Myanmar - Thuwunna Bonmi (Ramanya) City State BC 603-1050 AD

The first identifiable civilization in Myanmar is that of the Mon. The Mon probably began migrating into the area in about 300 BC, and their first kingdom Suwarnabhumi, was founded around the port of Thaton in about 300 BC. The Mons of Pegu have not existing among them the slightest trace of any tradition of their having ever occupied any other locality than their present one.

The Burmans, who lie above them to the North, and who have preserved accounts more or less reliable of their first wanderings from the West, and of the tribes they encountered in their migration, make no mention of the Mons or Taleins until some time after their own occupation of the Upper Valley of the Irrawaddy. The Mon traditions represent themselves as having been a wild, uncivilised race at the time of the advent of Gaudama six centuries before the Christian era.

The name Mon seems to belong to the aboriginal, or rather the earlier settled, race. The name Talaing, now universally employed, even by the people themselves, seems a reminiscence of the name Kalinga, or Telingana. This is a much disputed point. Phayre accepted it, or propounded it. Forchhammer rejected it with Teutonic grobheit: "All deductions, historical or etymological, from the resemblance . . . must necessarily be void ab initio." He will have it that the name dates from Alaungpaya's definitive conquest of the Mon, and means the downtrodden (which it really does in Mon), and was intended to mean it. The name Talaing, he says, is found in no inscriptions or palm leaves, and was not known before Alaungpaya's triumph in the middle of the eighteenth century. But Mr E.H. Parker found the word used in the Tangyuch annals in the year 1603, when "Siam and Teleng during consecutive years attacked Burma."

The Mon-Khmer preceded the Tibeto-Burmans in the occupation of Burma. They were once very powerful and far spread. They are now broken up, and widely separated, and their speech has been superseded, or is in course of being superseded, by others. Neither the Mon nor the Khmer, still less the Annamese or the Wa or the Palaungs, have any traditions of their first home, but they seem to have come from the north. There is a hill-encompassed hilly tract in the Khasi and Jyntia Hills where the Khassi of Central Assam still speak the tongue, and are able to communicate with, and receive staccato ideas from, the Hkamuk of the Middle Mekhong. But the Mon of the Pegu district was for years proscribed by the conquering Burmese; the Khmer of Cambodia nearly shared the same fate at the hands of the Siamese; and in Annam and Tongking the speech is being crushed by the desperate load of Chinese.

It seems probable that the Mon-Khmer languages once covered the whole of Farther India, from the Irrawaddy to the Gulf of Tongking, and extended north at any rate to the modern province of Assam. The Munda languages at the present day stretch right across the centre of Continental India, from Murshidabad on the east to Nimar on the west. Resemblances between the two forms of speech have long been pointed out, and there are further resemblances in the Nancaori dialect of the Nicobars and the vocabularies of the Malacca neighborhood. There have been those who would connect them, and imagine a common tongue spoken over the greater part of the Indian continent, over the whole of Indo-China, and even in the East Indian Archipelago and Australia. There is a substratum in common; but the Mon-Khmer languages are monosyllabic, the tongue of the Kols and of the Nancaoris is polysyllabic, and the order of words in a sentence is different. Nevertheless, there is a substratum in common. What this is, whether Mon-Khmer or Munda, or a language different from both, remains to be discovered. The study of Wa and Rumai, of Hkamuk and Sedang and Ba-hnar, may reveal something.

The Mon located in the center and lower part of the country today. Historically, Mon was a great kingdom in the Myanmar area long before the arrival of the Burman. The tracts about the mouths of the Irawadi, Sitang, and Salwin were anciently called Savarna Bhumi or Ramanya, and were inhabited by the Mon [aka Talaing]. The language of the Talaing is monosyllabic and tonic, with a sprinkling of polysyllabic words, and had a common origin with those of Cambodia and Annam; and some suggested that the Assamese, Mon, and Cambodians moved down the IndoChinese Peninsula about the same time, and occupied contiguous tracts of country until the Siamese intruded themselves between the members of the Mon Annam family. It has been suggested that the Mon language is connected with that of the Munda or Kolarian tribe iu Chutia Nagpur, and a few words in both languages are more or less alike.

The Burmese call them Talaing. The Siamese appellation is Ming-mon. Established in the delta region of Ayeyarwaddy, the Mons had for their capital Thaton (Ramanya Desha), east of Motetamet Gulf. The ancient capital of the Talaing was also called Thadung, Thatung, or Satung. Its ruins are still to be seen between the mouths of the Sitang and Salwin rivers, and the colonists seem to have been of Hindu origin, possibly arriving several centuries before the Christian era.

Before the establishment of the first Burman kingdom, Pagan, in Burma, the Mons both in Thailand and Burma were politically organized as the confederacy of Ramanya, and their kingdoms were stable until the 8th century. They seem to have extended their empire to Pegu and Arakan in the early centuries of the Christian era, and to have held sway for sixteen centuries. Part of thie population dwell on the delta of the Irawadi, Mon being the name used by themselves for the native populations of Pegu, Moulmein, Amherst, and Martaban; but their neighbors call them Talaing, and the same names, Mon or Talaing, are given to the vernacular language of Pegu. The alphabet, like that of the T'hay and Burmese, is of Indian origin, being essentially that of the Pali form of speech; and, like all alphabets of this kind, its language embodies a Buddhist literature. The Mon language is quite unintelligible to a Burmese or Siamese.

There is one great difference between the annals of the Taking and Burman races. The Taking national historians do not pretend to account for the origin of their race. While, like all other nations, their earliest traditions are largely mixed, with fable, they do not extend these back into a mythical antiquity, and go no further back than the era of Gaudama, that is, about 600 years before Christ. They have no tradition of ever having occupied other than their present localities, or of any changes or migrations of their race.

The Telingana wanderers went not only to Burma, but also to Cambodia. They civilised both countries, and both races have traditions of the foundation of the first city. Two princes of Thubinga, in the country of Karanaka (Karnata), in Kalinga (Telingana), left the continent, and came to live on the Peguan seashore, near the present town of Thaton. They found a naga-ma's (she-dragon = pretty maiden) eggs, out of which two boys were hatched. One died; the other grew up to be a prince, and founded the present town of Thaton, under the name of Thihayaza, on the coast. This was possibly around 600 BC. The town is now 8 miles in an air-line from the sea. The first Buddhist teachers came after the Third Great Council, in 241 BC. The old dynasty still ruled in Thaton.

As in all Buddhist countries Gaudama is alleged to have personally visited and preached in them, he is said to have so done in Thatone. But there are two versions of the legend. According to one this visit took place in the reign of Theeharaza himself, according to the other in that of his son Theereemathawka. This will give two dates to select from for the founding of Thatone. The first account places the visit of Gaudama in the thirty-seventh year before he attained neikban, and as Theeharaza is said to have died in the same year, having reigned sixty years, this will give BC 603 as the date of the foundation of the city. If, on the other hand, we accept King Theereemathawka as the contemporary of Gaudama, the date of Theeharaza's reign and of the founding of Thatone will be thrown back some sixty or eighty years. It is hardly to be expected to do more than approximately fix the commencement of the history of Thatone and of the Talaing people between 600 and 700 BC.

The ancient Mon Chronicles give a list of fifty-nine kings of Pegu, who reigned at Suvarna Bhumi or Thaton. The first King of Thaton, Thiha Raja, came from India, and died in 543 BC, the year in which Gaudama attained Buddhahood; and the last of the long line, Maniiha, was conquered and carried off as a prisoner to Pagan by Anawratazaw [Anoarahta], in 1057 AD [about 1050 AD] when he came to conquer and destroy the Mon kingdom at Thaton.