U Pe Maung Tin's and Luce's Glass Palace Revisited

52 Journal of Burma Studies, Volume 9 U PE MAUNG TIN'S AND LUCE’S GLASS PALACE REVISITED Tun Aung Chain* Talk about the Myanmar Chronicle, and the almost immediate response is, “Ah yes, The Glass Palace Chronicle.” And if the person making the response is not Myanmar, his reference is almost certainly to the translation of the Chronicle by U Pe Maung Tin and G. H. Luce, not to the Myanmar original. U Pe Maung Tin's and Luce’s The Glass Palace Chronicle of the Kings of Burma was first published in 1923,1 and since it celebrates its 75th anniversary this year, I think that The Glass Palace is worth visiting again to see how it has been constructed and ornamented. The translation bears the name of two authors, U Pe Maung Tin and G. H. Luce, but the introduction makes it clear that the translation is U Pe Maung Tin’s. In what would seem to be a rather strange gesture, one of the collaborators, U Pe Maung Tin, thanks the other, Luce, “to whose collaboration the translation owes its English style,” before making that final avowal of most authors, “I wish to make it clear that I alone am responsible for the correctness and final form of the translation.” Their roles seem clear: U Pe Maung Tin the translator, Luce the polisher of style. Was it U Pe Maung Tin also who decided on what parts to translate?2 The Hmannan Mahayazawindawgyi has a total of thirty-eight books,3 covering not only Myanmar history from its origins to the early part of Bagyidaw’s reign (1819–1837), ending rather abruptly with the sending of a mission to Bodh Gaya in 1821—but also what in the traditional Myanmar view was “Myanmar prehistory”—the origins of kingship and the succession of kings in Majjhimadesa, the ancestors of the Myanmar kings. * Professor and member of the Myanmar Historical Commission. Journal of Burma Studies, Volume 9 53 U Pe Maung Tin's and Luce's Glass Palace Revisited The Glass Palace is a translation of only three of the thirty-eight books of the Hmannan-- Books III, IV and V4 --and covers three periods of Myanmar history, the Tagaung, Thayehki�aya and Bagan periods. The introduction says nothing about the parts selected for translation, and the explanation why Books I and II, which deal with “Myanmar prehistory,” have been omi�ed from the translation comes in an unobtrusive “Note” tucked in between the introduction and the text of the translation. The explanation reads, “The first two parts are le� untranslated as they merely retell the story of Buddhism and of the Buddhist kings of Ancient India, with which the student of Pali and Buddhism is well acquainted.”5 The explanation sounds a bit unreasonable. The omi�ed parts indeed recount the history of Buddhism and of the Buddhist kings of Ancient India, bringing to bear a great wealth of knowledge upon it,6 but to assume that all readers of The Glass Palace Chronicle would be students of Pali and Buddhism is surely unreasonable. What is more important, the omi�ed parts are an integral part of the Hmannan and not extraneous to it. They lay out the cosmological time and space within which the thought and the action of the Chronicle takes place, set down the fundamental principles on which Myanmar kings are to guide their action and conduct, and furnish an ideal of kingship in the life and activities of Asoka— all essential to an understanding of the thinking and the action of the Chronicle. To leave them out of the Chronicle is rather like building a palace without a shrine room. Despite the decision to exclude part of the Hmannan from the translation, U Pe Maung Tin came to the task of translation with high ambition. The Hmannan represents the crowning achievement of traditional Myanmar historiography. There had been some great chronicles before it, notably the Yazawingyi (Great Chronicle) and the Yazawinthit (New Chronicle), but they were the work of individual authors—the former by U Kala, the la�er by Twinthintaikwun Mahasithu U Tun Nyo—while the Hmannan drew upon a wealth and...