{ We refer mainly Min-Yu-Wei’s article “ Thilawa, Myan-Pyi-Thar-9” published in The Ma-hay-thi (modern Burmese for Indian Sanskrit word Mahisi) magazine some time in 10 to 15 years ago. Though we cannot remember exact issue of the magazine the scanned copy in Burmese language is provided.” But the pages are old and blur. We will improve it later.}
Thi-la-wa was the prince of Yamethin
or the Lord of the Yamethin town. He was one of the famous and
remarkable Burmese nationals, and the Raj. When the King of Ava –Tha-do-min-pya
passed away, the ministers of the Ava Palace had meeting and unanimously decided
that Prince Thilawa is the right prince to be Ava King. Then the ministers
request him to take over Ava Throne as:
“O Lord, Mingyi Tha-do-min-pya had already passed away. You are the
best prince to take the Ava Throne. Please you do take over the Ava Throne”.
Then Prince Thi-la-wa or Si-l-va Raja
replied.
“O beloved friends, I would not like to talk two, three words a day. I
do not like to be a King. “
Then all the ministers were very surprised and thought that Thilawa
was the Lord and Raj of the town and region(desa). He was wise, martial
ability, had military strategy and also especially good in tactical warfare . But he still refused to
take the throne and not willing to be King. All ministers were astonished.
Then Thilawa continued,
“O beloved friends, Ask the Lord of Ah-Myint town or Prince of
Ah-Myint. He, the Prince of Ah-Myint or
Ah-Myint raj was the brother-in-law of the king and of the Royal lineage. He
has knowledge, wisdom and was also generous. He was also mentally and physically
fit and had military skills. Thus far you do ask him.”
All the ministers were glad to hear from Prince Thi-la-wa and
requested Ah-Myint Prince to take the throne. He was pleased and accepted to
take over the throne happily. The Ah-Myint prince was actually
Min-Gyi-Swa-Sor-Ke. He (Ah-Myint Prince) was the son of, Tha-yet Prince Shin
Saw. He (Ah-Myint Prince) first served at Sagaing Sin-phyu-shin. Due to his
ability and qualifications, he was awarded first to be governor of the Ta-loke
town and that of Yamethin and during the reign of Tha-do-min-pya he was the Duke or governor of Ah-Myint Town.
He married to the
younger sister of of SwarSorke.
In return SwarSorke al married the younger sister of Thilawa, Khameemee .Therefore they are double brothers-in-law. He became the king of Ava
unintentionally. Thus far there is old saying “ma-yor-bel-sor-ke min phyit).
Evidently the following is the excerpt from G.E Harvey.
“In 1371
the sawbwas of Kale in the Upper Chindwin district and Mohnyin in Katha
district each applied to Minkyiswasawkw asking him to help oust the other and
promising to become tributary. The wise minister Wunzinminyaza said “Temporise
and let them fight it out till they are exhausted and then you can get both.”
The king did so, and secure a nominal supremacy,…… “
Thilawa and Swa-sor-ke [Swasawke ]are also related. Thi-la-wa’s wife, Princess
Saw Pale or Saw Pa-Lae (Saw Pearl) was the younger
sister of Swa-sor-ke. And then ThiLaWa’s younger sister Princess Kha-Mei-Mee
was the Queen of Right-hall of Min-Gyi Swa-Sor-Ke. So, they are also double brothers-in-law.
Then 24 years after Swa-Sor-Ke took the throne, sometime in Burmese
Era 754 (ca 1393 AD) Mohnyin Tho-Han-Bwa rebelled Ava, raided Mye-du. To defend
and fight the rebellion, the King(swa-saw-ke) ordered and sent by land army of Thein-kha-yar
Saw Hnaung, In-yee-Tu-Rin and Nga-Shwe, the native of Legaing-Nga-Kha-yar. He, himself
led naval forces and sailed up to Tagaung(the famous city of the Abhiraj). But
they could not stop the rebels and the latter advanced to Sagaing and fought
fierce fighting and putting the town ablaze. Then the King sailed down and put
up defensive measure at the Capital Ava. He then summoned reinforcement from
Prince of Towngoo, Taung-twin, yamethin,Nyaung-yan, pauk-pyaing and Pin-le.
Then, Thilawa made battle plan and fought the rebels. He march his
forces to Ava and crossed over to Sagaing from Shwe-Kyet-Yet and marched behind
enemy’s line by the place called “Hti-foung-kar” to avoid the guard post of the
enemies. When they reached Sagaing he ordered his younger brother Thihathura to
command an elephant platoon,Thein-kha-yar Saw Hnaung to lead left-wing Calvary,
In-Yee-Tu-Rim lead Right-Wing Calvary and Nga-kha-yar thar Nga Shwe and Ma-yar-yon
(Wife-trust) Ti-ta-la infantry platoons. He, himself, ride the military elephant
called “Saw-Ye-Swar” (meaning braved and Aggressive Saw) and fought along-side his
brother Thihathura. Thilawa fought bravely, brilliantly, decisive batlle and
inflicts the enmiies. The impact caused the rebels heavily and the corpses of
enemy were laid up along the field from Sagaing till Ywar-thit (probably now
Ywar-thit-kyi).
Harvey mentioned that
“……., but in 1373 Mohnyin raided the frontier at
Myedu in Shwebo district and the had so much trouble that he sent an embassy to
Yunnan in 1383. In 1393 Mohnyin came
again in spite of the homily; the lord of Legaing in Minbu district marched to
Tagaung against him but was driven headlong into Sagaing town while the Shans
burnt the houses and monasteries outside the walls until Thilawa of Yamethin
came up and broke them, pursuing them as far as Shangon (20 miles North West of
Sagaing town) where he heaped their corpses in piles.”
Conclusion.
Based on the historical evidences and facts we can conclude as below.
1(a)
Swasawke was probably good in navy but not
good in military strategy and tactical warfare, because he was confined in
Arakan court and studied the management, law and judic (Dhamma-that) and etc.
He might be good in management, judicial and governance.
2(b)
Thi-La-wa was good in military strategy, tactical warfare and battle plan, a brilliant
military commander but he was not ambitious. He and his brother Thihathura were
good to lead military elephants. This is the fact which comes in our mind that
Thilawa might be of the Mon race. Back to our previous story about Mon in
Yamethin, he might as well be the relative of King Manoha. And it is fairly
safe to confirm that Yamethin was, then, the (Mon-Burman town in Middle Burma.
And the name was derived from RAMEN or
MON.
(c) The other two Calvary commanders Thein-Kha-Yar
Saw Hnaung and In-yee-Tu-Rin are of the Burman or Mramma race that are better
in Calvary because they are always associated with the horses. And probably
they are also the descendants of Abhiras.
Hence, we would like to emphasize that Mon and Burman are living in ancient Burma. Although majority of Mon Tribe living in lower Burma, there are places like Yamethin where Mon can be found. And the places may also be established by Mon in colabouration with Burman and also other races. referring to our previous post there are the Pagodas built by Niece and Nephew of Mon (RAMEN) King Manuha (ca 1044-1077, 11th Century AD) and maintained by probably their discendants till present day (21st Century AD). The pagodas are established and maintained for over 900 years. These P,agoda should heritage site in Yamethin, our native, hometown.
References.
1 1) Ma-hay-thi magazine. (attached scanned copy)
2 2) Harvey G. E.(1925), “History of Burma”
The ethononym of the Mon people in olden days were different from present name Mon, written Man (မန္). In the pre-Angkor Khmer inscriptions, the Mons were called RAMAN (ရမည္), RMMAN AND RAMANYA (ရမည ) IN THE 6TH-7TH CENTURIES ad. In 1021 AD, the Javanese named them as RMEN(ရမန္ ) and REMEN . The great Myanmar king Kyansittha referred them as RMEN (ရမန္) in his Palace Mon inscriptions at Pagan inscribed on huge stomnes in the 11th century A.D., when Myanmars were known as MIRMA (မရမၼာ). {Dr Nai Pan Hla}
Refer above Yamethin is the most probably ancient Mon - Py or Pru or Tritsu mixed development of cultural civilization. Refer the following picture of Min Nan Thu pagoda which we suppose is Mon Pagoda. It is situated near Kyee Ni Kan(Lake) or Copper Lake. When we were young in early 1960's to late 1960's (1962 to 1968) we used to go swimming there and eat fried Tohu (in Burmese Tot-Hu Kyaw) with local chilli sauce. It should be explore more to find if there are any ancient Mon or Pyu inscriptions and other evidences such as artifects.
h Please click on the following text Kyee Ni Kan and click on the arrow indicating geo-position of the pagoda and the lake and also click on the link of shwethinmaung555 at the bottom.
Kyee Ni Kan (Copper Lake)
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/72484683
updated on 3rd October 2015 at 19:30 Hours Singapore Time by Raja Saraka @ WZMR
http://www.maphill.com/burma/mandalay/yamethin/detailed-maps/road-map/updated on 3rd October 2015 at 19:30 Hours Singapore Time by Raja Saraka @ WZMR
ထီးလႈိင္ ဆိုရြာ ( ေဒသ နယ္ ေျမ) က ရမည္းသင္း ျမိဳ ့ နယ္ ထဲ မွာ ရိွ တာ ကို လည္း သတိ ႀကရ ပါ မည္။
ေနာက္ တခု က ရမည္းသင္းသား ေတြ က ဗိသနိုး ၊ ေတာင္တြင္းႀကီး နတ္ေမာက္ ေဒသ ႏွင့္ ဆူဝဏၰာဘူမီ ေခၚ သုဝဏၰဘူမိ ေနျပည္ ေတာ ္က လာႀကတဲ့ မြန္ေတြ၊ ျပဴ (Pru) ေခၚ တရီဆူ (Tarisul or Tircul) လူမ ်ိဳး ေတြ ျဖစ္ တယ္ ဆို တာ သမိုင္း မွာ ေတြ ့ရ ပါ တယ္။
ဒီ လို မဟုတ္ မခံ သတၱိထူးရိွ ႀပ တဲ့ လူ ေတြ ျဖစ္ တယ္ ။
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