The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c29.s3: (a) Āva 1287–1555
The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c29.s3
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(a) Āva 1287–1555
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After killing his father, Thihathu proceeded to kill such of his brothers as were in reach, in accordance with that Massacre of the Kinsmen which convention permitted to a Burmese king at his accession¹. As the Tartars were in occupation of the north, he went south and tried to establish himself in the Delta, but was killed whilst besieging Pegū which was held by its rebellious governor, Tarabya.
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¹ See Harvey, *History of Burma*, p. 338.
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The surviving son Kyawswa (1287–98) returned to Pagān, where he paid annual tribute to China and in 1297 sent his son to receive investiture from the Emperor himself as prince of the Upper Burma state. This state, which lasted till 1555, ran from Myedu in Shwebo district to below Prome, and from Laungshe in Pakokku district to Kyaukse.
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At the same time as he invested Kyawswa, the Emperor sent a seal to Athinhkaya as prince of Myinsaing in the Kyaukse district; Hsenwi had been similarly recognised in 1289, and Mohnyin² in 1296. Athinhkaya was the eldest of the Three Shān Brothers (1298–1324) who now became the real rulers of Upper Burma; the second was Yazāthinkyan, chief of Mokkayā; the youngest Thihathu, chief of Pinle. Their towns, all in the Kyaukse district, command passes into the Shān hills and were exactly where a chieftain ruling hill and plain would fix his stronghold—to command the plain and afford easy escape to his ancestral highlands. They were the sons of a hill chief who, owing to some feud, had fled to Myinsaing, where there was already a Shān colony; his daughter married no less a person than a son of the Pagān dynasty, so that the family gained favour at court and were entrusted with the administration of the Kyaukse canals. When the dynasty fell, they had every temptation to be disloyal, for, being in charge of the great canals and rice fields, they controlled the food supplies of the palace. In 1298 they plotted with the queen dowager, lured Kyawswa into a new monastery which they had built, and forced him to take the robe and dwell there under guard. They then reported to Yünnan that it had been necessary to dispose him because he was asking for armed assistance from Chiengmai and had intercepted envoys whom the new Talaing state of Pegu was sending to Yünnan. Finally they killed him³; at his death he said: ‘None of my ancestors was ever executed with the sword. Either throw me into the river or strangle me'; so they strangled and cremated him and cast his remains into the Irrawaddy¹. They killed also his son, his monk and principal followers, and seized the harem.
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² Parker, ‘*Précis.*’
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³ He merges with Minrekyawswa to form the Minkyawswa Nat spirit; Temple, *Thirty-Seven Nats*, p. 56.
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¹ For the taboo on shedding royal blood, and the convention whereby princes were drowned, see Harvey, *History of Burma*, p. 339.
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Survivors of the dynasty appealed to Yünnan. The Yünnan commandant obtained the Emperor's sanction, and with 12,000 men besieged the Brothers in three walled towns at Myinsaing. On their walls the Brothers mounted balistae, and in one assault the Tartars lost 500 men from the arrows, blocks of stone, and beams which rained down on the stormers². Finding the climate hot and malarious, the Chinese accepted the bribe, 800 taels (63 lb.) of gold and 2200 taels (183 lb.) of silver, and withdrew to Yünnan after letting their men help on the Kyaukse irrigation works, constructing the Thindwe canal. This is the end of Chinese interference in Burma resulting from the expedition of 1287.
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² Huber, 'Fin de la dynastie de Pagan' in *Bulletin de l'École Française d'Extrême Orient*, 1909.
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Whether Pagān had hitherto been fertile or not³, it was certainly unfertile now, and the soil of the Myingyan district assumed its present desolate and barren aspect. Denudation of the forests to provide fuel for pagoda bricks had doubtless lessened the rainfall, and extensive irrigation at Kyaukse might attract rainfall thither from Pagān. Crops grow there, but not in such quantity as to supply a city of 50,000 inhabitants who eat rice. Probably this was the reason, in addition to the belief that the luck of the site was exhausted, which now led to the removal of the palace from Pagān.
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³ Mackenzie, 'Climate in Burmese History' in *Journal of the Burma Research Society*, 1913.
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There was rice in the Delta but it was far away and the Delta was now under a hostile chief. There was rice in Kyaukse, but the capital could not be put there, so far from the country's own highway, the Irrawaddy. It was necessary to find a site which should be on the Irrawaddy and accessible to the rice of Kyaukse. The obvious site was Āva, in the Sagaing district, where the Myitnge river brought down the grain boats from Kyaukse. But as the omens were adverse to Āva, Thihathu, the surviving Shān Brother, in 1312 set up his palace at Pinya, a bad site near by, for which the omens were favourable.
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The Pagān dynasty continued to exist as *myosa* (governors) of Pagān until 1369 and then ceased save where it had merged, on the distaff side, with the lineage of the Shān Brothers. The only specific mention of the Ari¹ after their overthrow by Anawrahta is that Sawyun, lord of Sagaing, a son of Thihathu, in 1314 enumerated Ari among his armed retainers; apparently they were like the warrior abbots of contemporary Christendom.
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¹ Duroiselle, ‘The Ari of Burma and Tantric Buddhism’ in *Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India*, 1915–16.
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Even in its limited area the Upper Burma state was loosely knit, towns such as Sagaing, Sagu and Taungdwingyi doing as they pleased. The confusion was something more than brigandage: it was the result of a racial movement, nothing less than the Shān migration into the plains of Burma. In 1364 the Maw (Mogaung) Shāns² took Sagaing and Pinya, carrying off the princes, the white elephants, and numbers of the townsfolk. To escape being driven off in Shān raiders’ slave gangs, the population of Upper Burma took to migrating to Toungoo.
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² For Maw, Mogaung, Pong, etc., see Harvey’s *History of Burma*, p. 322.
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After the Maw Shāns had departed, Thadominbya (1364–8), one of the Sagaing family, killed off such of his kinsmen as stood in his way there and at Pinya, drained the swamps round Ava, and built the town. It was usually the Burmese capital for the next five centuries; till two generations ago the English, like the Chinese, referred to Burmah as Ava, and for the Shāns the king of Burma was to the end ‘The Lord of the Golden Palace at Ava.’ On his mother’s side Thadominbya was descended from the Three Shān Brothers, and his father was a Shān notable who claimed descent from the primitive Pyusawti lineage. His habits were sufficiently primitive—thus, after killing a Toungoo rebel he ate a meal on the corpse’s chest. Whilst trying to subject Sagu he was seized with small-pox. As he lay dying, a pagan who had no respect for Buddhism, he told an officer to return to the palace and kill his queen lest she should pass to his successor. The officer entered the palace and told her his errand so she then and there married him. As part of the regalia she had already been queen to four successive chiefs³ of Pinya, and her union with the officer raised him to the throne. The pair massacred the royal kinsmen but the ministers would not accept them and hawked round the crown until finally Minkyiswasawke accepted it.
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³ For the custom whereby queens passed to the next king, see Harvey’s *History of Burma*, p. 324.
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Minkyiswasawke (1368–1401) was descended from the union of the Shān sister with the son of the Pagān dynasty, and as a child he had been carried off into captivity with his father, the lord of Thayetmyo, when Minhti, king of Arakan, raided it in 1333. On his release he became *thūgyi* (village headman) of Amyin in the Sagaing district and on becoming king he made an Arakanese monk his primate. He built the Zidaw weir in Kyaukse district and repaired the embankment of Meiktila lake.
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Laukpya, lord of Myaungmya, hated his nephew Razadarit, and when Razadarit succeeded to the throne of Pegū in 1385, Laukpya wrote to Minkyiswasawke offering to hold Pegū as a vassal if Minkyiswasawke would help him to oust Razadarit. This started a war between Upper and Lower Burma which lasted till 1422. The fighting was almost entirely in the Delta and probably the war was a war of migration, Shān saturation of Upper Burma being sufficiently complete for Āva to swarm down on Pegū. The Burmese advance base was Prome, and their usual line of advance was down the Hlaing river to Dāgon (Rangoon), sometimes with another string of levies going down the Sittang valley from Toungoo. With them marched contingents from allied states, Mohnyin, Kale, and Yawnghwe; indeed, the Talaing chronicles sometimes refer to the invaders as simply 'the Shāns.' Their total strength would usually be some 12,000 and the advance took place every year or so, both sides going home for the rains (June–November). The invaders would sit down in large stockades, and sally forth headhunting and slave raiding, sometimes besieging Hmawbi, Dalla, Dāgon (Rangoon), and other towns, or being besieged themselves. Occasionally some determined leader would bring about a battle, but the casualties mentioned are seldom a decimal per cent. of the numbers engaged, and it is difficult to avoid the impression that most of the fighting was of the type not uncommon in mediaeval countries when there was as much shouting as killing and the wretched villagers were the chief sufferers.
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In addition to raiding the Delta, Āva had to defend herself against attacks from the Shān hill states and sometimes they tried to get her to join in their own quarrels. Thus in 1371 the *sawbwas* (chiefs) of Kale and Mohnyin each asked Minkyiswasawke to help oust the other, promising to become tributary in return; but he let them exhaust each other, and thus secured a nominal supremacy over both for a few years. But in 1373 Mohnyin raided the frontier at Myedu in Shwebo district and the king had so much trouble that in 1383 he sent an embassy to Yünnan. China thereupon graciously appointed him governor of Āva and ordered Mohnyin to behave. But Mohnyin in 1393 ravaged up to the walls of Sagaing.
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In 1374 Arakan was distracted with civil war and some of the people asked Minkyiswasawke to send them a king; he sent them his uncle, Sawmungyi. Sawmungyi ruled well, and on his death a few years later the Arakanese asked Minkyiswasawke to select a successor. Minkyiswasawke sent one of his sons but this son oppressed the people and soon fled back to Ava.
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Finding Pyānchi, chief of Toungoo, becoming friendly with Pegū in 1377, Minkyiswasawke told his brother, the lord of Prome, to inveigle Pyānchi into a visit and kill him. The king's brother wrote to Pyānchi: 'Come and marry your son to my daughter.' Pyānchi accepted the invitation and came with his son to Prome where, during the night, his host did him to death and seized his retinue with much booty. The king rewarded this exploit with rich presents, and the chroniclers¹ who record the incident describe him as a king with a most upright heart. He died in the odour of sanctity at the age of 70 and after some palace murders was succeeded by a younger son, Minhkaung.
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¹ Hmannan, Vol. i, pp. 420, 440.
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Minhkaung (1401–22) had been married by his father to a daughter presented by the chief of the Maw Shāns during a friendly mood about the same time as Razadarit put to death his own son, Bawlawkyantaw. A year later during her first pregnancy, she longed for strange food from the Delta, and the family asked Razadarit, though a foe, to send some. Razadarit consulted his ministers and they perceived that the unborn child was Bawlawkyantaw himself taking flesh again according to his dying prayer; they sent mangoes from Dalla and other food, having bewitched it.
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The child, prince Minrekyawswa, born in 1391, was already campaigning at the age of thirteen; he accompanied the 1404 expedition which, in retaliation for an Arakanese raid on Yaw and Laungshe in the Pakokku district, marched over to the An Pass and occupied Launggyet while the raja, Narameikhla, fled to Bengal. The Burmese left behind as regent Anawrahtaminsaw, to whom next year was sent a bride aged thirteen, sister to Minrekyawswa, together with the five regalia (white umbrella, yaktail, crown, sword, sandals).
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In 1406 the Burmese overran Mohnyin and killed the chief; China expostulated² and they withdrew, as they would doubtless have done in any case. In 1407 they sent an embassy to Yünnan. In 1413 the northern Shān state of Hsenwi ravaged the Ava villages and sent some prisoners to Pekin, but Minrekyawswa shattered the Hsenwi host at Wetwin near Maymyo, killing their leader in single combat. In 1414 Hsenwi again raided Āva at the instigation of Razadarit, whose envoys travelled viâ Chiengmai carrying a considerable weight of gold as an inducement.
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² Parker, '*Précis*'; Huber, '*Une ambassade chinoise en Birmanie en 1406*' in *Bulletin de l'École Française d'Extrême Orient*, 1904.
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Taking advantage of the usual palace troubles which attended Minhkaung’s accession, Razadarit made several raids, and in 1406 he came up the Irrawaddy river. It is characteristic of Burmese warfare that though he failed to reduce the Burmese garrisons at Prome, Myede and Pagān, he simply left them in his rear, pressed on to Sagaing, and camped there, raising the white umbrella and beating his drums in triumph. There was only the palace guard in Āva, and although there were plenty of men in the villages, it was not possible to summon them with the Talaings surrounding the city. Taken at a loss, Minhkaung called a great council. Nobody dared speak, for there was nothing to be said. But at last an eminent monk of Pyinya came forward saying he had eloquence enough to persuade any king in the universe. Minhkaung consented, and the monk went forth riding a tall elephant with a golden howdah, attended by 300 *thadinthon* (fasting elders) robed in white, 300 old men bearing gifts, and many elephants loaded with silks and rich presents. They met Razadarit on his great barge and the monk spoke holy words on the sin of bloodshed while Razadarit inclined his ear. He could not reduce a walled town, he could not remain for ever in a hostile country, and he consented to withdraw; he even rebuked his men for taking the heads of forty pagoda slaves.
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On returning home, Razadarit besieged Prome, and when Minhkaung came down to relieve it, defeated him so severely that he sued for terms. The two kings swore eternal friendship, mounting the steps of the Shwehsandaw pagoda, Prome, together hand in hand, and entering into a marriage alliance. Razadarit granted Minhkaung the customs revenue of Bassein; this, and the fact that throughout the fifteenth century Tharrawaddy was subject to Prome and was held by a governor who was appointed, at least nominally, by Āva, suggest that one cause of the fighting was the need of Āva to trade along the Irrawaddy river as far south as possible.
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But in 1407 Razadarit, having intercepted a letter from Minhkaung asking Chiengmai to join him in attacking Pegū and share the booty, supported a fugitive Arakanese prince, son of Narameikhla; the prince marched into Arakan, gathering strength from his fellow countrymen as he went, occupied Launggyet, and captured the Burmese garrison, 3000 strong. Anawrahtaminsaw¹ was executed and his little queen, Sawpyechantha, passed into Razadarit’s harem.
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¹ He is worshipped as the Shwenawrahta Nat spirit; Temple, *Thirty-Seven Nats*, p. 56.
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The news so enraged Minhkaung that he insisted on invading the Delta in the rains, with the natural result that he was severely defeated at Pankyaw, north of Pegū. He fled to Āva, leaving his men to be cut to pieces and his Maw Shān queen² to be captured; she joined her daughter Sawpyechantha in Razadarit’s harem.
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² She is worshipped as the Anaukmibaya Nat spirit; Temple, *Thirty-Seven Nats*, p. 56.
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Now that both his mother and sister were captives, Minrekyawswa became a fiend. ‘As a crocodile eats his victims, so will I rend the flesh of the Talaings,’ he said³. His father Minhkaung went no more to war, for his nerves were shattered after the fight at Pankyaw. But Minrekyawswa took charge. Year after year he carried fire and sword into the hapless Delta, defeating all comers, deporting the population wholesale, and making life so unbearable that in Myaungmya and Bassein men dared not work their fields, and in 1415 the whole west side paid him homage. Things came to such a pass that a hundred Talaings would run at the sight of a couple of Shān-Burmans.
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³ Hmannan, Vol. ii, p. 12. The Burmese used to eat portions of the flesh of their prisoners of war alive, *ad terrorem*; see Harvey, *History of Burma*, p. 298.
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But in 1417 the vengeful re-incarnation of Bawlawkyantaw came to an end. Razadarit, trusting to Minrekyawswa’s impetuosity, lured him out of his camp at Dalla until he was separated from his men, and dashed out on him at the head of some thirty Talaing lords on elephants. Minrekyawswa’s elephant, maddened by a hundred gashes, shook him off and crushed his thigh; he crawled away under a bush, but was found and taken to Razadarit’s camp. There he repelled Razadarit’s chivalrous advances and died during the night, uttering hatred with his last breath. He is now worshipped as the Minkyawswa spirit.
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At the news of his death, the Burmese Delta garrisons fled in panic, and the war soon came to an end, for men were weary. Minhkaung, broken-hearted at his brave son’s death, spent his declining years in piety; the Ari-gyi-do-ahnwe (descendants of the great Ari) frequented his palace and drank there, sometimes to such excess that they had to be carried back to their monasteries.
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He was succeeded by his son Thihathu (1422–26), who took his father’s queen Shin-Bo-me and was so fond of her that his first wife retired into religion. But during a raid on the Delta he did so much damage that the Talaing chief presented him with his sister Shinsawbu to buy him off; he brought her to Ava and crowned her queen consort in great state, so Shin-Bo-me had him assassinated. The court set up his nine-year-old son; Shin-Bo-me poisoned him and brought in a cousin of the royal house, Kalekyetaungnyo (1426–27), and when he was supplanted by a kinsman she married the kinsman Mohnyinthado (1427–40); this was her fifth crowned consort, but she died childless. Mohnyinthado’s reign was spent in striving, with tolerable success, to retain his throne against the principal fief-holders and the Shān states of Hsipaw and Yawnghwe; Hsipaw once drove him out of his palace for eight months, withdrawing only on payment of a large sum. It was in his reign that the first European wandered into Burma—Nicolo de’ Conti, a merchant of Venice; Conti visited Tenasserim, Mrohaung and Ava. His note¹ is brief, but its references to the white elephant, to tattooing the thighs, and to what he imagined was a prayer to the Trinity (the Buddhist invocation of the ‘Three Names of Refuge’), suggest that Burmese civilisation was then the same as in the nineteenth century.
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¹ Major, *India in the Fifteenth Century*.
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Mohnyinthado’s sons, Minrekyawswa (1440–43) and Narapati (1443–69), overran Kale and Mohnyin for a time, and captured the Maw Shān chief Thonganbwa when he was being hard pressed by Yünnan. Narapati refused to surrender him and in 1445 drove off the Yünnan levies at Kaungton in the Bhamo district. But when in 1446 they appeared in strength before Ava, he yielded, Thonganbwa committed suicide, so only his dead body could be given up; the Chinese removed the intestines, dried the body in the sun and at the fire, thrust an iron spit through it and took it away².
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² Hmannan, Vol. ii, p. 97; Parker, *Burma, relations with China*, p. 44, and ‘Précis’; Pemberton, *Report on Eastern Frontier*, pp. 111–12.
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In 1451 they sent Narapati a golden seal as governor of Ava, and in 1454 they gave him some Shān territory in return for the surrender of a Mohnyin chief. At this time China enumerated in and near Burma eight states held by what she was pleased to consider her ‘comforters’ or governors, of which five can be identified—Ava, Kenghung, Hsenwi, Pegū, and the country round Viengchang.
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Narapati was succeeded by his son Thihathura (1469–81), who fought Toungoo, Pegū, Prome and Yawnghwe. In 1474 he and his queen made their hair into a broom, studded the handle with gems and sent it to sweep the floor of the Temple of the Tooth at Kandy in Ceylon¹. In 1472 he asked China to give him Mohnyin. China warned Mohnyin not to obstruct the road between China and Burma, but she would not give his territory to Ava as he had done nothing to merit eviction. Mohnyin remained on good terms with the Chinese frontier eunuch, presenting him with a jewelled girdle.
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¹ Religious missions with Ceylon are also mentioned in 1430 and 1456. The Tooth had been at Kandy since 1286. Gerson da Cunha, 'Memoir of the History of the Tooth Relic of Ceylon' in *Journal of the Bombay branch of the Royal Asiatic Society*, 1875, gives the history of the Tooth. The silver gilt caskets in which it now rests are not unlike a Burmese pagoda in shape; the metal of which they are made and the gems which encrust them are largely Burmese.
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Jewels also helped the expansion of Momeik, the ruby mine state; founded in 1238, the town was part of Hsenwi but in 1420 it received thirteen villages as a reward for helping Yünnan to raid Chiengmai. In 1465 its chieftainess Nang-han-lung sent ruby tribute separately from Hsenwi and her present of jewels completely won over the frontier eunuch. She even tried to ally herself with Annam. She seized most of Hsenwi, and when China remonstrated, she said: 'Momeik is the baby elephant which has outgrown the mother elephant Hsenwi and can never enter the womb again,' and as, in addition to talking, she presented more rubies to the enquiring officers, they reported sympathetically on her case and she was left in possession.
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Conceivably the continuance of Chinese interest in Burma is due to the fact that after Kubla Khan's dynasty (1206–1368) had passed away, China lost control of the route across Asia to Europe. She had to look for other outlets, and the trade route down the Irrawaddy was perhaps one of them². Chinese porcelain³ of the fifteenth century had been found in the bed of the Bassein river near Negrais, and it is recorded⁴ that in 1450 the chief of Ava gave to a favourite 'the Chinese customs revenue,' probably Yünnan frontier tolls.
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² For Chinese sea trade, see Chau Ju-kua; Mayer's 'Chinese Explorations of the Indian Ocean during the Fifteenth Century' in *China Review*, Vol. iii; Rockhill, 'Trade of China with the Coast of the Indian Ocean during the Fifteenth Century' in *T'oung Pao*, 1914, 1915.
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³ *Report of the Superintendent, Archaeological Survey, Burma, 1915*, p. 35.
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⁴ *Hmannan*, Vol. ii, p. 99.
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Hitherto writing had been in Pali and Sanskrit but in this age vernacular literature makes its appearance. Its rise exposes the inadequacy of our material—pagoda inscriptions and court chronicles which, in their present form, are not even contemporary.
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Away from the track of the chiefs and their rabble, people were probably happy enough, and in many a monastery life must have been calm and beautiful. As is usual in secluded countries, Burmese literature is narrow in range and, though quite voluminous according to mediaeval standards, small in quantity. It shows little development and no improvement has been made on the earliest poets. The prose consists largely of translations and paraphrases from scripture stories. The verse is more original and includes minor poetry of a high order but the condensation of its style and the obscurity of its dialect militate against its having a wide appeal. The usually accepted view, that the following are the first vernacular writers, is probably correct, but the finish of their style indicates that the vernacular had been practised for some generations previously. The earliest writers are three monks, Shin Uttamagyaw, Shin Thilawuntha, and Shin Maharattathara. Shin Uttamagyaw, the author of *Tawla*, a celebrated poem, was a valued counsellor in the Ava palace. He was born on the same day as Shin Thilawuntha (1453–1520) and together they entered a monastery school at Taungdwingyi, Magwe district. Shin Thilawuntha was expelled for writing *Paramiganpyo*, as the monk considered poetry sinful; he continued writing in a fine monastery built for him at Ava by the chief, Minhkaung (1401–22); *Yazawingyaw*, the earliest chronicle extant, is his; it is a disappointing work, for instead of recording what went on round him—it would have been an invaluable picture—he merely reproduced scriptural traditions. Shin Maharattathara (1468–1529), a descendant of the Thihathu, the Shān Brother, wrote *Koganpyo* and other poems. Probably it is in this period that Yaweshinhtwe lived; she was a maid of honour and wrote verse on the 55 styles of hairdressing used by maids of honour in the Ava palace, styles some of which are still in popular use.
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Thihathura was succeeded by his son Minhkaung (1481–1502), who, hearing that Bimbisara, the king of Buddha’s period, had raised his son to the throne as joint king, decided to follow the precedent, gave his son the white umbrella, and shared the throne with him. He was continually attacked by Hanthawaddy and Prome in the south, and by the Shāns above Shwebo in the north. When his vassal of Toungoo was assassinated, he recognised the assassin as king, sending him the white umbrella, an act which the 1829 chroniclers¹ cite as an instance of statesmanship.
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¹ *Hmannan*, Vol. ii, pp. 127, 185.
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He was succeeded by his younger son Shwenankyawshin (1502– 27), as the elder son, the joint king, had died. Shwenankyawshin already had a wife whose sister was consort to the dead joint king; yet now, on coming to the throne, it was not his own wife, but the joint king's widow, who became his chief queen, as she was already part of the regalia. His life was attempted by kinsmen who fled to Toungoo. He thereupon gave his daughter in marriage to Minkyinyo of Toungoo with the villages from Kyaukse to Toungoo as dowry; he was giving his daughter to the harbourer of his assassins, and in giving away the rice area of Kyaukse he was giving away his crown. But he could not help himself—Prome and Salin were in revolt, Mohnyin was attacking the Shwebo border, and his own brothers were in the field against him. In 1527 Mohnyin encamped under the walls of Ava, the Shāns in the Ava garrison deserted to him, and Shwenankyawshin fell fighting on his elephant. The population fled in large numbers to Toungoo.
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Mohnyin set up his son Thohanbwa (1527–43) as king in Ava. Thohanbwa said: 'Burmese pagodas have nothing to do with religion. They are simply treasure chambers,' and proceeded to plunder such as were in reach. Probably, as in 1756 and 1885, the monks led the people in resistance; he said: 'Monks surround themselves with followers and could rebel if they liked. They ought to be killed'; in 1540 at Taungbalu, just outside Ava, he covered a field with huts, slaughtered buffaloes, cows, pigs and fowls and invited the monks to feast. When they were all in the huts, he surrounded them with his braves and massacred them to the number of 360. The survivors fled to Toungoo. He then seized the manuscripts in the monasteries and made bonfires of them. Finally he was assassinated by one of his Burmese ministers who thereupon, though of royal blood, retired into a monastery rather than take the throne.
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It therefore passed to Hsipaw, who ruled as Hkonmaing (1543–46). He joined six other *sawbwas* in the attack on Prome and was succeeded by his son Mobye Narapati (1546–52), who, weary of attacks from Mohnyin, fled to Bayinmaung, leaving Ava to its last *sawbwa*, Sithukyawhtin (1552–55), a nominee of Mohnyin.
v3.c29.s3.58
Indeed for two and a half centuries the ruler of Ava had been *sawbwa* in all but name; yet there was this difference between Ava and the other Shān states, that whereas they were so wild as to leave not even a record, the tradition of the Burmese palace gave Ava a veneer of civilisation, and her numerous monasteries contained monks who, if not learned, were at least literate; and to them it is due that though the lamp of civilisation flickered and burnt low, it never went out.