The Position of the Rājāvaṁsa Katnā in Mon History-Telling

The Mons are are considered one of the foundational peoples of Burma. In comparison with Burmese-language sources, there are fewer Mon-language texts concerning history. The Rājāvaṁsa Kathā is a collection of Mon-language historical texts and includes some of the longest, most elaborated, and well-known narratives in the Mon language. One of these concerns the rise and career of the Mon military hero and ruler, Rājādhirāj, forming a work perhaps better known in its Thai and Burmese “retellings” as a classic somewhere between history and literature. Yet for Mon scholars and intellectuals, this narrative seems to hold an equivocal position: while no one would dismiss it, it nevertheless does not seem to have the position of importance that it would seem to deserve. This essay is an attempt to understand where and how Mon scholars position these narratives within the Mon intellectual environment. This environment, in turn, is contingent upon the wider Burmese intellectual environment, itself a development out of indigenous practices and conceptions introduced through contact with British educational and intellectual traditions. This discussion touches on how history is conceived of, written, and retold in modern Burma, and the consequences that these conceptions have for Mon history. One of the most salient of these is that many Mon intellectuals consider the first millennium as the most important for Mon history, with more recent centuries–and the sources associated with them –less important to what is most central to be transmitted and told to the story of Mon history.