makes it extremely difficult to
say--concerning views not shared by Bodawhpaya--what did not exist prior
to his time, as asserted in the present study. Thus, while one might be
able to confidently trace the Abhiraja myth, a myth supported by the
court at this time, one wonders whether the argument can really be made
that the Thaton story definitely did not exist. Certainly, this problem
should have been discussed. The Twinthin taik-wun is clearly an
exception and an understandable one. As one of the men put in charge of
collecting and revising, the Twinthin taik-wun wrote his chronicle,
which was not officially sanctioned by the court, prior to Bodawhpaya's
shift regarding the Thaton story and after much of the text collecting
had been completed. This cannot be said of earlier manuscripts.

The discussion of Bimala Churn Law's translation of Shin Pannasammi's
_Sasanavamsa_ is also problematic for several reasons.[3] First, the
translation is frequently poor. Grammatical errors, contradictions, and
the like, pepper the book. For those of us unable to read Pali,
understanding what the translation is supposed to say, requires
examining Shin Nyanabhivamsa's _Thathanalinkaya-sadan_ (from which the
_Sasasanavamsa_ borrows extensively verbatim) for sections on which they
share coverage. A re-translation is necessary from the original Pali
(which the present reviewer is not able to read). Pending that
re-translation, the passage cited does not clearly show a contradiction
with a later passage, as argued by Aung-Thwin, regarding the Thaton
'myth.' Admittedly, it is under the heading of Ramanya, but the
paragraph in which is included is less geographically circumspect than
this heading would suggest:

"the king named Anuruddha of the town of Arimaddana brought an Order of
monks from there together with the Pitakas. After that ... the great
king Sirisamghabodhi-Parakkamabahu purified the religion in the island
of [Sri] Lanka. Six years after that ... the Elder named Uttarajiva
became famous in the religion" (Pannasammi, p. 44).

No mention is made of the place to which Anuruddha (Anawrahta) brought
the pitakas--although Aung-Thwin inserts "Pagan" within brackets to make
it so--"from there" could refer to either Pagan or to Thaton (the
subject of the previous paragraph), or, given the problematic
translation (or of the Pali original, if a new translation demonstrates
this), it could refer to any range of places (Aung-Thwin, p. 146).

Pannasammi actually includes two accounts of the "Thaton Conquest"
episode. The second is a full elaboration of the story, as rejected by
Aung-Thwin. The first, quoted by Aung-Thwin, is a nearly verbatim
repetition of the version of the episode found in the Pali section of
the Kalyani Inscriptions, probably preserved in an intermediary text.
The three versions relevant here can be arranged as follows:

[Kalyani] "King Anuruddha, the Lord of Arimaddanapura, brought a
community of priests together with the Tipitika (from Ramannadesa), and
established the Religion of Arimaddanapura, otherwise called Pugama"
(Kalyani, p. 49).[4]

[Pannasammi A]: "the king named Aniruddha of the town of Arimaddana
brought an Order of monks from there together with the Pitakas"
(Pannsammi, p. 44).

[Aung-Thwin quotation of Pannasammi A]: "the king named Aniruddha of the
town of Arimaddana [Pagan] brought an Order of monks from there [Pagan]
together with the Pitakas" (p. 146).


Clearly, Aung-Thwin's adjustment of the sentence has the effect of
single-handedly replacing Ramannadesa with Pagan, not presenting new
evidence that contradicts the Kalyani Inscription. As demonstrated
above, the Pannasammi story [version A] is not an entirely different
version of the episode, but the same Mon version of the story datable at
least to 1476, and, certainly, it can be read any way that one wishes
to, depending on which name they insert into the brackets, even as
evidence supporting the Thaton conquest account. What makes this problem
important is that Aung-Thwin then makes a jump, by ignoring the more
reliable account [Pannasammi B] and then telling his readers that
Pannasammi (A) provides a unique third version of events, that Anawrahta
"took the scriptures to Thaton" (p. 147), which is only conjecture on
the part of Aung-Thwin. In fact, the only precolonial tradition
(Aung-Thwin cites three competing traditions) that offers an alternative
story is derived from a text that can be reliably dated only to the
nineteenth century.

The overall argument of the book is sometimes not supported by the
evidence cited. Oddly, Aung-Thwin expends a considerable amount of
effort discussing chronicles and other texts that would not logically
mention the Thaton story in an effort to demonstrate that their failure
to include the Thaton story constitutes some sort of proof that the
story did not exist at the time they were written. _Zatatawpon Yazawin_
and _Yazawinkyaw_ are not histories per se, but deal almost exclusively
with royal lineage (and the latter, especially with horoscopes), with
little discussion of anything but regnal titles, dates, and filial
relations. _Razadhirat Ayeidawhpon_ as well was not intended to cover
the Pagan era (pp. 133-135). Further, one, the _Zambu Kungya_, cannot be
dated to the pre-nineteenth century period, although its contents can be
traced in part to U Kala in the early eighteenth century and to the
_Maniyadanabon_ in the late eighteenth century, but is nonetheless
presented as evidence that the earliest Burmese chronicles had a
different version of the Thaton story than that provided in U Kala (p.
123).

The author also fails to put his work into the broader range of
literature on myths and their emergence in Burmese history. In
neglecting related work in the field, _Mists of Ramanna_ remains only
important to those concerned with the relevance of the Mons to Burmese
history per se, rather than realizing its potential value within the
broader context of the study of history writing. Further, in directing
readers to other work on specialized topics and regions, Aung-Thwin's
suggestions are sometimes unrepresentative of the state of the field (at
least for the past decade). Closer attention to more recent decades of
Burmese historiography would have helped to prevent this problem.

As Aung-Thwin explains, his study is "not an indictment of evidence but
of methodology; of the way data have been assessed and used to conform
to a preconceived notion" (p. 3). This criticism was directed at
colonial scholars, but might be appropriately redirected at the present
study. The case against the Mon paradigm remains unproven. The data is
sometimes poorly handled in the present volume; vague references and
observations by the author based on equivocal evidence he mobilizes in
defense of his thesis represent questionable methodology.

In sum, _Mists of Ramanna_ presents an interesting journey through a
particular set of indigenous source materials and is easy reading. An
unconvincing analysis of the chronicles and a failure to place the
current study into the broader context of research on myths in Burmese
history, however, hinder the book's value. Perhaps a revised edition
will help the author make _Mists of Ramanna_ a stronger contribution to
the body of research on premodern Burmese history.


Notes

[1]. Michael Walter Charney, "Centralizing Historical Tradition in
Precolonial Burma: the Abhiraja/Dhajaraja Myth in Early Kon-baung
Historical Texts," _South East Asia Research_ 10, no. 2 (2002): pp.
185-215.

[2]. Royal Edict, 7 August 1817, in Than Tun, ed., _The Royal Orders of
Burma, A.D. 1598-1885_ (Tokyo: Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto
University, 1988), 7: p. 390.

[3]. Shin Pannasammi. _The History of Buddha's Religion (Sasanavamsa)_,
trans. Bimala Churn Law (Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1952).



[4]. The full citation is _The Kalyani Inscriptions Erected by King
Dhammaceti at Pegu in 1476 A.D. Text and Translation_ (Rangoon:
Superintendent, Government Printing, Burma, 1892).

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