Mon Kingdoms

400 Jan 1 - 1000 Thaton, Myanmar (Burma)

Mon Kingdoms © Maurice Fievet

The first recorded kingdom attributed to the Mon people is Dvaravati,^[15] which prospered until around 1000 CE when their capital was sacked by the Khmer Empire and a significant portion of the inhabitants fled west to present-day Lower Burma and eventually founded new polities. Another Mon-speaking state Haripuñjaya also existed in northern Thailand down to the late 13th century.^[16]

According to the colonial era scholarship, as early as the 6th century, the Mon began to enter the present-day Lower Burma from the Mon kingdoms of Haribhunjaya and Dvaravati in modern-day Thailand. By the mid 9th century, the Mon had founded at least two small kingdoms (or large city-states) centred around Bago and Thaton. The states were important trading ports between Indian Ocean and mainland Southeast Asia. Still, according to traditional reconstruction, the early Mon city-states were conquered by the Pagan Kingdom from the north in 1057, and that Thaton's literary and religious traditions helped to mould early Pagan civilisation.^[17] Between 1050 and about 1085, Mon craftsmen and artisans helped to build some two thousand monuments at Pagan, the remains of which today rival the splendors of Angkor Wat.^[18] The Mon script is considered to be the source of the Burmese script, the earliest evidence of which was dated to 1058, a year after the Thaton conquest, by the colonial era scholarship.^[19]

However, research from the 2000s (still a minority view) argues that Mon influence on the interior after Anawrahta's conquest is a greatly exaggerated post-Pagan legend, and that Lower Burma in fact lacked a substantial independent polity prior to Pagan's expansion.^[20] Possibly in this period, the delta sedimentation — which now extends the coastline by three miles (4.8 kilometres) in a century — remained insufficient, and the sea still reached too far inland, to support a population even as large as the modest population of the late precolonial era. The earliest evidence of Burmese script is dated to 1035, and possibly as early as 984, both of which are earlier than the earliest evidence of the Burma Mon script (1093). Research from the 2000s argues that the Pyu script was the source of the Burmese script.^[21]

Though the size and importance of these states are still debated, all scholars accept that during the 11th century, Pagan established its authority in Lower Burma and this conquest facilitated growing cultural exchange, if not with local Mon, then with India and with Theravada stronghold Sri Lanka. From a geopolitical standpoint, Anawrahta's conquest of Thaton checked the Khmer advance in the Tenasserim coast.^[20]

Waithali

Pagan Kingdom

Show in Timeline

History of Myanmar

References

Aung-Thwin, Michael, and Maitrii Aung-Thwin. A history of Myanmar since ancient times: Traditions and transformations (Reaktion Books, 2013).
Aung-Thwin, Michael A. (2005). The Mists of Rāmañña: The Legend that was Lower Burma (illustrated ed.). Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. ISBN 0824828860.
Brown, Ian. Burma’s Economy in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2013) 229 pp.
Callahan, Mary (2003). Making Enemies: War and State Building in Burma. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Cameron, Ewan. 'The State of Myanmar,' History Today (May 2020), 70#4 pp 90–93.
Charney, Michael W. (2009). A History of Modern Burma. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-61758-1.
Charney, Michael W. (2006). Powerful Learning: Buddhist Literati and the Throne in Burma's Last Dynasty, 1752–1885. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.
Cooler, Richard M. (2002). 'The Art and Culture of Burma'. Northern Illinois University.
Dai, Yingcong (2004). 'A Disguised Defeat: The Myanmar Campaign of the Qing Dynasty'. Modern Asian Studies. Cambridge University Press. 38: 145–189. doi:10.1017/s0026749x04001040. S2CID 145784397.
Fernquest, Jon (Autumn 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). ISSN 1479-8484.
Hall, D. G. E. (1960). Burma (3rd ed.). Hutchinson University Library. ISBN 978-1-4067-3503-1.
Harvey, G. E. (1925). History of Burma: From the Earliest Times to 10 March 1824. London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd.
Htin Aung, Maung (1967). A History of Burma. New York and London: Cambridge University Press.
Hudson, Bob (March 2005), 'A Pyu Homeland in the Samon Valley: a new theory of the origins of Myanmar's early urban system' (PDF), Myanmar Historical Commission Golden Jubilee International Conference, archived from the original (PDF) on 26 November 2013
Kipgen, Nehginpao. Myanmar: A political history (Oxford University Press, 2016).
Kyaw Thet (1962). History of Burma (in Burmese). Yangon: Yangon University Press.
Lieberman, Victor B. (2003). Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830, volume 1, Integration on the Mainland. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-80496-7.
Luce, G. H.; et al. (1939). 'Burma through the fall of Pagan: an outline, part 1' (PDF). Journal of the Burma Research Society. 29: 264–282.
Mahmood, Syed S., et al. 'The Rohingya people of Myanmar: health, human rights, and identity.' The Lancet 389.10081 (2017): 1841-1850.
Moore, Elizabeth H. (2007). Early Landscapes of Myanmar. Bangkok: River Books. ISBN 978-974-9863-31-2.
Myint-U, Thant (2001). The Making of Modern Burma. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-79914-7.
Myint-U, Thant (2006). The River of Lost Footsteps—Histories of Burma. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-16342-6.
Phayre, Lt. Gen. Sir Arthur P. (1883). History of Burma (1967 ed.). London: Susil Gupta.
Seekins, Donald M. Historical Dictionary of Burma (Myanmar) (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017).
Selth, Andrew (2012). Burma (Myanmar) Since the 1988 Uprising: A Select Bibliography. Australia: Griffith University.
Smith, Martin John (1991). Burma: insurgency and the politics of ethnicity (Illustrated ed.). Zed Books. ISBN 0-86232-868-3.
Steinberg, David I. (2009). Burma/Myanmar: what everyone needs to know. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-539068-1.
Wyatt, David K. (2003). Thailand: A Short History (2 ed.). p. 125. ISBN 978-0-300-08475-7.