MRAUK-U (1433-1785 AD)
Narinjara News
9/9/1988
The Portuguese Jesuit, Father A. Farrinha, SJ, who travelled to Mrauk-U in 1639, wrote Mrauk-U, called Arakan by the many foreigners who visited it, occupies a unique site. Situated in low land within a series of parallel ranges it commands both the Kaladan and Le-mro valleys and has access to the two main rivers, and therefore the Bay of Bengal, by both land and water.
After Min Saw Mun''s return, the country remained tributary to the Bengal Sultanate for a hundred years. The kings, though Buddhists, used Mohammedan titles in addition to their own names, some issuing coins bearing the kalima, the Muslim declaration of faith, in Persian script. Min Saw Mun''s brother, All Khan, managed to occupy the Bengali coastal town of Ramu and his son Ba Saw Pru, also known as Kalimah Shah, is said to have occupied Chittagong.
The twelfth king of the line, Min Bin, who ruled from 1531 to 1553 saw Arakan reach the height of its power. Two factors assisted him in this: the arrival of the Portuguese and civil war in Bengal.
In the sixteenth century the Portuguese were the world''s finest mariners. They arrived in the Bay of Bengal seeking to convert the heathen to Catholicism, and in doing so to promote trading opportunities. The Arakanese saw that by granting territorial concessions and trade openings, they could benefit through the Portuguese mastery of seamanship and their modern knowledge of arms and fortification. Min Bin thus turned Mrauk-U into the strongest fortified city of the Bay of Bengal, employing Portuguese to lay out his walls and moats and to forge and mount his cannon. He appointed them as military officers to train and equip a mercenary army of many races, and built, with their aid, a large fleet manned with his own men. It was during his reign that the Mrauk-U architectural style, drawing on Burmese, Mon and Bengali prototypes, developed. The Rakhaing navy became the scourge of the Bay of Bengal, taking slaves from up and down the coast as well as trading rice for luxury products for its aristocracy. The Portuguese recorded that the navy comprised three hundred and fifty vessels. Ships coming from the Bay of Bengal usually approached via the Mayu River. There was a customs checkpoint at Kwede, at the beginning of the river of that name which joins the Mayu with the Kaladan. Upriver were trading posts for the produce of the region, cotton goods and rice.
That Mrauk-U controlled the economy of the Kaladan and Le-mro valleys and their hinterlands can be seen not only in the widely scattered remains of religious buildings and Buddha images of the period but also in signs of occupancy of other centres essential for trade and the defence of the city. In 1630 the Portuguese traveller Sebastian Manrique found a massive image of the Buddha at the head of a pass guarding the land route to Bengal. Punnakvun, on the left bank of the Kaladan River, was strategically placed to control access by water to Mrauk-U, and was the site of its naval base. The Urittaung pagoda stands on a low, but steep and rocky hill opposite Punnyakyun. To the west of the pagoda are two large and several smaller tanks. The ground here is strewn with earthenware shards indicating a long period of settlement.
Meanwhile, in Bengal, the Mughals had arrived. The emperor Humayan conquered the Sultanate of Gaur, thus initiating a long period of civil war. Min Bin took advantage of this opportunity and occupied east Bengal with a combined fleet and army movement. The province remained a vassal of Arakan for the next one hundred and twenty years, till 1666. Its administration was left in the hands of twelve local rajas, who paid an annual tribute to the Arakanese king''s viceroy at Chittagong.
From the west, Min Bin was threatened by the powerful Burmese king ''Tabinshweti, who had already conquered the Mon country and was making war against the Thais at Ayuthia. Tabinshweti invaded Arakan in 1546-7 with the help of his Portuguese mercenaries and Mon levies. When the Burmese penetrated the eastern defences of the city, Min Bin opened the sluices of his great reservoirs and halted their advance. The Arakanese chronicles tell us that the Burmese, unable to make headway, accepted the intercession of the Buddhist monks. The opposing leaders met, had amicable discussions and the Burmese returned home.
The Portuguese Jesuit Sebastian Manrique, describing a similar procession before the coronation of King Sanda-thudhamma wrote The Nobles and the other men of rank gather at the palace whence, amongst music of all kinds, a huge elephant emerged, richly caparisoned, with his ivory tusks adorned with rings of gold and jewels. He carried on his back a howdah made of silver. It was open on all four sides except for curtains of green and gold silver veiling. Inside it was a tray of gold set with precious stones of immense value, which bore the royal order containing the proclamation of the coronation. Just in front, before the howdah, sat the Chique, or chief-justice at the Court, clothed in white silver cloth covered with plaques of gold. In front of him was the elephant-driver or cornaca in his usual place. He was dressed in red damask and carried in his hand the accustomed implement with which that land vessel is guided, in his instance of the finest gold. He was followed in due order by thirty-two war elephants, dressed in silken cloths and ornamented with gold, bearing the usual uncovered howdahs on their backs, made of wood but covered with silver plates. They carried huge silver bells around their necks and had rings of this same metal on their tusks. Each elephant had four silken banners of various colours fastened to the howdah which trembled in the light breeze and acted as flapping fans for their heated bodies.
When, in the east, the Mughal Emperor Akbar consolidated his hold on central and western Bengal, Min Bin''s successor Raza-gri protected his eastern frontier with the aid of a menacing group of Portuguese slavers and adventurers settled near Chittagong, to whom he gave trade concessions.
In 1595 the Arakanese besieged and conquered the Mon capital of Pegu, deporting 3,000 households, and taking back a white elephant and a daughter of the fallen king, bronze cannon and the thirty bronze images which the Burmese king Bayin-naung had earlier seized when he conquered Ayuthia. They left in charge Felipe de Britoy Nicote, one of their Portuguese mercenaries. For a short period Arakan extended from Dacca to Moulmein, a narrow coastal strip some thousand miles long.
But the causes of Arakan''s greatness were also the causes of its downfall. The thousands of Mughal, Burmese, Mon, Siamese and Portuguese mercenaries and prisoners of war did not bear a strong allegiance to the king. With mercenary support a pretender, Narapati, came to the throne in 1638, and Arakan''s power began to decline. The influence of the Portuguese also waned as the Dutch gained commercial advantage in the Bay of Bengal. King Sanda-thudamma temporarily restored the country''s glory by allowing the Dutch to settle at Mrauk-U. Wanting to strike at Catholicism in Ceylon, the European newcomers facilitated the sending of Arakanese monks there to revive the Buddhist ordination rites which had been in decline under the Portuguese.
Father Sebastian Manrique recorded that ......the city of Arracan according to general opinion must have contained one hundred and sixty thousand Inhabitants, excluding foreign merchants, of whom there was a great influx owing to the large number of-ship trading with this port from Bengala, Musulipattam,Tenasserim, Martaban,Achem and Jacatara. There were some other foreigners, too, some being merchants and some soldiers, the latter being enlisted oil salaries, and were, as 1 have said, Portuguese, Pegus, Burmese and Mogors .Besides these there were many Christians of Japanese, Bengal and other nationalities.
Meanwhile, in India, Shah Shuja, the Mughal pretender who had been provincial viceroy in Bengal, was defeated by his brother Aurangzeb who became Emperor at Delhi. Shah Shuja sought refuge at the Arakanese court, where King Sandathudhamma is said to have lusted not only after his immense treasure but also his daughter. Shuja in desperation attempted to overthrow the city, but was defeated and executed along with his family. In retaliation the Mughals broke the power of the Arakanese in east Bengal, enslaving many who had been slavers and inducing the Portuguese to change their allegiance.
Many of Shuja''s Indian followers are said to have remained in Arakan, where they were employed as archers of the guard and proceeded to murder and set up kings at will. Mrauk-U''s decline continued for a century. The country was beset with civil war and by a series of natural disasters such as awesome earthquakes, although the Arakanese continued to raid the Bengal coast as late as the middle of the eighteenth century. As soon as the kings of Burma regained their power under the Alaungpaya dynasty, the Peguan territories were lost and Arakan''s southern borders were withdrawn to Cape Negrais.
After Sanda-thudhamma Arakan survived as a polity only because it had no aggressive neighbour. The Moghuls had ceased to be an expanding power, and Burma was becoming preoccupied with the British. The power of the last of the many kings of this period could extend only a few miles beyond the walls of Mrauk-U. It came to an end in 1784 when the Burmese king Bodawpaya invaded and removed the protector of the country, the Mahamuni image, to his capital at Amarapura. Two hundred thousand Arakanese are said to have fled to India. These events laid the seeds for the first Anglo-Burmese war, fought in Arakan in 1825. The conquerors found the old city of Mrauk-U pestilential to its troops, and removed them to a small fishing village at the mouth of the Kaladan River, which today remains the capital of Rakhaing State of Sittwe.
Source: Narinjara News - www.narinjara.com
Title: MRAUK-U (1433-1785 AD)
Author: Narinjara News
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Date: 9/9/1988
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