Aung-thwin's"Myth of the Downtrodden Mon" II

Here are two texts that provide evidence of widespread oppression prior to the Mon revolt of 1740. Each text is proof against the claim made in The Mists of Ramanna (from the last post):

"I have found nothing in the pre-colonial Mon histories that show any indication that they were, or felt themselves oppressed by any group, including the Burmese speakers, even when both parties were at war..."

The Mon monk of Athwa in Pegu (c. 1740) writes of the last king of the restored Toungoo Dynasty (1597-1752)Maha-dama-ya-za-di-pati. This is a contemporary Mon monk writing about Mon oppression:

"In that king’s reign throughout Hanthawaddy [Pegu] the royal taxes were exceedingly heavy. [Tax collectors] followed their selfish inclinations and ordered that taxes be collected on every plantain tree, every chili plant, every brinjal plant, every loom.They even taxed the breasts of suckling mothers at the rate of two mats of silver for women whose breasts had not fallen…And so [because of this taxation] all the people, monks and laymen, of the Ram-manya country [land of the Mons] had no comfort and were in great distress" (British Library manuscript BL OR 3464, p.139, quoted in Lieberman, Burmese Administrative Cycles, p. 213).

Lieberman finds that this account agrees with Burmese Royal decrees (p. 213).

There's also an anonymous English account of 1750 describes a situation of uncontrolled rent-seeking by local officials. The word "oppress" is used by this on-the-scene observer:

"...every petty governour of Towns or Cities, if he can but satisfy the Minister at Court, can at his pleasure oppress the people under him, without any fear of Punishment, which has caused the revolt of the richest and largest province of his Kingdom [Pegu]" (quote in Lieberman, Administrative Cycles, p. 213).

Lieberman concedes:

"This decline was probably the inevitable result of geographic considerations rather than of a conscious policy of discrimination against Mons and southern Burmans. It was natural that official families nearest the capital would have had the ear of the king and his favorites. Nonetheless, decreasing patronage opportunities within the central administration must have alienated Delta leaders and reinforced the impression created by ruinous taxation that Ava’s government no longer functioned in the interests of the southern society" (Lieberman (1984) Burmese Administrative Cycles: Anarchy and Conquest: c. 1580-1760, Princeton, p. 214).

Financial oppression is oppression just the same. I still think what kept the Mons going as a group with the potential for revolt and state formation for over 200 years without the help of British colonialists is a more relevant and also answerable question.

References

Lieberman, Victor (1984) Burmese Administrative Cycles: Anarchy and Conquest: c. 1580-1760, Princeton.

Aung-thwin's "Myth of the Downtrodden Mon"

The so-called de-bunking of the myth of Mon oppression runs like this. Aung-thwin in Mists of Ramanna (p. 261) declares:

1. "...I do not wish to debate whether the Mon as a people were in fact oppressed by Burmese speakers as claimed..."

2. "I have found nothing in the pre-colonial Mon histories that show any indication that they were, or felt themselves oppressed by any group, including the Burmese speakers, even when both parties were at war..."

3. "...in fact, the image of a victimized Mon people was not initially a self-image at all; it was a colonial construct, found originally only in English in the official memoranda just prior to and during the First Anglo-Burmese War"

To paraphrase the argument:

1. I don't know if the Mons were actually oppressed or I consider it irrelevant.

2. I've never seen any Mon text translated into English or Burmese where a Mon is oppressed.

3. English colonial rulers claimed in their texts that Mons were oppressed.

The absolute first thing that is needed here is a definition of "oppress" and it can't be just whatever the English colonials meant by "oppressed". That would be circular reasoning.

Second, although the Burmese chronicle provides very little detail on pre-modern practices of warfare, other indigenous texts do, especially Razadarit Ayeidawpon.

Scorched earth tactics are an integral part of warfare (c. 1385-1421) and Scorched earth tactics are exactly what is meant by "oppression" in modern warfare.

Third, subject peoples (Mons, Shans) do not, as a rule, write about being oppressed in texts that are publicly available to their rulers (Burmese). The brutality of war is also usually absent from such texts.

Oppression and the brutality of warfare enter historical texts once again when political control ends. The Chiangmai chronicle of the mid-1750s is a lot more frank about "oppression" than it is in 1558 at the beginning of Burmese rule. There may well be a 'hidden transcript' as anthropologist James Scott calls it, perhaps in an oral folklore tradition.

(See p. 1171-1173 of Fernquest, Jon (2005) "Addendum to 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, Vol. 3, No. 2, Autumn 2005, Link).

Just because existent historical texts don’t record brutality or acts of oppression doesn't mean that they didn’t exist. Once again, absence of evidence doesn't imply evidence of absence. This is called the fallacy of negative proof.

Something must have kept a dream of Mon independence going though.

In 1740 after an interval of over 200 years, Mon leaders seized the opportunity to reassert Mon political control.

At the end of this short reign (r. 1740-1757) there was a short brutal oppression that was extensively recorded in texts. Lieberman points out in Burmese Administrative Cycles (1984) that this was followed by a period of apparently peaceful co-existence.

What kept the Mons going as a group with the potential for state formation for over 200 years may be a far more relevant question than whether they were oppressed or not (if in fact we can even come up with a definition or "oppression" that is independent of time and place.)

Radical revisionismsAnd the radically critical appraisals they should engender

Here's a good recent example of how a historian of China has been careful in the acceptance and use of the recent radical revisionist work on Mao, Chang and Halliday’sMao: The Unknown Story. (Source: Jonathan Dresner published this article in the Frog in a Well China Weblog)

Critical appraisal of this work has led to a student website at UCSD that critically assesses claims in the work.

The overall assessment might apply to Aung-thwin's Mists of Ramanna and the so-called Mon Paradigm:

"It seems pretty clear, from the credible reviews and this web site, that Chang and Halliday have been very sloppy, historically speaking, but there is a great deal of new material which might indeed have new and interesting implications. (Honestly, when I write a sentence like this, I’m put in mind of Holocaust denier David Irving, who frequently drew on previously untouched sources … and abused them endlessly to distort the historical record) It needs to be reexamined, published by scholars who are less opaque with citations and sources; primary source collections and interview notes will be necessary before their claims can be accepted" (Source)

It's the other guy's paradigm, not mine!

Interesting how people at the University of Hawaii view the Mists of Ramanna. From an official university page:

"It addresses the theory that a 'Kingdom of Ramanna' in Lower Burma, the foundations for early Burma and Mainland Southeast Asia scholarship for over a hundred years, is a myth. It is essentially an ethnic interpretation of history."

What does "it" refer to? Aung-thwin or the Mon Paradigm? This summary exhibits the same confusion that almost everyone exhibits when first confronted by the Mon Paradigm:

Honest-question: Is the Mon Paradigm Michael Aung-thwin's theory?

Honest-answer: No, well actually yes, in a way:

1. It is specially constructed by Aung-thwin to be wrong.

2. It is placed in the mouths of other historians to discredit them.

So yes, it sort of is his theory.

Professor of FUD Michael Aung-thwin at work again, keeping up the good fight for the Myanmar Junta, even using their tactics.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is a terrorist, right? And every historian of Burma except Michael Aung-thwin and friends (and you damn well better be one, no criticizing my theories, or else...) is a Mon Paradigmist!

The fallacy of argument ad antiquitam

The fallacy of argument ad antiquitam is "an illegitimate appeal to ages past in order to justify acts present or future" (Fischer, Historians' Fallacies, p. 297).

This used to mean using scholarly respect for the past to bolster your argument. In the post-colonial era it means using scholarly disrespect for the colonial past to bolster your argument.

The problem is the dependence of the history of Burma on scholarly work from the colonial era.

One way to avoid this dependence is to go back to the original sources and prepare detailed annotated translations of them, but the hard work behind translations doesn't seem to be valorized anymore in academia.

Grand theories well-marketed that hit the jackpot and turn the scholar into a superstar public intellectual of the stature of Foucault, a winner-take-all, celebrity approach to scholarship.

The Mists of Ramanna is such a winner-take-all crap shoot, attempting to discredit contemporary scholarship by likening it to colonial era scholarship

It is in the final analysis, a cheap rhetorical trick. Keep your colonial intellectual history separate.

Disorganized footnotes to a positive history yet to be written or even hypothesized?

All of Aung-thwin's writing is like a series of disorganized footnotes.

When he writes about questionable colonial era historiographical practices, he gets so caught up in his own argument that he gets confused and starts treating these very errors as a basis for truth.

His errors in logic can be assessed independently of his detailed command of the facts, facts that he pours out on the page to confuse the reader. Again, he is a professor of FUD. Take this disorienting sentence, for instance:

"The Kalyani Inscriptions of King Dhammazedi that supposedly offer proof of the conquest of Thaton had nothing whatever to say about any Shin Arahan and his conversion of Aniruddha, nothing about the latter’s request from any Manuha for the Tipitakas, nothing about the rebuff by that Manuha, nothing about the conquest of Thaton, nothing about transporting thirty sets of thirty sets of Tripitakas on thirty two white elephants, along with 30,000 people and their king, to Pagan" (p. 117).

You mock yourself here. What inscription would have all of this?

Oh, but you quote me out of context, you object.

The problem here, professor Aung-thwin, is to quote you in context I’d have to plop the whole book on your desk. The points you make on any given topic are spread all over the book. I would have to pull the whole thing up by its roots.

Throw out the uber-theory, allow logic and other people to enter your argument, and address the issues on an issue-by-issue basis!

The temptation when offering a rebuttal to your ideas is to go on like you do, stream of conscious style, and start bringing in other aspects of the Mon Paradigm until, walla, I am caught up in your net. I am the Mon Paradigm and you are the saviour of Burmese history exorcising yet another Mon Paradigmist.

Assertion: If I pick almost any part of your text at random there are the same logical problems with your argument, irregardless of whether you have correctly identified another red-herring error in colonial historiography or have found yet another place where the history of Burma sits on shaky ground.

Even though I have devoted a lot of time to reading, translating, and interpreting the Burmese chronicle in the original Burmese language, I am perfectly willing to concede that it may never be possible to disentangle fact from fiction (the chronicle may be literature, not history) but that does not mean that I will give up, throw in the towel, and become purely negative, hounding those who are trying to make sense of it, as you hound them. Cease and desist. Apologize to those whose minds you are trying to control.

To escape from colonial era historiography, go back to the original sources

Trying to learn from Aung-thwin what historical scholarship really is.

Paul Wheatley's Cities of the Mon

The original idea of the Mon Paradigm came from the work of the late Paul Wheatley whose work is extracted below.

Wheatley, however, never turned his theory into an opportunistic weapon, the Mon paradigm, to attack and bully other scholars with. You will not find the name Wheatley in the index of Aung-thwin's book. You will find him mentioned in passing in the actual text, but with nowhere near the amount of credit due to him being given. This of course, raises the question: "Could the idea of the Mon paradigm exist independently of Aung-thwin himself?" I think the answer is obviously: "no".

Take, for instance, the 2006 Burma Studies Conference at the National University of Singapore, there is a whole panel devoted to the discussion of his book: "Considering the Mon Paradigm: Roundtable on Michael Aung-Thwin's Mists of Ramanna."

Some of the ideas that he unifies under this umbrella notion of a Mon Paradigm, if taken separately, as hypotheses, could thrive without him.

Pre-modern Burmese history is a very small field with essentially one person publicly active, namely Michael Aung-Thwin. Should young people beginning work in Burmese history be answerable to one man, whose reasoning is often very shaky, and is as self-serving and opportunistic as one could imagine, on all questions regarding the Mon? I think it is simply ridiculous that a theory becomes inseparable from the person who creates it, or in this case, revives it. Without further ado here is the beginning of what Wheatley has to say about the Mon:

"Both traditions are unfortunately involved in an historical paradox which in the present state of knowledge cannot be resolved. According to later traditions, both written and oral, of the Burmese and Thai -- indeed of the Mon themselves -- the hearth of Mon culture situated in Lower Burma, particularly in the neighborhods of the cities of Thaton and Pegu, which might have been expected as a consequence to yield a rich harvest of Mon remains. The opposite is the case. Even allowing for a pucity of excavations, it is safe to say that archeology and epigraphy allow only exiguous glimpses of the settlement hierarchy of in Lower Burma prior to the 9th or 10th century A.D. Moreover, whereas Mon, Burmese and Thai chronicles all depict a strongly Theravadan state in that area in early times, such meagre archeological vestiges that have come to light are uncompromisingly Hindu. In central Thailand, by contrast, the elements of the paradox are reversed. The fairly abundant archeological remains available for investigation, and which bear witness to the existence of temple-cities of considerable cultural sophistication during the period from the 6th to the 11th century, have left no discernable impress on the written and oral traditions of any ethnic group (Paul Wheatley (1983) Nagara and Commandery , Chicago: University of Chicago)

Aung-thwin's ad hominem attack on Andrew Huxley

Wishing to bring scholars he admires into the Mon paradigm fold presents opportunities for creatively deploying the Mon Paradigm as a weapon and lethal deterrent:

"Andrew Huxley, whose work on Southeast Asian and Burma's legal history is extremely important to the field, did not question the Mon paradigm in his earlier works, However in a later one, he began to show some doubts, writing that "...if 10th century Rammanadesa was a flourishing base for legal inventiveness, it has left very few archaeological remains to testify to the fact." But later in the same article he wrote that "Mon chronicle traditions treat these centuries in a completely legendary fashion and only enter the realms of historical narration with king Manuha's defeat by Pagan in 1057,..." thus suggesting that he still considers the latter event as historical" (The Mists of Ramanna, p. 297)

Looking for [confirmation] in all the wrong places!
Looking for [confirmation] in too many faces!
Searching your [text], looking for traces!
Of what.. I'm dreaming of...
Hopin' to find a friend and [confirmation]!
God bless the day I discover!
Another heart, lookin' for [the Mon Paradigm] !

Aung-thwin's ad hominem attack on Tilman Frasch

In his judgement on German scholar of Pagan Tilman Frasch, Aung-thwin clearly indicates that he is head honcho academic agenda setter. You gotta answer his list of research questions or else:

"The latest PhD dissertation written on Pagan as of this writing, Tilman Frasch's work in German completed in 1996, preserves the Mon paradigm. It endorses the alleged raid of Thaton, its possession of the Tipitakas, and Shin Arahan's role, without questioning any of them. And for all of Frasch's proselytizing about having knowledge of Old Burmese being absolutely crucial to any study of Pagan, he cites Luce and The Glass Palace Chronicles as evidence for the above three 'events.' [continuing in a footnote] Tilman Frasch, Pagan: Stadt und Staat, pp. 287-288. My thanks again to Lily Handlin for her reading of the German" (Mists of Ramanna, p. 296-298).

There's also interesting evidence of a personal grudge. Did Frasch tell him that he didn't know Burmese?

He also tries hard to ridicule Frasch. He says Frasch cites a weeny colonial era translation of the Burmese chronicle into English. To admit that you even look at books like this, much less cite them, is to throw your scholarly manhood into question.

It's interesting that he had the Harvard historian of America Handlin translate two pages of this German work for him. Name dropping? I would get tired after two pages of German too, but is two pages enough to judge someone's life work?

Aung-thwin attack on Emmanuel Guillon

A good example of how Aung-thwin crawls into your head (like in Being John Malkovitz) and tries to navigate you into obedience:

"Emmanuel Guillon also continues to perpetuate the Mon Paradigm, although he does so with some skepticism and caution regarding certain issues [continuing in a footnote] As late as 1999, Emmanuel Guillon, in The Mons, has continued to accept the conquest of Thaton as probably historic, although he considers many of the other stories about Aniruddha as likely to be myth" (The Mists of Ramanna, p. 297)

Ooo! Probably historic! Versus what? Michael Aung-thwin omniscience?

All historic interpretations are "probably" ? Get some humility!

I'm really dieing to find out what the difference between "probably historic" and "likely to be myth" is.

Aung-Thwin gallery of ad hominem attacks I

In Aung-thwin's indictment of Burmese art historian Paul Strachan, we see how the Mon Paradigm strawman allows him to make a line-item veto of other scholars' work, almost to the point where he appropriates ownership of their scholarly work for himself. What would Foucault have to say about this?

"Although paying great deference to Luce, Strachan's own work has managed to wriggle free of the Mon Paradigm to a certain extent, even though it is still chained to it in many regards. [continuing in a footnote] This is most evident in his following of Luce's chronology and the Mon Paradigm with regard to the Thaton conquest. However, Strachan does seem a bit wary of Thaton's role (even for the wrong reasons), for he did write 'there is no substantive evidence to suggest that the Mons originated the kind of brick temple found at Pagan'" (Pagan, p. 9).

Notice how the Mon Paradigm allows Aung-Thwin to be judge, jury, and executioner, a sort of Joe McCarthy of Pagan era Burmese history.

I imagine that having him review one's work would be about as pleasant as having a tapeworm wriggle down one's throat!

Top ten things that the Mon Paradigm might be

1. A way for Aung-Thwin to remember what he is writing about

2. A way to humiliate the Mons while perversely claiming to be a Mon oneself.

3. A way to curry favor with the ruling Junta in Burma.

4. A tricky way to distract the reader from the fact that the author doesn't know a single word of the Mon Language and therefore cannot read and evaluate Mon inscriptions or chronicles.

5. A way to find colonial era ideas lurking in the ideas of his contemporaries, i.e. a conspiracy theory.

6. A convenient vehicle for attacking enemy scholars.

7. A way to pull together unrelated topics into a book.

8. A sneaky way to evade scholarly scrutiny and slip in the back door.

9. A way to control all academic debate on his region and time period.

10. Pent up anger about the following possibility: A Mon kingdom civilized Burmese Pagan (Aung-Thwin, 2005, 2).

11. A burning desire for the following to be true: A Mon kingdom at Thaton was not conquered by Pagan. Buddhist scriptures, the Mon royal family, as well as craftsmen and artisans were not brought back to Pagan. They did not influence the culture at Pagan in any way (Aung-Thwin, 2003).

12. Or this to be true: Before Pagan there was not a Mon kingdom at Thaton.

Hudson on the Mon Paradigm I

"Over the past few years a hypothesis has emerged which is having a profound impact on the study of early Burma, particularly early Bagan, and on the theoretical and analytical approach taken in this thesis. This is Michael Aung-Thwin’s rebuttal of what he calls the Mon paradigm, the widely accepted notion among both indigenous and western scholars that the traditional story of King Anawratha invading and capturing Thaton in the 11th century and a subsequent inflow of Mon culture into Bagan (as outlined above, page 25) was a historical fact. The Aung-Thwin hypothesis was introduced at conferences in Amsterdam and Yangon and has been developed in a volume still in press at the time of writing this thesis which the author has generously supplied in manuscript (Aung-Thwin 2004). Aung-Thwin’s work involves a paradigm shift in the classic sense, in which "one conceptual view is replaced by another". It fulfils Kuhn’s criteria of being a paradigm unprecedented so as to attract the scientific community, and open ended enough so that several different groups of scientists can work on different problems within it (Kuhn 1970). The reaction at the 2001 Texts and Contexts conference in Yangon, which saw two highly detailed, prepared rebuttals presented from the floor at the conclusion of Aung-Thwin’s paper, which had been circulated in advance, was a fair indication that the academic community in Myanmar is attracted to the debate. The following summary of, and commentary on, the Aung-Thwin hypothesis (Aung-Thwin 2001a, 2002, 2004) will demonstrate that the new paradigm is open to new approaches in many fields. Aung-Thwin suggests that:

* The conquest of Thaton by King Anawratha of Bagan in AD 1057 is a myth. There was no kingdom of Thaton to conquer at that time, it came later. The notion of a first millennium Mon kingdom in southern Burma originated with the 15th century King Dhammaceti of Bago (Pegu) as part of a retrospective claim of Theravada Buddhist orthodoxy for his regime. According to the story, Anawratha took captives, Buddhist scriptures and a generally more advanced culture to Bagan. He brought Buddhist relics to enshrine in the Shwezigon pagoda, and from his time, there was a substantial program of pagoda building (Phayre 1883: 33-35; Harvey 1925: 23-29). This portion of the received history emphasises a mid-11th century date for the beginnings of construction.

* Western scholars of the 20th century accepted the story of the early Mon kingdom as fact, and attributed many finds in southern Burma of coins, art works and archaeological materials, "even those with no dates or Mon writing on them" to the Mon ethnic group. The Mon were portrayed as the historical victims of aggressive Thais and Burmans, whose consolation for this injustice was to be credited with civilising their conquerors, a situation with parallels to the Roman adoption of the culture of the conquered Greeks.

* The introduction of Burmese writing at Bagan was wrongly attributed by modern-era scholars to the influence of the Mon after AD 1057. The first evidence of written Old Burmese was taken to be the AD 1112-1113 multi-language (Pyu, Pali, Old Burmese and Old Mon) Rajakumar (also called the Myazedi) inscription, widely viewed as Burma’s Rosetta stone (Taw Sein Ko & Duroiselle 1919). Any Burmese inscription that predated this was considered unreliable and "impossible". Duroiselle had stated that "all evidence points to the fact that the Burmese language was not written until the middle of the XIth century, after the fall of Thaton in 1057; all inscriptions, therefore, which bear a date anterior to this must be considered as, and in effect are, copies made subsequently" (ASB 1920: 15; Duroiselle 1921: vi).The assumption of the greater antiquity of Mon civilisation, including writing, therefore became both premise and proof. Aung-Thwin suggests that Burmese inscriptions at the Mahabodhi temple at Bodhgaya in India, listing repairs and donations by Burmese pilgrims, go back to at least AD 1035 (Figure 155). He says that several dozen other inscriptions, existing mainly as copies, but 11 as originals, written in Old Burmese, precede the Old Burmese face of the Rajakumar inscription. He proposes that the Burma (Bagan) script was most likely derived from the Pyu script found at Sriksetra in the 7th and 8th centuries, and that the Old Mon script derives from the Burman, not vice versa. Aung Thwin’s argument gains support from a recent study that suggests that the Burmese face of the inscription, of which two copies exist, one in the Bagan museum and one at the 19th century Myazedi pagoda, near which both pillars were found, appears on grammatical grounds to have been the original from which the other translations were made (Tun Aung Chain 2001).

"The effect of the Mon paradigm was to make “orthography the ultimate litmus test for deciding chronology”. Temples containing Archaic Burmese writings were automatically considered to be later than those with Mon writings. Aung-Thwin gives examples of misreadings of the written record, citing captions on the Jataka plaques at the East and West Hpet-leik temples at Bagan which were considered by early scholars to be Mon but were read in 2002 by Aung- Thwin and Myint Aung as actually being the Pali names of the Jataka stories, "no more Mon than they are Burmese". Architectural styles were assigned, notably by Luce, to an earlier "Mon phase", a "transitional phase" and a later “Burman” period. Aung-Thwin suggests that this should be rejected, and style should be assessed in terms of structural and technical development. However this must be done with the awareness that there was "astoundingcontinuity of the most dominant styles, which suggests that 'change' and 'progress' in temple architecture were not inevitable consequences of the mere passage of time".

* "The key documentary support for the idea of a Mon period at Bagan is the use of Old Mon in some inscriptions by Kyanzittha. Aung-Thwin points out that this represents only a dozen or so inscriptions, whose content mainly promotes the notion that Kyanzittha had been the god Vishnu in a previous life, and is therefore a claim of legitimacy for the throne. While Aung-Thwin tentatively advances some explanations for Kyanzittha’s use of Old Mon, such as the possibility that he may have relied on a Mon adviser, the Shin Arahan of later stories, he proposes that Kyanzittha's preference for Old Mon is a one-off phenomenon rather than a trend or pattern, and with Old Burmese used much more widely before and after Kyanzittha, the emphasis on his use of Old Mon represents the “propensity among certain scholars of South-east Asia to make rules out of exceptions” (Aung-Thwin 2001a, 2002, 2004). A pre-Bagan period founding date for Thaton, and its claim to be the centre that inspired Bagan, had been in dispute long before the argument was crystallised by Aung-Thwin. "This tradition is difficult to reconcile with the paucity of archaeological remains discovered in the area of Thaton”, wrote Subhadradis in 1966 (Subhadradis Diskul 1966: 166). There have been archaeological excavations around the sites of Winka and Hsindat Myindat, which are 30 to 45 kilometres north of Thaton. This area has at times been referred to, with no apparent basis, as "Old Thaton" ("Editor's Note on Excavation of Old Thaton" 1976), but is in fact a probable first millennium site traditionally known as Taikkala or Suvannabhumi, which in its own right merits further investigation (Myint Aung 1977, 1999). Thaton itself is shown by aerial photographs (1:6,000, 19 March 1958, THA 360, sheets 8-10, 26-31, 44-51, 59-67, 107-109) to be moated and rectangular in plan, with an enclosed site known as the "old palace" at the centre (Thin Kyi 1959; Luce 1969: 25; Aung Thaw 1972: 35-40). Archaeological excavation has revealed habitation material under Thaton’s stone and laterite wall (Baby 2000). A program of radiocarbon or thermoluminescence dating might be able to provide some concrete evidence of the age of the site."

No one has produced an example of one; therefore it doesn't exist. This means the opposite exists. Right?

This is my favorite fallacy-full quote from the Mists of Ramanna, the last good bye paragraph of the book, the can-I-shamelessly-commit-the-fallacy-of-negative-proof act of anti-scholarship.

During the whole course of the book you've had this strawman Mon Paradigm pounded into you interrogation style:

Jailer: Who is your enemy?

Prisoner: The Mon paradigm is my enemy.

By the last paragraph of the book you completely identify with your captor.

You've developed a real rabid hatred of that damned Mon Paradigm.

You're ready for the triumph of Pagan!

1. "But -- to ask the question one more time -- can we live without the Mon paradigm [strawman]?"

2. "The answer is we can and we must."

3. "For the historical reality is that the Mon paradigm [strawman] is a myth [how ironically true!]."

4. "Sona and Uttara had nothing to do with the origins of Theravadan Buddhism in Burma, and perhaps even in the rest of Southeast Asia;"

5. "there was no Mon kingdom in Lower Burma called Ramannadesa that preceded Pagan;"

6. "there was no conquest of Thaton by Aniruddha in 1057;"

7. "and as a consequence Lower Burma did not 'civilize' Upper Burma."

8. "It was the other way around: Pagan settled, developed, and 'civilized' Lower Burma." [tricky, but you need positive proof!]

9. "It was Pagan's economic, political, and cultural development of the interior and its agrarian sector that enabled the subsequent rise of coastal, trade-centered Ramannadesa." [OK. Show me the evidence.]

10. "Like it or not -- and not withstanding my Mon father [irrelevant] -- the making of 'classical' Burma has little or nothing to do with the Mon of Lower Burma."

11. "We must come to terms with this old and erroneous sentiment no matter how undesirable this dualistic interpretation of early Burma may seem in today's political world of binary constructs." [What?]

12. "Lest we perpetuate for another generation a myth that has been allowed to continue far too long." [You started it in 2003!]

Thaton was recorded in U Kala's version of the Burmese Chronicle around 1700.

You want me to believe that U Kala had the Mon paradigm too? In 1720?

Do you state any positive evidence at all that Pagan civilized the Mons?

I'm still looking for it. I may find it yet.

Make positive falsifiable tentative hypotheses like Lieberman does. Test them.

I dare you.

There are good ideas and useful information in the book also, but we are eternally, unceasingly, tiringly forced to view it through your Mon paradigm.

There is too much faulty logic. Downright sloppiness.

Do you think we, your readers, are stupid?

Do you think that "Burma Studies" is so chummy-chummy and cozy-friendly, someone won't eventually point out your glaring logical flaws and downright sloppiness?

Wake up.

[to be continued...]

No positive history, only negative fault finding

There is not much evidence for any Burmese history before the Konbaung era.

Your pointing this out is not a contribution to the history of Burma.

Your completely negative methodology is deeply logically flawed.

No evidence that something existed is not evidence that it did not exist.

The only reason people don't call you on this is that Burma Studies seems to be a tightly knit little coterie of friends many of whom are afraid of losing their jobs.

All the more reason to never be part of it.

You should erase all places in your book where you rely on the Burmese chronicle.

The Burmese conquest of Talaing Thaton was in U Kala's Burmese chronicle before it was in any colonial era scholar's history.

I cringe whenever I hear you criticise Luce for putting forth tentative positive hypotheses. That is science.

To merely show negatively that the evidence is thin?

We all know that already.

You are contributing nothing.

Stop attacking other people (Strachan, Huxley, Frasch, Luce...) and make a positive hypothesis about what that history actually was.

I am going to post verbatim the exact language in which you accuse all your enemies of committing the Mon Paradigm (McCarthyism). Just like Joe McCarthy did during the McCarthy era.

Publish the inscriptions you cite all the time, so we can make up our own mind.

That would be a lasting contribution.

I will continue to pick apart your shoddy scholarship until your readers wake up.

Ad hominem attack me to death like you do everyone else in Burma Studies.

"The Myth of the Downtrodden Talaing" ?

You should be more careful with the names you choose, even if they are meant to describe an event in the distant past.

During the early Konbaung it is well-documented that the Mon did suffer at the hands of the Burmese (See Lieberman's Strange Parallels).

People defeated in warfare always suffer.

The fact that you are part Mon that you are always citing at important parts of your argument is irrelevant.

Paul Wheatley's Point

Paul Wheatley made the original point that the archaeological and inscriptional evidence for early Mon civilization was thin in his work Nagara and Commandery (1983).

Of course it was thin compared to neighboring Southeast Asian countries. Burma had been under isolationist Socialist rule for more than 20 years.

Paul Wheatley should be more thoroughly acknowledged as the source of the original idea. He is not even in the index to your book: The Mists of Rammana.

What is an ad hominem argument or attack?

ad hominem arguments have many flavors. Combined with the strawman fallacy:

ad hominem (abusive): instead of attacking an assertion, the argument attacks the person who made the assertion.

Example: You may argue that God doesn't exist, but you are just following a fad.

(Source)

What is a straw man?

A straw man or straw dog argument is a rhetorical technique based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.

To "set up a straw man" is to create a position that is easy to refute, then attribute that position to the opponent.

A straw-man argument can be a successful rhetorical technique (that is, it may succeed in persuading people [and publishing books]) but it is in fact misleading, since the argument actually presented by the opponent has not been refuted.

One can set up a straw man in the following ways:

1. Present the opponent's argument in weakened form, refute it, and pretend that the original has been refuted.

2. Present a misrepresentation of the opponent's position, refute it, and pretend that the opponent's actual position has been refuted.

3. Present someone who defends a position poorly as the defender, refute that person's arguments, and pretend that every upholder of that position, and thus the position itself, has been defeated.

4. Invent a fictitious persona with actions or beliefs that are criticized, and pretend that the person represents a group of whom the speaker is critical. (Source: Wikipedia:Strawman; also See this article).