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50-542: Thaton is the Burmese name of Sathuim (သဓီု) in Mon , which in turn is from Sudhammapura ( သုဓမ္မပူရ ) in Pali , after Sudharma, the moot hall of the gods. This name has Buddhist symbolism: according to the 4th-century Buddhavaṃsa , this was the name of the city where the Śobhita Buddha was born, as well as the name of his father, and "Sudhammavati" was also the name of the city where

100-535: A prestige language even after the fall of the Mon kingdom of Thaton to Pagan in 1057. King Kyansittha of Pagan (r. 1084–1113) admired Mon culture and the Mon language was patronized. Kyansittha left many inscriptions in Mon. During this period, the Myazedi inscription , which contains identical inscriptions of a story in Pali , Pyu , Mon and Burmese on the four sides, was carved. However, after Kyansittha's death, usage of

150-473: A Mon dialect in Thailand found that in some syllabic environments, words with a breathy voice vowel are significantly lower in pitch than similar words with a clear vowel counterpart. While difference in pitch in certain environments was found to be significant, there are no minimal pairs that are distinguished solely by pitch. The contrastive mechanism is the vowel phonation. In the examples below, breathy voice

200-626: A community of monks together with the Tipiṭaka and established the religion in Arimaddanapura, otherwise called Pugāma", without saying where the monks or texts came from; in another part, the inscriptions refer to the decline of Thaton during the reign of a king Manohor, without mentioning any sort of conquest. These two parts were then conflated, according to Aung-Thwin, into a single narrative of conquest in 18th-century chronicles and then repeated by 19th-century colonial scholars. Aung-Thwin interprets

250-586: A conquest of Thaton, which would be unusual because it would have been directly on the route to Mergui. The earliest text to mention something like the conquest of Thaton is the Zambu Kungya , written by Wun Zin Min Yaza , who served as a minister under the Ava-period kings Mingyi Swasawke and Mingaung I in the late 1300s and early 1400s. The only surviving part of this is an 1825 copy, although some of its content

300-633: A good preservation" of the Zambu . The Kalyani Inscriptions of 1479, which are relatively close in date to the Zambu Kungya , are often cited to illustrate the conquest of Thaton, However, Aung-Thwin writes that the Kalyani Inscriptions contain no direct reference to this event. Instead, they refer to two completely separate things: in one part, the Pali version of the inscription says simply that Anawrahta "took

350-720: A language closely related to Mon, called Nyah Kur . They are descendants of the Mon-speaking Dvaravati kingdom. Mon has three primary dialects in Burma, coming from the various regions the Mon inhabit. They are the Central (areas surrounding Mottama and Mawlamyine ), Bago , and Ye dialects. All are mutually intelligible. Ethnologue lists Mon dialects as Martaban-Moulmein (Central Mon, Mon Te), Pegu (Mon Tang, Northern Mon), and Ye (Mon Nya, Southern Mon), with high mutual intelligibility among them. Thai Mon has some differences from

400-515: A meter tall and carved with panels depicting of the life of Gautama Buddha and floral designs at the top. Their date is highly uncertain — stylistically similar sema found in Thailand are associated with the Dvaravati culture and dated to the 6th through 9th centuries, but the Kalyani sema also have their own distinct forms that have been tentatively associated with Mon migrations from Haripuñjaya in

450-550: A meter tall, depicting the god Vishnu reclining on the serpent Ananta Shesha . Three lotus stems are depicted as coming out of Vishnu's navel, and smaller figures of Vishnu, Brahma , and Shiva are depicted sitting on them. (Normally, there would only be one lotus and deity coming out of Vishnu's navel.) The exact find spots for these three reliefs was not recorded, so their function is unknown. They were likely intended for local faithful, indicating an "eclectic religious milieu" at first-millennium Thaton. All three were destroyed during

500-435: A palace has partially been excavated, at the center of the site. Part of the city walls also remain. The walled area of Thaton is mostly rectangular in shape, roughly measuring 2010 m from north to south and 1290 m from east to west. The walls aren't perfectly rectangular, though — the northeast and southeast corners each have a few rounded segments that serve to "draw water off from streams flowing down from peaks on

550-401: A reddish-yellow soil which is rich in iron . At Thaton, this is found as a "clay layer" about 10 cm below the ground surface. Historically, laterite was widely used as a building material in southern Myanmar, and today, it is also mined extensively for iron in the area north of Thaton. Silting has resulted in the coastline moving 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) away from Thaton, which is now

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600-586: A sleepy town on the rail line from Bago to Mawlamyine (Moulmein). Thaton was the capital of the Thaton Kingdom , a Mon Kingdom which ruled present day Lower Burma between the 4th and 11th centuries. Like the Burmans and the Thais , some modern Mons have tried to identify their ethnicity and, specifically this kingdom at Thaton, with the semi-historical kingdom of Suwarnabhumi ("The Golden Land"); today, this claim

650-565: A small proportion (estimated to range between 60,000 and 80,000) speak Mon, due to Thaification and the assimilation of Mons into mainstream Thai society. Mon speakers in Thailand are largely concentrated in Ko Kret . The remaining contingent of Thai Mon speakers are located in the provinces of Samut Sakhon , Samut Songkhram , Nakhon Pathom , as well the western provinces bordering Myanmar ( Kanchanaburi , Phetchaburi , Prachuap Khiri Khan , and Ratchaburi ). A small ethnic group in Thailand speak

700-876: Is an Austroasiatic language spoken by the Mon people . Mon, like the related Khmer language , but unlike most languages in mainland Southeast Asia , is not tonal. The Mon language is a recognised indigenous language in Myanmar as well as a recognised indigenous language of Thailand . Mon was classified as a "vulnerable" language in UNESCO 's 2010 Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger . The Mon language has faced assimilative pressures in both Myanmar and Thailand, where many individuals of Mon descent are now monolingual in Burmese or Thai respectively. In 2007, Mon speakers were estimated to number between 1800,000 and 2 million. In Myanmar,

750-691: Is contested by many different ethnicities in south-east Asia , and contradicted by scholars . In the kingdom of Dvaravati , Thaton was an important seaport on the Gulf of Martaban , for trade with India and Sri Lanka . Shin Arahan , also called Dhammadassi , a monk born in Thaton and raised and educated in Nakhon Pathom , an old capital of the Mon kingdom of Dvaravadi, now in Thailand , took Theravada Buddhism north to

800-550: Is marked with under-diaeresis. Mon verbs do not inflect for person. Tense is shown through particles. Some verbs have a morphological causative, which is most frequently a /pə-/ prefix (Pan Hla 1989:29): Mon nouns do not inflect for number. That is, they do not have separate forms for singular and plural: sɔt pakaw apple mo̤a one me̤a CL {sɔt pakaw} mo̤a me̤a apple one CL 'one apple' sɔt pakaw apple ba two me̤a CL {sɔt pakaw} ba me̤a apple two CL 'two apples' Adjectives follow

850-420: Is more characteristic of later times than of Pagan times), Aung-Thwin says the inscription is likely from a later period. (Even among scholars who are proponents of the idea that Thaton was a major capital at this time period, the 1067 inscription is also rejected for the same reasons, and they say it could be no earlier than the 1500s.) The earliest dated inscriptions found near Thaton (but not mentioning it) are

900-750: Is perched on a hilltop east of the town. Thaton is home to the U Pho Thi Library , which houses an extensive collection of palm-leaf manuscripts , at the Saddhammajotikārāma Monastery. Thaton is home to Computer University (Thaton) , which offers five-year bachelor's degree programs in computer science and computer technology. It is also the home of Thaton Institute of Agriculture . Mon language The Mon language ( / ˈ m oʊ n / , listen ; Mon: ဘာသာမန် [pʰesa mɑn] ; Mon-Thai: ဘာသာမည် [ pʰiəsa moʊn ]; Burmese : မွန်ဘာသာစကား listen ; Thai : ภาษามอญ listen ; formerly known as Peguan and Talaing )

950-423: Is the usual Mon form of the name. Thaton is not mentioned before this, although other inscriptions from Bagan and Ava monarchs do mention places farther south. Then in 1486, the name Sudhammapura appears in three Mon inscriptions. There is one inscription purportedly dating to 1067 records the building of a temple by a king Manuho of Thaton, but based on linguistic analysis (for example, the spelling of certain words

1000-602: The Kalyani Ordination Hall (Kalyani Sima) outside Bago, the inscriptions commemorate the reformation of Burmese Buddhism in Ceylon 's Mahavihara tradition between 1476 and 1479. The inscriptions are the most important sources on religious contacts between Burma and Sri Lanka. King Dhammazedi, a former monk, proclaimed in the inscriptions that Buddhism in Ramanya (Lower Burma) was in decline as sectarianism had developed and

1050-632: The Second World War when they were kept in the University of Yangon 's library. Another relief found at Thaton is a 1.2 m-tall depiction of Shiva sitting down, with his bull Nandi shown below his right leg and a "buffalo demon" below his left knee. There is also a set of sema , or boundary stones, at the Kalyani Thein ordination hall near the Shweyazan stupa. The Kalyani sema are each over

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1100-496: The Sittaung River in the north to Myeik (Mergui) and Kawthaung in the south, remains a traditional stronghold of the Mon language. However, in this region, Burmese is favored in urban areas, such as Mawlamyine , the capital of Mon State. In recent years, usage of Mon has declined in Myanmar, especially among the younger generation. While Thailand is home to a sizable Mon population due to historical waves of migration, only

1150-474: The Sujāta Buddha "held his first assembly of monks". The name of Thaton probably originated as the formal Pali name "Sudhamma", which then became vernacular Mon form "Sadhuim", which is in turn pronounced "Thaton" in Burmese. Thaton is located on a "fanlike" area at the foot of an elongated mountain spur, with the coast to the west. There is a significant slope within the city, from 43 m above sea level at

1200-443: The 12th and 13th centuries. Myint Aung's excavation in the 1970s did not produce any radiocarbon dating, so the exact date of the site is uncertain. According to Moore and San Win, repeated renovations and additions to pilgrimage sites has made detecting first-millennium remains "extremely difficult". However, as mentioned above, they identify the fingermarked bricks as evidence of first-millennium occupation at Thaton. The origins of

1250-536: The 19th century, in addition to concomitant economic and political instability in Upper Burma (e.g., increased tax burdens to the Burmese crown, British rice production incentives, etc.) also accelerated the migration of Burmese speakers from Upper Burma into Lower Burma. The Mon language has influenced subtle grammatical differences between the varieties of Burmese spoken in Lower and Upper Burma. In Lower Burmese varieties,

1300-486: The Burmese dialects of Mon, but they are mutually intelligible. The Thai varieties of Mon are considered "severely endangered." Unlike the surrounding Burmese and Thai languages, Mon is not a tonal language . As in many Mon–Khmer languages, Mon uses a vowel-phonation or vowel- register system in which the quality of voice in pronouncing the vowel is phonemic. There are two registers in Mon: One study involving speakers of

1350-418: The Burmese kingdom of Bagan . In 1057, King Anawrahta of Bagan conquered Thaton. However, Michael Aung-Thwin , has disputed the entire traditional narrative of a "Thaton Kingdom" and its conquest by Anawrahta. No contemporary inscriptions refer to Thaton or its conquest by Anawrahta, and the full version of the conquest story does not appear in later chronicles until U Kala 's Mahayazawingyi , written in

1400-828: The Kalyani Inscriptions as a way of legitimizing Dhammazedi's religious reform to more closely follow what he saw as a more "orthodox" form of Theravada Buddhism of the Mahavihara tradition. Thus, the story of Thaton's decline under Manohor was meant to "illustrate what happened when Buddhist kings allowed the religion to decay". It also "invented the tradition of an 'earlier' Thaton" that had practiced an earlier, more "pure" version of Buddhism before being corrupted, so that his own religious reforms could appeal to an even older tradition and overcome opposition from "conservative forces in Lower Burma" who were following an allegedly corrupted strain of Buddhism. The Jinakālamālī , written in Pali in

1450-606: The Kyaik Talan and Kyaik Te inscriptions, which were made in 1098 under Kyanzittha . The two inscriptions were found at the Kyaik Talan and Kyaik Te stupas in Ayetthema , on the northwest side of Kelasa Mountain . The inscriptions record the renovation of the stupas under Kyanzittha. An urban site at Thaton was excavated between 1975 and 1977 under U Myint Aung. The site is small, with an area of about 1,500 square yards and "at most three major stupas". A large structure that may have been

1500-719: The Mahavihara tradition as King Sithu II had done. The inscriptions were so named because the sangha of Lower Burma were re-ordained on the Kalyani river (near modern Colombo ). The language of the first three stones is Pali , inscribed using the Burmese script . The rest of the stones are Mon translation. The stones are 7 feet (2.1 m) high, 4 feet 2 inches (1.27 m) wide, and 1-foot-3-inch (0.38 m) thick. They are inscribed on both faces, with 70 lines of text to each face, three letters to an inch (2.54 cm). Some of

1550-504: The Mon language declined among the Bamar and the Burmese language began to replace Mon and Pyu as a lingua franca . Mon inscriptions from Dvaravati 's ruins also litter Thailand . However it is not clear if the inhabitants were Mon, a mix of Mon and Malay or Khmer. Later inscriptions and kingdoms like Lavo were subservient to the Khmer Empire . After the fall of Pagan, Mon again became

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1600-457: The Orders had grown farther and farther away from their original purity; that he emulated great model Buddhist kings Anawrahta of Pagan , Sithu II of Pagan and Parakramabahu I of Ceylon who, according to him, kept the religion pure and reformed the sangha in the "orthodox" brand of Theravada Buddhism that he was attempting to do; and that he had sent the sangha to Ceylon to be re-ordained in

1650-424: The conquest story by Anawrahta in 1057 are unclear and "apparently does not go back to any single source". According to Michael Aung-Thwin, the story may have originated from Bagan's conquest of Lower Burma during this period. Anawrahta's southward expansion is well-documented in contemporary inscriptions, with about 28 votive tablets recording his activity as far south as Mergui . But no Bagan-era inscription mentions

1700-408: The conquest story is U Kala 's Mahayazawingyi , written sometime between 1712 and 1720. It is not clear where U Kala got this story from — none of the sources he is said to have used mention the conquest of Thaton. He may have been using older sources that are now lost, or he may have synthesized or embellished it based on the sources he was using. In any case, U Kala's version proved influential: it

1750-411: The early 1500s by an author from Chiang Mai , is the first work to mention Anawrahta's conquest of Manohara's kingdom. It appears to treat the story as "an illustration of Buddhist principles": a weak ruler like Manohara, who fails to properly uphold Buddhist ideals, would inevitably be defeated by a strong ruler who does. The "first chronicle of Burma with the most comprehensive and complete version" of

1800-535: The early 1700s. Aung-Thwin also disputes the existence of Thaton itself during this time period, writing that "it is not even certain that the area... was not under the ocean" during the first millennium CE, since the shoreline likely would have been much farther inland at the time. The first undisputed mention of Thaton is in the 1479 Kalyani Inscriptions , which were written in the Middle Mon language and attributed to Dhammazedi . This inscription uses "Sudhuim", which

1850-702: The elementary level. This system has been recognized as a model for mother-tongue education in the Burmese national education system, because it enables children taught in the Mon language to integrate into the mainstream Burmese education system at higher education levels. In 2013, it was announced that the Mawlamyine -based Thanlwin Times would begin to carry news in the Mon language, becoming Myanmar's first Mon language publication since 1962. Southern Myanmar (comprising Mon State , Kayin State , and Tanintharyi Region ), from

1900-411: The escarpment". The overall layout resembles the 1st-millennium site of Halin , which also had a rectangular shape. The lower layers of Thaton's city walls contain numerous fingermarked bricks, which according to Elizabeth Moore are characteristic of first-millennium architectural remains over a wide area including not just Myanmar but also parts of India and Thailand. As a result, Moore and San Win date

1950-666: The lingua franca of the Hanthawaddy Kingdom (1287–1539) in present-day Lower Myanmar , which remained a predominantly Mon-speaking region until the 1800s, by which point, the Burmese language had expanded its reach from its traditional heartland in Upper Burma into Lower Burma . The region's language shift from Mon to Burmese has been ascribed to a combination of population displacement, intermarriage, and voluntary changes in self-identification among increasingly Mon–Burmese bilingual populations in throughout Lower Burma. The shift

2000-576: The majority of Mon speakers live in Southern Myanmar, especially Mon State , followed by Tanintharyi Region and Kayin State . Mon is an important language in Burmese history. Until the 12th century, it was the lingua franca of the Irrawaddy valley —not only in the Mon kingdoms of the lower Irrawaddy but also of the upriver Pagan Kingdom of the Bamar people . Mon, especially written Mon, continued to be

2050-501: The northeast corner to 9 m in the southwest. Just south of Thaton, the mountain range opens up and there is a valley 20 km long offering passage to Hpa-an and eventually over the Three Pagodas Pass to central Thailand. Besides the mountain range, there are also eight smaller hills that form a low arc around the city. Seven of these are located on the west and south, which conveniently provide protection against flooding on

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2100-454: The noun (Pan Hla p. 24): prɛ̤a woman ce beautiful prɛ̤a ce woman beautiful 'beautiful woman' Demonstratives follow the noun: ŋoa day nɔʔ Kalyani Inscriptions The Kalyani Inscriptions ( Burmese : ကလျာဏီကျောက်စာ ), located in Bago , Myanmar, are the stone inscriptions erected by King Dhammazedi of Hanthawaddy Pegu between 1476 and 1479. Located at

2150-447: The side that is otherwise exposed to the sea. The eighth hill, Neimindara, is on the northeast. It is thought to have been a key strategic point in pre-cannon times, and "the troops that held this hill controlled the city". On the west side of Thaton is a fault line , which the railway follows. To the south are the Gawt and Waba streams. Southern Myanmar has extensive deposits of laterite ,

2200-556: The verb ပေး ("to give") is colloquially used as a permissive causative marker, like in other Southeast Asian languages, but unlike in other Tibeto-Burman languages. This usage is hardly employed in Upper Burmese varieties, and is considered a sub-standard construct. In 1972, the New Mon State Party (NMSP) established a Mon national school system, which uses Mon as a medium of instruction , in rebel-controlled areas. The system

2250-415: The walls of Thaton to the first millennium as well. Remains of city gates have been found on the north and south walls, but none have been found on the east or west walls. Three carved reliefs of Hindu deities found at Thaton in the 19th century have been variously stylistically dated to the 9th/10th or 11th centuries. One depicts Shiva and Parvati . The other two are reddish sandstone reliefs, each over

2300-552: Was also incorporated into the Maniyadanabon , which was written in the late 1700s. This version (the one incorporated into the Maniyadanabon ) says nothing about a conquest of Thaton; it only says that in 1054 "the king, ministers, officers, people, and monks of Thaton carried the three Pitakas of the scriptures" to Bagan. Although the version in the Maniyadanabon was only written in 1781, Aung-Thwin writes that it "is very likely

2350-754: Was certainly accelerated by the fall of the Mon-speaking Restored Hanthawaddy Kingdom in 1757. Following the fall of Pegu (now Bago), many Mon-speaking refugees fled and resettled in what is now modern-day Thailand. By 1830, an estimated 90% of the population in the Lower Burma self-identified as Burmese-speaking Bamars; huge swaths of former Mon-speaking areas, from the Irrawaddy Delta upriver, spanning Bassein (now Pathein) and Rangoon (now Yangon) to Tharrawaddy, Toungoo, Prome (now Pyay) and Henzada (now Hinthada), were now Burmese-speaking. Great Britain's gradual annexation of Burma throughout

2400-408: Was expanded throughout Mon State following a ceasefire with the central government in 1995. Mon State now operates a multi-track education system, with schools either using Mon as the primary medium of instruction (called Mon national schools) offering modules on the Mon language in addition to the government curriculum (called "mixed schools"). In 2015, Mon language courses were launched state-wide at

2450-534: Was the first scholar to specifically cite the Kalyani Inscriptions as a source for the conquest of Thaton (probably because he interpreted it as confirming what was by his time "common knowledge"). Second, he was the first one to write that Shin Arahan was born at Thaton, which was repeated in the Hmannan . Thaton's primary Buddhist pagoda is Shwesayan Pagoda , which is near the town's main Myoma Market. Myathabeik Pagoda

2500-628: Was used as a source for both the Yazawin Thit and especially the Hmannan Maha Yazawindawgyi , which "depended heavily on his work". The Yazawin Thit , written by Twinthin Taikwun Maha Sithu in the late 1700s, introduces a couple of details not found in previous or contemporary sources. First, Twinthin — a well-educated scholar who was already familiar with Old Burmese inscriptions —

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