“Myth and History in the Historiography of Early Burma. Paradigms, Primary Sources and Prejudices”, by Michael A. Aung‑Thwin
Michael A. Aung-Thwin. Myth and History in the Historiography of Early Burma. Paradigms, Primary Sources and Prejudices, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, & Athens: Ohio University, Center for International Studies, Monographs in International Studies, Southeast Asia Series, No. 120, 1998, 312 p.
Texte intégral
1After Pagan: The Origins of Modern Burma (1985) and Irrigation in the Heartland of Burma: Foundations of the Pre-Colonial Burmese State (1990), the late Michael Aung-Thwin, professor of Asian Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Manao, invites us once more to a revision of Burmese historiography. Ali along his rigorous demonstration, he points at and demolishes the strongly held and controversial earlier interpretations of five key events that took place in the kingdom of Pagan, in order to disentangle history from myth. The author finds that, since Arthur H. Phayre first wrote a Burmese history in the English language during the British colonial period, these events actually have been invented or embellished by historians of the late 19th and the 20th century - namely, Gordon H. Luce - caught in their own intellectual and political world.
2Although Paul J. Bennett, often quoted by AungThwin, and Aung-Thwin himself reached similar conclusions that may explain the fall of the Pagan dynasty, they used complementary ways. The former based his studies on the Burmese institutions, demonstrating that there “was a ’contraction’ in that the state on the one hand owed a large part of its legitimacy to the sangha, while the other competed with it for the same ’fixed’ and scarce resources of labor and irrigated land […] By the late thirteenth century, a ’critical mass’ was reached, whereby a weakened state and a wealthy sangha presented a tempting target for the Mongols” (pp. 63‑64).
3As for Aung-Thwin, he focused his analysis exclusively on events, rather than institutions. His reconstruction of five major events of the Pagan dynasty is based on his own reading and analysis of the vernacular and primaries sources - inscriptions in Old Burmese, as well as the successive Burmese chronicles: the Yazawinkyaw (1520), the Jātātōpum (17th c.?), the Mahayazawwingyi (18th c.), the Myanma Yawinthit and the Maniyadanabon (late 18th c.), and the Hmannan (19th c.); one Sinhalese chronicle, the Cūkvamsa (13th c.); and Chinese chronicles, mainly the Yuan Shih (Ming dynasty). Aung-Thwin’s methodological approach stresses the need to check the events, and the events only, as recorded in the various sources, rather than force them into “a preconceived framework,” as did Luce, whose “corroborating evidence” was independent of the original assumption. For example, using Luce’s analysis of King Klawcwā’s dethroning, the author shows how “preconceived notions turn unfavorable evidence into ‘surprise.’”
4The five myths are introduced following the chronology of the events to which they refer: 1. The myth of a Sinhalese invasion of Pagan in 1165 A.D., a raid that seems to actually have concerned Lower Burma only; 2. The myth of the king who fled from the Chinese, whereas it appears that, after the Mongols took the northern Burmese cities in 1283, two diplomatic missions in 1284 and 1285 forestalled a new invasion; 3. The myth of the destruction of Pagan, which was believed to have been sacked, destroyed, or occupied by the Mongols in 1287, whereas it appears that “no reference to the Mongol invasion of 1287 can be found in any indigenous record,” and that the myth “is, ultimately, a product of twentieth-century scholarship;” 4. The myth surrounding King Klawcwā, from his enthroning to the end of the Mongol problem in Burma’s history, between 1289 and 1301; 5. The myth of the so-called Three “Shan” Brothers, powerful ministers of the Burmese king, who were blamed for the Pagan kingdom’s final demise, and whose ethnic affiliation formed the basis for interpreting the significance of the kingdom of Ava, known as the “Shan period” in Burmese history.
5The identification of the toponyms of early Burma, as they appear in the inscriptions and compared with other sources, is a constant priority in Aung-Thwin’s analysis. For example, he identifies the kingdom of Rāmañña with Lower Burma, in contrast with Marammarattha, which was Upper Burma; likewise, Ukkàla appears undoubtedly to have been a city of Lower Burma and, although it proves difficult to locate it with precision - possibly east of Basein or Martaban - in no case was it Pagan. This systematic analysis gives strong backing to his demonstration that the theory of a Sinhalese invasion of Pagan, described in the first myth, is not supported by facts. Semantic values are also often discussed: the term prañ may really refer to Prome, a city in Lower Burma, as Luce figured; but the Burmese connotation of this word is also “capital,” that is, Pagan, in Central Burma. Considering the last meaning, Aung-Thwin shows that what the primary sources call Tarup Mō, later identified by Western scholars as a city below Prome, far south of Pagan, actually refers to a city located to the northeast of the capital, near Shwebo, where the Burmese king Narathihapade was “directing the delicate operations from his field headquarters,” instead of “having fled the Chinese,” as he had been suspected previously.
6Such data, combined with a meticulous and comparative new reading of the inscriptions and chronicles, convinced Aung-Thwin that “neither an attack of 1287 nor a destruction of Pagan [by the Mongols] was recorded.” In the same way, by paying a great deal of attention to the meanings of old Burmese words, he not only sets a new notions of space and time in the ·context of early Burma, but also, by collating different sources contemporaneous with the events, he accurately estimates the time then necessary to travel from Tali to Yunnan Fu and onward to the Burmese border. He then provides two maps, of Lower Burma in the 12th century and of Upper Burma in the 13th century. (Since he was granting so much attention to words and names, he should have managed not to write Linter for Lintner and Prichard for Pichard.)
7Through this painstaking research, the author demolishes earlier mistaken interpretations - not least among which, the case of the two Burmese diplomatic missions in 1284 (Disapramok) and 1285 (Antipicañ), which averted the Sino-Mongol invasion and allowed for for the continuation of the Pagan dynasty up to 1368, long after King Klwacwā’s dethroning - and he also contributes to re-establishing the royal Burmese chronology. With King Kulākya reinstated as a historical character, “the revised chronology should look something like this: Alaungsithu reigned between 1113 and 1169-70 […]; Kulākya between 1169 and 1170 […]; Maṅ Yaṅ Narasiṅkha, 1170-1174; and Narapathisithu, 1174-1211 A.D.”
8Although I do not have the historian’s competence to appraise the details of this reconstruction of early Burmese history, the constant reference to the creation of myths (which occurs in the book’s first sentence, quoting in particular C. Lévi-Strauss), considerations of the concept of ethnic difference versus quest of power, and discussion of the relationships between the central power and ethnic minorities, ail these various bridges built between history and anthropology, lead the ethnographer having conducted fieldwork in both Central Burma and the Shan State of Burma to extend some comments.
9After Pr. Than Tun, Aung-Thwin shows in his fifth myth that the famous Three “Shan” Brothers were in fact Burmese, and that, instead of a Shan Period, “the inscriptional evidence to this period shows that Ava remained the center of Burmese art, literature, and economic and political power until 1527, when it was indeed conquered by the Shan chief Thohanbwa.” The author stresses that there is no mention al ail of the Shan, which would refer to the Three Brothers. But, at the same time, he downplays the occurrence of the word sawbwa, which traditionally refers to the Shan chiefs, in the inscriptions.
- 1 See F.K. Lehman, “Ethnic categories in Burma and the theory of social system,” in Southeast Asian T (...)
- 2 See F. Robinne, Fils et maîtres du Lac. Relations inter-ethniques dans l’État shan de Birmanie, Par (...)
10Three brief comments may be made on this word and its implications. First, F.K. Lehman has shown that “the sawbwa system is a Shan political system, which derived its jural authority mainly from the Burmese kingdoms.”1 Second, quoting from E. Leach, Aung-Thwin writes that the Burmese used the term sawbwa “to refer to both Kachin and Shan chieftains and possibly those of other hill tribes,” whereas, in fact, Leach’s thesis tends to show that the autocratic system of the Kachin is derived from the Shan political structure, the same reason explaining - not “possibly,” but surely- the presence of a Palaung, a Wa, and even a Panthay sawbwa in the Northern Shan State, as well as the case of seven Danu sawbwa in the Southern Shan State.2 Third, two economic and religious Shan institutions, the cycle of five markets and the ceremonial procession of five Buddha images, are still attested in many places, not only in the Shan State, but also farther afield, in fact, everywhere the Shan political system and the sawbwa’s influence were dominant, even in the irrigated area of Kyaukse, in Central Burma.
- 3 See F. Robinne, “Cinq jours un marché. Cycles et enjeux dans l’État shan de Birmanie,” in Foires et (...)
11In any case, the fate of these two Shan institutions is linked to the evolution - the emergence or decline of an ethnic leadership3. Thus, although the Three “Shan” Brothers were not Shan and the true Shan Period of Ava started in the 14th century, Shan influence may have been, in such a complex ethnic situation, upon which the political systems of Burma were and still are built, much more meaningful than Aung-Thwin assumes in his analysis of the fifth myth - and it certainly cannot be simply pushed aside.
12The author correctly asserts that the colonial period and the following decades led to a reification of ethnicity, a theme he develops in his conclusion (pp. 148-149). But how could we understand his reluctance to acknowledge Western scholars’ ability to read and use vernacular and primary sources (pp. 137-138), while he himself resorted to the help of translators to tap the Sinhalese and Chinese sources that he then made the best possible use of? Let us mention, among the new generation of researchers alone, at least three names, those of Tilman Frasch, of Germany (history of Pagan), Jacques Leider, of Luxemburg (history of Arakan), and Michio Takatani, of Japan (history of the Shan State), whose work unambiguously demonstrates their capacity to use the original vernacular sources.
13In his systematic attempt at debunking the established history of Burma, Aung-Thwin’s main explanation for so many past misinterpretations runs as follows: “It is because more and more authorities can be cited for the same story as time passes, it gains credibility, when in reality only a single authority exists for this interpretation, which has been shown here to be largely speculative and untenable” (pp. 113-114). This is a leitmotiv of his demonstration, in which he repeatedly refers to “the Luce paradigm,” going so far as to speak of a “conspiracy theory” (pp. 119, 128) and even, with an unnecessary psychological coloring, coming close to lampoon, e.g., “The queen living in the thirteenth century was said to be ’horrified’ at the scenario recreated by Luce in 1958, when in reality, it was Luce who was ’horrified’ - and by his own reconstruction at that” (p. 103).
14There was no need for Aung-Thwin to turn his high-quality analysis into a methodical denunciation of his predecessors, if not his masters, in general, and of Luce, in particular. Stressing the existence of a connection between the historian’s social, political, and academic perspectives and his historiographic work may be a truism; but Aung-Thwin does not seem to see a truism in his remark that, since Luce, new archaeological discoveries and considerable progress in methodological tools have occurred, while computerized facilities (except in Burma) have generated scientific networks. He concludes: "Not that the pioneers of Burma’s history were shallow, careless, ill-trained, or slipshod. On the contrary, they were the first to identity, collect, decipher, and read Old Burmese, Mon, and Pyu inscriptions, careful to a fault, and obsessively thorough. Without their contribution, Burma studies would not be where it is today’’ (pp. 149-150); he could have started with this (ambiguous) homage to Phayre, Luce, and Than Tun. Beyond the remarks above, Aung-Thwin’s invitation to revisit the history of the early Pagan kingdom - with a very interesting glimpse at the myth-making process currently under way in Burma - and, subsequently and more generally, the history of Southeast Asia, is the reason why this important book, like his previous books, was greeted as a classic from the moment of its release.
Notes
1 See F.K. Lehman, “Ethnic categories in Burma and the theory of social system,” in Southeast Asian Tribes, Minorities, and Nations, P. Kunstadter (Ed.), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967, vol. 1, p. 99.
2 See F. Robinne, Fils et maîtres du Lac. Relations inter-ethniques dans l’État shan de Birmanie, Paris: CNRS/MSH, 2000, p. 46, n. 15.
3 See F. Robinne, “Cinq jours un marché. Cycles et enjeux dans l’État shan de Birmanie,” in Foires et marchés en Asie du Sud-Est, G. Hamonic et N. Krowolski (Eds.), forthcoming.
Haut de pagePour citer cet article
Référence papier
François Robinne, « “Myth and History in the Historiography of Early Burma. Paradigms, Primary Sources and Prejudices”, by Michael A. Aung‑Thwin », Moussons, 1 | 2000, 129-131.
Référence électronique
François Robinne, « “Myth and History in the Historiography of Early Burma. Paradigms, Primary Sources and Prejudices”, by Michael A. Aung‑Thwin », Moussons [En ligne], 1 | 2000, mis en ligne le 06 juin 2022, consulté le 16 juillet 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/moussons/8928 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/moussons.8928
Haut de pageDroits d’auteur
Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.
Haut de page