The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c23.s3: The Toungoo Dynasty (1531–1752)
The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c23.s3
- Language
- English
The Toungoo Dynasty (1531–1752)
v4.c23.s3.1
The Shan migration, lasting two centuries, had now ended, leaving Burma split into chieftainships. Tabinshwehti² set himself to revive the overlordship. Toungoo was thronged with refugees, so that he had no lack of men; he was in control of Kyaukse, the richest area in upper Burma and the key to Ava; and, to crown all, his opponents were Shans, a race which could not unite.
v4.c23.s3.2
² See vol. iii, p. 558.
v4.c23.s3.3
First he advanced against lower Burma. It was the richest part of the country and also it contained Portuguese adventurers who were willing to be hired. Sometimes he had as many as seven hundred. To obtain their services was to win the day, for they had firearms, hitherto unknown in Burma, and no race in Indo-China could stand up to them.
v4.c23.s3.4
By 1541 he had annexed the Pegū state. He was able to enter Pegū city without a siege because the Talaings, after suffering several defeats, lost heart, and their king Takayutpi,¹ instead of putting heart into them, took to distrusting his officers and executing them; instead of leading his men to the end, Takayutpi deserted the city and lived in a stockade at Ingabu, Maubin district; a year later he died while hunting elephants and the fishermen there still worship a *nat* spirit called Po Yutpi. Martaban, a thriving port, rich with the accumulated stocks of merchants of many races, gave more trouble; it fought to the end, aided by seven Portuguese ships; these were small craft, manned largely by Eurasians and slaves, and Tabinshwehti drove them off with fire-rafts, while other rafts, with scaffolding higher than the ramparts, were run alongside the fortifications facing the river; the sack raged for three days.²
v4.c23.s3.5
¹ See vol. III, p. 556.
v4.c23.s3.6
² Pinto, *Voyages and Adventures*.
v4.c23.s3.7
Tabinshwehti exercised his royal privilege of putting spires on the great Talaing pagodas; to the Shwedagon he offered his queen and redeemed her with 10 *viss* (1 *viss* = 3.65 lb.) of gold.³ In 1542 he took Prome, although the Rājā of Arakan and the chiefs of upper Burma, headed by the Āva *sawbwa*, attacked him while he was besieging the town. In 1544 he annexed upper Burma as far as Minbu and Myingyan; he had already been crowned at Pegū as king of lower Burma, and now while halting at Pagan he was crowned as king of upper Burma. On returning home in 1546 he was crowned as king of both, using Talaing as well as Burmese rites. Only half his task was done, but the rest was sure, and men again beheld the glory of the ancient ritual; after three centuries of *sawbwas* (Shan chiefs) there was once more a king in Burma.
v4.c23.s3.8
³ Halliday, "Slapat Rajawan Datow Smin Ron", in *Journal Burma Research Society*, 1923.
v4.c23.s3.9
In the cold weather of 1546-47 he attacked Arakan. Many of his war-canoes were wrecked on the west coast. All his land forces arrived but Mrohaung was a strong town, and the only chance of taking it was when the walls were in disrepair. But Arakan was under an energetic raja (p. 477) who saw that his defences were in repair, and after a short time under the walls Tabinshwehti accepted the intercession of the monks and returned home.
v4.c23.s3.10
He returned the more quickly because Siam, hearing that he and all his valiant men were away in Arakan, had raided Tavoy; and in 1547-48 the Burmese advanced against Siam.⁴ The hosts crossed from Martaban to Moulmein on a bridge of boats over which they could ride their ponies at a gallop. His Majesty’s elephant was ferried across on a raft, but the other elephants were sent upstream where the fords were shallow. Jingals were mounted on many of these elephants. The cannon were kept close to the king, and he moved in great state, surrounded by the choicest elephants, richly attired lords, and 400 Portuguese guards whose helmets and muskets were inlaid with gold, for they provided a bodyguard as well as artillery. Hundreds of workmen went ahead every day to pitch the wooden camp palace,¹ richly painted and gilded, and at each halt there was a *pwe* festival.
v4.c23.s3.11
⁴ When, in 1767, the Burmese sacked Ayuthia (p. 515), they destroyed the palace archives, so that Siamese chronology before the eighteenth century is vague. Until recently the Siamese dates for the Burmese invasions of the sixteenth century were a decade or two earlier than the Burmese dates, which I follow. Recent research by Siamese gentlemen has, however, confirmed the Burmese dates, which are also borne out by contemporary Burmese inscriptions and European travellers. See the discussion in Harvey, *History of Burma*, p. 343; and Wood, *History of Siam*, pp. 23-25.
v4.c23.s3.12
¹ Faria y Sousa (Stevens), *The Portuguese Asia*, II, 135.
v4.c23.s3.13
The Burmese advanced up the Ataran river, through Three Pagodas Pass and down the Meklawng river to Kanburi. Thence they struck at Ayuthia. The Siamese possessed cannon, made of the copper which was annually imported from China. The weakest part of the wall was defended by fifty Portuguese; Tabinshwehti tried to bribe them, but they treated the offer with derision and one of the Siamese commanders, flinging open the gate, dared Tabinshwehti to bring the money. After a month the Burmese withdrew and tried to plunder Kampengpet, a wealthy town; but here again were Portuguese, who used flaming projectiles so that the guns had to be kept under shelters of damp hide. Tabinshwehti, saying the Siamese were devils who, when their own weapons failed, used new ones never known since the beginning of the world, retreated, and it would doubtless have gone hard with him had he not captured the Siamese king’s son and brothers in some open fighting. At once Siamese envoys came with red and green woollen cloths, *longyis* (men’s skirts), and aromatic woods, offering friendship in return for the captive princes. Tabinshwehti released not only them but also his other prisoners, and was thereupon left unmolested in his retreat through Raheng.
v4.c23.s3.14
Tabinshwehti dreamed of a united Burma. When conquering the Talaing kingdom he made no attempt to administer his new subjects by Burmese governors. Any Talaing lord who made timely submission could count on being left in his fief. Consequently from the first he had a large Talaing following; fully half his levies and best officers were Talaings. He left the beautiful buildings of the Talaing kings standing when he captured Pegū. Talaings had their full say in his councils, he took care to be crowned with the ritual of a Talaing king, and he gave way to the importunities of his Talaing princesses, letting them dress in their own fashion instead of the Burmese court dress. Finally, hearing an old prophecy that no king with a Burmese hairknot should rule the Talaing land, he bobbed his hair like a Talaing and wore the diadem of a Talaing king.²
v4.c23.s3.15
² Hmannan, II, 240.
v4.c23.s3.16
On returning from Siam Tabinshwehti took to hunting with a young Portuguese captain, who had a gun and seldom missed his mark. Tabinshwehti thought a gun a miraculous thing, and in admiration gave him a royal handmaid to wife. The feringhi taught his bride to cook feringhi dishes for the king to eat, and gave him juice of the grape to drink, also spirits sweetened with honey. The king drank and his heart was glad, but he lost his wits, respecting not other men's wives, listening to evil tales and executing innocent men. Bayinnaung, his foster-brother and principal commander, remonstrated with him but he answered: "I have made friends with drink. Brother, do thou manage the affairs of state. Bring me no petitions. Leave me to my jollity." Sometimes he attended levees, sometimes he could not. The Burmese, Shan and Talaing lords at court combined to ask Bayinnaung to take the throne, but he was faithful, and would not.¹
v4.c23.s3.17
¹ Hmannan, II, 268–70.
v4.c23.s3.18
The king went to stay at Pantanaw, Maubin district, in the care of Talaing chamberlains, and Bayinnaung went to deal with a rebellion headed by a monk, a descendant of the fallen Talaing dynasty, who, flinging off the robe, assumed the title Smim Htaw, and occupied Dagon (Rangoon) and Dalla. The Talaing chamberlains enticed Tabinshwehti into a jungle saying a white elephant had been traced, and there they cut off his head;² they then raised the Talaings, seized Pegū, and set the leading chamberlain on the throne.
v4.c23.s3.19
² He is worshipped as the Tabinshwehti Nat spirit, Temple, *Thirty-Seven Nats*, p. 64.
v4.c23.s3.20
Bayinnaung (1551–81). The fiefs of central Burma all shut their gates and never lifted a finger to help Bayinnaung; his own brothers and kinsmen tried to set up as independent kings in such important charges as Prome and Toungoo itself. There he was, a king without a kingdom, grappling with one Talaing rebel in the west while another sat on his throne in the east, his Burmese people looked on with folded hands, and his own brothers seceded. At once he sent overseas for his Portuguese guards, who had rejoined their own people in Malaya; they came in haste, and in his unfeigned relief he greeted³ their leader with the words: "Ah, brother Diogo, brother Diogo, we two, we happy two, I on my elephant and thou on thy horse, we could conquer the world together!" With them, and the few faithful levies that stood by him, he was safe, although little better than a fugitive in the jungles. But many joined him, including even Talaings, for men recognise character when they see it. As the months went by, he regained Toungoo and Prome, and finally he advanced on Pegū.
v4.c23.s3.21
³ Couto, *Da Asia*, vol. IV, part I, p. 136.
v4.c23.s3.22
Smim Htaw had overthrown the usurping chamberlain and occupied the Pegū palace. When Bayinnaung's host came near the walls, the Talaings went out to meet it. The two chiefs fought hand to hand and finally Bayinnaung, freeing his elephant, drew back and charged, breaking the tusk of his foeman's elephant and driving him off the field followed by all his men. He then sacked Pegū, killing men, women, children and even animals.
v4.c23.s3.23
Talaing opposition collapsed. Smim Htaw could get few more followers, but he made a gallant fight, hunted as he was throughout the Delta. Many a jungle there has its tradition of his hiding. Sometimes he would catch the Burmese boats stranded at low tide in a creek, and wipe them out, sometimes he would surprise an outpost. But as the months passed, the end drew near. His family fell into the hands of his pursuers. He fled alone in a canoe along the coast to Martaban. Once they fell on him during the evening meal, but he slipped away leaving his clothes in their hands. He hid in the hills round Sittaung, poor and unknown, till he took a village girl to wife and told her his secret; she guilelessly told her father, who reported to the village officer. Bayinnaung had him paraded through the jeering streets, and saying he had done evil put him to an evil death. Thus ended the lineage of Wareru.¹
v4.c23.s3.24
¹ See vol. III, p. 551.
v4.c23.s3.25
Having thus regained the position from which he should have started, Bayinnaung set out on his career of conquest. The size of his armies varied with the area of his kingdom for the time being. At its maximum, when it included upper Burma, the Shan States, and Siam, it supplied him with a mass levy approaching possibly one hundred thousand.² His efforts were on a bigger scale than had hitherto been known to Burma. Long records of faithful service, and the ties of ancient friendship, were pleaded in vain by officers who failed; the least they had to fear was deprivation of all titles and property, and exile to some fever-stricken spot. As for the rank and file, the severity they suffered was provoked by the fact that many of the levies were like herds of driven cattle, and the only way of keeping them together and bringing them to action was to use methods of frightfulness.
v4.c23.s3.26
² Elizabethan travellers who say they actually saw half a million men march out of Pegū are only repeating bazar talk. The Burmese chronicles give a list of Bayinnaung's levies totalling over a million men, but in the Anglo-Burmese wars of the nineteenth century our troops found Burmese commanders habitually overestimating numbers by at least one decimal. Even in the early nineteenth century the population of Burma can hardly have exceeded four millions. Harvey, *History of Burma*, p. 333, and Burney, *Population of Burman Empire*, in *Journal Statistical Society*, 1842.
v4.c23.s3.27
By 1555 he had annexed Āva, and by 1559 the whole of upper Burma, the present Shan States, Manipur, Chiengmai and Viengchang (Linzin). From this time dates Burmese suzerainty over the Shans; the Pagan monarchy had controlled little more than the foothills, and even now Burmese suzerainty was seldom more than nominal until the time of Alaungpaya (1752–60).
v4.c23.s3.28
It is characteristic that while Bayinnaung was proceeding down the Salween against Chiengmai, his garrison in Mone was murdered and the bridge he had built across the Salween was destroyed by Mone, Yawnghwe and Lawksawk. Revolts were continuous. In 1562, 1572, 1574–76 he was campaigning against Mohnyin and Mogaung, and even to the north, wearing out his men in pursuits over snow-clad hills; finally the chiefs submitted, tired of starving in the wilderness. The Mogaung chief was exhibited for a week in fetters at the gates of Pegū; as for some scores of his principal followers, Bayinnaung, saying he was very merciful, refrained from executing them and sent them to be sold as slaves in the Ganges delta.
v4.c23.s3.29
As was invariably the case, the Burmese no sooner occupied an area than they required levies, and the Burmese Shans were at once employed against the Siamese Shans. The chiefs presented daughters to the rival harem, sent their sons to be brought up in the palace, and paid periodic tribute; Momeik, the most valuable of all, paid rubies; Chiengmai paid elephants, horses, lacquer and silks. Everywhere he deported numbers of the people in order to populate his homeland. From Chiengmai he took artisans, especially her famous lacquer workers;¹ it is probably these who introduced into Burma the finer sort of lacquer ware called yun, the name of the Yun or Lao Shan tribes round Chiengmai.²
v4.c23.s3.30
¹ See vol. III, p. 555.
v4.c23.s3.31
² Morris, "Lacquerware industry of Burma", in *Journal Burma Research Society*, 1919; Kyaw Dun, "Lacquerware called Yun", in *ibid.* 1920.
v4.c23.s3.32
In the 1556 campaign he went by river as far as Katha district, accompanied by his harem and worshipping at the principal pagodas on the way. On the return journey in 1557 he set up at the Shwezigon pagoda, Pagan, the great bronze bell bearing in Pali, Burmese and Talaing an inscription every line of which breathes imperial pride in his conquests and in the steps he took to promote religion among the Shans, building monasteries, and suppressing funeral sacrifice. It had been customary to bury with a major *sawbwa* (Shan chief) as many as ten elephants, a hundred horses, and a hundred each of men and women slaves, the numbers being less for minor *sawbwas*.
v4.c23.s3.33
He also suppressed the sacrifice of white animals (buffaloes, kine, goats, pigs, fowls) to the Mahagiri spirit on Popa Hill;³ hitherto these animals had been killed for a feast, and their skulls were hung in strings all round the shrine; the worshippers drank intoxicants at the feast, and once a year the king and court shared in it as an act of state worship. Bayinnaung introduced prohibition and punished drunkenness with death. He enforced the divine command against taking life even to the extent of abolishing the Baqr ‘Īd among Muslim settlers.
v4.c23.s3.34
³ Hmannan, II, 312; Wawhayalinatta, p. 69.
v4.c23.s3.35
The king of Ayuthia, styled Lord of the White Elephants, had recently possessed no fewer than seven; it was the glory of these elephants which attracted white merchants from the ends of the earth and brought Siam unprecedented prosperity; there could be no other cause, for in the days of his predecessors, who had far fewer, there was less trade and European merchants had not come. He still had four, and Bayinnaung’s soul was stirred to its depths at not having so many himself. He was considering not only his own glory but also the interests of his people; he believed it to be essential to their prosperity that he should acquire these elephants.¹ Therefore he invaded Siam. As he had a much larger area from which to get levies, his task was easier than Tabinshwehti’s.
v4.c23.s3.36
¹ For the significance of the White Elephant, see Harvey, *History of Burma*, p. 274.
v4.c23.s3.37
In 1563–64 the huge host captured Kampengpet and Sukhotai and then swarmed down on Ayuthia, losing considerably from the Siamese and their feringhi gunners, but capturing stockades, war-canoes and three foreign ships. The city quickly yielded in quite unnecessary terror of Bayinnaung’s Portuguese artillery, which though noisy was too light to do real damage to the walls. The terms were the surrender of four white elephants, the captivity of the king and some princes as hostages, the presentation of a daughter, the cession of Tenasserim shipping tolls, and annual tribute of thirty war elephants. Bayinnaung left the Siamese king’s son to rule as vassal with a Burmese garrison of 3000 men, and went home with the captive king and court, and with thousands of the population roped together in gangs with wooden collars; among them were actors and actresses, and it is probably these who introduced into Burma the songs and dances called Ayuthia. The loot included thirty crude images of men and elephants in bronze.
v4.c23.s3.38
The captive princes of Ayuthia, Ava and Chiengmai were kept at Pegū and given reasonable treatment, even being allowed to live in double-roofed houses painted white, the prerogative of royalty.² But Siam was not settled with the fall of Ayuthia. Till the end of the reign the armies were constantly campaigning all over the country from the northern Laos downwards. Year after year Bayinnaung led a weary chase through trackless hills where his men were reduced to eating grass and died in thousands of starvation and disease. Year after year there was cruel fighting against the Siamese stockades, against their war-canoes and flaming rafts. He usually succeeded in occupying towns, setting his puppet with a Burmese garrison on their little thrones, and dragging away the population, when it had not hidden in the jungle, to work as slaves in Burma if they survived the long march. But he could do little more than this, he could give no settled government to the surviving victims, and some of the chiefs he never caught. He generously allowed the captive king of Siam, who had become a monk, to return home on pilgrimage; no sooner had he arrived than he flung off the robe and so another siege of Ayuthia became necessary. It lasted ten months (1568–69). The Burmese losses were so heavy that the men used to take shelter under the piles of their comrades’ corpses. The troops sickened of the carnage and officers were executed right and left for failure. The town could not be taken by storm and, although short of food, held its own until Bayinnaung employed treachery. He promised large rewards, and one of his prisoners, a Siamese lord, entered the town saying he had escaped from the Burmese. The Siamese gave him high command, and one night he opened the gates.
v4.c23.s3.39
² For Burmese sumptuary laws, see Shway Yoe, *The Burman, his Life and Notions*.
v4.c23.s3.40
In 1560 the Portuguese captured the Buddha Tooth of Ceylon¹ and took it to Goa. Bayinnaung sent envoys on a Portuguese ship to Goa, offering, in return for the Tooth, eight lakhs of rupees and, whenever needed, shiploads of rice to provision the fortress of Malacca. Other Buddhist and Hindu kings made offers. The Portuguese wished to accept but were overridden by their archbishop who, in the presence of a large assembly including the Burmese envoys, ground the Tooth to powder, burnt the powder, and cast the ashes into the river. But soon men said that the Tooth was miraculously restored to its temple at Kandy.
v4.c23.s3.41
¹ See vol. III, p. 548.
v4.c23.s3.42
Learning from his astrologers that he was destined to wed a princess of Ceylon, Bayinnaung sent envoys to find her. They went to Colombo and told of their master’s glory. The chief there had no daughter, but his chamberlain had one whom the chief cherished as his own. He had no authority over the Temple of the Tooth at Kandy, where another chief ruled, but he showed the envoys a shrine which he said contained the Tooth. The envoys took the daughter and the Tooth. Bayinnaung sent gorgeous presents in return. The Tooth reached Bassein in 1576. Bayinnaung went to meet it in a great procession of magnificent canoes crowded with lords and ladies clad in court dress. He bathed ceremonially, scented himself, and bowed before the shrine. Princes waded into the river and bore it ashore at Pegū, walking over the state vestments which the lords took off and spread before them. It was encased in a golden casket studded with the gems of Dammazedi and the kings of old, and of Momeik and of Ayuthia, the vassal kings, and finally it was deposited at the Mahazedi pagoda, Pegū. This was the day of days in Bayinnaung’s life; his wide conquests, even the white elephants from Siam, faded into insignificance; he said: “Heaven is good to me. Anawrahta could obtain only a replica Tooth from Ceylon, Alaungsithu went to China in vain, but I, because of my piety and wisdom, I have been granted this!”²
v4.c23.s3.43
² Linschoten, *Voyage to the East Indies*, I, p. 293; Faria y Sousa (Stevens), *The Portuguese Asia*, II, 207–9, 251–2; Hmannan, III, 8, 33–35; Gerson da Cunha, “Memoir on the History of the Tooth Relic of Ceylon”, in *Journal Bombay branch of the Royal Asiatic Society*, 1875.
v4.c23.s3.44
Bayinnaung’s great Talaing officer, the *wungyi* (minister) Binnya Dala, compiled the Razadarit Ayedawpon chronicle.³ Bayinnaung introduced a measure of legal uniformity by summoning distinguished monks and officials from all over his dominions to prescribe an official collection of law books; they prescribed the Wareru *dhammathat*¹ and compiled the Dhammathatkyaw and Kosaungchok. The decisions given in his court were collected in the Hanthawaddy Hsinbyumyashin *pyatton*.² He also tried to standardise weights and measures, such as the cubit, tical, and basket, throughout the realm.
v4.c23.s3.45
³ See vol. III, p. 553.
v4.c23.s3.46
¹ See vol. III, pp. 551–2.
v4.c23.s3.47
² Forchammer, *Jardine Prize Essay on Burmese Law*.
v4.c23.s3.48
Styling himself the king of kings, he governed only Pegū and the Talaing country directly, leaving the rest of the realm to vassal kings with palaces at Toungoo, Prome, Āva and Chiengmai. He regarded Chiengmai as the most important, having fifty-seven provinces; these, like the thirty-two provinces of Pegū,³ were big villages. Chiengmai was a Shan state, and when he spoke of having twenty-four crowned heads at his command, he was referring to *sawbwas*. Each of the twenty gates of his new city at Pegū was named after the vassal who built it, such as the Prome gate, the Chiengmai gate, the Toungoo gate, the gates of Salin, Dalla, Mohnyin, Tavoy, Hsenwi, Linzin, Tenasserim, Ayuthia, Martaban, Pagan—it was the men of Pagan who had to plant the toddy palms all along the walls and at the street corners. As a model Buddhist king he distributed copies of the scriptures, fed monks, and built pagodas in Chiengmai, Koshanpye and other conquered states. Some of these pagodas are still to be seen, and in later ages the Burmese would point to them as proof of their claim to rule those countries still. He supervised mass ordinations at the Kalyānī *thein*.⁴ Following a royal custom he would break up his crown and use its jewels to adorn the spire of a pagoda; he did this for the Shwedagon, the Shwemawdaw, and the Kyaiktiyo in Thaton district. Again, as at the Shwemawdaw, he would build as many surrounding monasteries as there were years in his life at the time, fifty-two; or he would bear the cost of ordaining a similar number of monks. After the 1564 earthquake, which coincided with his queen’s death, he repaired the Shwedagon, and added a new spire. His chief foundation was the Mahazedi at Pegū, at which he enshrined a begging bowl of supernatural origin sent him in 1567 by some Ceylon kinglet, the Tooth (p. 489) and golden images of himself, the royal family, and such of the great officers of state as were in his inner circle.
v4.c23.s3.49
³ See vol. III, p. 553.
v4.c23.s3.50
⁴ *Ibid.* p. 556.
v4.c23.s3.51
Bayinnaung made no distinction of race in appointment to office. His best commander was a Talaing, Binnya Dala. As his predecessors had doubtless done for ages, he entered into artificial blood-brotherhood (*thwethauk*) with over a score of his principal officers, and the list includes Talaings. They penetrated his entourage to such an extent that the word used by European travellers for a court grandee is *semini*, an Italianisation of *smim*, the Talaing for lord. Such being his methods, he might have reconciled both races and founded a national dynasty. He failed to do so because he alienated human nature by his wars. The brunt fell on Talaings; hence while at first they followed him because they believed he could give them settled government, at last the only ones who followed him were hardy spirits desirous of foreign loot.
v4.c23.s3.52
Unlike most Burmese kings, who lived in the backwoods (pp. 496, 513), Bayinnaung lived in a seaport and came into contact with the outer world. The extent to which overseas traders frequented the Delta indicates that his trade regulations were reasonable. Merchants sailing from India first sighted Negrais and saw there, as we see now, the superb Hmawdin pagoda flashing on the headland, a landmark for a whole day's sail.¹ They went upstream to Bassein and then, turning east, passed through the Myaungmya creeks to Pegū. Those creeks were, at least on the main route, crowded with villages almost touching each other, a teeming hive of happy people. Customs officers, though strict, were not obstructive, and there was free export of such commodities as jewels and rice, a thing subsequently forbidden by the benighted kings of Āva (p. 501). Bassein is scarcely mentioned, the chief ports being on the eastern side, Syriam, Dalla, Martaban, and above all Pegū, where the merchants were allowed, by special privilege, to have brick warehouses, the populace being restricted to houses of bamboo or timber. Ralph Fitch and the merchants of Venice never tire of describing Pegū city, the long moat full of crocodiles, the walls, the watch-towers, the gorgeous palace, the processions with elephants and palanquins and grandees in shining robes, the shrines filled with images of massy gold and gems, the unending hosts of armed men, and the vision of the great king himself receiving petitions as he sat throned on high amid his lords.
v4.c23.s3.53
¹ Hakluytus Posthumus, x, 150.
v4.c23.s3.54
Yet despite its splendour, the kingship was not loved. Bayinnaung and the princes risked their lives freely at the head of the hosts conspicuously on elephants, and Bayinnaung shared many a hardship with his men. But what was sport to him was death to the common people. The disorganisation caused by his wars was such that Pegū sometimes starved. Even the fertile Delta cannot grow rice without men to plant it, and they were not there to plant it, having all been dragged away on foreign service. Of those that went, few returned, for if battle casualties were great, the wastage from hunger and dysentery was even greater. Even if they were not sent to fight, they were herded together and led away in one of the everlasting deportations which the kingship found necessary to re-populate ravaged areas.
v4.c23.s3.55
At least once Bayinnaung had to hurry home from a Siamese campaign to deal with rebellion at his own capital. He had settled in the neighbourhood some twenty thousand Shans and Siamese. Talaings made common cause and led them when in 1564 they rose and burnt his palace, the palace which the Portuguese regarded as in itself a city, with roofs of solid gold. He penned thousands of the rebels in bamboo cages to be burnt alive according to immemorial custom, but ended by burning only seventy leaders, with their families, because the monks protested and popular feeling supported them.¹
v4.c23.s3.56
¹ Hakluytus Posthumus, x, 160; Hmannan, III, 78.
v4.c23.s3.57
His campaigns were the price men had to pay for the unification of Burma. Thus far he succeeded. Beyond that he failed, because, like his age, he was not constructive. Every other year throughout his reign he was hastening somewhere to maintain himself in power. A ruler without an administration, he could not be everywhere at once, and no sooner did he turn his back than the chances were even that a rebellion would break out. The unity he gave was artificial and within a few years of his death it collapsed. If it rose again and endured for another century and a half, this was because his immediate successors happened to be men of character and because the listlessness of the people prevented organised opposition.
v4.c23.s3.58
Bayinnaung died at the age of sixty-six leaving ninety-seven children. Although he already had more territory than he could hold, he was actually sending an expedition to annex Arakan when he died.
v4.c23.s3.59
Rebellion at home compelled his son, Nandabayin (1581–99), to recall the expedition against Arakan. There was scarcely a year in which he was not campaigning from Mogaung in the north to Hmawbi in the south. He used his father's methods of terrible executions and wholesale conscription. Life was unbearable and men flocked to become monks, partly to seek religious consolation in their misery, partly to evade conscription.
v4.c23.s3.60
The crown prince used Talaings for forced labour on his land, stored the crop, and made people buy from him alone. The king deported people from all over the country to populate Pegū. Distrusting the Talaings, he executed them in numbers; he branded them on the right hand with their name, rank and village, and sent those who were too old for service to be exchanged for horses in upper Burma; he exiled their monks to Ava and the Shan States. It is at this period that the periodic migrations² of the Talaings to Siam begin, migrations which lasted until the English conquest in 1824 and were due to the sustained severity of the Burmese.
v4.c23.s3.61
² Halliday, *The Talaings*; and his "Immigration of the Mons [Talaings] into Siam", in *Journal Siam Society*, 1913; Ravenswaay, "Translation of Van Vliet's description of Siam", in *ibid.* 1910.
v4.c23.s3.62
The one hope of keeping the country together was to evacuate Siam and retrench in every direction. But neither Bayinnaung nor his son could see it. The only method by which the king could control remoter areas was by fighting them periodically, a process which used up the only people he could really call his own, the population round the capital. There were not sufficient left alive to till the soil there, and remoter areas would not send food. In 1596 a plague of field rats destroyed what little crop had been planted; there was a terrible famine, and it was only one of a series; wide stretches of country in lower Burma became a desert.
v4.c23.s3.63
Nandabayin might have held the rest of his kingdom, but it was Ayuthia that ruined him. She found a leader in the famous prince Pra Naret. Year after year Nandabayin led his men into Siam; each incursion further reduced his remaining man-power but none succeeded in taking Ayuthia. He could never raise 25,000 men—a mere third of the number his father had led—and these were too few to surround Ayuthia, so that instead of the besieged it was the besiegers who starved. In 1593 his son was killed in hand-to-hand combat with Pra Naret; the Burmese fled in panic at the sight and were once more cut to pieces in a long and terrible retreat. After that there were no men left to invade Siam; indeed it is Ayuthia which invades Pegū.¹
v4.c23.s3.64
¹ Faria y Sousa (Stevens), *The Portuguese Asia*, III, 120; *Peter Floris* (Moreland, Hakluyt Society, 1934), pp. 52–5; Frankfurter, "Events in Ayuddhys 686–966", in *Journal Siam Society*, 1909; Jones, "Siamese History", in the *Chinese Repository*, 1836–38; Saulière, "Jesuits on Pegu", in *Bengal Past and Present*, 1919; Hmannan, III, 97.
v4.c23.s3.65
And now, in the hour of his utmost need, not one of the king's sons or brothers rallied to his side. If the king was not satisfactory they could have combined to set up someone who was; but instead of trying to keep the country together, each was out entirely for himself—it is doubtful how far the concept of a kingdom ever penetrated in a country where any brigand, who levied blackmail as far as eye can reach, was, within living memory, styled a king. The prince of Toungoo, first cousin to the king, actually wrote to Arakan proposing a joint attack on the king and a division of the spoil. He chose Arakan because it was farthest, and after getting its loot it would return home and not be a rival for the throne. The Arakanese shipped a force which occupied Syriam, effected a junction with the Toungoo levies, and with them besieged Pegū in 1599. The townsfolk and officers deserted. The king and a faithful son surrendered on a promise of good treatment and were put to death.
v4.c23.s3.66
Hearing that there was a carcass, the king of Ayuthia came swooping down to see what he could get. As the victors would not share with him, he ravaged the country up to Toungoo and went home.
v4.c23.s3.67
The Arakanese deported 3000 households of the wretched Pegū folk and went off with a white elephant and a daughter of the fallen king for their own royal harem; they also took brazen cannon and the thirty bronze images of Ayuthia (p. 488); and retaining Syriam they left it in charge of one of their Portuguese mercenaries, De Brito. The prince of Toungoo took away the Ceylon Tooth and begging bowl (p. 490) with more than twelve caravan-loads of loot.
v4.c23.s3.68
Pegū was burnt. Bayinnaung's palace, his radiant buildings decked with the spoil of conquered kings, went up in flames. It was a pitiful ending. The misery in lower Burma beggared description: the bodies of those who died of wounds or starvation filled the rivers and impeded the passage of boats, and men ate human flesh.
v4.c23.s3.69
The country south of Martaban paid homage to Ayuthia. Burma was once more a series of petty states, held by princes of the royal house. The best was the prince of Āva; a son of Bayinnaung, he reduced upper Burma and the Shan States; he induced China to extradite the fugitive Bhamo *sawbwa*, and the Chinese themselves admit that after 1628 Burma sent no more "tribute" missions.¹ His son Anaukpetlun (1605–28), having the north on which to draw for levies, found little difficulty in annexing the depopulated land of lower Burma. In 1607 he took Prome. In 1610 he took Toungoo, carrying home to Āva the Ceylon Tooth and begging bowl, two-thirds of the cattle, and many people, including all who had been deported from Pegū, Prome and Āva.
v4.c23.s3.70
¹ Burney, "Wars between Burma and China", in *Journal Asiatic Society of Bengal*, 1837.
v4.c23.s3.71
De Brito (p. 478) had made himself independent at Syriam, defeating all attacks whether by his old Arakanese master or by other chiefs. He had a hundred Portuguese, some negro and Indian slaves, and the Talaings who came in from the neighbourhood. He was liked, because he gave folk settled government. He had several ships cruising round the coast to prevent merchant vessels from putting in save at Syriam, where he could make them pay customs duty. He became so successful that the Portuguese viceroy at Goa acknowledged him as official Portuguese governor of Syriam. But he continued to do as he pleased, and he did wrong in pillaging pagodas. He would scrape the gold off images and beat it into gold-leaf for sale to pilgrims; and he melted down some of the beautiful bronze bells at the Shwedagon to save himself the expense of importing bronze to make cannon. He was allied to Martaban and Toungoo.
v4.c23.s3.72
In 1613 Anaukpetlun advanced on Syriam. Success had made De Brito so careless that he had allowed himself to run out of powder when the king arrived with 12,000 men. However, the stockade was strong and the defenders beat off all attacks with boiling oil. Natshinnaung, the fallen prince of Toungoo and cousin to the king, was inside, having taken refuge with De Brito. The king especially desired to capture him, and offered De Brito friendship if he would surrender him. But De Brito replied: "We Portuguese keep faith. I have given my word to Natshinnaung and do not break it." The king cut off a prisoner's ears and sent him to De Brito saying: "Look at this, and consider whether it will pay thee to harbour mine enemy."
v4.c23.s3.73
But De Brito never wavered. Once, when all the Portuguese were in church, the Burmese broke into the stockade, but the Portuguese came rushing out and none of the Burmese escaped alive. At the end of six weeks the Burmese mined the stockade and managed to pull out two of the posts; they poured in and captured the town. The king offered the two leaders their lives if they would beg pardon, but they refused, Natshinnaung saying: "You can kill my body, but my soul never. De Brito and I are brothers for we have entered into the *thwethauk* (p. 490) bloodbond. We have lived one life. Let us die one death." His wish was granted. De Brito was crucified and lingered three days. Perhaps he was still alive when some Portuguese relief ships arrived but went back, seeing that the town had fallen.¹
v4.c23.s3.74
¹ Faria y Sousa (Stevens), *The Portuguese Asia*, III, 191; Pawtugi Yazawin and Furnivall, "A Forgotten Chronicle", in *Journal Burma Research Society*, 1912; *ibid.* 1926, pp. 101 *sqq.*; Hmannan, III, 118; Dinnyawadi Yazawinthit, p. 210.
v4.c23.s3.75
The Portuguese, with Eurasians, women, and children, a total of 400, were enslaved and sent to live in the Shwebo villages called, after them, *bayingyi* (feringhi) villages. They were used as hereditary gunners to the king and were in charge of such cannon as he possessed. Their numbers were occasionally increased, as every white man who came into the power of the Burmese was sent there (p. 506), and by 1800 their descendants numbered two thousand, including women and children. Their chaplains were Goanese until 1721, when Italian Barnabites founded the European mission.
v4.c23.s3.76
From about 1627 the Dutch, from 1647 the English, East India Companies had branches in Burma under junior representatives. These branches were closed from time to time, and, although profits were occasionally considerable, the disturbed state of the country made steady trade impossible. Both factories were at Syriam, and in 1677 the Dutch finally withdrew.²
v4.c23.s3.77
² Hall, *Early English Intercourse with Burma*.
v4.c23.s3.78
Anaukpetlun tried to take Tenasserim, but the Siamese, aided by forty Portuguese, drove him off with heavy loss. He regained control down to Chiengmai and to Ye in Moulmein district. His methods were those of Nandabayin, and of many an energetic Burmese king. His people in delighted terror said that he had only to wave his sword and the tide would stop. Yet outside his palace at Pegū there hung a bell with an inscription in Burmese and Talaing calling on all who had a grievance to strike the bell and he would hear (p. 479).
v4.c23.s3.79
When in his palace on the west side of the river at Pegū he detected his son Minredeippa in a love intrigue with one of the harem ladies, and told him he deserved roasting alive. Such punishment was not unusual, and Minredeippa, fearing it would really be inflicted, collected some friends, entered the king's room at night, and did him to death.
v4.c23.s3.80
At once the ministers summoned a general assembly of the court. Early action was necessary, and they took it: they elected the parricide to the throne. Their reasoning was that the king's brothers, his natural successors, were away campaigning in the Shan States—at one time they had gone as far as Kenghung north-east of Kengtung—and the kingdom would be in turmoil before they could be recalled. Public morality apart, the reasoning was invalid, for young Minredeippa had not the wit to hold a throne, whereas his two uncles were mature men, each in command of an army, and the news reached them easily in nine days. So far from avoiding disorder, the court's decision caused it. The country respected the uncles, for they were men of authority; it knew nothing of Minredeippa, and half a dozen governors took the opportunity to revolt. Deprived of support from lower Burma, the two uncles had to waste sixteen months reducing the north country. Meanwhile they seized the families of the upper Burma companies in the palace guard, making the fact known in Pegū, and thus shaking the allegiance of Minredeippa's guards. He had not the courage to leave his palace and attack them. Town after town in upper Burma fell to them, and when they surrounded Āva, Minredeippa, foreseeing their success, decided to flee to Arakan; but his own followers, in disgust at his cowardice and tyranny, seized him and sent a deputation to Āva asking Thalun, one of the uncles, to take the throne. He did so, and immediately on arriving in Pegū executed Minredeippa, sternly rejecting his plea to be allowed to become a monk.
v4.c23.s3.81
Thalun (1629–48) reigned with the help of his brother until the latter's death some years later. His coronation was scarcely over when Talaings rushed the palace; they were driven out, fled to Moulmein, and held it for some time before they migrated to Siam in large numbers. He moved the capital back to Āva and there it stayed. The Delta had lost its advantages now that the idea of attacking Ayuthia was dead, and Pegū ceased to be a seaport when, about 1600, the silting up of the river was complete. The proper site to move to was Syriam, but the court did not realise that the country's future lay on the sea coast (p. 513). The return to Āva signified the abandonment of Tabinshwehti's dream of a national kingship. The attempted union with the Talaings had failed, and the court relapsed into its tribal homeland, upper Burma.
v4.c23.s3.82
The return to upper Burma restored Kyaukse to the importance it had lost so long as the kingship was situated among the Delta rice fields. Instead of dedicating prisoners of war as slaves to pagodas, Thalun found a new use for them: he settled them as tenants at Kyaukse, where their families supplied labour for the canals and they themselves served in the guard at court.
v4.c23.s3.83
Indeed Thalun must rank as one of the best kings. The wars of his predecessors left the country bloodless for a century. He kept the peace and reorganised the administration. He may not have created, but at least he revived the old village and district administration which had been shattered; and he placed it on record in the great revenue inquest of 1638, the first in Burmese history. None of the record has been found, but probably it resembled Bodawpaya’s 1784 inquest¹ and consisted of the sworn statements of every village headman throughout the country as to the number of people in his village, the area of cultivated land, the crops grown, the revenue paid, etc.
v4.c23.s3.84
¹ Harvey, *History of Burma*, p. 269.
v4.c23.s3.85
How destructive was the disorder which overwhelmed Burma is shown by the history of the Shwesettaw shrine in the Minbu district. It is one of the holiest imaginable, containing two of Buddha’s reputed footprints. Yet, during the depopulation caused by the Siamese wars, so little was the intercourse with Arakan over the An Pass, the approach to which runs through Shwesettaw, that even this famous spot was forgotten. In 1638 a party of monks sent by the king succeeded in finding the footprints amid the jungle which enveloped them, and the shrine was restored.²
v4.c23.s3.86
² Duroiselle, *Notes on the Ancient Geography of Burma*.
v4.c23.s3.87
Thalun’s minister Kaingsa Manu compiled the Manusarashwemin or Mahārājā *dhammathat*, the first law book written in Burmese instead of Pali. It is based on Bayinnaung’s compilations (p. 490) and on the still earlier Talaing *dhammathats*, but it substitutes Burmese ideas on, for instance, inheritance, for theirs, which are largely Hindu.
v4.c23.s3.88
Thalun’s principal pagoda is the Yazamanisula (Kaunghmudaw) at Sagaing, of Cingalese pattern; here he enshrined the Ceylon Tooth and begging bowl (p. 494), dedicating Shan slaves from Chiengmai and elsewhere.
v4.c23.s3.89
His son Pindale (1648–61) built the Ngatatkyi pagoda, Sagaing district, containing a very large sitting Buddha.
v4.c23.s3.90
When the Ming dynasty of China was overthrown, Yung-li, the last Ming emperor, tried to maintain himself in Yünnan. But in 1658 he was defeated and fled to Bhamo with his family and seven hundred followers. He gave the Bhamo *sawbwa* 100 *viss* (1 *viss* = 3.65 lb.) of gold to send the king with a petition asking leave to live in Burma, and the king permitted him to live at Sagaing with his followers.
v4.c23.s3.91
A plague of freebooter armies broke out in China during the change of dynasty. They swarmed over the provinces but, finding by bitter experience that it did not pay to plunder the Manchus, the new conquerors of China, they looked for easier prey. They occupied Mone and Yawnghwe and ravaged up to Ava, plundering the villages, killing men, carrying off women and burning monasteries, while the monks fled in terror to the woods. They could not take Ava, for it was a walled town, and one of their leaders was even killed by a shot from the feringhi gunners from the wall. But for the next three years they ravaged upper Burma from Yawnghwe, occupying Wundwin in Meiktila district, raiding Pagan, defeating every army, and even capturing some of the princes.
v4.c23.s3.92
The king ruled over much the same area as Bayinnaung and had the same resources at his disposal. Bayinnaung would have found a speedy remedy; he would have marched with a large force and taken such reprisals that no Chinaman would have dared show his face inside the frontier for a generation. But the king was spiritless and commanded no following outside his homeland.
v4.c23.s3.93
He did indeed send for a levy of 3000 men from Martaban, but the Talaings had no heart in the business and deserted on the march. The punishment for desertion was burning alive in batches. Their indignant kinsmen rose, fired Martaban, drove the Burmese out, and went off into Siam, 6000 souls in all, including families and prisoners. The frontier guards reported to the king of Siam, who sent lords (*smim*) to greet them, men of their own race who had long since settled in Siam. He granted gracious audience to their eleven leaders in the palace at Ayuthia, and allotted them lands.
v4.c23.s3.94
The Talaings had fled into Siam because they could not stand against Burmese vengeance. Thus, though there is some excuse for the king's failure to get levies from the Delta, there is none for his failure to get its rice, which could easily have been brought upstream. He needed that rice, for Kyaukse, the granary of upper Burma, was in the hands of the Chinese.
v4.c23.s3.95
But he sat with folded hands while they roamed the land at will, the crops could not be sown, the city granaries ran low, and the guards and the palace staff were plunged into mourning by the massacre of their kinsmen in the villages. The guards could get no food to eat, and finally they found that the royal concubines had cornered what rice there was and were selling it at iniquitous prices. The king exercised no control and when they appealed to him he mournfully said he could not help them. They approached his brother Pye, who at once marched on the palace. Hearing the drums, the king sent eunuchs to see what was happening. They told him, and he went to hide while the queen with her son aged eight and grandson aged four remained on the couch of state. Pye and his men entered the palace cutting down some twenty men and women. Pye said: "Brother, I wish thee no harm, but these things cannot be. Many a time have the ministers called me, and now I must do as they say." The queen entreated him, saying: "Be king but spare our lives. We will end our days in religion. Let the children become monks." But Pye shook his head, saying: "When have our families been monks? They will only throw off the robe. Yet will I do you no harm, remembering the oath of brotherly love I took to our father." He kept them in a royal house, sending them food daily. But after a few weeks the court said: "There cannot be two suns in the sky", and he drowned¹ the king, queen and their son and grandson in the Chindwin river.
v4.c23.s3.96
¹ For the taboo on shedding royal blood, and the convention whereby princes were drowned, see Harvey, *History of Burma*, p. 339.
v4.c23.s3.97
Pye (1661-72) was troubled in heart over these terrible events and after summoning the monks and listening to the scriptures he said to them: "I had no wish to be king but the ministers and captains insisted that they had no refuge but me. Even as the Lord himself is bound by his clergy, so must I hearken to the voice of my people." The monks did not gainsay him, for he spoke the truth. They represented the public conscience, and every good king strove to win their approval.
v4.c23.s3.98
Pye stopped profiteering among the harem women, so that his guards did not have to go without food for three days at a time as under his predecessor. But otherwise his success was not perceptibly greater. The Siamese, with Martaban, Tavoy and Chiengmai levies in their army, raided Syriam and Pegū, carrying off the population in crowds.² The Chinese ravages continued with undiminished intensity.
v4.c23.s3.99
² S. Smith, *History of Siam, 1657-1767*, pp. 22-30.
v4.c23.s3.100
Yung-li and his followers were helpless fugitives who only wished to be left in peace. But the court believed them to be implicated in the Chinese ravages, and summoned the followers to the Tupayon pagoda at Sagaing intending to split them into small parties and scatter them in distant villages. When they were being led away from the pagoda, the Chinese grew frightened and, though unarmed, resisted; they were slain to a man. Yung-li apologised pitifully, saying he was sure they were wrong.
v4.c23.s3.101
In time, the Chinese freebooters wore themselves out and the iron hand of the Manchu dynasty fell on the remnants. In 1662 the Yünnan viceroy came with 20,000 men and, halting at Aungbinle in Mandalay district, he sent a herald summoning the king to surrender Yung-li or take the consequences. This was the pass to which things had come through lack of judgment in admitting Yung-li and lack of manhood in repelling the Chinese. The king called a council. He pointed out that there were precedents to show that fugitives ought to be surrendered³ and accordingly Yung-li must be given up. The ministers agreed and, disregarding the solemn fact that Yung-li had been admitted to allegiance, they delivered him up to meet his doom.⁴
First 101 of 130 passages. Read on