Ridiculous Mon Paradigm Quotation #4
"By...linking Lower Burma with the sacred geography, sacred genealogy, and sacred chronology of Asoka's Buddhist India, King Dhammazedi, in one stroke gave Ramannadesa an antiquity, orthodoxy, and legitimacy that it never had" (Mists of Ramanna, p. 1)Dhammazedi was not unique in making such a linking or mapping to sacred geography, genealogy, and chronology. The writers of Burmese history did the same. Since kings before Dhammazedi had done this long before him, he was not the first, and you cannot say that this occurred in "one stroke". The accretion of myth to history takes place over a long period of time as a study of Livy's received history of Rome shows.
The parts of the Burmese chronicle that incorporate the Indian mythology of Ashoka (Burmese: Thawka) is translated into English (by me) in the Indian Kings I and Indian Kings II sections of the Burmese Historical Chronicle.
posted by Jon Fernquest at 4:47 PM
2 Comments:
If other societies have made the same sort of claim, why is that statement ridiculous? It seems most polities that are old enough have founding or legitimation myths. Isn't the invasion of Thaton just one of the latter? We can observe several early founding myths in which legitimacy is tied back to the legendary teacher of the Pāṇḍavaḥ in which one of his descendents, a brāhmaṇa, founds the Southeast Asian kingdom.
We do not buy Tai or Thai story.
Shan or Siams or Syams actually is Sams ,
also Assams.
Sanskrit is the language of Sam people who are neither Tai nor Thai.
The following is totally not truth and fabrication.
Quote { There is absolutely no reason to believe that the word "Sawbwa" does not refer to a Tai chieftain. All the other references to Sawbwa in the Burmese chronicle during this time period mean "Tai chieftain." "Sawbwa" is just the Burmese loan word for the Tai word "Chao Fa" meaning "prince" or "chieftain." Chinese has a similar loan word used in the Ming Shi-lu, the Annals of the Ming dynasty, to refer to Tai chieftains (Wade, 2005). Perhaps more is not made of their Shan-ness or Tai-ness because there is only a passing reference to their origins in the first line before they leave for Myinsaing. } Unquote.
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