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133-620: The Pagan Kingdom ( Burmese : ပုဂံပြည် , pronounced [bəɡàɰ̃ kʰɪʔ] , lit.   ' Bagan State ' ; also known as the Pagan dynasty and the Pagan Kingdom ; also the Bagan dynasty or Bagan Kingdom ) was the first Burmese kingdom to unify the regions that would later constitute modern-day Myanmar . Pagan's 250-year rule over the Irrawaddy valley and its periphery laid

266-759: A Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Myanmar , where it is the official language , lingua franca, and the native language of the Bamar , the country's principal ethnic group. Burmese is also spoken by the indigenous tribes in Chittagong Hill Tracts ( Rangamati , Bandarban , Khagrachari , Cox's Bazar ) in Bangladesh, and in Mizoram state in India. The Constitution of Myanmar officially refers to it as

399-565: A pitch-register language like Shanghainese . There are four contrastive tones in Burmese. In the following table, the tones are shown marked on the vowel /a/ as an example. For example, the following words are distinguished from each other only on the basis of tone: In syllables ending with /ɰ̃/ , the checked tone is excluded: In spoken Burmese, some linguists classify two real tones (there are four nominal tones transcribed in written Burmese), "high" (applied to words that terminate with

532-645: A second language by another 10 million people, including ethnic minorities in Myanmar like the Mon and also by those in neighboring countries. In 2022, the Burmese-speaking population was 38.8 million. Burmese is a tonal , pitch-register , and syllable-timed language , largely monosyllabic and agglutinative with a subject–object–verb word order. It is a member of the Lolo-Burmese grouping of

665-545: A Burmese army of 40,000 to 60,000 (including 800 elephants and 10,000 horses) at the battle of Ngasaunggyan in 1277. However, some argue that the Chinese figures, which came from eye estimates of a single battle, are greatly exaggerated. As Harvey puts it: the Mongols "erred on the side of generosity as they did not wish to diminish the glory in defeating superior numbers". But assuming that the precolonial population of Myanmar

798-523: A chief justice and a chief minister. Pagan's military was the origin of the Royal Burmese Army . The army was organised into a small standing army of a few thousand, which defended the capital and the palace, and a much larger conscript-based wartime army. Conscription was based on the kyundaw system (called the ahmudan system by later dynasties), which required local chiefs to supply their predetermined quota of men from their jurisdiction on

931-562: A common set of tones, consonant clusters, and written script. However, several Burmese dialects differ substantially from standard Burmese with respect to vocabulary, lexical particles, and rhymes. Spoken Burmese is remarkably uniform among Burmese speakers, particularly those living in the Irrawaddy valley, all of whom use variants of Standard Burmese. The standard dialect of Burmese (the Mandalay - Yangon dialect continuum ) comes from

1064-460: A golden age that would last for the next two centuries. Aside from a few occasional rebellions, the kingdom was largely peaceful during the period. King Kyansittha (r. 1084–1112) successfully melded the diverse cultural influences introduced into Pagan by Anawrahta's conquests. He patronised Mon scholars and artisans who emerged as the intellectual elite. He appeased the Pyus by linking his genealogy to

1197-425: A growth in the number of population centres and a growing prosperous economy. The economy also benefited from the general absence of warfare that would stunt the economies of later dynasties. According to Victor Lieberman, the prosperous economy supported "a rich Buddhist civilization whose most spectacular feature was a dense forest of pagodas, monasteries, and temples, totaling perhaps 10,000 brick structures, of which

1330-573: A half centuries later, in 483 BC, scions of Tagaung founded yet another kingdom much farther down the Irrawaddy at Sri Ksetra , near modern Pyay (Prome). Sri Ksetra lasted nearly six centuries, and was succeeded in turn by the kingdom of Pagan. The Glass Palace Chronicle goes on to relate that around 107 AD, Thamoddarit ( သမုဒ္ဒရာဇ် ), nephew of the last king of Sri Ksetra, founded the city of Pagan (formally, Arimaddana-pura ( အရိမဒ္ဒနာပူရ ), lit. "the City that Tramples on Enemies"). The site reportedly

1463-424: A kingdom . The chronicle does not claim that he had arrived in an empty land, only that he was the first king. Abhiraja had two sons. The elder son Kanyaza Gyi ( ကံရာဇာကြီး ) ventured south, and in 825 BC founded his own kingdom in what is today Arakan . The younger son Kanyaza Nge ( ကံရာဇာငယ် ) succeeded his father, and was followed by a dynasty of 31 kings, and then another dynasty of 17 kings. Some three and

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1596-475: A large number of new weirs and diversionary canals, and Minbu a similarly well-watered district south of Pagan. After these hubs had been developed, in the mid-to-late 12th century, Pagan moved into as yet undeveloped frontier areas west of the Irrawaddy and south of Minbu. These new lands included both irrigable wet-rice areas and non-irrigable areas suitable for rain-fed rice, pulses, sesame, and millet. Agricultural expansion and temple construction in turn sustained

1729-550: A lesser extent, Burmese has also imported words from Sanskrit (religion), Hindi (food, administration, and shipping), and Chinese (games and food). Burmese has also imported a handful of words from other European languages such as Portuguese . Here is a sample of loan words found in Burmese: Since the end of British rule, the Burmese government has attempted to limit usage of Western loans (especially from English) by coining new words ( neologisms ). For instance, for

1862-605: A market in land and certain types of labour and materials. Land reclamation, religious donations, and building projects expanded slowly before 1050, increased to 1100, accelerated sharply with the opening of new lands between c. 1140 and c. 1210 and continued at a lower level from 1220 to 1300. By the second half of the 13th century, Pagan had developed an enormous amount of cultivated lands. Estimates based on surviving inscriptions alone range from 200,000 to 250,000 hectares. (In comparison, Pagan's contemporary Angkor relied on its main rice basin of over 13,000 hectares.) But donations to

1995-674: A monk]", Lower Burmese speakers use [sʰʊ́ɰ̃] instead of [sʰwáɰ̃] , which is the pronunciation used in Upper Burma. The standard dialect is represented by the Yangon dialect because of the modern city's media influence and economic clout. In the past, the Mandalay dialect represented standard Burmese. The most noticeable feature of the Mandalay dialect is its use of the first person pronoun ကျွန်တော် , kya.nau [tɕənɔ̀] by both men and women, whereas in Yangon,

2128-501: A privy council of ministers, the forebear of the Hluttaw . But the seeds of Pagan's decline were sowed during this seemingly idyllic period. The state had stopped expanding, but the practice of donating tax-free land to religion had not. The continuous growth of tax-free religious wealth greatly reduced the tax base of the kingdom. Indeed, Htilominlo was the last of the temple builders although most of his temples were in remote lands not in

2261-490: A qualitative and quantitative standard that subsequent dynasties tried to emulate but never succeeded in doing. The court finally developed a complex organisation that became the model for later dynasties. the agricultural economy reached its potential in Upper Myanmar. The Buddhist clergy, the sangha , enjoyed one of its most wealthy periods. Civil and criminal laws were codified in the vernacular, Burmese , to become

2394-523: A smaller empire of the Irrawaddy valley and nearer periphery. Anawrahta's victory terracotta votive tablets emblazoned with his name in Sanskrit have been found along the Tenasserim coastline in the south, Katha in the north, Thazi in the east and Minbu in the west. In the northeast, a series of 43 forts Anawrahta established along the eastern foothills, of which 33 still exist as villages, reveal

2527-466: A stop or check, high-rising pitch) and "ordinary" (unchecked and non-glottal words, with falling or lower pitch), with those tones encompassing a variety of pitches. The "ordinary" tone consists of a range of pitches. Linguist L. F. Taylor concluded that "conversational rhythm and euphonic intonation possess importance" not found in related tonal languages and that "its tonal system is now in an advanced state of decay." The syllable structure of Burmese

2660-450: Is C(G)V((V)C), which is to say the onset consists of a consonant optionally followed by a glide , and the rime consists of a monophthong alone, a monophthong with a consonant, or a diphthong with a consonant. The only consonants that can stand in the coda are /ʔ/ and /ɰ̃/ . Some representative words are: Kanyaza Gyi Kanraza Gyi ( Burmese : ကံရာဇာကြီး , pronounced [kàɰ̃jàzà dʑí] ; also spelled Kanraza Gree )

2793-463: Is inconclusive to prove that it was specifically a Burman (and not just another Pyu) settlement.) Thant Myint-U summarises that "the Nanzhao Empire had washed up on the banks of the Irrawaddy, and would find a new life, fused with an existing and ancient culture, to produce one of the most impressive little kingdoms of the medieval world. From this fusion would result the Burmese people, and

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2926-442: Is pronounced [mõ̀ũndã́ĩ] . The vowels of Burmese are: The monophthongs /e/ , /o/ , /ə/ , /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ occur only in open syllables (those without a syllable coda ); the diphthongs /ei/ , /ou/ , /ai/ and /au/ occur only in closed syllables (those with a syllable coda). /ə/ only occurs in a minor syllable , and is the only vowel that is permitted in a minor syllable (see below). The close vowels /i/ and /u/ and

3059-584: Is the value of the four native final nasals: ⟨မ်⟩ /m/ , ⟨န်⟩ /n/ , ⟨ဉ်⟩ /ɲ/ , ⟨င်⟩ /ŋ/ , as well as the retroflex ⟨ဏ⟩ /ɳ/ (used in Pali loans) and nasalisation mark anusvara demonstrated here above ka (က → ကံ) which most often stands in for a homorganic nasal word medially as in တံခါး tankhá 'door', and တံတား tantá 'bridge', or else replaces final -m ⟨မ်⟩ in both Pali and native vocabulary, especially after

3192-638: Is the word "moon", which can be လ la̰ (native Tibeto-Burman), စန္ဒာ/စန်း [sàndà]/[sã́] (derivatives of Pali canda 'moon'), or သော်တာ [t̪ɔ̀ dà] (Sanskrit). The consonants of Burmese are as follows: According to Jenny & San San Hnin Tun (2016 :15), contrary to their use of symbols θ and ð, consonants of သ are dental stops ( /t̪, d̪/ ), rather than fricatives ( /θ, ð/ ) or affricates. These phonemes, alongside /sʰ/ , are prone to merger with /t, d, s/ . An alveolar /ɹ/ can occur as an alternate of /j/ in some loanwords. The final nasal /ɰ̃/

3325-491: The [ ɹ ] sound, which has become [ j ] in standard Burmese. Moreover, Arakanese features a variety of vowel differences, including the merger of the ဧ [e] and ဣ [i] vowels. Hence, a word like "blood" သွေး is pronounced [θw é ] in standard Burmese and [θw í ] in Arakanese. The Burmese language's early forms include Old Burmese and Middle Burmese . Old Burmese dates from

3458-588: The /l/ medial, which is otherwise only found in Old Burmese inscriptions. They also often reduce the intensity of the glottal stop . Beik has 250,000 speakers while Tavoyan has 400,000. The grammatical constructs of Burmese dialects in Southern Myanmar show greater Mon influence than Standard Burmese. The most pronounced feature of the Arakanese language of Rakhine State is its retention of

3591-519: The Arakanese , Mons , Mongols and Shans . Repeated Mongol invasions (1277–1301) toppled the four-century-old kingdom in 1287. The collapse was followed by 250 years of political fragmentation that lasted well into the 16th century. The origins of the Pagan kingdom have been reconstructed using archaeological evidence as well as the Burmese chronicle tradition. Considerable differences exist between

3724-473: The Burmese alphabet began employing cursive-style circular letters typically used in palm-leaf manuscripts , as opposed to the traditional square block-form letters used in earlier periods. The orthographic conventions used in written Burmese today can largely be traced back to Middle Burmese. Modern Burmese emerged in the mid-18th century. By this time, male literacy in Burma stood at nearly 50%, which enabled

3857-618: The English language in the colonial educational system, especially in higher education. In the 1930s, the Burmese language saw a linguistic revival, precipitated by the establishment of an independent University of Rangoon in 1920 and the inception of a Burmese language major at the university by Pe Maung Tin , modeled on Anglo Saxon language studies at the University of Oxford. Student protests in December of that year, triggered by

3990-652: The Irrawaddy River Valley, use a number of largely similar dialects, while a minority speak non-standard dialects found in the peripheral areas of the country. These dialects include: Arakanese in Rakhine State and Marma in Bangladesh are also sometimes considered dialects of Burmese and sometimes as separate languages. Despite vocabulary and pronunciation differences, there is mutual intelligibility among Burmese dialects, as they share

4123-466: The Kyaukse district , east of Pagan. The newly irrigated regions attracted people, giving him an increased manpower base. He graded every town and village according to the levy it could raise. The region, known as Ledwin ( လယ်တွင်း , lit. "rice country"), became the granary, the economic key of the north country. History shows that one who gained control of Kyaukse became kingmaker in Upper Myanmar. By

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4256-675: The Mon people , who until recently formed the majority in Lower Burma . Most Mon loanwords are so well assimilated that they are not distinguished as loanwords, as Burmese and Mon were used interchangeably for several centuries in pre-colonial Burma. Mon loans are often related to flora, fauna, administration, textiles, foods, boats, crafts, architecture, and music. As a natural consequence of British rule in Burma , English has been another major source of vocabulary, especially with regard to technology, measurements, and modern institutions. English loanwords tend to take one of three forms: To

4389-534: The Myanma Salonpaung Thatpon Kyan ( မြန်မာ စာလုံးပေါင်း သတ်ပုံ ကျမ်း ), was compiled in 1978 by the commission. Burmese is a diglossic language with two distinguishable registers (or diglossic varieties ): The literary form of Burmese retains archaic and conservative grammatical structures and modifiers (including affixes and pronouns) no longer used in the colloquial form. Literary Burmese, which has not changed significantly since

4522-457: The Myanmar language in English, though most English speakers continue to refer to the language as Burmese , after Burma —a name with co-official status that had historically been predominantly used for the country. Burmese is the most widely-spoken language in the country, where it serves as the lingua franca . In 2007, it was spoken as a first language by 33 million. Burmese is spoken as

4655-614: The Pyu language . These indirect borrowings can be traced back to orthographic idiosyncrasies in these loanwords, such as the Burmese word "to worship", which is spelt ပူဇော် ( pūjo ) instead of ပူဇာ ( pūjā ), as would be expected by the original Pali orthography. The transition to Middle Burmese occurred in the 16th century. The transition to Middle Burmese included phonological changes (e.g. mergers of sound pairs that were distinct in Old Burmese) as well as accompanying changes in

4788-753: The Sino-Tibetan language family . The Burmese alphabet is ultimately descended from a Brahmic script , either the Kadamba or Pallava alphabets. Burmese belongs to the Southern Burmish branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages , of which Burmese is the most widely spoken of the non- Sinitic languages. Burmese was the fifth of the Sino-Tibetan languages to develop a writing system, after Classical Chinese , Pyu , Old Tibetan and Tangut . The majority of Burmese speakers, who live throughout

4921-461: The governorship of Martaban in 1285, consolidated Mon -speaking regions of Lower Myanmar, and declared Ramannadesa (Land of the Mon) independent on 30 January 1287. In the west too, Arakan stopped paying tribute. The chronicles report that the eastern territories including trans-Salween states of Keng Hung, Kengtung and Chiang Mai stopped paying tribute although most scholars attribute Pagan's limits to

5054-519: The 1050s and 1060s when King Anawrahta founded the Pagan Empire, presumably for the first time unifying under one polity the Irrawaddy valley and its periphery. By the late 12th century, Anawrahta's successors had extended their influence farther to the south into the upper Malay Peninsula , to the east at least to the Salween river , in the farther north to below the current China border, and to

5187-531: The 11th century, Pagan consolidated its hold of Upper Burma, and established its authority over Lower Burma. The emergence of Pagan Empire would have a lasting impact on Burmese history as well as the history of mainland Southeast Asia . The conquest of Lower Burma checked the Khmer Empire's encroachment into the Tenasserim coast, secured control of the peninsular ports, which were transit points between

5320-413: The 11th to the 16th century ( Pagan to Ava dynasties); Middle Burmese from the 16th to the 18th century ( Toungoo to early Konbaung dynasties); modern Burmese from the mid-18th century to the present. Word order , grammatical structure, and vocabulary have remained markedly stable well into Modern Burmese, with the exception of lexical content (e.g., function words ). The earliest attested form of

5453-457: The 13th century, is the register of Burmese taught in schools. In most cases, the corresponding affixes in the literary and spoken forms are totally unrelated to each other. Examples of this phenomenon include the following lexical terms: Historically the literary register was preferred for written Burmese on the grounds that "the spoken style lacks gravity, authority, dignity". In the mid-1960s, some Burmese writers spearheaded efforts to abandon

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5586-410: The 19th century, in addition to concomitant economic and political instability in Upper Burma (e.g., increased tax burdens from the Burmese crown, British rice production incentives, etc.) also accelerated the migration of Burmese speakers from Upper Burma into Lower Burma. British rule in Burma eroded the strategic and economic importance of the Burmese language; Burmese was effectively subordinated to

5719-465: The 2nd century BC the Pyu had built water-management systems along secondary streams in central and northern parts of the Irrawaddy basin and had founded one of Southeast Asia's earliest urban centres. By the early centuries AD, several walled cities and towns, including Tagaung, the birthplace of the first Burman kingdom according to the chronicles, had emerged. The architectural and artistic evidence indicates

5852-464: The 7th to early 9th centuries, no sizeable kingdom had yet emerged by the 9th century. According to a reconstruction by G.H. Luce , the millennium-old Pyu realm came crashing down under repeated attacks by the Nanzhao kingdom of Yunnan between the 750s and 830s AD. Like that of the Pyu, the original home of Burmans prior to Yunnan is believed to be in present-day Qinghai and Gansu provinces . After

5985-502: The Bagan Archaeological Zone of which over 2000 remain. The wealthy donated tax-free land to religious authorities. The kingdom went into decline in the mid-13th century as the continuous growth of tax-free religious wealth by the 1280s had severely affected the crown's ability to retain the loyalty of courtiers and military servicemen. This ushered in a vicious circle of internal disorders and external challenges by

6118-526: The British in the lead-up to the independence of Burma in 1948. The 1948 Constitution of Burma prescribed Burmese as the official language of the newly independent nation. The Burma Translation Society and Rangoon University's Department of Translation and Publication were established in 1947 and 1948, respectively, with the joint goal of modernizing the Burmese language in order to replace English across all disciplines. Anti-colonial sentiment throughout

6251-557: The Buddhist clergy (monks) from the laity ( householders ), especially when speaking to or about bhikkhus (monks). The following are examples of varying vocabulary used for Buddhist clergy and for laity: Burmese primarily has a monosyllabic received Sino-Tibetan vocabulary. Nonetheless, many words, especially loanwords from Indo-European languages like English, are polysyllabic, and others, from Mon, an Austroasiatic language, are sesquisyllabic . Burmese loanwords are overwhelmingly in

6384-483: The Burman ethnicity. Sithu II's success in state building created stability and prosperity throughout the kingdom. His immediate successors Htilominlo and Kyaswa (r. 1235–1249) were able to live off the stable and bountiful conditions he passed on with little state-building on their part. Htilomino hardly did any governing. A devout Buddhist and scholar, the king gave up the command of the army, and left administration to

6517-688: The Burmese language into Lower Burma also coincided with the emergence of Modern Burmese. As late as the mid-1700s, Mon , an Austroasiatic language, was the principal language of Lower Burma, employed by the Mon people who inhabited the region. Lower Burma's shift from Mon to Burmese was accelerated by the Burmese-speaking Konbaung Dynasty 's victory over the Mon-speaking Restored Hanthawaddy Kingdom in 1757. By 1830, an estimated 90% of

6650-407: The Burmese language is called Old Burmese , dating to the 11th and 12th century stone inscriptions of Pagan . The earliest evidence of the Burmese alphabet is dated to 1035, while a casting made in the 18th century of an old stone inscription points to 984. Owing to the linguistic prestige of Old Pyu in the Pagan Kingdom era, Old Burmese borrowed a substantial corpus of vocabulary from Pali via

6783-531: The First Burmese Empire—the "charter polity" that formed the basis of modern-day Burma/Myanmar. Historically verifiable Burmese history begins with his accession. Anawrahta proved an energetic king. His acts as king were to strengthen his kingdom's economic base. In the first decade of his reign, he invested much effort into turning the arid parched lands of central Myanmar into a rice granary, successfully building/enlarging weirs and canals, mainly around

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6916-460: The Hluttaw grew greatly in the following decades. It came to manage not only day-to-day affairs but also military affairs of the kingdom. (No Pagan king after Sithu II ever took command of the army again.) The powerful ministers also became kingmakers. Their support was an important factor in the accession of the last kings of Pagan from Htilominlo (r. 1211–1235) to Kyawswa (r. 1289–1297). The court

7049-547: The Indian Ocean and China, and facilitated growing cultural exchange with the external world: Mons of Lower Burma, India and Ceylon. Equally important was Anawrahta's conversion to Theravada Buddhism from his native Ari Buddhism . The Burmese king provided the Buddhist school, which had been in retreat elsewhere in South Asia and Southeast Asia, a much needed reprieve and a safe shelter. By the 1070s, Pagan had emerged as

7182-497: The Irrawaddy River valley. Regional differences between speakers from Upper Burma (e.g., Mandalay dialect), called anya tha ( အညာသား ) and speakers from Lower Burma (e.g., Yangon dialect), called auk tha ( အောက်သား ), largely occur in vocabulary choice, not in pronunciation. Minor lexical and pronunciation differences exist throughout the Irrawaddy River valley. For instance, for the term ဆွမ်း , "food offering [to

7315-676: The Khmer Empire in Southeast Asia, recognised as a sovereign kingdom by the Chinese Song dynasty , and the Indian Chola dynasty . Several diverse elements—art, architecture, religion, language, literature, ethnic plurality—had begun to synthesize. Pagan's rise continued under Alaungsithu (r. 1112–1167), who focused on standardising administrative and economic systems. The king, also known as Sithu I, actively expanded frontier colonies and built new irrigation systems throughout

7448-471: The Mongols under Kublai Khan systematically invaded the country. The first invasion in 1277 defeated the Burmese at the Battle of Ngasaunggyan , and secured their hold of Kanngai (modern-day Yingjiang, Yunnan, 112 kilometres (70 mi) north of Bhamo ). In 1283–85, their forces moved south and occupied the land down to Hanlin. Instead of defending the country, the king fled Pagan for Lower Myanmar, where he

7581-478: The Nanzhao attacks had greatly weakened the Pyu city-states, large numbers of Burman warriors and their families first entered the Pyu realm in the 830s and 840s, and settled at the confluence of the Irrawaddy and Chindwin rivers, perhaps to help the Nanzhao pacify the surrounding countryside. Indeed, the naming system of the early Pagan kings—Pyusawhti and his descendants for six generations—was identical to that of

7714-496: The Nanzhao kings where the last name of the father became the first name of the son. The chronicles date these early kings to between the 2nd and 5th centuries AD, scholars to between the 8th and 10th centuries CE. (A minority view led by Htin Aung contends that the arrival of Burmans may have been a few centuries earlier, perhaps the early 7th century. The earliest human settlement at Bagan is radiocarbon dated to c. 650 AD. But evidence

7847-479: The OB vowel *u e.g. ငံ ngam 'salty', သုံး thóum ('three; use'), and ဆုံး sóum 'end'. It does not, however, apply to ⟨ည်⟩ which is never realised as a nasal, but rather as an open front vowel [iː] [eː] or [ɛː] . The final nasal is usually realised as nasalisation of the vowel. It may also allophonically appear as a homorganic nasal before stops. For example, in /mòʊɰ̃dáɪɰ̃/ ('storm'), which

7980-605: The Pagan dynasty was founded by the Mranma of the Nanzhao kingdom in the mid-to-late 9th century AD; that the earlier parts of the chronicle are the histories and legends of Pyu people , the earliest inhabitants of Myanmar of whom records are extant; and that Pagan kings had adopted the Pyu histories and legends as their own. Indeed, the Mranma and Pyu people became mixed after years of immigration and settlement. The earliest archaeological evidence of civilisation far dates to 11,000 BC. Archaeological evidence shows that as early as

8113-480: The Pagan line continued to be claimed by successive Burmese dynasties down to the last Burmese dynasty Konbaung . Pagan's government can be generally described by the mandala system in which the sovereign exercised direct political authority in the core region ( pyi , lit. "country", ပြည် , [pjì] ), and administered farther surrounding regions as tributary vassal states ( naingngans , lit. "conquered lands", နိုင်ငံ , [nàiɴŋàɴ] ). In general,

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8246-512: The Pagan region, reflecting the deteriorating state of royal treasury. By the mid-13th century, the problem had worsened considerably. The Upper Myanmar heartland over which Pagan exercised most political control had run out of easily reclaimed irrigable tracts. Yet their fervent desire to accumulate religious merit for better reincarnations made it impossible for Pagan kings to halt entirely their own or other courtiers' donations. The crown did try to reclaim some of these lands by periodically purging

8379-421: The Pagan society—members of the royalty, senior court officials, and wealthy laymen—donated to the clergy enormous acreages of agricultural land, along with hereditary tied cultivators to attain religious merit. (Both religious lands and cultivators were permanently tax exempt.) Although it ultimately became a major burden on the economy, the practice initially helped expand the economy for some two centuries. First,

8512-443: The Pyu realm's contact with Indian culture by the 4th century AD. The city-states boasted kings and palaces, moats and massive wooden gates, and always 12 gates for each of the signs of the zodiac, one of the many enduring patterns that would continue until the British occupation. Sri Ksetra emerged as the premier Pyu city-state in the 7th century AD. Although the size of the city-states and the scale of political organisation grew during

8645-601: The Salween. At any rate, the 250-year-old Pagan Empire had ceased to exist. After their 1287 invasion, the Mongols continued to control down to Tagaung but refused to fill the power vacuum they had created farther south. Indeed, Emperor Kublai Khan never sanctioned an actual occupation of Pagan. His real aim appeared to have been "to keep the entire region of Southeast Asia broken and fragmented." At Pagan, one of Narathihapate's sons Kyawswa emerged as king of Pagan in May 1289. But

8778-892: The abandoned capital of Danyawaddy in present-day Rakhine State , and founded the Second Danyawaddy Dynasty. Kanraza Gyi was born in Tagaung 861 BC, after his father Abhiyaza died he lost the throne to his younger brother after race to complete pogoda. He left the kingdom eventually settled in Dhanyawdi later founded the Second Dhanyawadi Kingdom of Arakan following through the Chindwin River pass. He married queen Thubbada Dewi of Dhanywaddy. Where his descendants became today known as "Rakhine" or "Arakanese". He ruled for 37 years and

8911-491: The adoption of neologisms. An example is the word "university", formerly ယူနီဗာစတီ [jùnìbàsətì] , from English university , now တက္ကသိုလ် [tɛʔkət̪ò] , a Pali-derived neologism recently created by the Burmese government and derived from the Pali spelling of Taxila ( တက္ကသီလ Takkasīla ), an ancient university town in modern-day Pakistan. Some words in Burmese may have many synonyms, each having certain usages, such as formal, literary, colloquial, and poetic. One example

9044-498: The agricultural base of the kingdom with new manpower from the conquered areas, ensuring the needed wealth for a growing royalty and officialdom. Pagan dispatched governors to supervise more closely ports in Lower Myanmar and the peninsula. In the early 13th century, Pagan, alongside the Khmer Empire, was one of two main empires in mainland Southeast Asia. His reign also saw the rise of Burmese culture which finally emerged from

9177-530: The army was driven back, it left no doubt as to who held the real power in central Myanmar. In the following years, the brothers, especially the youngest, Thihathu , increasingly acted like sovereigns. To check the increasing power of the three brothers, Kyawswa submitted to the Mongols in January 1297, and was recognised by the Mongol emperor Temür Khan as viceroy of Pagan on 20 March 1297. The brothers resented

9310-647: The basic jurisprudence for subsequent ages. Sithu II formally founded the Palace Guards in 1174, the first extant record of a standing army, and pursued an expansionist policy. Over his 27-year reign, Pagan's influence reached further south to the Strait of Malacca , at least to the Salween river in the east and below the current China border in the farther north. (Burmese chronicles also claim trans-Salween Shan states, including Kengtung and Chiang Mai.) Continuing his grandfather Sithu I's policies, Sithu II expanded

9443-511: The basis of population in times of war. This basic system of military organisation was largely unchanged down to the precolonial period although later dynasties, especially the Toungoo dynasty, did introduce standardisation and other modifications. The early Pagan army consisted mainly of conscripts raised just prior to or during the times of war. Although historians believe that earlier kings like Anawrahta must have had permanent troops on duty in

9576-457: The capital. The region consisted of the capital and the key irrigated hubs ( khayaings , ခရိုင် , [kʰəjàiɴ] ) of Kyaukse and Minbu . Because of the irrigated hubs, the region supported the largest population in the kingdom, which translated into the largest concentration of royal servicemen who could be called into military service. The king directly ruled the capital and its immediate environs while he appointed most trusted members of

9709-447: The city of Pagan, once home to 200,000 people, had been reduced to a small town, never to regain its preeminence. (It survived into the 15th century as a settlement.) The brothers placed one of Kyawswa's sons as the governor of Pagan. Anawrahta's line continued to rule Pagan as governors under Myinsaing, Pinya and Ava Kingdoms until 1368/69. The male side of Pagan ended there although the female side passed into Pinya and Ava royalty. But

9842-469: The clergy in the name of Buddhist purification, and seizing previously donated lands. Although some of the reclamation efforts were successful, powerful Buddhist clergy by and large successfully resisted such attempts. Ultimately, the rate of reclamation fell behind the rate at which such lands were dedicated to the sangha . (The problem was exacerbated to a smaller degree by powerful ministers, who exploited succession disputes and accumulated their own lands at

9975-525: The close portions of the diphthongs are somewhat mid-centralized ( [ɪ, ʊ] ) in closed syllables, i.e. before /ɰ̃/ and /ʔ/ . Thus နှစ် /n̥iʔ/ ('two') is phonetically [n̥ɪʔ] and ကြောင် /tɕàũ/ ('cat') is phonetically [tɕàʊ̃] . Burmese is a tonal language , which means phonemic contrasts can be made on the basis of the tone of a vowel. In Burmese, these contrasts involve not only pitch , but also phonation , intensity (loudness), duration, and vowel quality. However, some linguists consider Burmese

10108-447: The core by appointing its governors in place of hereditary rulers. In the 12th and 13th centuries, for example, Pagan made a point of appointing its governors in the Tenasserim coast to closely supervise the ports and revenues. By the second half of the 13th century, several key ports in Lower Myanmar (Prome, Bassein, Dala) were all ruled by senior princes of the royal family. However, the escape of Lower Myanmar from Upper Myanmar's orbit in

10241-433: The core zone governors did not have much autonomy because of the close proximity to the capital. Surrounding the core region were the naingngans or tributary states, governed by local hereditary rulers as well as Pagan appointed governors, drawn from princely or ministerial families. Because of their farther distances from the capital, the regions' rulers/governors had greater autonomy. They were required to send tributes to

10374-604: The country. These varieties include the Yaw , Palaw, Myeik (Merguese), Tavoyan and Intha dialects . Despite substantial vocabulary and pronunciation differences, there is mutual intelligibility among most Burmese dialects. Below is a summary of lexical similarity between major Burmese dialects: Dialects in Tanintharyi Region , including Palaw, Merguese, and Tavoyan, are especially conservative in comparison to Standard Burmese. The Tavoyan and Intha dialects have preserved

10507-508: The crown but they generally had a freehand in the rest of the administration. They were chief justices, commanders-in-chief, and tax collectors. They made local officer appointments. In fact, no evidence of royal censuses or direct contact between the Pagan court and headmen beneath the governors has been found. Over the course of 250 years, the throne slowly tried to integrate the most strategically and economically important regions—i.e. Lower Myanmar, Tenasserim, northernmost Irrawaddy valley—into

10640-456: The crown's authority diffused away with the increasing distance from the capital. Each state was administered at three general levels: taing ( တိုင်း , province), myo ( မြို့ , town), and ywa ( ရွာ , village), with the high king's court at the centre. The kingdom consisted of at least 14 taings . The core region was the present-day Dry Zone of Upper Myanmar, measuring approximately 150 to 250 kilometres (93 to 155 mi) in radius from

10773-514: The earliest Pagan kings points to 956. The earliest mention of Pagan in external sources occurs in Song Chinese records, which report that envoys from Pagan visited the Song capital Bianjing in 1004. Mon inscriptions first mentioned Pagan in 1093, respectively. Below is a partial list of early Pagan kings as reported by Hmannan , shown in comparison with Hmannan dates adjusted to 1044 and

10906-669: The early post-independence era led to a reactionary switch from English to Burmese as the national medium of education, a process that was accelerated by the Burmese Way to Socialism . In August 1963, the socialist Union Revolutionary Government established the Literary and Translation Commission (the immediate precursor of the Myanmar Language Commission ) to standardize Burmese spelling, diction, composition, and terminology. The latest spelling authority, named

11039-498: The effective extent of his authority. Moreover, most scholars attribute Pagan's control of peripheral regions (Arakan, Shan Hills) to later kings—Arakan to Alaungsithu , and cis-Salween Shan Hills to Narapatisithu . (Even those latter-day kings may not have had more than nominal control over the farther peripheral regions. For example, some scholars such as Victor Lieberman argue that Pagan did not have any "effective authority" over Arakan.) At any rate, all scholars accept that during

11172-527: The expense of the crown.) By 1280, between one and two-thirds of Upper Myanmar's cultivatable land had been donated to religion. Thus the throne lost resources needed to retain the loyalty of courtiers and military servicemen, inviting a vicious circle of internal disorders and external challenges by Mons , Mongols and Shans . The first signs of disorder appeared soon after Narathihapate 's accession in 1256. The inexperienced king faced revolts in Arakanese state of Macchagiri (present-day Kyaukpyu District ) in

11305-598: The form of nouns . Historically, Pali , the liturgical language of Theravada Buddhism , had a profound influence on Burmese vocabulary. Burmese has readily adopted words of Pali origin; this may be due to phonotactic similarities between the two languages, alongside the fact that the script used for Burmese can be used to reproduce Pali spellings with complete accuracy. Pali loanwords are often related to religion, government, arts, and science. Burmese loanwords from Pali primarily take four forms: Burmese has also adapted numerous words from Mon, traditionally spoken by

11438-488: The foundation for the ascent of Burmese language and culture , the spread of Bamar ethnicity in Upper Myanmar , and the growth of Theravada Buddhism in Myanmar and in mainland Southeast Asia . The kingdom grew out of a small 9th-century settlement at Pagan (present-day Bagan) by the Mranma /Burmans. Over the next two hundred years, the small principality gradually grew to absorb its surrounding regions until

11571-444: The foundations of modern Burmese culture." Evidence shows that the actual pace of Burman migration into the Pyu realm was gradual. Indeed, no firm indications have been found at Sri Ksetra or at any other Pyu site to suggest a violent overthrow. Radiocarbon dating shows that human activity existed until c. 870 at Halin , the Pyu city reportedly destroyed by an 832 Nanzhao raid. The region of Pagan received waves of Burman settlements in

11704-440: The government. The members of the court can be divided into three general categories: royalty, ministers, and subordinate officials. At the top were the high king, princes, princesses, queens and concubines. The ministers were usually drawn from more distant branches of the royal family. Their subordinates were not royal but usually hailed from top official families. Titles, ranks, insignia, fiefs and other such rewards helped maintain

11837-522: The introduction of English into matriculation examinations , fueled growing demand for Burmese to become the medium of education in British Burma; a short-lived but symbolic parallel system of "national schools" that taught in Burmese, was subsequently launched. The role and prominence of the Burmese language in public life and institutions was championed by Burmese nationalists, intertwined with their demands for greater autonomy and independence from

11970-548: The king of Pagan received a periodic nominal tribute but had "no substantive authority", for example, on such matters as the selection of deputies, successors, or levels of taxation. Pagan largely stayed out of the affairs of these outlying states, only interfering when there were outright revolts, such as Arakan and Martaban in the late 1250s or northern Kachin Hills in 1277. The court was the centre of administration, representing at once executive, legislative and judiciary branches of

12103-420: The kingdom of Pagan to expand beyond the dry zone of Upper Myanmar, and to dominate its periphery, including the maritime Lower Myanmar. As reconstructed by Michael Aung-Thwin , G.H. Luce and Than Tun , the main driver for this agriculture-based economic expansion was the practice of donating tax-free lands to the Buddhist clergy. For some two hundred years between 1050 and 1250, wealthy and powerful segments of

12236-415: The kingdom. He also introduced standardised weights and measures throughout the country to assist administration as well as trade. The standardisation provided an impetus for the monetisation of Pagan's economy, the full impact of which however would not be felt until later in the 12th century. The kingdom prospered from increased agricultural output as well as from inland and maritime trading networks. Much of

12369-406: The late 13th century proves that the region was far from fully integrated. History shows that the region would not be fully integrated into the core until the late 18th century. The royal authority attenuated further in farther naingngans : Arakan, Chin Hills, Kachin Hills, and Shan Hills. These were tributary lands over which the crown only had a "largely ritual" or nominal sovereignty. In general,

12502-510: The later kings to expand. Pagan reached the height of political and administrative development during the reigns of Narapatisithu (Sithu II; r. 1174–1211) and Htilominlo (r. 1211–1235). The Sulamani Temple , Gawdawpalin Temple , Mahabodhi Temple , and Htilominlo Temple were built during their reigns. The kingdom's borders expanded to its greatest extent. Military organisation and success reached their zenith. Monumental architecture achieved

12635-742: The list of Zatadawbon Yazawin (the Royal Horoscopes Chronicle). Prior to Anawrahta, inscriptional evidence exists thus far only for Nyaung-u Sawrahan and Kunhsaw Kyaunghpyu . The list starts from Pyinbya , the fortifier of Pagan according to Hmannan . By the mid-10th century, Burmans at Pagan had expanded irrigation-based cultivation while borrowing extensively from the Pyus' predominantly Buddhist culture. Pagan's early iconography, architecture and scripts suggest little difference between early Burman and Pyu cultural forms. Moreover, no sharp ethnic distinction between Burmans and linguistically linked Pyus seems to have existed. The city

12768-515: The literary form, asserting that the spoken vernacular form ought to be used. Some Burmese linguists such as Minn Latt , a Czech academic, proposed moving away from the high form of Burmese altogether. Although the literary form is heavily used in written and official contexts (literary and scholarly works, radio news broadcasts, and novels), the recent trend has been to accommodate the spoken form in informal written contexts. Nowadays, television news broadcasts, comics, and commercial publications use

12901-453: The loyalty-patronage structure of the court. The king as the absolute monarch was the chief executive, legislator and justice of the land. However, as the kingdom grew, the king gradually handed over responsibilities to the court, which became more extensive and complex, adding more administrative layers and officials. In the early 13th century, c. 1211, part of the court evolved into the king's privy council or Hluttaw . The role and power of

13034-659: The main Theravada stronghold. In 1071, it helped to restart the Theravada Buddhism in Ceylon whose Buddhist clergy had been wiped out by the Cholas . Another key development according to traditional scholarship was the creation of the Burmese alphabet from the Mon script in 1058, one year after the conquest of Thaton. Anawrahta was followed by a line of able kings who cemented Pagan's place in history. Pagan entered

13167-500: The mid-1050s, Anawrahta's reforms had turned Pagan into a regional power, and he looked to expand. Over the next ten years, he founded the Pagan Empire, the Irrawaddy valley at the core, surrounded by tributary states. Anawrahta began his campaigns in the nearer Shan Hills , and extended conquests to Lower Myanmar down to the Tenasserim coast to Phuket and North Arakan . Estimates of the extent of his empire vary greatly. The Burmese and Siamese chronicles report an empire which covered

13300-613: The mid-to-late 9th century, and perhaps well into the 10th century. Though Hmannan states that Pagan was fortified in 849—or more accurately, 876 after the Hmannan dates are adjusted to King Anawrahta 's inscriptionally verified accession date of 1044—the chronicle reported date is likely the date of foundation, not fortification. Radiocarbon dating of Pagan's walls points to c. 980 at the earliest. (If an earlier fortification did exist, it must have been constructed using less durable materials such as mud.) Likewise, inscriptional evidence of

13433-492: The monastery-temple complexes, typically located some distances away from the capital, helped anchor new population centres for the throne. Such institutions in turn stimulated associated artisan, commercial, and agricultural activities critical to the general economy. Secondly, the need to accumulate land for endowments, as well as for awards for soldiers and servicemen, drove the active development of new lands. The earliest irrigation projects focused on Kyaukse where Burmans built

13566-476: The new "king" controlled just a small area around the capital, and had no real army. The real power in Upper Myanmar now rested with three brothers, who were former Pagan commanders, of nearby Myinsaing . When the Hanthawaddy Kingdom of Lower Myanmar became a vassal of Sukhothai in 1293/94, it was the brothers, not Kyawswa, that sent a force to reclaim the former Pagan territory in 1295–96. Though

13699-678: The new arrangement as a Mongol vassalage as it directly reduced their power. On 17 December 1297, the three brothers overthrew Kyawswa, and founded the Myinsaing Kingdom . The Mongols did not know about the dethronement until June–July 1298. In response, the Mongols launched another invasion, reaching Myinsaing on 25 January 1301, but could not break through. The besiegers took the bribes of the three brothers, and withdrew on 6 April 1301. The Mongol government at Yunnan executed their commanders but sent no more invasions. They withdrew entirely from Upper Myanmar starting on 4 April 1303. By then,

13832-496: The number of conscripted cultivators offered the best single indication of military success, Upper Myanmar with a greater population was the natural centre of political gravity. Various sources and estimates put Pagan's military strength anywhere between 30,000 and 60,000 men. One inscription by Sithu II, who expanded the empire to its greatest extent, describes him as the lord of 17,645 soldiers while another notes 30,000 soldiers and cavalry under his command. A Chinese account mentions

13965-518: The origins of the Pagan kingdom to India during the 9th century BC, more than three centuries before the Buddha was born. Abhiraja ( အဘိရာဇာ )of the Sakya clan ( သကျ သာကီဝင် မင်းမျိုး ) – the clan of the Buddha – left his homeland with followers in 850 BC after military defeat by the neighbouring kingdom of Panchala ( ပဉ္စာလရာဇ် ). They settled at Tagaung in present-day northern Myanmar and founded

14098-568: The palace, the first specific mention of a standing military structure in the Burmese chronicles is 1174 when Sithu II founded the palace guards—"two companies inner and outer, and they kept watch in ranks one behind the other". The palace guards became the nucleus round which the mass levy assembled in war time. Most of the field levy served in the infantry but the men for the elephantry , cavalry , and naval corps were drawn from specific hereditary villages that specialised in respective military skills. In an era of limited military specialisation, when

14231-649: The population in Lower Burma self-identified as Burmese-speaking Bamars; huge swaths of former Mon-speaking territory, from the Irrawaddy Delta to upriver in the north, spanning Bassein (now Pathein) and Rangoon (now Yangon) to Tharrawaddy, Toungoo, Prome (now Pyay), and Henzada (now Hinthada), were now Burmese-speaking. The language shift has been ascribed to a combination of population displacement, intermarriage, and voluntary changes in self-identification among increasingly Mon–Burmese bilingual populations in

14364-479: The present-day Myanmar and northern Thailand. The Siamese chronicles assert that Anawrahta conquered the entire Menam valley, and received tribute from the Khmer king. One Siamese chronicle states that Anawrahta's armies invaded the Khmer kingdom and sacked the city of Angkor , and another one goes so far as to say that Anawrahta even visited Java to receive his tribute. Archaeological evidence however confirms only

14497-420: The real and mythical ancestors of Sri Ksetra, the symbol of the Pyu golden past, and by calling the kingdom Pyu, even though it had been ruled by a Burman ruling class. He supported and favoured Theravada Buddhism while tolerating other religious groups. To be sure, he pursued these policies all the while maintaining the Burman military rule. By the end of his 28-year reign, Pagan had emerged a major power alongside

14630-425: The region. Standardized tone marking in written Burmese was not achieved until the 18th century. From the 19th century onward, orthographers created spellers to reform Burmese spelling, because of ambiguities that arose over transcribing sounds that had been merged. British rule saw continued efforts to standardize Burmese spelling through dictionaries and spellers. Britain's gradual annexation of Burma throughout

14763-461: The remains of over 2000 survive." Agriculture was the primary engine of the kingdom from its beginnings in the 9th century. Burman immigrants are believed to have either introduced new water management techniques or greatly enhanced existing Pyu system of weirs, dams, sluices, and diversionary barricades. At any rate, the Kyaukse agricultural basin's development in the 10th and 11th centuries enabled

14896-481: The riverine portions of Minbu and Pakkoku . To the north lay the Nanzhao Kingdom, and to the east still largely uninhabited Shan Hills , to the south and the west Pyus, and farther south still, Mons . The size of the principality is about 6% of that of modern Burma/Myanmar. In December 1044, a Pagan prince named Anawrahta came to power. Over the next three decades, he turned this small principality into

15029-429: The royal family to rule Kyaukse and Minbu. Newly settled dry zone taik ( တိုက် , [taiʔ] ) areas on the west bank of the Irrawaddy were entrusted to the men of lesser rank, as well as those from powerful local families known as taik leaders ( taik-thugyis , တိုက်သူကြီး , [taiʔ ðədʑí] ). The governors and taik-leaders lived off apanage grants and local taxes. But unlike their frontier counterparts,

15162-510: The said pronoun is used only by male speakers while ကျွန်မ , kya.ma. [tɕəma̰] is used by female speakers. Moreover, with regard to kinship terminology , Upper Burmese speakers differentiate the maternal and paternal sides of a family, whereas Lower Burmese speakers do not. The Mon language has also influenced subtle grammatical differences between the varieties of Burmese spoken in Lower and Upper Burma. In Lower Burmese varieties,

15295-399: The sangha over the 250 years of the empire accumulated to over 150,000 hectares (over 60%) of the total cultivated land. Ultimately, the practice proved unsustainable when the empire had stopped growing physically, and a major factor in the empire's downfall. Burmese language Burmese ( Burmese : မြန်မာဘာသာ ; MLCTS : Mranma bhasa ; pronounced [mjəmà bàθà] ) is

15428-436: The shadows of Mon and Pyu cultures. With the Burman leadership of the kingdom now unquestioned, the term Mranma (Burmans) was openly used in Burmese language inscriptions. Burmese became the primary written language of the kingdom, replacing Pyu and Mon. His reign also saw the realignment of Burmese Buddhism with Ceylon's Mahavihara school. The Pyus receded into the background, and by the early 13th century, had largely assumed

15561-764: The spoken form or a combination of the spoken and simpler, less ornate formal forms. The following sample sentence reveals that differences between literary and spoken Burmese mostly occur in affixes: Burmese has politeness levels and honorifics that take the speaker's status and age in relation to the audience into account. The suffix ပါ pa is frequently used after a verb to express politeness. Moreover, Burmese pronouns relay varying degrees of deference or respect. In many instances, polite speech (e.g., addressing teachers, officials, or elders) employs feudal-era third person pronouns or kinship terms in lieu of first- and second-person pronouns. Furthermore, with regard to vocabulary choice, spoken Burmese clearly distinguishes

15694-448: The traditional homeland of Burmese speakers. The 1891 Census of India , conducted five years after the annexation of the entire Konbaung Kingdom , found that the former kingdom had an "unusually high male literacy" rate of 62.5% for Upper Burmans aged 25 and above. For all of British Burma , the literacy rate was 49% for men and 5.5% for women (by contrast, British India more broadly had a male literacy rate of 8.44%). The expansion of

15827-425: The underlying orthography . From the 1500s onward, Burmese kingdoms saw substantial gains in the populace's literacy rate , which manifested itself in greater participation of laymen in scribing and composing legal and historical documents, domains that were traditionally the domain of Buddhist monks, and drove the ensuing proliferation of Burmese literature , both in terms of genres and works. During this period,

15960-462: The verb ပေး ('to give') is colloquially used as a permissive causative marker, like in other Southeast Asian languages, but unlike in other Tibeto-Burman languages. This usage is hardly used in Upper Burmese varieties, and is considered a sub-standard construct. More distinctive non-standard varieties emerge as one moves farther away from the Irrawaddy River valley toward peripheral areas of

16093-499: The views of modern scholarship and various chronicle narratives. According to the local myth and chronicles written down in the 18th century trace its origins to 167 AD, when Pyusawhti founded the dynasty at Pagan (Bagan). But the 19th-century Glass Palace Chronicle ( Hmannan Yazawin ) connects the dynasty's origins to the clan of the Buddha and the first Buddhist king Maha Sammata ( မဟာ သမ္မတ ). The Glass Palace Chronicle traces

16226-515: The wealth was devoted to temple building. Temple building projects, which began in earnest during Kyansittha's reign, became increasingly grandiose, and began to transition into a distinctively Burman architectural style from earlier Pyu and Mon norms. By the end of Sithu I's reign, Pagan enjoyed a more synthesised culture, an efficient government and a prosperous economy. However a corresponding growth in population also put pressure on "the fixed relationship between productive land and population", forcing

16359-512: The west, and Martaban (Mottama) in the south. The Martaban rebellion was easily put down but Macchagiri required a second expedition before it too was put down. The calm did not last long. Martaban again revolted in 1285. This time, Pagan could not do anything to retake Martaban because it was facing an existential threat from the north. The Mongols of the Yuan dynasty demanded tribute, in 1271 and again in 1273. When Narathihapate refused both times,

16492-694: The west, in northern Arakan and the Chin Hills . In the 12th and 13th centuries, Pagan, alongside the Khmer Empire , was one of two main empires in mainland Southeast Asia. The Burmese language and culture gradually became dominant in the upper Irrawaddy valley, eclipsing the Pyu , Mon and Pali norms by the late 12th century. Theravada Buddhism slowly began to spread to the village level although Tantric , Mahayana , Brahmanic , and animist practices remained heavily entrenched at all social strata. Pagan's rulers built over 10,000 Buddhist temples in

16625-466: The wide circulation of legal texts, royal chronicles , and religious texts. A major reason for the uniformity of the Burmese language was the near-universal presence of Buddhist monasteries (called kyaung ) in Burmese villages. These kyaung served as the foundation of the pre-colonial monastic education system, which fostered uniformity of the language throughout the Upper Irrawaddy valley,

16758-410: The word "television", Burmese publications are mandated to use the term ရုပ်မြင်သံကြား (lit. 'see picture, hear sound') in lieu of တယ်လီဗီးရှင်း , a direct English transliteration. Another example is the word "vehicle", which is officially ယာဉ် [jɪ̃̀] (derived from Pali) but ကား [ká] (from English car ) in spoken Burmese. Some previously common English loanwords have fallen out of use with

16891-483: Was also the chief justice of the land. Sithu I (r. 1112–1167) was the first Pagan king to issue an official collection of judgments, later known as the Alaungsithu hpyat-hton , to be followed as precedents by all courts of justice. A follow-up collection of judgments was compiled during the reign of Sithu II (r. 1174–1211) by a Mon monk named Dhammavilasa. As another sign of delegation of power, Sithu II also appointed

17024-410: Was assassinated by one of his sons in 1287. The Mongols invaded again in 1287. Recent research indicates that Mongol armies may not have reached Pagan itself, and that even if they did, the damage they inflicted was probably minimal. But the damage was already done. All the vassal states of Pagan revolted right after the king's death, and went their own way. In the south, Wareru , the man who had seized

17157-418: Was one of several competing city-states until the late 10th century when it grew in authority and grandeur. By Anawrahta's accession in 1044, Pagan had grown into a small principality—about 320 kilometres (200 mi) north to south and about 130 kilometres (81 mi) from east to west, comprising roughly the present districts of Mandalay , Meiktila , Myingyan , Kyaukse , Yamethin , Magwe , Sagaing , and

17290-427: Was relatively constant, the estimates of 40,000 to 60,000 of the entire military are not improbable, and are in line with figures given for the Burmese military between the 16th and 19th centuries in a variety of sources. The economy of Pagan was based primarily on agriculture , and to a much smaller degree, on trade . The growth of the Pagan Empire and subsequent development of irrigated lands in new lands sustained

17423-439: Was succeeded by his son, Thila Raza . The story of Abhiyaza, Kanyaza Gyi and Kanyaza Nge appeared for the first time in an official Burmese royal chronicle only in 1832, part of the efforts by the early Konbaung kings to promote a more orthodox version of Theravada Buddhism . The Abhiyaza story linked the Burmese monarchy to the Buddha and superseded then prevailing pre-Buddhist origin story involving one Pyusawhti , son of

17556-639: Was the legendary founder of the Second Dhanyawaddy Dynasty of Arakan . According to Hmanan Yazawin (the Glass Palace Chronicle), Kanyaza Gyi was the eldest son of King Abhiyaza of Tagaung , a prince of the Sakya clan of the Buddha who came from the ancient kingdom of Kosala (present-day northern India). After his father died in 825 CE, Kanyaza Gyi lost out the throne to his younger brother Kanyaza Nge . He left Tagaung with his followers. He eventually settled at

17689-432: Was visited by the Buddha himself during his lifetime, and it was where he allegedly pronounced that a great kingdom would arise at this very location 651 years after his death. Thamoddarit was followed by a caretaker, and then Pyusawhti in 167 AD. The chronicle narratives then merge, and agree that a dynasty of kings followed Pyusawhti. King Pyinbya ( ပျဉ်ပြား ) fortified the city in 849 AD. Modern scholarship holds that

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