Arakan: The Mrauk U Period (re-submitting)

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Arakan: The Mrauk U Period

by Dr. Jacques P. Leider

Though Arakan1 has remained up to a very recent date a very poorly studied area of Southeast Asia, historians agree that the coastal Kingdom of Arakan developed during the 17th century into a thriving commercial entrepot that had its place in the trade network of the Bay of Bengal (Lieberman 1980:204 Subrahmanyam 1997:208)2. But little interest has been paid to the political and military background of Arakan's rise during the 16th and early 17th century3. While the reasons for this lack of interest can only be hinted at, a look at an Arakan-related bibliography shows indeed the paucity of scientific or academic materials on the country. The only overview of Arakanese history can be found in Arthur P. Phayer's History of Burma published in 1983, a book in which, meritoriously, Arakanese history still gets a fair share in the general history of Burma4. Mainly based on a single Arakanese chronicle that was written around 1842 at the initiative of Phayre himself, the Na Man rajawan5, Phayer's text reflects the Western reading of a traditional Burmese literacy form, an oriental chronicle seen through the eyes of an educated and interested mid-19th century Brithsh colonial officer. Phayer singled out what he deemed fit to p****as straight facts and put it into the mould of a Western-style dynastic history. In the end, much interpretation of the author is passed over to the reader as a matter of fact. Little attention was paid to the geographical and historical context and much of the textual richness of the original document was sacrificed. All this should be born in mind as Phayre has remained a major reference tool for most people who are unfamiliar with the original sources.
If we examine what has been written on, or in connection with Arakanese history, it looks more like an incongruous collage than a mosaic of elements completing each other. A various range of books and articles have brought about a certain number of simplifications or clichés that can only be accounted for in the reduced perspectives of their authors. There is thus an obvious interest in dealing briefly with the historiographical literature on Arakan to approach the history in its geographical context and some of the problems of research. Some conclusions from this review can lead us to a better understanding of the field of studies concerned with Arakan's past and the challenges awaiting the researcher.
In a second part, the political and military history of Arakan from the 15th to the end of the 17th century will be presented diachronically. This synopsis, based on Burmese, Arakanese, Portuguese and Persian sources, is a critical attempt to pull together in coherent picture the episodic appearances of Arakan in the older literature; it also pays due attention to its local and wider socio-economic context as construed in contemporary studies on the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia. The second part will show that the kingdom of Arakan had its own autonomous history, that should be understood in its proper geo-political and cultural context. Arakan in the 16th and 17th centuries does not fit into the conceptual framework of dynastic cycles that has been outlined for neighboring Burma. This paper challenges Harvey's statement that "Arakan has a separate history" that is "the same in king" [than Burma's] (Harvey 1967:137). A consistent approach of Arakan's history must moreover transgress the all too well established and rigorously defined cultural areas of study and research, such as South Asia and Southeast Asia and contemporary political borders. Northeast India, East Bangladesh and Western Myanmar form a last geographical zone of mountains, valleys and alluvial plains characterized by a great ethnic diversity. They share the experience of a past (and maybe a present) peripheral situation when related to the development of the greater political centres on their eastern and western sides (mainly in our context, the eastward expansion of the Irrawaddy kingdoms and the eastward expansion of the Mogul empire). This experience can also be recontextualised in a langue duree perspective with the expansion of Islam and lamic culture moving towards the east and the consolidation and increasing impact of a centralizing kingdom in the upper Irrawaddy valley.
The whole area was repeatedly a destination port for refugees from India's North and West Buddhists who lost the support of predominantly Hindu ruling elites and came under the pressure of Muslim progress, Afghan Muslims fleeing the Mogul conquerors) and a barrier for ethnic expansion from the east (the farthest expansion of the Tai (Tai-Ahom settling in Assam) and the Tibeto-Burmans (e.g. Arakanese settling in Eastern Bengal). In political terms (keeping the major political centre-oriented perspective), the area had only a limited importance; but conquest by great powers (i.e. the Moguls from India or the kings of Burma) was discouraged and for a long time kept at bay, as the hope of controlling effectively the land faded away with the rising heights, the dense jungle or the intricate waterways. One can illustrate this point with the dragging Mogul wars against the Ahom or the approximately 90 years that it took to extend Mogul control over the whole of Bengal [from the 1976 victories in Western and central Bengal to the conquest of Chittagong (in southeastern Bengal) in 1666].
With the first and second part outlining the sources and the history of Araksn's kingship in the early modern period, one may wonder if this is an attempt to put another, lesser known centre on the map of continental Southeast Asia. It actually is. But this does not only mean switching the headlight to a minor political and economic center worth to be recognized as such. It leads inevitably to a whole lot of yet little explored questions linked to the relations between Arakan and Bengal or Myanmar. How did Arakan resist attempts at conquest in the 16th 17th centuries? Why did it fail in defending Chittagong in 1666 a year which marks the onset of its decline and why did it fall like a rotten fruit into Burmese hands in 1785? I consider that Arakan's development was sensibly different from the political development in the Irrawaddy valley during the early modern period. This paper supports the view that a study of Arakanese political institutions and the country's integration into the socio-economic network of the Bay of Bengal provide answers to the above questions. Where the historian makes himself at home on the periphery, he faces both an inward and an outward perspective. On one hand there is the all pervasive question of how does the periphery respond to the challenge of higher' centres in terms of defending itself (military resources, alliances, diplomacy). On the other hand, there is the question of the periphery's own structural balance which is based on creating and maintaining resources. Logically the third part will thus proceed with an analysis of various aspects of the administration, the trade connections in relation to the socio-political background and the nature of the political development that characterized Arakan's rise during the Mrauk U period.
Those who consider that the varying degree of centralization is the crucial question of Southeast Asia's historical development, might feel that the insistence on peripheral developments is blurring their main point of interest. The study of the periphery compels indeed a more complex view as it calls for an examination of the diversity of local conditions. Shifting our attention from the centre to the periphery, the analytical framework of political and economic centralization needs to be complemented by a better understanding of related and interacting networks based on a study of local and regional history.
(To be continued)

(mentioned in the Independent News, BD)
GMA NEWS

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by Dr. Jacques P. Leider
Historians of Southeast Asia have maneuvered themselves into a blind alley while sticking too much to the 20th century concept of Southeast Asia and its nation states that emerged from the colonial period. The challenge of studying especially early modern history calls for a more flexible answer in terms of geographical and ethnic boundaries and the concept of autonomous history comes as a natural companion to the discovery of regional and local history. This does not just mean a shifting of perspectives and this is not just giving more credit to some minor centres on a map of hierarchically structured political and economic centres. It literally enriches our perception and deepens our meaning of the historical map of Southeast Asia.
Arakan's Past in Historical Writing
The deplorable state of historical research on Arakan is best illustrated by the fact that there is neither any manuscript or printed collection of epigraphic sources of the Mrauk U period nor any catalogue or detailed description of religious monuments, temples, pagodas or mosques. In this paper, I will deal mainly with manuscript or printed literary and historiographical sources. The main source for the study of Arakan's history are Arakanese historiographical compilations which contain texts belonging to different literary genres (poetry, annals, narratives, eulogies)6; the only chronicle presenting a coherent narrative like U Kala's Maharajawan is the above mentioned Na Man rajawan, of which only a few manuscript copies are still existing. Burmese, Persian and Tripura chronicles as well as Bengali literary sources vastly contribute to our information on Arakan's history as they report how the Mon or Burmese kings of the Irrawaddy valley, the political rivals in southeastern Bengal (sultans of Bengal or kings of Tripura), and the Mogul government (through its subadars of Bengal) interfered with Arakan's master. Some slightly better known printed French, Portuguese and Dutch sources have in fact been little exploited. Recently scholars have unraveled new source material in England, Portugal and the Netherlands which is directly or indirectly relevant for the study of Arakan.
The major grief with the modern historiography on Arakan has been the selective choice of source materials by historians dealing with the country. Actually the work of historians reflects not only their own eclectic use of sources, it mirrors the chronicles in their selectivity. Progress of research and academic interest have evolved mainly along traditional borderlines of culture and nation. What we can read in English or Burmese on Arakan's history is generally based on the Arakanese and Burmese palm leaf sources and historians have not shown much interest in Arakan's involvement in southeastern Bengal's past. Bengali historians, on the other hand, have based their articles mainly on Bengali and Persian sources; Phayre's or Harvey's standard histories of Burma would do as their reference tools in English to keep track of the chronology of kings and political events, but nothing is generally said about what was Arakan's place in the Burmese context. As a result, the general picture (or just the impression) of the Arakanese kingdom and its political and its political and socio-economic development was biased following the selective choice of materials consulted and as a consequence of the linguistic abilities or just the limited knowledge of historian. But more than that, Arakan's history has suffered from the centre-oriented perspectives of modern-day historian. With the exception of Arthur Phayre, the majority of Burma specialists had little or no special interest in Arakan's history as such7. As we have already mentioned, Phayre's history was based on a chronicle written by an Arakanese familiar with the country's past and the traditional, historiographical literature. Phayre presents Arakan's history in distinct chapters beside the Burmese history and differences between what the respective chronicles say on the same events or people are occasionally outlined. GE. Harvey readily subsumed Arakan's history under Burma's general history and in consequence disregarded Arakan's own political development, focusing mainly on a few episodes relating to Arakan's involvement with Burma or occasionally Bengal. In Maung Htin Aung's History of Burma, Arakan gets recognition as one among other Burmese kingdoms competing for power, but the author does not allow for a separate history and Arakan gets only attention as a military player momentarily involved with events in Burma. Harvey's and Maung Htin Aung's histories exclusively focus on the history of important Burmese political centres, such as Pagan, Ava or Pegu. Though his chapter on Arakan is less detailed than Phayre's, Harvey consulted Arakanese manuscript sources (and seemingly had a broader access to them then Phayre); Maung Htin Aung does not refer to any Arakanese sources at all. After the second world war, the tendency among historians dealing with the history of Burma was mostly to disregard Arakanese history. With one exception though: D.G.E Hall was not proficient in Burmese, but he had some interest in Arakanese history as his article on Arakanese Dutch relations shows. The little regard for Arakanese history may be stated without too many critical overtones. Not too much can be glanced from the sole reading of the Burmese chroniclers. After all, one does not necessarily need to share the view that a history of Burma has to cover the history of Arakan as well. It is actually quite a different story, , though we are evidently inside the sphere of Tibeto-Burmese ethnicity and culture and on the safe ground of a Theravadin Buddhist kingship. But while Maung Htin Aung strongly claims the Burmese identity of 16th century Arakanese ("the Arakanese remained nationalistic and proud of their Burmese origin"), it is surprising that he, as a self-proclaimed nationalist historian, pays about no attention to the historical developments in Arakan. Readers of the Journal of the Burma Research Society are familiar with the more than a dozen articles that Maurice Collis and two Arakanese authors, San Baw U and San Shwe Bu, published on diverse topics and periods of Arakanese history between 1913 and 1933. We find here some valuable contributions to what the authors called "legendary history" and what are actually oral traditions that have sometimes a counterpart in the written historiographical tradition. Though Maurice Collis was not a historian, he had a tremendous influence inside and outside of Burma on what people currently think on Arakan and its kings; his popular romance on friar Sebastian Manrique's stay in Mrauk U during Sirisudharamaraja's reign, was published as The land of the Great Image in 1943. In is article "Arakan's Place in the Civilisation of the Bay". Collis asserted, without any scientific rationale that Mrauk U's civilization in the 16th 17th century was mainly the result of turning away from a backward East and exposing itself to a civilizing Muslim world (1925: 39-40). Not much more convincingly Maung Htin Aung explained that Arakan became a "worthy rival of Pegu" because it had copied "Bayinnaung's enlightened policies with regard to commerce, religion and culture". Interestingly, Harvey strikes the balance and is so much less condescending as regards the "real aptitudes" of the Arakanese who he says, "were usually quite able to look after themselves" and "in several respects less back ward than the Burmese". Beside the fact of the cultural influences and the complex relationships that Arakan entertained with neighbouring countries. Hervey notes their competence on the sea, their use of coins and the business-like attitude of their 17th century kings (1967: 138, 140, 146) And this is indeed one of the rare positive judgements on the Arakanese kingship.
In the writings of Bengali historians, three major themes are prominent: (1) The raids of Arakanese fleets and the aggressions against southern and eastern Bengal; (2) the Bengali Muslim influence on the court of Arakan; (3) Arakan's control over chittagong. Most articles are void of any contextual approach and generally try to give a kind of synthesis based on Bengali and Persian sources. So the main criticism one can formulate concerns the neglect of any arakanese socio-cultural, economic or political background that would have provided a more sensitive approach to the (indeed horrifying) slave-raids (but the Arakanese incursions were not only slave-raids!) and to the impact of the Muslim presence at the count which varied considerably over the decades!8
Arakanese kings led war raids against Tripura and south-eastern Bengal and they even attacked the Mogul fleet in Dhaka. On the other hand, they tolerated slave-raids which were for many decades masterminded and organized by the Luso-Asian communities in the Chittagong area with the help of Arakanese manpower. Both phenomena cannot be chronologically separated and particular events are sometimes difficult to assess. The available evidence suggests that warfare played a grater part during the period between approximately 1575 and 1624, while systematic slave-raiding became more prominent after the final elimination of the political endeavours of the local Portuguese community in 1615. The dedeportation of Bengali country folk to Arakan considerably slowed down only some time after the establishment of the British administration in Chittagong (1761). While the subject of slave-raiding and Bengal wars did not interest historians focusing on Burmese history, there is generally no clear distinction in the Bengali historiography between these two related but dissimilar aspects of Arakan's aggressive policy versus Bengal. Exclusive attention is paid to slave-raids highlighted in western travelogues like Francois Bernier's or Wouter Schouten's and remembered in Bengali folk songs. Moreover the Arakanese are usually identified as pirates, a biased (and value-added) term, which makes it difficult to understand the political strategy of the Arakanese kings while reading one's way through the confusing Histoire evenamentielle of Arakan-Bengal relations. In his History of the Mughal Navy and Naval Warfares, Atul Chandra Roy writes for instance that "at the beginning of Jahangir's reign, most of the strategic naval forts in Bengal were in the possession of the Bhulyas and the Magh-Feringhi pirates".

(mentioned in the Independent News, BD)




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