Mon Paradigm Fallacy Blog

Demystifying Mists: The Case for the Mon (Donald Stadtner)

2008-09-10T21:55:00.008+07:00

Dr. Donald M. Stadtner has provided one of the most thorough critiques of Aung-Thwin's Mists of Ramanna to-date.

The initial paper, Demystifying Mists: The Case for the Mon, was presented at a conference, Discovery of Ramanya Desa : History, Identity, Culture, Language and Performing Arts, Chulalonkorn University, Bangkok. 10-13 October, 2007.

An abridgment of this long conference paper, published recently in the Journal of the Siam Society vol. 96 (2008), has also been included here.

1. Full conference paper

2. Abridged Siam Society version

Aung-Thwin’s myth of the myth of The Three Shan Brothers

2008-04-07T17:31:00.010+07:00

Historian of Burma Michael Aung-Thwin, despite claims that his work demythologizes the work of previous historians such as Gordon Luce, actually even further mythologizes this history.

Given the semi-fictional nature of pre-modern Burmese historical sources, historians may never be able to state precisely "what actually happened," only approximately what "might have happened." Furthermore, they should be intellectually honest about the limitations of their sources and ability to infer what "actually happened."

Writing history in a tone that accuses previous historians such as Gordon Luce of creating myths, as Aung-Thwin does, hides the incomplete and ambiguous nature of the historical record. Later in his career Luce tried to weave the bare facts he had uncovered earlier, in extensive translation of inscriptions and chonicles, into a richer narrative story of "what might of happened" in order to make sense of it, producing such works as Luce (1966, 1970), works that project modern political categories such as "democratic" and "nationalist" back into pre-modern history, projections that dated these works rather quickly. Aung-Thwin hones in on these dated interpretations and by exagerrating they effectively come to summarize the sum total of the work of Luce as interpreted by Aung-Thwin. In short, in being over zealous in finding orientalism everywhere, Aung-Thwin comes close to approximating an orientalist oneself.

Here is a brief sketch of the so-called problem of the Three Shan Brothers that Aung-Thwin "discovered" in two publications (Aung-Thwin, 1996, 1998) and a translation of the key text that everything hinges on, that Aung-Thwin never provides.

Background Information

"Three Shan brothers" refers to three brothers who held power in Upper Burma after the decline of Pagan in the wake of the Chinese Mongol invasions around 1300.

"Shan" is the Burmese term for the Tai ethnic group and language, so the more general term "Tai" will be used here.

Tais played an important role for hundreds of years in the history of Upper Burma after the decline of Pagan, roughly the period 1287-1555 (Bennett, 1971; Fernquest, 2005).

There were frequent Tai invasions into Upper Burma (Bennett, 1971).

There are also references to Tai chieftains at various locations in Upper and Lower Burma during this period, indicating widespread Tai settlement and intermingling with both the Burmese and the Mon (Fernquest, 2006).

The Problem

Indigenous historical sources do not refer to the three powerful brothers of post-Pagan Upper Burma as the "Three Shan Brothers."

The term was created by colonial era historians.

Colonial era historians also sometimes referred to the whole period 1287-1531 as the "Shan Dominion" period (Harvey, 1925, 72-73).

Now, there are really two separate questions.

a. Is there any truth to the name "Three Shan Brothers" ?
b. Is this really the best term to refer to them with ?

The answer to the first question is "yes" there is some truth to this name, but it is not 100% certain either way.

The answer to the second question can only be "no" if one wishes to be precise and mirror historical sources in the best way possible.

Now to look in further depth at the first question.

Burmese Chronicle Evidence

To answer the question whether there is any truth to the name
"Shan Brothers" one has to take a close look at the chronicle
passage used to justify this name:

"Once upon a time, a great Tai chieftain (sawbwa) who ruled over the Beinnaka Myo (town, major settlement) had two sons. When the great Tai chieftain no longer existed, the older son became the ruler of Beinnaka. Since his relations with the younger brother Theinkhabo were not clear, he imprisoned the younger brother and, as the younger brother Theinkhabo was going to be killed, he left Beinnaka together with the people who worked for him (his followers or clients), and having fled from place to place he arrived in Myinsaing where the Pyo people lived in the kingdom of Myan-ma and there in the Myinsaing area, he married the daughter of a wealthy Athi. The daughter of the wealthy man gave birth to three sons named Athinkhaya, Yazathingyan, and Thihathu" (UK I, page 309, section 374, see vocabulary notes at end)."

Given the accusatory nature of Aung-Thwin’s historical arguments, this is the very passage he should have gone back to and used as the basis of his argument. Instead, he weaves layer after layer of speculation to the already existing multiple layers of speculation, hardly clarifying matters.

There are two questions:

a. Does "Sawbwa" mean "Tai chieftain" in this text as it normally does?
b. Does "Beinnaka" refer to a group of Tais in this text?

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.

Under the chronicle usage of the term "Beinnaka" is synonymous with "Shan" or "Tai." Beinnaka refers to Tai chieftainships in the ancient Tagaung chronicle later incorporated into the Hmannan chronicle:

"[The fall of Tagaung.] In the time of the last of these kings, Bhinnakaraja, the kingdom of Tagaung, called Sangassarattha, perished under the oppression of the Tarops [Chinese] and Tareks from the Sein country in the kingdom of Gandhala. And Bhinnaka, mustering what followers he might, entered the Mali stream and abode there. When he died his followers split into three divisions. One division founded the nineteen Shan States of the East and were known thenceforth as the descendants of Bhinnakaraja. Another division moved down the Irrawaddy and entered the Western Country, where dwelt Muducitta and other Sakiyan princes among the Pyus, Kanyans, and Theks. The third division abode in Mali with the chief queen Nagahsein." (Glass Palace Chronicle, Pe Maung Tin and Luce, 1923, Oxford University Press, 1923)

Reference is also made to "Bhinnaka" as a Tai ethnonym in U Tin's Myanma Ok-chok-pon Sadan (Tin and Bagshawe, 2001):

"The nineteen Shan districts of the Bhinnaka taing - this province had its origin, according to the Arakanese chronicle, when King Kan-ya-za-gyi planted 57 villages to the east and to the west of the Salween river, as a Shan area, to form a barrier against the Tartars and the Chinese. According to the Burmese chronicles, Bhinnakaraja was the last of the 33 kings of the first Tagaùng dynasty, and in his time the country was divided into three parts. One part, to the east, became the nineteen Shan districts and was called after the king's family name. In this connection, it is said in the Ei-gyin for the Sin-gù Prince:

Bhinnaka taing - chief seat of government! Bhinnaka pyi - famous controlling power! King Bhinnaka pure fount of your race! Two noble sons of the Sakya line!" (Tin and Bagshawe, 2001, 171)

Aung-Thwin says the answer is "no" to both questions. No, "sawbwa" does not mean Tai chieftain. No, "Beinnaka" is the name of a modern village which is also a Pyu archaeological site, so Beinnaka must be "Pyu."

He does not use the chronicles themselves as evidence. He claims that "Sawbwa" can refer to chieftains of tribal peoples such as the Kachin. He cites a secondary source of a non-historian, namely anthropologist Edmund Leach (1954, reprint 1970) who refers to events during the much later nineteenth century. Aung-Thwin claims that the modern village and Pyu archaeological site of Binnaka South of Kyaukse was the original home of the three brothers. He doesn’t provide any evidence and in fact rather oddly places a question mark after his own assertion:

"As it turns out, Binnakha is actually an old Pyu (?) city that lies right in the heartland of Burma, just south of the irrigated Kyaukse valley, and not a Shan state outside of Burma. It dates to sometime in the first millennium B.C. and was unexcavated until archaeological work uncovered it in the 198os.4 Thus, although Phayre is certainly not expected to have known of its Pyu origins from archaeological excavations conducted in the twentieth century, his mistake was in assuming that it was Shan." (Aung-Thwin, Myths, 123)

Aung-Thwin clearly is not even aware that "Binnaka" is an ethnonym in the Burmese chronicle tradition that can refer in a broad sense to Shans or Tais. As archaeologist Hudson observes: "the modern village of Binnaka, possibly named for this king (Win Maung, 2001a) sits in the shadow of the Shan hills at the southern end of the Samon Valley [near Kyaukse]" (Bob Hudson, PhD dissertation, 24, citing: Win Maung, "Tanpawady" 2001b Binnaka Yaza (King Binnaka and his family, A paper read in Mandalay to commemorate the 85th birthday of Sayagyi U Maung Maung Tin. Mandalay, Privately circulated). According to the chronicle tradition the Shans were known as descendants of the Bhinnaka king.

Given that it is an ethnonym for Shans and Tais, Binnaka could refer to several different settlements, not only this village, or even a whole domain. Even if it does refer to this one little village, the Pyu archaeological work is for a period hundreds of years before the time of the Three Brothers.

References

Aung-Thwin, Michael (1996) "The Myth of the "Three Shan Brothers" and the Ava Period in Burmese History," The Journal of Asian Studies 55(4): 881-899.

Aung-Thwin, Michael (1998) Myth and History in the Historiography of Early Burma, Ohio University Center of International Studies.

Aye Chan, U (2006) "Burma: Shan domination in the Ava period (c. AD 1310-1555)," Journal of the Siam Society, Vol. 94.

Bennett, Paul J (1971). "The 'Fall of Pagan': Continuity and Change in 14th Century Burma," in Paul J. Bennett (1971) Conference Under the Tamarind Tree: Three Essays in Burmese History, Yale University Southeast Asian Studies Monograph Series no. 15. New Haven, pp. 3-53.

Harvey, G.E (1925) History of Burma from the Earliest Times to 10 March 1824, The Beginning of the English Conquest, London: Longmans, Green, and Co.

Hudson, Bob (2004) "The Origins of Pagan: The Archaeological Landscape of Upper Burma to AD 1300," PhD Dissertation, University of Sydney.
[URL: ]

Fernquest, Jon (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, Vol. 3, No. 2, Autumn 2005
[URL: http://web.soas.ac.uk/burma/3.2files/02Mingyinyo2.pdf]

Fernquest, Jon (2006) "Crucible of War: Burma and the Ming in the Tai Frontier Zone (1382-1454)," SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research 4.2 (Autumn 2006).

[UK] Kala, U (1961). Maha-ya-za-win-gyi, Three volumes, edited by Pe Maung Tin, Saya Pwa, and Saya U Khin Soe, Rangoon: Hanthawaddy Press.

Leach, E.R. (1954) Political Systems of Highland Burma, The London School of Economics and Political Science, G. Bell and Sons, London.

Leach, Edmund (1970) Political Systems of Highland Burma, Boston: Beacon Press.

Luce, G.H. (1966) "The Career of Htilaing Min (Kyanzittha ), the Uniter of Burma, Fl. A.D. 1084-1113," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, New series. vol. 1 - 2 (Apr. 1966), pp. 53 - 68.

Luce, G.H. (1970) "Aspects of Pagan History - Late period," In Tej Bunnag and Michael Smithies, eds. In Memorian Phya Anuman Rajadhon," Bangkok, Siam Society, pp. 135-137.

Pe Maung Tin & G.H. Luce (1923) The Glass Palace Chronicle of the Kings of Burma, Rangoon University Press.

U, Tin and Bagshawe, L.E. (tr.) (2001) The Royal Administration of Burma, Bangkok : AVA Publishing House, 2001.

[MSL] Wade, Geoff. tr (2005) Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu: an open access resource, Singapore: Asia Research Institute and the Singapore E-Press, National University of Singapore, [http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl]

Vickery on Aung-Thwin's"contempt for truth in history"

2007-12-13T23:11:00.000+07:00

Vickery, Michael (1998) Society, economics, and politics in pre-Angkor Cambodia : the 7th-8th centuries, Tokyo: Toyo Bunko.

Vickery in his in his magnum opus on 7th-8th Cambodian inscriptions can't help citing Aung-Thwin as embodying "contempt for truth in history."

"Obviously I disagree with the definition of history in Veyne 1978:9-10, that history is not a science and has no method, but rather "historians narrate true events in which man was the actor; history is a novel that is true."

At least Veyne showed respect for truth, in contrast, for example to Aung-Thwin 1988:359, who manifested contempt for truth in history,..."

A "contempt for truth in history" accompanied by a dishonest act that none of his colleagues called him on:

"...and with a dishonest comment about "scratch marks on eleventh-century Sanskrit inscriptions," a matter which had not figured at all in the work on which he was passing comment, and, peculiarly, not informing readers that he was reviewing the publication of a conference in which he had fully participated, even though his paper was not included in the publication." (Vickery, 1998, footnote 7, pp. 3-4)

References

Aung-Thwin, Michael (1988) Review of Southeast Asia in the 9th to 14th Centuries, edited by David G. Marr and A.C. Milner (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies; Canberra: Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University), Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 19, pt. 2:353-62.

Veyne, Paul (1978) Comment om ecrit l'histoire, suivi Foucault revolutionne l'histoire, Paris: Editions du Seuil

Comment: Makes one wonder what other infelicities he got away with during his career. He almost got away with erasing Mon history without even learning the Mon language, using the excuse over and over again, that his father was part Mon. His elementary school teacher wouldn't even have accepted such an excuse.

Demystifying Mists: The Case for the Mon (Stadtner, 2007)

2007-12-13T19:55:00.000+07:00

Dr. Donald M. Stadtner has also reviewed Aung-Thwin's Mists of Ramanna Desa. This paper was presented at a conference at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok on Mon history and culture: Discovery of Ramanya Desa: History, Identity, Culture, Language and Performing Arts, 10-13 October 2007. [Link to list of conference presentations]

[Download pdf version of paper here]

Tilmann Frasch – Publications

2007-12-13T19:50:00.000+07:00

A bibliography of works by historian of Pagan Tilmann Frasch is available online [Link]. Here are some entries of interest I selected out:

Monographs

Pagan. Stadt und Staat, Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag 1996 (= Beiträge zur Südasienforschung 172). XI, 370 pp.

Articles

The Burmese dhammasats with Special Reference to the Pagan Period, in Uta Gärtner/Jens Lorenz (eds.), Tradition and Modernity in Myanmar, Münster: LIT 1994, vol. 1, p. 45-54 (= Berliner Asien- und Afrikastudien 2,1)

An Eminent Buddhist Tradition: The Burmese Vinayadharas, in Traditions in Current Perspective. Proceedings of a Conference (Yangon, Nov. 15-17, 1995), Yangon: Universities Historical Research Centre 1996, p. 115-144

A Buddhist Network in the Bay of Bengal: Relations between Bodhgaya, Burma and Sri Lanka, c.300-1300, in Claude Guillot/Denys Lombard/Roderich Ptak (eds.), From the Mediterranean to the China Sea. Miscellaneous Notes, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 1998, p. 69-93 (= South China and Maritime Asia 7)

tog. with Monika Schlicher: Bibliographisches zum Thema, in Periplus. Jahrbuch für Aussereuropäische Geschichte 8, 1998, p. 98-102

The Mt.-Thetso Inscription Re-examined, Myanmar Historical Research Journal 2, 1998, p. 109-126

King Nadaungmya’s Great Gift, in Études Birmanes en hommage à Denise Bernot, réunis par Pierre Pichard et François Robinne, Paris: EFEO 1998, p. 27-35

A Note on the Mahabodhi Temples at Pagan, in Wibke Lobo/Stefanie Reimann (eds.), Southeast Asian Archaeology. Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference of the European Association of Southeast Asian Archaeologists, Hull/Berlin: Center for Southeast Asian Studies/SMPK 2000, p. 41-50

The Buddhist Connection: Sinhalese-Burmese Intercourse in the Middle Ages, in G. Berkemer et al. (eds.), Explorations in the History of South Asia. Essays in Honour of Dietmar Rothermund, Delhi: Manohar 2001, p. 85-97

Coastal Peripheries during the Pagan Period, in Jos Gommans/Jacques Leider (eds.), The Maritime Frontier of Burma. Exploring Political, Cultural and Commercial Interaction in the Indian Ocean World, 1200-1800, Amsterdam: KITLV Press 2002, p. 59-78

Lectures/Conferences

The Burmese dhammasats with Special Reference to the Pagan Period (Berlin Burma Conference, May 1993)

An Eminent Buddhist Tradition: The Burmese Vinayadharas (Rangoon Burma Conference, Nov. 1995)

Religious Intercourse between Burma and Sri Lanka, 12-13th Centuries (Colombo: German Cultural Institute, Sept. 1995)

Royal Dedications at Minnanthu, Pagan: The Emergence of a 13th Century Construction Site (Rangoon: German Embassy, Feb. 1996)

King Nadaungmya’s Great Gift (Rangoon: Universities Historical Research Centre, Feb. 1996)

Pagan Epigraphy: Problems and Prospects (Leiden: EurASEAA Conf., Sept. 1996)

A Buddhist Network in the Bay of Bengal (Paris, March 1997)

A Note on the Mahabodhi Temples at Pagan (Berlin: EurASEAA Conf., Sept. 1998)

Notes on Dipavamsa - An Early Publication of Prof. U Pe Maung Tin (London: SOAS, Sept. 1998)

Two Approaches to the History of Arakan in the 11th to the 13th Centuries (Amsterdam: KNAW Colloquium, Oct. 1999)

“The Lion’s Share of History”: Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtspolitik in Sri Lanka (Colloquium Historicum Heidelberg, Nov. 1999)

The World of Buddhism in the Year 1000 (Univ. of Colombo, Nov. 1999)

The Lion’s Share of History: Historiography and the Politics of History in Sri Lanka (Colombo: German Cultural Institute, Dec. 1999)

The City in History (Univ. of Colombo, Sociology Dept., Dec. 1999)

The Past that Shaped the Future: The Politics of History in Sri Lanka (Edinburgh: 16th ECMSAS, Sept. 2000)

Art and History of Pagan (Bonn University, Feb. 2001)

Monastic Architecture in Pagan, (DeKalb, Northern Ill. University, Jan. 2002)

Issues in Early Burmese History (DeKalb, Jan. 2002)

Reading Epigraphs and Architecture: Monasteries in Early Burma (National University of Singapore, May 2002)

Reading Epigraphs and Architecture: Monasteries in Early Burma (Gothenburg: Burma Studies Conference, Sept 2002)

Lao history revisited: Paradoxes and problems in current research

2007-12-10T10:30:00.000+07:00

By Michel Lorrillard (EFEO)
[Download: pdf, abstract]

Abstract: The historiography of what is now the country of Laos
has remained relatively underdeveloped since the colonial period.
The earliest scholarly works produced by Lao and foreign authors
were based on certain assumptions that have remained unquestioned
despite serious problems with the sources. Recent epigraphical and
archaeological discoveries have permitted a rethinking of these
assumptions, and hold out the promise of further revisions of our
view of the Lao past. Particularly worth exploring are the cultural
and artistic connections between the Lao kingdom of Lan Xang
and the northern Thai kingdom of Lanna.

Keywords: historiography; archaeology; epigraphy; Laos

Comment: This historian is currently preparing a edited volume of annotated inscriptions of the pre-modern Lao kingdom of Lan Chang. His work also provides a model (in addition to Tilman Frasch) of what Burmese epigraphy could become.

www.pannalawka.org

2007-12-09T17:14:00.000+07:00

Myanmar Online Education Website by Phyo Win Latt is a valuable resource. (Follow this link)

Writings and recorded lectures by historians of Burma U Than Tun and Gordon H. Luce are available as well as articles from on the Burmese language. The description on the front page of the website says it all:

Panna Lawka is the first Myanmar Online Education Website ever appeared on the internet. And, it is FREE to anyone. This site distributes all Education resources to people who are not able to attend the ordinary Universities. This site was intended mainly for Myanmar/Burmese people who have no chance whatsoever to learn the proper education in Myanmar/Burma.

The resources upload on this site can be downloaded without requiring any fees/prices. We encourage everyone to distribute these articles, journals, e-books, online library that you collect from this site to your friends/colleges.

Aung-Thwin's methodology in a nutshell

2007-12-09T10:38:00.001+07:00

Here is a statement of Aung-Thwin's methodology in a nutshell:

"But the primary sources do not support that theory, and so we have the creation of a myth from a story that might have already been a myth" (Myth and History in the Historiography of Early Burma, 1998, 4)

Implications:

1. Pre-modern primary sources are the foundation of any theory.
2. Pre-modern primary sources often contain stories that are myths.
3. Colonial era historians, in turn, created their own myths from these primary sources.
4. The current era N of historians is likewise creating its own myths, but we won't know what they are until the next era N+1, and so on, ad nauseam.

Comments:

1. Colonial era historians like Luce made primary sources available in well-edited translations.

2. Aung-Thwin's work relies on these translations.

3. Why hasn't Aung-Thwin made more primary sources available in more well-edited translations?

4. Wouldn't this constitute progress in the field?

5. Compared to Cambodia, Burmese epigraphy is still in its infancy.

6. If colonial era historians sometimes made mistakes in historical interpretation, how is this any different than historians from any era?

7. How can a historian make a career solely out of a commentary on another historian's mistakes?

8. The French historian Michel Lorrillard is currently creating an extensive edited volume of Lao inscriptions.

9. Creating a foundation for Burmese epigraphy is possible.

10. This is what Tilman Frasch's German dissertation does. It needs to be translated into English:

Pagan: Stadt und Staat [Pagan] / von [by] Tilman Frasch. - XI, 370 pp. ISBN 3-515-06870-8 Literaturverzeichnis [bibliography] pp. 349-360, Index pp. 361-365, English summary pp. 367-370.

"This study tries to give an overview of the history of Burma´s first capital pagan, again scrutinizing ist source material like epigraphs, chronicles and monuments. It contains a critical assessment of these, focusing on inscriptions and discussing the problems and shortcomings imposed by them and their various editions." (Source)

In Southeast Asia, if you're having a hard time finding this book, the Siam Society's library has a copy: GEN 915.591 F841P

Unbundling Aung-Thwin's Demythologisations of Burmese history

2007-12-08T13:58:00.000+07:00

Myth and History in the Historiography of Early Burma
Paradigms, Primary Sources, and Prejudices (1998)
By Michael A. Aung-Thwin

Aung-Thwin's Mists of Ramanya is such a huge monolithic work that it's difficult to define exactly what is wrong with it, but most people agree there is something deeply flawed in the work.

That the author is attempting to erase Mon history, yet cannot read or speak the Mon language and therefore cannot know what is in Mon sources (inscriptions, chronicles), almost none of which have been translated into English or Burmese, is one major criticism of his work.

That Aung-Thwin's prose is almost impossible to understand, that he merely cites sources 50 to 100 years old, virtually impossible to find outside a handful of libraries (e.g. the six elephant volumes of inscriptions c. 1900), without actually providing the source in an appendix, let's say, that any Burma scholar with access to these resources is probably a friend of Aung-Thwin bound to not question him very much, are all criticisms.

Aung-Thwin has, in fact, provided a list of approved reviewers of his work: Martin Stewart Fox in CSSH, Pat Pranke in Asian Perspectives, and the late Paul Wheatley. (See interview) Reviewers who he does not know (not in his client-patron chain) and actually criticise things in the work are not "competent" by definition. That French scholar Bénédicte Brac De La Perriére disagreed with Aung-Thwin is ipso facto proof she didn't understand "what the book was about."

The methodology behind the work needs a thorough critique. As a preliminary step, I've decided to look at Aung-Thwin's earlier demythologizations of Burmese history first, such as the Three Shan Brothers, the king of Pagan who "ran away from the Chinese," or the Sri Lankan invasion of Burma.

One almost has to rewrite these academic papers to make sense of them so muddled is the logic. Critiquing narrative history requires first setting out the narrative history from the most original sources in linear fashion and then referring to this during the critique, instead of jumping around and creating a tangled ball of string with one's logic. Being kind to the reader so that the reader does not get lost or just end up nodding his or her head, yes, professor, yes, whatever you say, can I go now. Only then will a reader be able to understand the criticism of the narrative history. In fact, a lot of Aung-Thwin citations in the literature seem to be courtesy citations that accept his demythologizations at face value without really trying to understand or engage with them. This is outrageous and really has to change.

Three steps seem appropriate first steps:

1. Make the most original sources available online.
2. Make it clear what you take these sources to say.
3. Reconstruct various competing narratives from these sources.
4. Compare and evaluate these narratives critically.

Aung-Thwin's interpretations will then be only one among several possible interpretations. Then and only then can we start to entangle Aung-Thwin's arguments and see what he really has to say.

Journal of Burma Studies not the only refereed journal on Burma

2007-12-08T13:50:00.000+07:00

There is a false statement on the Journal of Burma Studies website at Northern Illinois University:

"The Journal of Burma Studies is an annual, fully refereed journal of scholarship on Burma. It is the only scholarly journal in the world to publish exclusively on research and writing about Burma." (See website)

According to a recent overview of Burma Studies by Andrew Selth:

"There are currently three peer-reviewed journals devoted to Burma studies outside the country. These are The Journal of Burma Studies, published annually by the Burma Studies Centre at NIU, the SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research [SBBR] published twice a year by the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, and Burma Economic Watch (BEW), which is published periodically on the internet by the Economics Department of Macquarie University in Australia.

I personally have published articles in the SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research and they were peer reviewed (double blind anonymous referees). I know other people who published in the SBBR and their articles were peer reviewed also. I think this false statement is an attempt by the old power clique that has dominated the rather stagnant field of Burma Studies for the last thirty odd years to control discourse space. Times are a changing. Most of so-called Burma Studies takes place outside of the United States nowadays. Much of it in Southeast Asia in Thailand and Singapore or nearby Australia.

The president of the Burma Studies Group, F. K. Lehman, and the General Editor of the journal, Catherine Raymond, should correct this mistake.

Senior scholars perhaps do not realize that many paper journals in the humanities are now closing down. The Journal of Burma Studies has very progressively put its articles online for free. This means that students in Southeast Asia will be able to read important articles published in the west about their homeland, which is important. Since university libraries are unlikely to continue paying for the journal when they can get it for free online, the web definitely looks like it is the future as far as Burmese history is concerned.

Aung-Thwin said of my work:

"It requires no credentials to put your opinions on-line, especially on your own web-site. Especially if you don’t have to go through peer review, a problem I think we as scholars should take much more seriously."

I have published papers at the SBBR at the University of London and all those papers have been peer reviewed (reviewed by referees). Once again, a false statement has been made. Pointing out false statements online like this, in a blog, is effectively a form of peer review too. Welcome to the future.

Bertil Linter on Aung-Thwin's Myth and History in the Historiography of Early Burma

2007-12-08T13:07:00.000+07:00

Bertil Lintner in critiquing a recent collection of articles Exploring Ethnic Diversity in Burma notes of Aung-Thwin's work:

Takatani’s conclusion is as flawed as some writings of another academic, Michael Aung-Thwin, whose "Myth and History in the Historiography of Early Burma" (a quoted source in this book) states that the three Shan brothers who founded the 14th-16th century Ava dynasty may not have been Shan at all, because the title sawbwa was “used to refer to both Kachin and Shan chieftains and possibly those of other hill peoples as well.”
Sawbwa is just a Burmese corruption of saohpa, “lord of the sky” in Shan, and with no meaning in any other language. If the three brothers were sons of a saohpa, they were indeed Shan. Kachin chieftains are called duwa, not sawbwa or saohpa, and the chiefs of “other hill peoples”— the Shan, by the way, are not a hill people but archetypical valley dwellers—never had that title unless they had adopted Shan culture and customs, such as the Palaung saohpa of Tawngpeng State. What would have been more interesting to examine is what it meant to be Shan in the Middle Ages, centuries before the notion of the nation state was conceived.

Bertil Linter makes a good point here. This is the reason I refuse to use the term "Shan" in my writing. The so-called "Shan" were actually part of a much larger group, the Tai.

A close reading of the Burmese chronicle and inscriptions shows that a lot of Tai statelets or chieftainships pass in and out of Burma's radar (or more accurately the kingdom of Ava) during the period 1348-1555, so being designated as "Shan" is really a meaningless historical accident, meaningful only within the Burmese court of a given era. All these groups were Tai in some more fundamental sense for hundreds of years.

Publications: Jon Fernquest

2007-12-08T12:30:00.000+07:00

Fernquest, Jon (2005). "The Flight of Lao War Captives From Burma Back to Laos in 1596: A Comparison of Historical Sources," SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research, Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 2005, pp. 1-26. [journal, pdf]

Fernquest, Jon (2005b). "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 [journal, pdf]

Fernquest, Jon (2006a). "Rajadhirat's Mask of Command: Military Leadership in Burma (c. 1348-1421)", SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research, Vol. 4, No. 1, Spring 2006. [journal, pdf]

Fernquest, Jon (2006b) "Crucible of War: Burma and the Ming in the Tai Frontier Zone (1382-1454)," SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research, Vol. 4, No. 2, Autumn 2006. [journal, pdf]

Fernquest, Jon (forthcoming) "The ecology of Mon-Burmese warfare in the Rajadhirat historical epic (c. 1383-1425)," conference paper, Discovery of Ramanya Desa: History, Identity, Culture, Language and Performing Arts, 10-13 October 2007, Chulalongkorn University Bangkok Thailand.

Ridiculous Mon Paradigm Quotation #4

2006-07-20T16:47:00.000+07:00

"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.

Ridiculous Mon Paradigm Quotation #3

2006-07-20T16:03:00.000+07:00

"In 1479, when King Dhammazedi of the kingdom of Pegu declared on his Kalyani inscriptions that the legendary Suvannabhumi of Buddhist tradition was the Mon kingdom of Ramannadesa in Lower Burma, he inadvertently created a twentieth historiographic issue that I have called 'the legend that was Lower Burma,' still with us today" (Mists of Ramanna, p. 1)

No, professor Aung-Thwin, you are the one who quite intentionally created a historiographic issue. What King Dhammazedi did, create a regime legitizing myth, was quite normal for people who hold power.

Ridiculous Mon Paradigm Quotation #2

2006-07-18T15:45:00.000+07:00

If only Aung-thwin had devoted his career to publishing pre-colonial sources. Instead he consumed the texts of colonial intellectual intermediaries, and cannot escape from this. Take the ridiculous historical bias in the following:

"The Mon Paradigm as we have seen, was not created by any single individual. It began with King Dhammazedi attempting to legitimate his reign and programs, continued with U Kala for reasons not entirely clear..." (p. 283, Mists of Ramanna).

1.Indigenous sources becoming gradually more and more factual and less mythological is the normal pattern of development in historical texts, Mon, Burmese, Roman,... Why pretend that only Mon sources exhibit this characteristic?

2. Modifying historical texts to legimitate rule is the norm, not the exception, in both the Mon and Burmese historical traditions.

3. Every Burmese king as well as Mon king king tried his hardest "to legitimate his reign and programs," not only the Mon King Dhammazedi. Contemporary politics even does this.

4. U Kala took Mon history from Dhammazedi? Obvious implication from above. Ridiculous.

5. The formula that guides your analysis is ridiculous and obviously opaque to you. Conspiracy theory for Dhammazedi, but for U Kala, the Burmese historian, it's not clear why he committed the Mon Paradigm. The history of Dhammazedi and the Kalyani inscriptions need to be published in the form of:

a. The original documents, so that people can examine the evidence for themselves without you holding their hands and leading them down ridiculous pathes of reasoning.

b. A comparison with other historical traditions, e.g. Tai, Burmese, to show that how Dhammazedi utilized the Kalyani inscriptions to legitmate his power was the norm, not an exception. Get the basic facts straight before you start weaving conspiracy theories.

Ridiculous Mon Paradigm Quotation #1

2006-07-18T15:26:00.000+07:00

Regarding Pagan's conquest of Thaton in the Burmese chronicle, Aung-thwin asks:

"...since there is no epigraphic evidence for either the event or the place, when, how, and why did the story become part of Burma's chronicle tradition?"

1. All history enters the chronicle via inscriptions? This is ridiculous.

2. Inscriptional history is a history of only certain kinds of events. Most inscriptions record religious donations. Most chronicle narratives are records of warfare.

3. Almost all early modern Burmese history is chronicle history that has no reference in an inscription.

4. Aung-thwin is working here with worn out colonial era assumptions that the only history worth writing is inscriptional history.

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

2006-05-17T00:30:00.000+07:00

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"

2006-05-15T01:22:00.000+07:00

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

2006-05-14T17:05:00.000+07:00

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!

2006-05-07T23:09:00.000+07:00

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

2006-05-07T22:45:00.000+07:00

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?

2006-05-07T12:11:00.000+07:00

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

2006-05-07T09:03:00.000+07:00

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

Paul Wheatley's Cities of the Mon

2006-05-05T22:28:00.000+07:00

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

2006-05-05T18:08:00.000+07:00

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

2006-05-05T17:32:00.000+07:00

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

2006-05-05T16:00:00.000+07:00

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

2006-05-05T15:14:00.000+07:00

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

2006-05-05T01:53:00.000+07:00

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

2006-05-04T19:33:00.000+07:00

"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?

2006-05-04T17:48:00.000+07:00

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

2006-05-02T23:03:00.000+07:00

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

2006-05-02T22:58:00.000+07:00

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?

2006-05-02T22:40:00.000+07:00

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?

2006-05-02T22:39:00.000+07:00

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).

Mists of Ramanna Book Review(Pre-Modern Mon History)

2006-02-28T18:27:00.000+07:00

Any work that claims to bring with it a new "paradigm" in historiography like the "Mon Paradigm" should be subjected to critical scrutiny and that's exactly what the book review below by Dr. Michael Charney of SOAS, University of London does in a very thorough way:

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
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).

The fallacy of negative proof

2006-02-28T18:25:00.000+07:00

This logical fallacy is especially dangerous for pre-modern Burmese history, at least for the pre-Konbaung period, not well-endowed with primary sources. Finding shortcomings in these sources and in the ways they've been used by previous generations of historians, even colonial historians, is easy; finding positive evidence that supports indigenous sources is much more difficult. A devotion to fault-finding instead of attempting to write accurate history, no matter how hard this might be to do, is likely to bring the field of pre-modern Burmese history to a grinding halt as everyone lays waste to each other's research projects. The purely negative can easily degenerate into a McCarthy era-like witch-hunt.

Indigenous primary sources have a literary quality that make them difficult to use in traditional factual narrative history. Professor Lieberman has partially vindicated indigenous sources by demonstrating that parts of the Burmese chronicle (U Kala's Mahayazawingyi) for which there are independent European sources are accurate (Lieberman, Victor B. "How Reliable is U Kala’s Burmese Chronicle? Some New Comparisons." Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 17.2 (September, 1986): 236-255).

Independent European or Chinese sources to support indigenous sources are not available for all historical periods. The narrative thread of the Burmese Chronicle begins with the creation of the universe and ends in the early eighteenth century which makes for a historiographical tradition radically different from the western Rankean tradition. Historical interpretations that must be based on this single source are likely to be uncertain and tentative. This is a problem also faced in many non-western historiographies, from American Indian "ethnohistory" to the interpretations of ancient Greece history found in the works of M.I. Finley like "The World of Odysseus" (which I am currently reading).

The problem lies in historical method. Showing that historical facts from the chronicle tradition are only weakly supported by sources does not provide evidence of the exact opposite facts. According to the pulitzer prize winning historian David Hackett Fischer:

"The fallacy of negative proof is an attempt to sustain a factual proposition merely by negative evidence. It occurs whenever a historian declares that "there is no evidence that X is the case," and then proceeds to affirm or assume that not-X is the case. He may have spent all his youth in the Antiquarian Society, feverishly seeking the holy X and never finding it. He may have examined every relevant scrap of evidence in every remote repository, without reward. He and every other reasoning being on this planet may know in their bones that not-X is the case. But a simple statement that "there is no evidence of X" means precisely what it says -- no evidence. The only correct empirical procedure is to find affirmative evidence of not-X -- which is often difficult, but never in my experience impossible...A good many scholars would prefer not to know that some things exist. But not knowing that a thing exists is different from knowing that it does not exist. The former is never sound proof of the latter. Not knowing that something exists is simply not knowing. One thinks of Alice and the White Knight:

"I see nobody on the road," said Alice.
"I only wish I had such eyes,"
the king remarked in a fretful tone.
"To able [sic] to see Nobody! And at that distance too!"

Spending a lot of time looking for negative evidence to disprove interpretation X can distract one from find the positive evidence that is necessary to prove what one really wants to prove, i.e. not-X. The "Fallacist's Fallacy" or "Argumentum ad Logicam" is pertinent here:

"Like anything else, the concept of logical fallacy can be misunderstood and misused, and can even become a source of fallacious reasoning. To say that an argument is fallacious is to claim that there is no sufficiently strong logical connection between the premises and the conclusion. This says nothing about the truth-value of the conclusion, so it is unwarranted to conclude that a proposition is false simply because some argument for it is fallacious" (Source: The Fallacy Files).

In conclusion, I would argue for a more positive and constructive search for better evidence. This evidence can be used to construct both: 1. fact-based Rankean histories, politico-military and socio-cultural, as well as 2. intellectual history into the historical discourses used in indigenous historical texts. Pre-modern indigenous historical texts are better viewed as speech acts in the sense of Searle, intimately involved in the making of history, often going through radical revisions with this use in mind.

[Note: Recently found an extensive review of Fischer's "Historian's Fallacies".

The "Mon Paradigm" in Burmese History

2006-02-28T18:24:00.000+07:00

The archaeologist Dr. Bob Hudson defines the Mon Paradigm as "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...was a historical fact." (PhD Dissertation, p. 39, rather slow online link, summary of story on page 26 paragraph 4 of the dissertation).

The Mon Paradigm has been gathering momentum for several years as a subject of debate: "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." (p. 40)

The Mon Paradigm seems to have several dimensions beyond the Pagan era events in the definition given above. It also includes a criticism of western "Orientalist" historical scholarship: "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." (p. 40) There are also writing orthography dimensions to the debate.

The Mon Paradigm probably needs a broader formal definition than the series of Pagan era events as well as a more precise statement of sub-claims and support. Toulmin's model of logical argumentation might help some people organize and understand the complex web of arguments in the Mon Paradigm. Some of the criticism might have bearing on post-Pagan historical periods such as the Ava (1365-1527) or the First Toungoo (1486-1599) periods.

The myth supposedly originates during the reign of king Dhammaceti just before the time period (1486-1539) that my paperon the late Ava and early First Toungoo period addresses: "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." (p. 40) The discussion of the ethnonym "Talaing" in Dr. Aung-thwin's book is of especial interest to me since this is the term used to refer to the inhabitants of the south in U Kala's Mahayazawingyi which I have used as the foundation of my narrative history.

(Dr. Bob Hudson's dissertation is large, so beware, it took me a long time to download. There is also a separate download page for the dissertation.)

Myths in Burmese History

2006-02-28T18:04:00.000+07:00

This weblog is devoted to the study of myths in Burmese history:

1. To the truths they may contain, historical as well as philosophical.

2. To the purposes their fictions may have served their authors in centuries past and more recent times.

Aung-thwin: Regime apologist

2006-02-10T16:43:00.000+07:00

1. Regime apologist I

2. Regime apologist II

3. Regime apologist III

4. Pyinmana editorial I - The Nation

Geiger on the Singhalese raid of Lower Burma (1164-5)

2006-02-10T09:45:00.000+07:00

In the wake of what was essentially a trade dispute, King Parakkamabahu I, who had unified the island of Lanka (Ceylon) early in his reign, decided to gather together a fleet of ships and launch raids against Lower Burma.

The landing of Singhalese forces from Sri Lanka on the soil of Lower Burma and the events that transpired after that run as follows what Geiger called the Culavamsa chronicle (actually just a continuation of the Mahavamsa). As the Lankan troops disembarked from their boats at Bassein, known then as Cosmi (or Kusumi below), in Lower Burma, Ramanna troops met them in combat. The Lanka troops quickly overwhelmed the feeble resistance and took to a strategy of scorched earth:

"Warriors of great fighting strength who sailed on five vessels landed on the territory of Ramanna in the port called Kusumi. These doughty soldiers with the Nagaragiri Kitti at the head, equipped with armour and weapons slew from their landing place the troops belonging to the Ramanna country, many thousands of them in terrible combat and while they, like to rutting elephants, hewed down around many coco palms and other trees and set fire to the villages, they laid waste a great part of the kingdom." (Geiger, 1953, 69)

Another division disembarked at another place named Papphalama (probably Martaban but have to check hard to find Frasch (1998) first):

"But the ship on which the Damiladhikarin Adicca commanded, landed in the territory (or Ramanna) at the port of Papphalama, and while at once the people with the Damiladhikarin at the head, fought a gruesome, fearful, foe-destroying battle and captured alive many people living in the country, they plunged the Ramanna kingdom into sore confusion. Thereupon the Sihalas with terrible courage, fearful with their swords, burst into the town of Ukkama [north of Yangon] and slew the Monarch of the Ramanas. when they had subdued the Ramanas and brought their country into their power, the great heroes mounted a splendid white elephant. They rode around the town free from all fear turning the right side towards it and thereupon made known by the beat of drum the supremacy of the Sovereign of Lanka." (Geiger, 1953, 69)

Buddhist monks were then sent to negotiate a peace:

"Then overwhelmed by fear the people in the Ramanna land, seeing no other protection, gathered together and held counsel. With the instructions: "Year by year must we from now onwards send elephants to any amount as tribute from our property – in order that the Monarch of Lanka lay on us intolerable (burdens), ye must influence him [1] and thereby at all times full of pity, have mercy on us all" – they sent in haste their messengers with letters in their hand to the bhikku community dwelling in the island of Lanka. Through the friendly words of the community living in the three communities, the Ruler of Lanka was moved to kindness, and while the Ramanas sent him yearly numbers of elephants, they made anew with the Lanka Ruler who kept his treaties faithfully, a pact of friendship" (Geiger, 1953, 70).

References:

Frasch, Tilman (1998a) "The Mount Thetso Inscription Re-examined," Myanmar Historical Research Journal 2: 109-126.

Geiger, Wilhelm and Christian Mabel Duff (trs.) (1953) Culavamsa : Being the more recent part of the Mahavamsa, Colombo, Sri Lanka: Ceylon Govt. Information Dept.

Comments: These Culavamsa passages must be one of the few independent outside sources for military history during the classical Pagan period of Burma’s history. Since my research is on warfare during the early modern period (1350-1600), these passages are of interest to me.

Aung-Thwin gallery of ad hominem attacks

2006-02-09T17:04:00.000+07:00

None of the scholars he cites or attacks are listed in the index of his book The Mists of Ramanna. I'm listing them here as a aid to scholarship, as I find them, in my spare time:

1. Against Burmese art historian Paul Strachan

2. Against German Pagan scholar Tilman Frasch

3. Against British legal scholar Andrew Huxley

4. Against Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.

5. Against French Mon scholar Emmanuel Guillon.

I just realized that getting attacked is like making it onto the all-star team.

[Luce, Frasch, Huxley, ...]

Geiger on Sri Lanka's diplomatic relations with Rāmañña in Lower Burma during the Pagan period

2006-02-09T10:00:00.000+07:00

Wilhelm Geiger's Culture of Ceylon in medieval times (1960) provides a nice succinct overview of relations between Sri Lanka and the Mon kingdom of Rāmañña during the Pagan era (citations are to Geiger, 1953):

"Rāmanñña was the name of the province of Pegu in Southern Burma. Its inhabitants were, like those of Ceylon, Buddhists of the Theravadan school. Between the two countries there had never been dissension up to the 12th century, and their monarchs were wont to send each other many costly gifts and in this way to maintain a friendly intercourse (76.10 sq). Vijayabahu I (1059-1114 A.C.) sent envoys with various presents to the king of Rāmañña and received in return valuable gifts from him (58.8 sq). When in Ceylon the number of Bhikkus had decreased so much that it became impossible to fill the chapter in order to perform the Vinaya ceremonies, the same king fetched from Ramanna Bhikkus who were thoroughly versed in the Buddhist precepts and able to restore the Order which had declined in Lanka (60.4 sq.)…

The friendship between the two countries was severely disturbed in the twelfth century. The war made by Parakkamabahu on the Rāmañña king was, according to the chronicle, successful for the Singhalese. The former friendly relations were restored by King Vijayabahu II, 1186-87. The King himself composed a letter in the Maghada language - i.e. Pali, the lingua franca among the Buddhists - which he sent to the ruler of Rāmañña and concluded a treaty with him as Vijayabahu I had done before (80.6-7). (Geiger and Bechert, 1960, 134-135).

Trade disputes are said to have been a motivating cause behind the Singhalese raid on Lower Burma:

"In the medieaval period various stuffs, sandal-wood, camphor and the like were imported from Rāmañña, Southern Burma (58.9 sq.). From the same country elephants were brought to Ceylon though plenty of them roamed wild in the forests. The fact that in the twelfth century the king of Rāmanñña tried to monopolize the elephant-trade and enormously raised the prices, was one of the reasons by which Parakkamabahu's war with Rāmañña was provoked (76.17-34). (Geiger and Bechert, 1960, 108)

References

Geiger, Wilhelm and Christian Mabel Duff (trs.) (1953) Culavamsa : Being the more recent part of the Mahavamsa, Colombo, Sri Lanka: Ceylon Govt. Information Dept.

Geiger, Wilhelm (1960) Culture of Ceylon in medieval times, ed. Heinz Bechert, Wiesbanden: Otto Harrassowitz

Tilman Frasch on the Singhalese raid on Lower Burma around 1164-5

2006-02-08T19:21:00.000+07:00

Frasch, Tilman (2002) “Coastal peripheries during the Pagan period,” In The Maritime of Burma: Exploring Political, Cultural and Commercial Interaction in the Indian Ocean World, 1200-1800, Edited by Jos Gommans and Jacques Leider, Leiden: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, pp. 59-78.

Luckily I have this paper by Tilman Frasch that seems to clear up a lot of the confusion in Aung-Thwin's rambling 1976 paper:

...the Singhalese raid on Lower Burma around 1164-5 which King Parakkama Bahu I of Polonnaruva had sent to extract revenge for insults he had suffered at the hands of the Burmese. According to the contemporary Sinhalese chronicle Culavamsa [9], the Sinhalese forces captured the two port towns of Kusumiya (Bassein) and Muttuma (Martaban) as well as a third place called Ukkama which may be identified as Okkam, a place some twenty miles north of Rangoon [10]"

[9] Geiger 1925/1929, ch. 76.10-75. This part of the chronicle, dealing with the life of Parakkama Bahu, was written during the later part of the king's reign or shortly afterwards, and is generally regarded as highly reliable, see Geiger 1930, 205-228. The conquest of the port town of Kusumiya (Bassein) is mentioned in the Devanagala Rock inscription that records the reward King Parakkama gave to his victorious general Kit Sri Nuvaragal: Epigraphia Zeylanica 3, 312-325.

[10] I have dealt with the Sinhalese expedition and its implications exhaustively in Frasch 1998a. For earlier views, see Luce 1965a, and Aung-Thwin 1976.

References:

1. Aung-Thwin (1976) "The Problem of Ceylonese-Burmese Relations in the 12th Century and the question of an Inter-regnum at Pagan," Journal of the Siam Society, 64(1): 53-74.
2. Epigraphia Zeylanica
3. Geiger (1925/1929) The Culavamsa. Being the More Recent Part of the Mahavamsa, London: Pali Text Society.
4. Geiger (1930) "The Trustworthiness of the Mahavamsa," Indian Historical Quarterly, 6 (2): 205-228.
5. Luce (1965b) "Some Old References to the South of Burma and Ceylon," In Felicitation Volumes of Southeast Asian Studies, presented to his Highness Dhaninivat...on the Occasion of his 80th Birthday, Vol. 2, Bangkok: Siam Society.

Comments: This is a nice concise overview of what happened that can be filled in later with details from the Culavamsa and inscriptions. Aung-Thwin's 1998 Myths book republishes the 1976 paper. Wikipedia is missing this sort of information.

The Mon Paradigm Fallacy - a fallacist's fallacy

2006-02-07T18:27:00.000+07:00

Paul Wheatley's cities of the Mon

Disorganized footnotes to a positive history not yet written or even hypothesized?

The fallacy of argument ad antiquitam

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

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

Aung-thwin's ad hominem attackon Aung San Suu Kyi

2006-02-05T20:22:00.000+07:00

This was his first and most famous ad hominem attack.

It raises the question of whether these attacks are really just lame attempts at PR, pitiful attempts of a second rate intellectual at getting himself in the limelight, trying to jumpstart a career as a public intellectual:

"She had an aristcratic air about her," he said. "She always thought of herself as part of the Burmese aristocracy, and that she had a right to Burma's throne because of her father...She was charming, intelligent, but very stubborn, very authoritarian. She was in favor of overthrowing the military, but she was personally authoritarian herself. Once, I remember her her saying,'It is my destiny to rule Burma.' I said,' You should have a relatively easy time because of your father's name.' She bristled. 'I will do this myself," she said. 'It won't have anything to do with my father.' 'Then why do you use your father's name?' I asked. But she just repeated, 'I will do it myself.'" (From The Lady Triumph, Vanity Fair, October 1995, Source)