The Mists of Ramanna : The Legend That Was Lower Burma /
Michael A. Aung-Thwin.
- 1 online resource (448 pages): illustrations
- Book collections on Project MUSE. .
The Py millennium -- Rmaññadesa : an imagined polity -- Thatôn (Sudhuim) : an imagined center -- The conquest of Thatôn : an imagined event -- The conquest of Thatôn as allegory -- The Mon paradigm and the origins of the Burma script -- The place of written Burmese and Mon in Burma's early history -- The Mon paradigm and the evolution of the Pagán temple -- The Mon paradigm and the Kyanzittha legend -- The Mon paradigm and the myth of the "down-trodden Talaing" -- Colonial officials and colonial scholars : the institutionalization of the Mon paradigm.
Open Access
Scholars have long accepted the belief that a Theravada Buddhist Mon kingdom, Ramannadesa, flourished in coastal Lower Burma until it was conquered in 1057 by King Aniruddha of Pagan--which then became, in essence, the new custodian and repository of Mon culture in the Upper Burmese interior. This scenario, which Aung-Thwin calls the ""Mon Paradigm, "" has circumscribed much of the scholarship on early Burma and significantly shaped the history of Southeast Asia for more than a century. Now, in a masterful reassessment of Burmese history, Michael Aung-Thwin reexamines the original contemporary accounts and sources without finding any evidence of an early Theravada Mon polity or a conquest by Aniruddha. The paradigm, he finds, cannot be sustained. Aung-Thwin meticulously traces the paradigm's creation to the merging of two temporally, causally, and contextually unrelated Mon and Burmese narratives