Arakan Library - Recalling Local Pasts

Arakan: - One Who Preserves and Takes Care of Their Own Nationality.

Publication by Arakan Action Association (AAA.)

ARAKAN'S ASCENT DURING THE MRAUK U PERIOD

EDITED BY SUNAIT CHUTARANOND & CHRISBAKER

RECALLING LOCAL PASTS

Arakan is the name of a former Buddhist kingdom of Burma lying on the eastern Bay of Bengal. In 1785 , it was conquered by the Burmese king Bodawphaya (1782-1819) and forty years later, it was one of the two provinces occupied by the troops of the British East India Company under the terms of the Treaty of Yandabo (1826) which brought to an end the First Anglo-Burmese War. It is now a state of the Union of Myanmar with approximately four million people and its name is variously spelt as Rakhaing, Rakhine or, according to the modern Burmese pronounciation, Yakhine. Indian poets writing in Persian or Bengali called the country Roshang, Sinhalese chroniclers knew it as Rakhangapura and the Siamese chroniclers as Yakhai. Arakan forms the major part of Burma's northwestern coast and borders on modern Bangladesh's Chittagong district. The Arakan Yoma range, running in a north-south direction, forms a natural barriers of steep mountains covered with dense jungle that separates Arakan's coastal plains from the Irrawaddy valley. Among Arakan's multi-ethnic population, the Arakanese are by far the biggest group. They are called Magh, an injurious term of uncertain origin, used in Bengal to refer to the Arakanese pirates.

The ruins of several ancient cities were found in the valleys of the kaladam and Lemro Rivers in central Arakan. They point to an early Hindu-Buddhist culture and date back to the first millennium AD. The best known of these old cities is Vesli. Its kings reigned between the fourth and the eighth century A.D. and belong to a Candra dynasty closely related to southeast Bengal's Harikela Candra kings. In this early period, which partly predates the arrival of the so called Arakanese, Arakan most likely had a mixed population of Indo-Aryan and Tibeto-Burman ethnicity.

This chapter deals with the political history of the Arakanese kingdom during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuriese which form the major part of the so-called Mrauk-U period (1430-1785). Mrauk-U is the name of the capital and was known during the colonial period as Mro-haung (or Myo-haung, “old city”), a name still commonly found on maps. The city boasted an extraordinary system of fortifications that resisted two major Burmese invasions in the sixteenth century. Until today the city and its surroundings are covered with the remains of dozens of Buddhist pagodas and temples which give evidence of Arakan's predominating Theravada Buddhists alike, this statue, now in the city of Mandalay, is a true copy of Lord Buddha who allegedly visited Arakan in the reign of King Candrasuriya (fourth century A.D.?). Later Arakan became home to a growing Muslim community. A majority of traders plying the seas of the Indian Ocean were Muslim, and Muslim missionaries contributed to the spread of the cult of the “pirs” (Muslims, saints) along the coasts of Arakan (Temple 1925; Yegar 1976). More Muslims were found among the thousands of inhabitants of Bengal who were forcibly deported to Arakan. Those who became royal slaves were settled as farmers on the king's lands. Among them there were also artists, craftsmen, soldiers, and highly educated people who left an account of their stay in Arakan during the heyday of the kingdom in the seventeenth century describe it as a fertile and populous country. Rice grew abundantly in the valleys of the Kaladan, Lemro, and Mayu Rivers and was exported to places as far away as Aceh and Java. Modern historians agree that at the end of the sixteenth century Arakan developed into a thriving commercial entrepot that had its place in the trade network of the Bay of Bengal (Lieberman 1980, 204; Subrahmanyam 1997, 208).

The first section of this chapter gives a critical appreciation of historical writing on Arakan. The country has remained until recently a poorly studied area of Southeast Asia and a brief look at some of the available material may be a welcome guide for the interested reader.

The next three sections describle the political and military history of Arakan from the fifteenth century to the second half of the seventeenth, and pay attention to Arakan's local and wider socio-economic context as context as construed in contemporary studies on the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia. Arakan had its own autonomous history that should be understood in its proper geographic, political, and cultural context. G. E. Harvey's statement the “Arakan has a separate history” that is “the same in kind” as Burma's (Harvay 1967, 137) is challenged by the fact that its history does not fit into the conceptual framework of dynastic cycles that has been outlined for neighbouring Burma. A consistent approach to 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 South Asia and Southeast Asia.

Starting from the sixteenth century, the kings of Arakan transformed their marginal principality into a regional power which held its own on the battlefield against much more resourceful neighbours, notably the Mughal governors of Bengal and the kings of Burma. The Maruk-U kings at times took advantage of a combination of economic and political opportunities, but their success depended above all on the ways material and human resources were gained , improved , managed , and maintained. The final section of this chapter explores the causes of Arakan's political success in the context of the country's cultural and institutional background and itsr connection to the maritime world.

A study of the periphery that unravels major aspects of political, cultural, and economic autonomy is not meant to offer a better perception of varying degrees of political centralization. The model of centralization is particularly apt for the writing of national histories. The concept of centralization is thus ideologically tainted because it gives priority to major ethnic groups and predominant cultural practices. It discards somewhat the relevance of the periphery and its particularities as these tend to be absorbed or standardized in the course of time. Autonomous history asserts that the periphery is interesting, relevant, and subject to further study. It is a challenge to centres and calls for an examination of the diversity of local conditions. It is not merely a shift of perspectives which enlarges our view of marginal spaces. The periphery occasionally becomes a “centre” itself once historians identify its links in networks of cultural and economic relationships. The most profitable aspect of autonomous history, as I understand it, lies in the diversity of these networks that reflect successive layers of historical experience that transgress all too well established political and ethnic borders and allow a more subtle and richer discourse on the past..

Arakan Library was founded by a group of Arakan Action Association (AAA) in exile in Thailand from Burma in 2007 doing to voice for the knowledge, the people democratic and human rights.

Arakan Action Association (AAA)

Chotana Road , Chaing Mai ( 50301 ), Thailand.

Email : arakanactionassociation@walla.com , +66—089-637-4383, +66—053-409-577