Talk:Mon kingdoms

Lines of Mon monarchs

I just realized that there really are more lines of Mon monarchs than the early modern one in lower Burma (c. 1287-1539). There's also Haripunchai. These can be added to this page later, if someone wants or if I get to that point. This table serves as a to do list of monarchs to write articles for, everyone that doesn't have a link.

I guess "Ramanya" or "Ramannadesa" is good, but the name that this kingdom used to refer to iself should really be used. Perhaps Mon inscriptions would answer this question, better look at Shorto's dictionary of Mon inscriptions. "Monarchs" seems to be a Wikipedia standard.(Jonfernquest 15:43, 11 August 2006 (UTC))

Title

I think we should write about History of Mon people rather than Mon kingdoms only. Soewinhan (talk) 13:00, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

You may want to start with the history section of the Mon people article. It provides a good overview but can definitely use a rewrite. (I wrote much of the lead but haven't had time to redo the rest.) Also, the article is very thin--there's little else outside the history. The culture section has just a few sentences. If you are knowledgeable about Mon culture, and have good references (Burmese language books are fine), please contribute. Look up Nai Pan Hla's books on Mon culture and history. Hybernator (talk) 04:08, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Micheal Aung Thwin's argument

I don't know who is he. But, I think his argument in relationship with delta sedimentation is flawed indeed. There are self-evident truths that several inscriptions can be found today (including those I put in the article). Kyansittha's marriage with Khin Oo is not just a legend. Myazedi inscription is an evident. (Of course, no body could create thousands of inscriptions and chronicles to make a legend)

Overall, it's all depend on the premise that delta sedimentation is at a certain rate, which itself not the case. Sedimentation depends on topography, soil conditions of the upper river, amount of sedimentation itself, and storms and weather conditions which make it difficult to predict across the ages.

I won't remove his argument (without consensus). But I think removing it is better. Soewinhan (talk) 20:35, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

I added the piece which you have since modified. Michael Aung Thwin is a historian of Myanmar/Burma (Pagan specialist), from the University of Hawaii (I believe). As far as I know, he's one of the few that has done painstakingly detailed research on the Pagan era. His assertions are certainly in the minority because they are quite new. But Victor Lieberman, one of the foremost authorities on Burmese history today, accepts much of Aung-Thwin's arguments.

His argument is not that the Mon did not exist but that the influence of the Mon has been exaggerated. Or at least not backed by evidence. Of course, the mainstream opinion (which Aung Thwin calls the "Mon paradigm") is still that the Mon were a major influence on the culture of Upper Burma (which I personally still ascribe to). However, one has to keep an open mind when someone like Aung-Thwin, who has done the grunt work, puts forth a bold new theory. Especially because he is half-Mon (from his father's side); he stated that he started out his research to prove the Mon paradigm but just couldn't find any evidence for it.

Another thing to keep in mind is that our national cultural memory (like many other national myths) is shaped by legends. It's important to keep an open mind, especially when the likes of Lieberman and Aung-Thwin question it. Hybernator (talk) 23:40, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Btw, the Rakhine History article is another one, just parroting their national cultural memory without including any modern research. Let's try to make Burma-related articles as sound as possible. Hybernator (talk) 23:48, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

It may be a legend. But, lack of evidence of script prior to Anawrahta invasion directly supports that upper Burma may have taken script from lower Burma (since the script is the same). Until evidence of writing from upper Burma (prior to Anawrahta invasion) has been uncovered, Micheal Aung Thwin's assertion will largely remain as a hypothesis rather than a discovery. Soewinhan (talk) 05:04, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm with you as far as the Mon script being the source of the Burmese script. Mon is also considered the source of Lan Na script. The earliest evidence of Burmese script is 1058, just a year after the Thaton conquest. It's too coincidental not to be. But his thesis is just more than the script. He's questioned the prevailing wisdom that the Mon of Lower Burma provided much of the civilization of Upper Burma. He argues that the existing evidence points the source to the Pyu, not the Mon. Although I don't agree with with his assertions wholesale, they do appear to be based on well-researched theses, and have been accepted by at least one renown historian of Burma. But, of course, we need more Burmese language educated historians to verify Aung-Thwin's thesis in particular, but also understand more about Burmese history than what the chronicles say or what the colonial era historians say. Be sceptical but keep an open mind.Hybernator (talk) 20:56, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Aung-Thwin part 2

Why has someone gone around posting the same blocks of text on several Mon-related articles? It comes across as a bit of a political campaign. More to the point, it doesn't add to the overall quality of articles about Mon stuff. If we're going to have an article, let's have a merged comprehensive one, rather than a plethora of little ones where some fan of "Michael Aung-Thwin" has gone around copypasting the same block of text with references to him - I've seen three instances so far, it's lazy to say the least; moreover, it doesn't add to the overall body of knowledge on the subject. There must be more researchers on this subject in the world whose take on things can be brought into the article. macdaddy

• Since you're the same IP from the Jinakalamali page, look at my response at the talk page of Jinakalamali [1]. As discussed on that page, Aung-Thwin's views are certainly *a* mainstream, if not the prevalent, view among the modern-day scholarship. I agree that more research is needed. Unfortunately, Pagan and pre-Pagan scholars are few and far between. (As of 2005, there had been just five PhDs worldwide whose dissertation papers were on Pagan. Ever!) Burma studies is still largely stuck on the theories/conjectures from the colonial times. If you can find other (ideally, peer-reviewed) sources, feel free to add. Btw, before accusing someone of a political campaign, do a bit more research beyond whatever Google spits out on the first page. Thank you. Hybernator (talk) 15:15, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Aung-Thwin part 3

Thank you for the above discussion. I can claim to be a sort of expert on 15th century Myanmar history with several long published papers in peer-reviewed journals [2] and frequently cited in Myanmar history Wikipedia articles (e.g. [[3]]). Michael Aung-Thwin (MAT) cites and uses my narratives in his 'Myanmar in the Fifteenth Century: A Tale of Two Kingdoms' and a 2018 Siam Society article on Tai history uses my narratives as a main source [4].

As mentioned, the issues of where one would do a PhD on this topic or publish on it are real. Deep scholarly engagement with historical sources by scholars with the necessary linguistic skills is lacking. The most primary sources which would be their focus are, however, the right place to begin. This largely means 'chronicle narratives' since 'epigraphy' is lacking. However, many would not consider these chronicle sources primary sources at all since they are, following the tradition of Pali and Sanskrit literature, literary embellishments of history (cf the very similar Kashmiri chronicle tradition in Sanskrit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajatarangini).

The work of Michael Aung-Thwin (MAT) consists of a far-reaching critique of the meager historical sources available, generating speculative theories in the process. Many, if not most, of the primary sources MAT employs are not publicly available in translation. This is a problem. For Razadarit Ayeidawpon, for instance, there is a rough translation manuscript, but you would have to go to the stacks of Chulalongkorn Library or the Siam Society to find it, which is where I found it, definitely an informal and very rough translation, but always cited in my works. For the Burmese chronicle, I have my own rough translation that I have used in the past and there is also one cited in Strong's 'Relics of the Buddha' (2004). And the manuscript of Shorto's translation of the most important Mon chronicle was handed out by a prominent scholar to other scholars with a promise not to share the original manuscript. An improved version by prominent Mon scholars was going to published about a decade ago but in the end never appeared.

In short, all the important sources that should be cited by wikipedia articles such as this one are not publicly available. A lot of this stems from western academia favoring PhD work that can be transformed into tenure-achieving monographs, while not valuing scholarly translation. This is not true in all scholarly domains however. Sanskrit and Pali studies have always prioritized close commentary on original texts.

Advances in natural language processing in AI (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BERT_(language_model)) have made machine translation a lot more accurate and this should eventually help a lot with scholarly translations. For example, yesterday I stepped through the online copy of the Thai Razadarit epic at the Thai National Library [5] getting a rough translation just by using the Google Translate browser plugin I already had installed. This at least allows comparison with the Burmese and Mon versions and would be an substantial start for any scholarly translation.

I will be contributing to Myanmar history pages. For starters, I will try to share the informal translation sources mentioned (at least on my Google Drive) that should be the first source used and cited before speculative work by MAT (which uses these sources). There is also important work to be added such as current archival manuscript work in Thailand by a researcher focusing on Pali verions of the Razadarit epic. I will help with editorial comments when I see places for improvement or innaccuracies (I had editorial responsibilities at the Bangkok Post for a decade). In the process, I will always provide citations and adhere to the high Wikipedia standards. As my ethnomusicology professor at University of Hawaii used to say, Wikipedia is the best original source for info nowadays in many disciplines. One can no longer dismiss it as scholars once did. Cheers.

Yggdrasil1001 — Preceding undated comment added 04:41, 8 October 2022 (UTC)