A student of Arakanese History will be agreeably surprised to learn that there were ancient Kings reigning Arakan as far back as six thousand years ago, that its recorded history for that period makes
Mention of the towns and cities over which they ruled, names of their queens, the number of their issue, the length of their reigns, victories in battle and other notable incidents in their lives, and that as late as 200 years ago that the blood of founders of the four main dynasties – Kanrazagri, Marayu, Brahmarazah and Vasudeva had ran in the veins of its rulers in an uninterrupted succession all the time.
Six thousand years of recorded history span an immense period in the history of making. A glance at the beginnings of the ancient civilizations may help one grasp its significance. The earliest Egyptian dynasty is divided into 30 dynasties 3400 B.C.- 332 B.C. The earliest paramid was evolved in the period of the 4th dynasty (2900 B:C.) , ancient Chinese history beings with Hsia dynasty in 1994 B.C.- 123 B.C. Ancient Babylonian first formed in 3000 B.C. ,rose to importance under Sargon and achieved its peak of greatness under Hamurabi in 2100 B.C. The wanderings of Moses along the coasts of Arakan as recorded in the old Testament took place in 1215 B.C.- 1235 B.C. and king Solomon’s empire lasted from 962 B.C. till 922 B.C. Alexander the Great’s world conquest began only in 333 B.C., and the great Roman empire was firmly established in 1st Century B.C.
As to ancient Burmese History, it can point to no king by name earlier than King Abhirazan of Tagaung, indeed Burmese Historians proudly mention that the history began at Tagaung repeating a saying.
“ ျမန္မာအစ တေကာင္းက”
One the death of Abhirazan , Kanrazahgri, his eldest son agreed to rule over land to the west of Irrawaddy leaving to his younger brother Kanrazahrgre to occupy the throne at Tagaung with the territory lying to the east of it. He retired westwards with his troops until he reached to Chindwin, he then appointed his son Mudusettar to rule over the Pyus, an ancient tribe of Burma, that wanted a King. Next , he went over the Arakan Yomah some 3482 years ago and ruled first at Kyaukpandaung and later at Danyawaddy.
Min-nge pyaw –hla Sithu , the last King of the Marayu line that ruled over Arakan for some 1818 years, having been killed by his Ministers ,his two daughters, Sandari and Phwadawthwe became his queens and by their union the blood of Marayu and of Kanrazahgri was transmitted to their successors.
King Marayu ,son of the Hermit-king Arjura of Kapilavastu by a Sak-Princess (as may be Chitra) ascended the Arakanese throne some 5300 years ago (or in 5995 their old Arakanese Era) and started 2 line of kings that were 57 in number.
It will be seen, were we to date the beginnings of Arakanese History from the Kingship of Marayu, it would surpass the origins of Tagaung History by at least 1800 years.
The ancient History of Arakan may be said to go back much earlier that the line of Marayu himself. There were 16 Tharaban Kings that ruled at Vesali ( Wethali) in Arakan before him. It was an ancient capital not from Mrohaung. The last of the Tharaban Kings was known as Brahmatheikdi. During his reign rakhases or tribe of fierce cannibals raided Arakan , harried Wethali and slew its King.
Marayu came forth as the saviour of the Arakanese people, subdued the cannibals and married King Brahamtheikdi’s daughter. The powers of Marayu is still remembered in Arakan as it is celebrated in many a tale in both prose and poetry, as, for example in Razawin linga.
သိၾကားလက္နက္၊ထိန္ထိန္ထြက္သည္၊စႀကႍာအေရာင္၊၀င္း၀င္းေျပာင္းႏွင္႔၊ ေတာေတာင္ခုိမွီ၊ အလဇၽၥီဘီလူး၊ လူစားႀကဴးကုိ၊ ဂုဏ္ထူးအာဏာ၊ဘုန္းမုိးျဖာႏွင္႔၊ လုိရာေအာင္ျမင္၊ ငအင္ၿမဳိ႕၀င္၍၊ ေခၚတြင္ရကၡဳိင္၊ခုတုိင္မပ်က္၊ေမာ္ကြန္းထြက္၍၊မင္းဆက္ေပ်ာ္မွီး၊ေလာကီတြင္………………………….
Again the 16 Taraban Kings merely continued the blood of 7 Brahmarazat Kings who ruled Arakan before them.
The first of this line was learned Purdit Brahin who had married Ajjaza Devi, sister ofh the 10 celebrated Kansa brothers. They had fled from the doomed city of Dwaraka which has been identified be Arakanese Historians with Dawrawaddy or Sandoway when they reached Wethali after an adventurous journey , Vasudeva and Balavadeva had been killed on the way.
At Wethali they were crowned as king and queen of Arakan which was mourning the death of its late King, whose daughter Brahma Sundara became the queen of Brahma Sundara, their son in due course.
It should be mentioned that in the Mahabharata, the name of the only sister of the Kansa brothers is Subadda who eloped with Arijua, the most daring of the Pandava brothers and that Dwaraka is now assigned to a small seaport in West Gujarati. The Arakanese account it however corroborated by the Buddhist Palicanas viz: Gata Pandita Datha Neikbhat and Ankura Peta Jataka Wathtu.
Vasudeva in Arakanese history is undoubtedly no other than Sir Krishna whom Arjuna worships in the Bashavasita as:
“ An , my God, I see , all goals within your body; Each in his degree, the multitude of creatures; See lord Brahma enthroned in the lotus; See all the sages, and the holy serpents”:
In another great Indian poem Gita Govinda he figures as the alluring, handsome prince for the matter of whose love divine or earthly Radha and beautiful cowherdesses are always pining:
“ Beautful Radha, Jasmine bosomed Badha,
All in the springtime waited by the wood
For Krishna fair, Krishna the all forgetful-Krishna with earthly love’s false give consuming-“
To return to the Purohit Brahmin who had become King Brahmaragah, we find that he has been acclaimed as a successful ruler who continued the lineage of Vesudia, whose Kings founded prosperous towns and cities on the banks of the Kaladan River as may be gathered from Razawwin linga, a historical working verse………
အသမၻိႏၵ၊ ခတၱိယဟု၊ ၀ါသုေဒ၀၊ မင္းကစ၍၊ ကစၦပနဒီ၊ ျမစ္ကုိမွီလ်က္၊ လက္၀ဲ႔လက္ယာ၊ မ်ားၿမဳိ႕ျပည္၊ တည္ခဲ႔ေပမွ၊ ေနာက္ဆုံးက်သည္၊ . ျပင္းထန္၊ သရဘန္မင္းဆက္ ျပန္လ်င္းသည္။
Next, the ancient history of Arakan deals with the lives of 19 Kings for 100 years from the time of Kanrazahgri when we meet with name of a King that died more than 2500 years ago, undoubtedly a contemporary of Lord Buddha who flourished six centuries before Chirst. It is King Sandathuriya who as 29th in directs descent from Kanrazahgri. He ascended the throne at Danyawaddy in 97 Bodaw Injaraera, when Buddha embarked on the Great Renunciation of the world. In 123 Bodaw Injana era and the 26th year of his reign, Lord Buddha visited Arakan expressly to enable King Sandathuriya to build a life –size image of Himself –Buddha’s parineikhana took pplace 2502 years ago, and His visit to Arakan was 25 years before it. He the Blessed one alighted on the top of the Thelagiri Hill. Situated wast Of Kyauktaw on the babk of the Kalandan River. He had parted His lips with the merest suggestion of smile when His teeth emitted rays of light that shone forth with dazzling brilliance in all directions, and to the Rev: Ananda his beloved cousin, He uttered the following words: “ Danyawaddy is a great and noble country which shall have 99 towns on the eastern bank of the Gacchapancchi and 99 towns on its western bank. It is western bank. Its kings shall continue to be of the ancient Kshatriya stock and particularly our Setkya race has been descended from Arjuna Hermit-King of Kapila. As a Boahisrt, I was reborn many a time here; I shall have in this noble country My Own Image Built that shall enclose in this land for 5000 year during the life of my sasana or Buddhism.
King Sandathuriya next invited Him to his palace at Danyawaddy where He preache the Ariya Antingiko Maggo or the Noble Eightfull Path the Arakanese devotees who were established in the Sukapatipoala at the end of the discourse.
Arakanese may justly claim to be the first in Asia outside Mejjitinadusa to have heard the word of Lord Buddha and that too from His Holy lips.
As the time for Lord Buddha’s departure drew near, King Sandathuriya found it very hard to part with Him and begged to Him to sanction his building of the Great Image of Himself. Buddha foresaw that the only other Image of Himself that King Pasenadi of Kusala got was likely to disappear from the world of men, when he kings succeeded to the ruler ship of country in later times and that Indra , King of Devas was likely to assume it into heaven in that enentuality. He must have one built in Arakan to last 5000 years there to the glory and happiness of gods and men.
When the Image was finished, it was established in Thirigota Hill amidst universal rejoicings when gods and men can mingle freely to worship the Great Image of Mahamuni.
How deeply intertwined the Image of Mahamuni was in the hearts of Arakanese may be gathered from the following celebrated passage in the poem called Arakanese Priness Egyin; -
ထူးလည္ျမတ္စုိက္၊ ဧကရာဇတံခြန္၊ ဆႏၵျဖဴလြ၊ တြရြရြႏွင္႔၊ ဓည၀တီ၊ သဂႌေရႊျပည္၊ ဘုံဘိစည္သာ၊ အမည္သူရိယ၊ စႏၵရာဇာ၊ မင္းသဒြာႏွင္႔၊ တုိခါစုိးခုိက္၊ ရွင္ေတာ္ႀကဳိက္၍၊ ရုိက္ရုိက္သဲစိမ္႔၊ အူသိမ္႔တက္၀ွန္၊ ပီတိမၼန္ယု၊ ေတာင္ပန္ေသာခါ၊ မဟာမုနိ၊ ရွိသည္ယခု၊ ဆင္းရုပ္ထုကုိ၊ ၀ိသုကမၼ၊ သိႀကားမ၍၊ ပဥၥေလာဟာ၊ ရတနာျဖင္႔၊ သြန္းခါမျဖစ္၊ ခုႏွစ္လက္ေခြ႕၊ ကုိယ္ေႏြေတာ္ယူ၊ တည္႔ေတာ္မူမွ၊ ဘုန္းတူဘုန္းရွည္၊ ညီငယ္ဘုရား၊ ကုိယ္ေတာ္စားဟု၊ ထားခဲ႔ေသာအား၊ သုံးပါးနတ္လူ၊ ကုိးရာမူသည္႔၊ အယူရိညြတ္ထူးတည႔္ေလ။
At Mahamuni Image, Buddha predicted that it would one day suffer disfigurement as vicar us punishment for as a prince ling of Cheduba He mained the lags of one hedman and tortured the backs of five prisoners.
The students of Arakanese History now remember that this prophecy was fulfilled when Pyu and Talaing troops of the army of Alaungsithu of Pagan netted portions of the Image for its gold in 1103 A.D. and that it was not restored to its former glory until the time of King Datharajah of Arakan [ 1108-1139 A.D.] . The shrine of the Mahamuni had also been picked off its gems by Shan raiders during the time of Pepyunin , in 794 A.D. although the Image itself was left untouched . King Anawratha of Pagan paid a memorable visit to it towards the beginning of the 11th century A.D. It was not until 1875 A.D. that a neighboring Buddhist King attempted to take it away to his country from its place of worship despite the word of Lord Buddha Himself that it was to remain in Arakan for 5000 years of His Sasana for the benefit of gods and men.
The 25 Kings of the Sansathuriya dynasty ruled Arakan for 858 years, the last of this line was King Thuriyakith whose son Sandra or Candara 327-384 A.D. headed a line of ten Kings all whom except perhaps the last shed a way special lecture on Arakan. During their reigns, Arakanese dominions extended through Bengal territory as far west as Murshidbhad [Arakanese Monk {Nuza} ] bordering on Patana district , as far east as Decca in Chittagon : Northwards they included Hill Tippera and Manipur up to the towns and villages on the banks of Brahmaputtra River . Beyond Patitwa they embrace the Sawbwa States on the Chindwin, and eastwards of the Arakan Yoma, the influence of its great rulers was acknowledged in Northern and Sothern Shan States, in Pegu and Siam.
A short account of the 0th Kings, Sula Sandara [733 A.D.- 769 A.D.] will best illustrate this ascendency of Arakanese Kings over their neighbors. When the Sultan of Bengal refused to acknowledge his sovereignty, Sula Sandara landed at Chittagong with an immense army and was preparing to march northwards when the Sultan sought to appease his anger by sending him a princess of his blood and a tribute in money. He was persuaded to give up fighting and to return home, from which incident a saying went abroad among Arakanese troops that Chittagong which sue to be called Kansa Town was စစ္မတုိက္ေကာင္း when he was well past fifty years he suffered from a severe headache which, he was told, could only be cured if he went to Tagaung in Upper Burma. He collected an immense fleet of ten thousand vessels and on the way up to the Irrawaddy he received the abeisence of the King of Pegu, Pagan and the Sawbwas of Mogaung, Mone, Mahtwe, Ohnbin until he finally reached Tagaung . He established his rule as an over lord of all Burma including Shan States for 3 years. He was returning to Arakan in 131 B.E. or 769 A.D. when he perished with the greater parts of the grand fleet off Cape Negaris near Bassein.
Arakanese History share still splendidly in the careers of later monarchs such Kawliya, Min Hkee, Deth arazah, Min Phonza, Alawmapru, Min Saw Mun, Min Bar, Min Phalaung, Min Razahgri and Wizaya and continued with undeemed luster up to the end of the middle of the 17th century, that thereafter a period of anarchy and distress followed with more than thirty Kings in one troubled century, when in 1785 A.D. Arakan tottering to the full by its momentum was invaded by a neighboring Buddhist King who had his eye on the Great Image of Arakan. He stretched out his heels to grasp it, but whether he successes in taking it away out of Arakanese devotees are said to be admitted as privileged worshippers at Mahamuni, dwelling inself-impued obscurity closed to its old sits. There are not a few devotees liviing today on either side of the Arakan Yomah who believe that after the ammageddonn that shall involve the nations of hist King of Buddha Razah will arise to wipe away the tears manking and restore peace ans unity smongst them. With him the Mahamuni will again emerge in to public view to the glory and happiness of gods and men as ordained by the Blessed one.
St.John’s Revelatio in the New Testament naturally refers to the return of Chirst to judge manking at such times. There are a number of Arakanese prohecies regerding the advent of the Buddhist King as a univversal Monarch this essay may fittingly close with a citation of a few stanzas from the well kmown Arakanese publication.
” တေတာင္ဥာဏ္ျဖင္႔၊ နတ္ရ်င္သိၾကား၊ ၾကည္႔တုံျငား၍၊ ဘုရားသာသနာ၊ ေႏွာင္ခါညွုိဳးသန္း၊ ပန္းႏွစ္ႏြမ္းလိမ္႔၊စိတ္၀မ္းျဖဴစင္၊ ၾကည္လင္မင္းေကာင္း၊ ဘုရားေလာင္းကုိ၊ ရေျပာင္းရွဳေမွ်ာ္၊ငယန္၊လသာညည္႔တည္႔၊ မွန္ေပေအးေလ၊ သာစြေလး၊ ရခုိင္သာညည္႔သာစြေလ။
နတ္ပြဲ၀င္ခါ၊ ညီညာေသာင္းသဲ၊ မ်ဳိးပြဲေလ၊ ေရာင္႔ရဲေရာင္လန္၊ လွံပု့နတ္ခက္၊ ဓါးသန္လွ်က္ကုိ၊ စြဲလ်က္ကုိင္လာ၊ သာေလာေခါင္းညွင္း၊ယင္းယဥ္႔မင္းေလာင္း၊ ျမင္းေကာင္းစီးကာ၊ နန္းတက္လ်ာသည္ သာစြေလ။
ရတနာမုိး၊ ေျမျပင္မ်ဳိးဟု၊ ၿဖဳိးၿဖဳိးရြာသည္႔၊ သာယာစြေလ၊ ရခုိင္သာသည္ သာစြေလ။
ဆင္ျဖဴသခင္၊ နတ္ရွင္အေလာင္း၊ ထုိမင္းအေလာင္း။ျဖစ္ေဟာင္းမ်ားစြာ၊ ရွဳသညာက၊ က်စြာစည္ၿဖဳိး၊ ေရွးအက်ဳိးေၾကာင္႔၊ တန္ခုိးေတဇာ၊ အာဏာထန္ျပင္း၊ မင္းထက္မင္းဟု ျဖစ္လိမ္႔ေပတည္႔၊ မွန္ေပထ၊ ေလးသာစြေလ၊ ရခုိင္သာေလ၊ သာစြေလ“။
The high destiny of Arakan is one at which Burmese will also rejoice, for Arakanese ans Burmese have offinities of blood, language and alliance between them indeed: dose not a celevrated Burmese classic “ Lawkidhitna Nagat” declare.
တရာ႔တပါး၊ လူမ်ဳိးမ်ားကုိ၊ စကားသာယာ၊ နိဒါန္းျဖာလိမ္႔၊ ျမန္မာတလုိင္း၊ ရခုိင္ထား၀ယ္၊ ဘရန္ေတာင္သူ၊ ေျပာလူကမ္းယံ၊ ခုနစ္တန္ကုိ၊ ျမန္မာမုခ်၊ ေရတြက္ဆေလ”.
(ျမန္မာတုိ႔ေရးသားက်မ္း၊ ေလာကီဒိ႒ာနဂတိ အဆုိ)
HLA TUN PRU
(M.A.,B.L.)
10th Dec.1958.
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