In this Book
- The Mists of Ramanna: The Legend That Was Lower Burma
- Book
- 2005
- Published by: University of Hawai'i Press
-
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
summary
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.
Table of Contents
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- Preface and Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-xii
- 1. Introduction
- pp. 1-12
- 2. The Pyü Millennium
- pp. 13-42
- 3. Rämaññadesa, an Imagined Polity
- pp. 43-78
- 4. Thatôn (Sudhuim), an Imagined Center
- pp. 79-103
- 5. The Conquest of Thatôn, an Imagined Event
- pp. 104-118
- 6. The Conquest of Thatôn as Allegory
- pp. 119-153
- 13. Without the Mon Paradigm
- pp. 299-322
- Bibliography
- pp. 403-424
Additional Information
ISBN
9780824874414
Related ISBN(s)
9780824828868
MARC Record
OCLC
1103698289
Pages
448
Launched on MUSE
2019-08-02
Language
English
Open Access
Yes
Creative Commons
CC-BY-NC-ND