ARAKAN'S ASCENT DURING THE MRAUK U PERIOD

EDITED BY SUNAIT CHUTARANOND & CHRISBAKER

RECALLING LOCAL  PASTS

Arakan is the name of a former Buddhist kingdom of Burma lying on the
eastern Bay of Bengal. In 1785 , it was conquered by the Burmese king
Bodawphaya (1782-1819) and forty years later, it was one of the two
provinces occupied by the troops of the British East India Company under the
terms of the Treaty of Yandabo (1826) which brought to an end the First
Anglo-Burmese War. It is now a state of the Union of Myanmar with
approximately four million people and its name is variously spelt as Rakhaing,
Rakhine or, according  to the modern Burmese pronounciation, Yakhine.
Indian poets writing in Persian or Bengali called the country Roshang,
Sinhalese chroniclers knew it as Rakhangapura and the Siamese chroniclers
as Yakhai. Arakan forms the major part of Burma's northwestern coast and
borders on modern Bangladesh's Chittagong district. The Arakan Yoma
range, running in a north-south direction, forms a natural barriers of steep
mountains covered with dense jungle that separates Arakan's coastal plains
from the Irrawaddy valley. Among Arakan's multi-ethnic population, the
Arakanese are by far the biggest group. They are called Magh, an injurious
term of uncertain origin, used in Bengal to refer to the Arakanese pirates.

                 The ruins of several ancient cities were found in the valleys of the
kaladam and Lemro Rivers in central Arakan. They point to an early Hindu-
Buddhist culture and date back to the first millennium AD. The best known of
these old cities is Vesli. Its kings reigned between the fourth and the eighth
century A.D. and belong to a Candra dynasty closely related to southeast
Bengal's Harikela Candra kings. In this early period, which partly predates the
arrival of the so called Arakanese, Arakan most likely had a mixed population
of Indo-Aryan and Tibeto-Burman ethnicity.

                 This chapter deals with the political history of the Arakanese
kingdom during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuriese which form the
major part of the so-called Mrauk-U period (1430-1785). Mrauk-U is the name
of the capital and was known during the colonial period as Mro-haung (or
Myo-haung, “old city”), a name still commonly found on maps. The city
boasted an extraordinary system of fortifications that resisted two major
Burmese invasions in the sixteenth century. Until today the city and its
surroundings are covered with the remains of dozens of Buddhist pagodas
and temples which give evidence of Arakan's predominating Theravada
Buddhists alike, this statue, now in the city of Mandalay, is a true copy of Lord
Buddha who allegedly visited Arakan in the reign of King Candrasuriya (fourth
century A.D.?). Later Arakan became home to a growing Muslim community.
A majority of traders plying the seas of the Indian Ocean were Muslim, and
Muslim missionaries contributed to the spread of the cult of the “pirs”
(Muslims, saints) along the coasts of Arakan (Temple 1925; Yegar 1976).
More Muslims were found among the thousands of inhabitants of Bengal who
were forcibly deported to Arakan. Those who became royal slaves were
settled as farmers on the king's lands. Among them there were also artists,
craftsmen, soldiers, and highly educated people who left an account of their
stay in Arakan during the heyday of the kingdom in the seventeenth century
describe it as a fertile and populous country. Rice grew abundantly in the
valleys of the Kaladan, Lemro, and Mayu Rivers and was exported to places
as far away as Aceh and Java. Modern historians agree that at the end of the
sixteenth century Arakan developed into a thriving commercial entrepot that
had its place in the trade network of the Bay of Bengal (Lieberman 1980, 204;
Subrahmanyam 1997, 208).

                 The first section of this chapter gives a critical appreciation of

historical writing on Arakan. The country has remained until recently a poorly
studied area of Southeast Asia and a brief look at some of the available
material may be a welcome guide for the interested reader.

                 The next three sections describle the political and military history of
Arakan from  the fifteenth century to the second half of the seventeenth, and
pay attention to Arakan's local and wider socio-economic context as context
as construed in contemporary studies on the Indian Ocean and Southeast
Asia. Arakan had its own autonomous history that should be understood in its
proper geographic, political, and cultural context. G. E. Harvey's statement the
“Arakan has a separate history” that is “the same in kind” as Burma's (Harvay
1967, 137) is challenged by the fact that its history does not fit into the
conceptual framework of dynastic cycles that has been outlined for
neighbouring Burma. A consistent approach to Arakan's history must
moreover transgress the all too well established and rigorously defined
cultural areas of study and research, such as South Asia and South Asia and
Southeast Asia.

                 Starting from the sixteenth century, the kings of Arakan

transformed their marginal principality into a regional power which held its
own on the battlefield against much more resourceful neighbours, notably the
Mughal governors of Bengal and the kings of Burma. The Maruk-U kings at
times took advantage of a combination of economic and political
opportunities, but their success depended above all on the ways material and
human resources were gained , improved , managed , and maintained. The
final section of this chapter explores the causes of Arakan's political success
in the context of the country's cultural and institutional background and itsr
connection to the maritime world.

                 A study of the periphery that unravels major aspects of political,

cultural, and economic autonomy is not meant to offer a better perception of
varying degrees of political centralization. The model of centralization is
particularly apt for the writing of national histories. The concept of
centralization is thus ideologically tainted because it gives priority to major
ethnic groups and predominant cultural practices. It discards somewhat the
relevance of the periphery and its particularities as these tend to be absorbed
or standardized in the course of time. Autonomous history asserts that the
periphery is interesting, relevant, and subject to further study. It is a challenge
to centres and calls for an examination of the diversity of local conditions. It is
not merely a shift of perspectives which enlarges our view of marginal spaces.
The periphery occasionally becomes a “centre” itself once historians identify
its links in networks of cultural and economic relationships. The most
profitable aspect of autonomous history, as I understand it, lies in the diversity
of these networks that reflect successive layers of historical experience that
transgress all too well established political and ethnic borders and allow a
more subtle and richer discourse on the past..

ARAKAN'S PAST IN HISTORICAL WRITING

The state of historical research on Arakan is best illustrated by the fact that
there is neither a printed collection of epigraphic sources of the Mrauk-U 
period nor any catalogue or detailed description of religious monuments,
temples, pagodas, or mosques. The most readily available sources for the
study of Arakan's history are Arakanese historiographical compilations which
contain texts belonging to different literary genres (poetry, annals, narratives,
eulogies). Some of these texts were printed, but most cannot be found in
Western libraries. The only chronicle that presents a coherent narratives of
Arakanese history is the Na Mi rajawan, of which only a few manuscript
copies exist. Burmese, Persian, and Tripura chronicles as well as Bengali
literary sources also contribute to our knowledge on Arakan. The travel
accounts of the Austrian diplomat Georg Christoph Fernberger (1999), the
Augustinian monk Sebastialo Manrique (1927), and the Dutch physician
Wouter Schouten (1727) provide invaluable information on Arakan between
the late sixteenth century and the middle of the seventeenth. Ongoing
research in Portuguese and Dutch archives is now considerably enlarging our
perception of the Arakanese monarchy as seen through the eyes of outsiders
and the integration of the trade network of the Bay of Bengal (Guedes 1994;
Subrahmanyam 1997). The growing interest in Arakan during the last ten
years has resulted in a number of conference, articles, and even doctoral
dissertations. Researchers on this hitherto little explored area have faced two
major problems. One has been the painstaking task of collecting source
materials in a country where, for a long time, a scholar could not freely travel.
Even searching for references on Arakan in Western archives can be like
looking for a needle in a haystack, as a Portuguese colleague observed. The
second problem arises from the history books and research articles that date
mostly from the British colonial period. The following paragraphs provide a
critical review of some of these older texts.

There is a strong contrast between the general perception of Arakan's history

by English, Burmese, and Arakanese authors on the one hand, and the
interpretation of Arakan's rise on the fringes of Eastern Bengal by Indian and
especially Bengali authors on the other. The reason for this lies both in the
particular coverage of events by different indigenous sources.

English or Burmese/Arakanese authors based their accounts on Arakanese

and Burmese palm leaf manuscripts and the few available Western
references. They showed little interest in Arakan was seen as a minor, not
particularly interesting kingdom on the periphery of the greater and more
impressive Burmese empire. Besides a limited survey done in the 1880s
(Forchhammer 1891), the ruins of its major sixteenth and seventeenth-century
temples remained hidden under a dense jungle vegetation and were never
systematically explored. Bengali historians have paid little attention to
Arakan's particular place in the Burmese context. They explored Bengali and
Persian language sources and used textbook histories of Burma only to keep
track of the chronology of kings and political events. They emphasized the
magnificence of those Arakanese kings who patronized Bengali literature at
the court of Mrauk-U, but their portrait of the Arakanese, scornfully called
Maghs, was generally negative. Focusing on the devastating raids against
southeastern Bengal, they concluded that piracy and slave-raiding were the
major occupations carried out by the Arakanese to enrich their king. As a
result, the picture of Arakan's history available to a modern reader appears
either biased or incomplete.

A readable through outdated account of Arakan's history is found in Arthur

P.Phayre's History of Burma (1883).Phayre was one of the first British
governors of Arakan and developed a special interest in the country. His
narrative summarizes the above mentioned chronicle written in the early
1840s at the express demand of phayre himself by a local scholar called Na
Mi G.E. Harvey's well-known History of Burma dealt with Arakan in the context
of Burma's general history. As a consequence, Harvey disregarded Arakan's
own political development, focusing on a few episodes relating to Arakan's
expansion into Lower Burma and Bengal. D.G.E Hall (1936) explored the
printed sources (notably the Dagregister ) of the Dutch VOC and made an
interesting study of Arakan's exports of rice and slaves to Batavia. In his
History of Burma (1967), Maung Htin Aung strongly claimed the Burmese
identity of the sixteenth-century Arakanese (“the Arakanese remained
nationalistic and proud of their Burmese origin”). Arakan gets recognition as
one among other Burmese kingdoms competing for the control of power in
Lower Burma, but the author pays virtually no attention to historical
developments in Arakan itself. The histories by Harvey and Maung Htin Aung
focus above all on Burma's major political centres, such as Pagan, Ava, or
Pegu. Though his chapter on Arakan is less detailed than Phayre's , we
should mention that Harvey consulted Arakanese manuscript sources (and
seemingly had a broader access to then Phayre). Maung Htin Aung does not
refer to any Arakanese sources at all.

Readers of the Journal of the Burma Research Society may be familiar with
more than a dozen articles that Maurice Collis and two Arakanese authors,
San Baw U and San Shwe Bu, published on diverse topics of Arakanese
history between 1913 and 1933 (e.g. San Shwe Bu 1918, 1919, 1921; San
Baw U 1921; Collis 1923a, 1923b, 1923c, 1925). They contain valuable
contributions to what the authors called “legendary history” and the oral
traditions that complement the historiographical tradition. Though Maurice
Collis was not a historian, he had a tremendous influence inside and outside
of Burma on what people came to think about Arakan and its kings. His
popular romance about Friar Sebastiao Manrique's stay in Mrauk-U during
Sirisudhammaraja's reign (The Land of the Great Image) was first published in
1943 and reprinted in Thailand just a few years ago. In his article “Arakan's
Place in the Civilisation of the Bay,” Collis (1925, 39-40) asserted without any
scientific rationale that Mrauk-U's civilization in the sixteenth and seventeenth
century was the result of turning away from a backward East and exposing
itself to a civilizing Muslim world. Not much more convincingly, Maung Htin
Aung explained that Arakan became a “worthy rival of Pegu” because it had
copied “Bayinnaung's enlightened policies with regard to commerce, religion
and culture.” Interestingly, Harvey is much less condescending about the “real
aptitudes” of the Arakanese who, he says, “were usually quite able to look
after themselves” and “in several respects less backward than the Burmese.”
Beside the cultural influences and complex relationships that Arakan
entertained with neighbouring counties, Harvey (1967, 138, 140, 146) notes
their competence on the sea, their use of coins, and the business-like attitude
of their seventeenth-century kings. This is a rare positive appreciation of
Arakanese kingship.

In the writings of Bengali historians (Bhattachaya 1927; Siddiq Khan 1936;

Habibullah 1945; abdul 1952; Ghosh 1960; Askari 1960), three major themes
are prominent: the attacks of Arakanese fleets and the slave raids against
south and southeast Bengal Muslim influence on the court of Arakan; and
finally, Arakan's control over the port of Chittagone. Most articles fail to
provide any socio-cultural, economic, or political background to get a
balanced view of Arakan's expansion, the economic importance of the slave
trade, and the complex  relations of Arakan with the Muslim world. Mauvli
Hamidullah Khan (1873) analyzed Arakanese policy as an “aggressive move
for territorial acquisition of the kings” who “took advantage of the internal
troubles and political complications following Akbar's nominal conquest of
Bengal to extend their authority over a large portion of southeastern Bengal”
(quoted by Ghosh 1960, 58). But most Bengali historians do not make a clear
difference between the wars that the Arakanese kings fought in southeast
Bengal to enlarge their territories to the north, on the one hand, and the slave
raids masterminded and organized by the Luso-Asian communities in the
Chittagong area with the help of Arakanese manpower, on the other . Atul
Chandra Roy (1972, 72-3) writes that “at the beginning of Jahangir's reign,
most of the strategic naval forts in Bengal were in the possession of the
Bhuiyas [bharab bhuyan, independent landlords] and the Magh-Feringhi
pirates.” These naval forts were described as “depredations of the pirates,”
and Mughal expeditions are called “conquests.” The construction of naval
forts is hardly consistent with piracy. In Mirza Nathan's Baharistan i-Ghaybi , a
Mughal general's account of events in Bengal between 1608 and 1624, the
Maghs are referred to as “rebellious” and “accursed,” but never as pirates.
Nathan notes the numerical strength of the Arakanese (though his numbers
seem much inflated ) and explains that “the Raja of the Mags” who, in 1617,
after “repeatedly raiding Bhalwa” and suffering “defeat after defeat,” “busied
himself in repairing his fleet  and in organizing his army” (Nathan 1936,
1:404). Another seventeenth-century Muslim source is Shiab-ud-Din Talish's
Fathya i-Ibriyya which describes the Mughal conquest of Chittagong in 1666.
In Talish's opening paragraph (“The Rajah appointed the Feringhi pirates to
plunder Bengal and hence he did not send the Arracan fleet for this purpose”),
he refers to the change in Arakanese policy toward Bengal when ,
approximately in the 1630s, the Arakanese kings gave up their attempts at
conquering more land. But in Jamini M.Ghosh's Magh Raiders in Bengal , a
curious patchwork of quotations from primary and secondary sources, the
reader gets only a vague sense of the difference between piracy and
conquest. A feeling of Muslim superiority, seemingly shared by the historians
themselves , is perceptible in the characterization of the Arakanese. In the
authoritative History of Bengal (Dacca University), S.N. Bhattacharya thus
speaks of the “quaint features, manners and customs of these half civilized
Mongoloid hordes,” while Alamgir Serrajuddin thinks that the “superior culture”
of Bengal was a cultural challenge for the “primitive society” of the “turbulent,”
“tribal and backward” Arakanese people. The Bangladeshi scholar even
rejects the common argument that the adoption of Muslim titles betrayed a
manifestation of Muslim influence on the Arakanese court (Ghosh 1960, 58;
Serrajuddin 1986, 17-8).

B. Bhattachrya further emphasized Collis' argument of the civilizing influence

of Muslim India on Arakan and concluded that the tolerant Buddhist dynasty ”
(Bhattachaya 1927, 144). Phayre had stated, on his own interpretation of the
Na Mi rajawan , that the founder of the Mrauk-U dynasty, King Man Co Mwan,
“agreed to be tributary to the king of Bengal” after the sultan of Bengal's
presumed military support around 1426-28. This is a very debatable clain.”
Not a single Bengal source claims that a sultan of Bengal became the
overlord of Arakan and A.B.M. Habibullah could not find any “proofs of
Arakan's continued vassalage,” noting that Bengal after 1433 was not “in a
position to demand its fulfillment ” (Phayre 1883, 78; Habibullah 1945, 35).
Bengali historians praised the reigns of Sirisudhammaraja (1622-1638) and
Satuidhammaraja (1645-1638) when two famous Bengali poets, Dawlat  Qazi
and Al Awwal , were patronized at the Arakanese court, but this fact went
unnoticed by other authors.

After Burma's independence (1948), the political situation made Arakan an

isolated area and interest in the country was frustrated by severe restrictions
on travel. In the 1950s, Denise and Lucien Bernot did research in the
Chittagong Hill Tracts of former East Pakistan on the language and civilization
of the Marma (Arakanese migrated to southeast Bengal). Some twenty years
later, Pamela Gutman (1976) started her work on Arakan's Vesali art and
history. Over the last forty years, a small number of Arakanese writers, like
the monk Ashin Sakkinda, have published popular articles on Arakan's culture
in local magazines that have a very limited circulation and are practically
unknown abroad. U San Tha Aung, a dedicated amateur historian, had some
of his books on old Arakan, coins, and iconography translated into English
(e.g. San Tha Aung 1979). They became a reference for people looking for
information on Arakan beside the odd textbook history.

It was only in the 1990s that Arakan started to attract a winder interest from
scholars originally doing research on the Portuguese presence in the Bay of
Bengal or on the early Konbaung period. Indian historian Sanjay
Subrahmanyam (1990, 1993), in his remarkable work on the Portuguese
communities on the Coromandel coast and his overlapping interest in the
eastern coast of the Bay, followed G.Winius (1983) and vastly contributed to
our understanding of the Luso-Asia communities in southeast Bengal. Ana
Marques Guedes (1994) dug out new material in the Portuguese archives that
throws further light on Portuguese activities, and also enriches our perception
of power structures in the area. For the eventful period between 1580 and
1630, she interpreted the Portuguese presence in the eastern Bay of Bengal
as a link between two rival polities, Arakan and Lower Burma, but
underestimated the divisiveness of Luso-Asian society. At the University of
Michigan, Michael Charney (1993, 1994, 1997) shifted his perspective from
the Portuguese mercenaries to the Arakanese kings. Catherine Raymond
(1995), a French art historian, followed in the footsteps of the earth goddess
Vesantara and Arakan's relations with Sri Lanka. French anthropologist A. de
Mersan is currently doing extensive field research on Arakanese religious
practices. In the Dutch VOC archives in The Hague, Stephan van Galen
(1998) found first-hand accounts from VOC traders based in Mrauk-U which
contribute to our understanding of the slave trade and the importance of the
port of Chittagong. My own interest in Arakan began in 1984 while I was
working on the Burmese manuscript collection at the Biblotheque national in
Paris and has since focused on the history of the Mrauk-U period (Leider
1998c). Research on Arakan is still in its infancy, but it on longer evolves in
isolation. Arakanese students of history at the University of Yangon have also
contributed a small number of academic papers. Their research on indigenous
sources is likely to bear fruit once a greater flow of academic exchange takes
place. Hopefully the emergence of Arakanese studies in Myanmar will
generate a greater awareness of Arakan's autonomous existence as a former
Buddhist kingdom on the fringes of both South and Southeast Asia.

ARAKAN'S RISE AS A REGIONAL POWER: EARLY

SIXTEENTH-CENTURY FOUNDATIONS

The great period of the kingdom of Mrauk-U in terms of political ascendancy,

territorial expansion, and economic development coves about a hundred and
fifty years from King Man Pa (1531-1553) to king Candasudhammaraja (1652-
1684). This section outlines Arakan's situation up to the middle of the
sixteenth century, while the next section deals with the period of incessant
warfare and Arakanese expansion during the reigns of the Warrior Kings--
Man Phalaung (1571-1593), Man Raja-Kri (1593-1612), and Man Khamaung
(1612-1622). The fourth section focuses on the decades up to the early 1680s
when Arakan's kings profited from their local power status in a relatively stable
geopolitical environment.

                

When Man Pa took power in uncertain circumstances in 1531, he inherited a

kingdom that had already given proofs of its military abilities, its will to expand,
and its openness to trade. All the factors that played a crucial role during the
next decades were already persent: a sizable number of foreigners in
Arakan's armed forces; integration of regional commerce into the wider Indian
Ocean trading network; and an efficient defensive strategy against invaders.
Taking a look at the century that preceded  king Man Pa's access to power
helps us to understand how this marginal kingdom could become a local
power player.

                

At the beginning of the fifteenth century, Arakan was the victim of Mon and
Burmese expansionism, as both Pegu and Ava strove for control of the
country. The Mons could easily reach the southern part of the country around
Sandoway both by sea and land, while the Avan armies had to cross the hill
passes (using mainly the Am and Talak roads) to invade the plains of the
Kaladan and Lermo Rivers. According to the Burmese chronicler U Kala, King
Mingyismwasokay of Ava (1360-1401) installed an uncle on Arakan's throne
in 1373 who reigned there for seven years. The Arakanese genealogies do
not mention this Burmese appointee. They provide a confusing list of local
kings with short reigns thus giving proof of the unstable political situation in
the country at the end of the fourteenth century. In 1406, after spending
merely two years on the throne, a young king, Naramitlha, fled  a Burmese
invaseion and left the country for Bengal. He came back around 1428,
allegedly with the help of soldiers provided by the sultan of Bengal. He
adopted a new title (Man Co Mwan), and established himself at Mrauk-U
which remained Arakan's capital until the Burmese conquest in 1785. The Na
Mi rajawan reports oral traditions of a legendary character relating to the
refugee king's stay in Bengal. It is said, for example, that Naramitlha taught
the sultan of Bengal how to catch elephants. The chronicler even boasts that
thanks to Naramitlha's cleverness, Delhi was conquered by the sultan! But
other Arakanese sources are altogether silent on the subject of the king's
exile. No general conclusion on Arakan's relations with Bengal can be drawn
from such a narrative. Neither does it convey a clear idea on an early Muslim
presence in Arakan. Nonetheless, the fantastic story of King Naramitlha's
exile suggests the later chronicler perceived Arakan in this era as inferior to
the prestigious Bengal sultanate.

                

Barely anything is known about the political and social conditions is Arakan
during these years. The sources do not even mention who were the troops or
foreign governors the king had to confront when he returned from exile and
regained power in Laung Krak, the former capital. Man Co Mwan probably
controlled the Kaladan and Lemro valleys and eventually the island of
Ramree. The country was unified under the reign of his brother Man Khari
(better known by his adopted title Ali Khan, 1434-1458). Sandoway, which
had been for some decades under Mon control, was coerced into the
kingdom. Along the northeastern coastline, the king extended his power up to
Ramu. Under Bha Co Phru (1458-1481) and Dolya (1481-1491), the
Arakanese kingship was further strengthened. In 1454, king Man Khari met
King Narapati of Ava (1443-1469) and the watershed of the Arakan Yoma was
fixed as the border between the two considered themselves equals. Poetical
creation at the Arakanese court like the famous Rakhaing Minsami egyin may
have inspired Burmese poetry. The Burmese monk-poets Shin
Maharathasara and Shin Tejosara stayed for some years at the court of
Mrauk-U (Pe Maung Tin 1987, 53-4). Just like the courts of Ava and Pegu,
Mrauk-U turned to Sri Lanka to reform its sangha.

                

Any idea of a political ascendancy of Bengal over Arakan during the fifteenth
century is necessarily linked to the debt that King Man Co Mwan supposedly
incurred to the sultan of Bengal (for providing men to reconquer his throne).
But this assumption is not supported by a thorough analysis of the sources,
and it does not accord with the political situation in Bengal, especially in the
second half of the fifteenth analysis of the sources, and it does not accord
with the political situation in Bengal, especially in the second half of the
fifteenth century. Central power in the sultanate was weak and hence a
Bengali hegemony is improbable. While Arakan enjoyed political autonomy,
the cultural impact of the Bengal sultanate was weak and hence a Bengali
hegemony is improble. While Arakan enjoyed political autonomy, the cultural
impact of the Bengal sultanate was considerable.

                

The Arakanese kings adopted so-called Muslim titles and -if the identity of
some rare undated coins in Persian script could be confirmed - from the late
fifteenth century on, they had their coins minted according to the Bengal
model. Muslim traders from India came to Mrauk-U and Muslim preachers
spread their doctrine. Which Arakan's economy was based on the rice
production of its plains, the uninterrupted rivalry with the sultans of Bengal
and the Hindu kings of Tripura for the control of the port city of Chittagong
indicate competing commercial interests. Information about the ruby trade
from Ava over the Arakan Yoma to the Bay of Bengal and about Arakanese
rice exports dates only from a later period, but hints at Arakan's integration
into the trading network of the Bay of Bengal. The date of Arakan's first attack
on Chittagong during the Mrauk-U period cannot be fully ascertained.
Phayre's conjecture that the Arakanese controlled the city for fifty years after
1459 cannot be upheld, as Sultan Rukn-ud-Din Barbak Shah (1459-1474)
held the city around 1473 (Phayre 1883, 78). Neither does the short narrative
of the chronicles suggest any lasting occupation of the city (Habibullah 1945,
35; CL 1932, 2:33).

                

The political history of Arakan at the very end of the fifteenth century is
confusing and the dynastic succession between 1513 and 1531 largely a
mystery. Chroniclers paid no attention to these decades that were eclipsed by
the acclaimed splendour of King Man Pa's subsequent reign (1531-1553).
However, the king's openness to trade and their commitment to further
expansion in the northeast towards Chittagong clearly emerge (Pires 19 44,
228). Chittagong was one of the three most important ports of Bengal at the
beginning of the sixteenth century when the first Portuguese arrived in the
area. The anonymous chronicler of the 1521 official Portuguese mission to
Gaur describes Chittagong as a cosmopolitan city with a strong fortress where
rival group of merchants competed for influence (Bouchon and Thomaz
1988). Chittagong's position at the periphery of the sultanate, deprived of any
real hinterland, made it a tempting target for both the Arakanese and Tripura.
In 1513, king Dhanamanikya of Tripura conquered the city, but about two
years later, Arakanese troops (sent presumably by King Gajapati), seized the
city and held it until Nustat Khan, the son of the great Sultan Husayn Shah of
Bengal (1493-1519), retook it in 1516-17. According to the Portuguese
chronicler de Barros, the Arakanese king made a warm appeal to the first
Portuguese who arrived in Chittagong around 1516-17 to came to his
kingdom for trade. This invitation is confirmed by an undated royal letter from
around 1519 to the Portuguese authorities (Bouchon and Thomaz 1988).

                

No other reign has been as magnified by the Arakanese tradition as Man Pa's
and his actions have been extolled quite unlike those of his successors. Court
annals were probably written for the first time. The legal code (dhammasat)
was reformed and the brahmanic ritual “making” the king though an act of
ablution was revived (Tha Thwan Aung 1927, 45, 93-110). The legacy of this
reign is still visible in some of Mrauk-U's most remarkable stone constructions,
such as the Shit-taung Pagoda or the remains of  the inner palace walls
(whose exquisite shape was revealed by the 1997-98 excavations on the
palace site). The Dhanawati are-to-pum chronicle asserts that the king
conquered large parts of Bengal (up to Murshedabad) and married a daughter
of the “sultan” Delhi. The reason for the conquest, as given by this source,
throws some light on Man Pa's territorial claims and legitimizes the
aggression.

                

Man Pa asserted that his ancestor Man Co Mwan had given most of Bengal
(according to the chronicle) to the sultan's predecessors as a token of
gratitude for helping him to regain his throne, but this gratitude had to come to
an end and these lands had to be returned. We have no material proof that
Man Pa invaded Bengal at all. But we have good reason to believe that
around 1539-40 the Arakanese conquered Chittagong. They probably held
the city until the end of Man Pa's rule, facing the tremendous challenge of
controlling a cosmopolitan port with a bustling  population of traders and
soldiers of fortune. It is revealing that the Portuguese chronicler de Barros is
mute on events at Chittagong after 1539. An Arakanese inscription on a silver
plate dated 1542 proves the Arakanese presence in the city at that time
(Shore1790). The turbulent political situation in Bengal and India under the
reign of the Afghan Sher Khan (1539-1545) offered an undeniable opportunity
for the Arakanese to intervene in southeast Bengal and oust their Tripura
rivals. Basically the account of the chronicler makes sense and stresses the
king's ambitions, but large parts of the description of the Arakanese attack
against Bengal may be dismissed as gross embellishments.

                
In 1534, a Portuguese fleet went up the Kaladan and succeeded in pushing
the Arakanese back to Mrauk-U. The king reorganized his troops and finally
forced the attackers to retreat to the open sea (CL 1932, 2:49). As the attack
was not due to the official Portuguese authorities of Goa, it was likely a local
initiative of Portuguese settlers who made their presence increasingly felt in
Bengal and the Chittagong area. The way this attack is reported in the Na Mi
rajawan implies that it came as a surprise to the Arakanese. Later evidence
dating from the early seventeenth century suggests that the some Portuguese
may already have been allied to the Arakanese.

                

The Burmese invasion of 1546 was the first major test of the strength and
confidence that Arakan had found under King Man Pa. Obviously the
Arakanese anticipated a Burmese invaded the southern Arakanese province
of Sendoway in 1545, their land and sea forces converged on the Kaladan-
Lemro plains and Bayinnaung, then the leading commander of the Burmese
troops (and later a king himself), put the capital under siege. The Arakanese
used a system of dams and canals to flood the western and southeastern
areas near the capital. The town itself, lying amidst low-level hills covered by
dense vegetation, was shielded in the south by two lakes and partly
surrounded by walls connecting the hills (CL 1932, 2:46-8). The Arakanese
were probably not strong enough to push back the invaders, but the stalking
Burmese ran out of provisions, accepted the stalemate, and retreated. After a
short time, the Burmese troops also lost control over Sandoway where a
Burmese governor had been installed. The question whether the Burmese
actually supported an alternative candidate to the throne, as U Kala's
Burmese chronicle claims, cannot be answered satisfactorily because the
Arakanese sources do not provide any evidence (U Kala 1960). In 1580, three
decades later, the Burmese dismally failed in another attempt to conquer
Arakanese were not merely defending themselves. They had become
themselves aggressors and conquerors.

                

By the end of the sixteenth century, an increasing number of Muslim and

Portuguese traders from the Coromandel coast and Bengal were visiting
Mrauk-U. They bought rice, the major staple product for export, and Bengali
slaves, and provided the court with luxury items and cotton textiles from India.
An Arakanese source mentions the increasing number of ships arriving from
abroad. Rubies from Upper Burma and India cotton textiles were major
articles of the trans-Arakanese trade which connected Ava with the Bay of
Bengal (Guedes 1994, 201; Leider 1994; Blackmore 1985, 30). For its literary
name, Dhanawati, meaning “rich in grain”. The expansion of trade generated
even more wealth which ensured the strength of Arakan's rulers. The
mounting presence of foreigners (mercenaries, artists, and traders) of diverse
origins had a considerable impact as well. Indians, and later on, Portuguese,
contributed to technological transfer in the production and use of weaponry
(Pearson and DasGupta 1987; Parker 1988; Subrahmanyam 1993; Tak
Htwan Ni 1985) as well as the construction of stone temples and fortifications.
King Man Pa's reign was not only a period of burgeoning political expansion,
but also an epoch of flourishing artistic expression pursued by his son and
successor Man Tikkha (1553-1555). He acceded to the throne as the
strongest contestant in a power struggle and built the magnificent Ko-thaung
Pagoda, a masterpiece of sixteenth-century Arakanese architecture (Gutman
2001).

                

Between 1550 and 1580, Arakan's kings waged wars against the kingdom of
Tripura (who succeeded in controlling during the early 1560s) and against the
Muslim governors of Chittagong whose autonomy grew as the Bengal sultans
had to confront their political foes in the west. In 1567, the Mughal troops
conquered large parts of Bengal and put an end to the independent sultanate.
This event opened an entirely new period in the history of the whole area.
During the following decades, the Mughal governors confronted strong
resistance from the Hindu and Afghan (Muslim) landlords (called the bharah
bhuyan) who held most of east and south Bengal. In addition, the lack of any
strong central power opened the gates for the sixteenth and beginning of the
seventeenth centuries thus became the heyday of Arakan's expansion to the
northeast.

ARAKAN'S EXPANSION UNDER THE WARRIOR KINGS

(1578-1629)

The conquest of Chittagong by King Man Phalaung (1578-1593) around 1578,

and the attack of the Arakanese fleet on Dhaka by King Sirisudhammaraja in
1624, mark the major period of Arakan's territorial expansion. Whie military
successes and the architectural splendour under Man Pa were the outcome of
a century of slow growth, Man Phalaung established Arakan's regional power
status in less than twenty years by taking control of Chittagong and using the
royal fleet as an instrument of political hegemony over  the northeastern coast
of the Bay of Bengal. He resisted the Burmese invasion of 1580-81, crushed
the power of the tribal lords in the mountainous northeast, and eliminated
Tripura as a compertitor for Chittagong. At the end of the sixteenth century,
southern Tripura had to recognize Arakan's king as its overlord (Chowdhury
1997, 151). For eighty years Chittagong became a military and economic
cornerstone for the kingdom. Curiously, this domination was not specially
celebrated in the Arakanese chronicles. The reason could be twofold: on the
one hand, southeast Bengal was looked upon as an area which came
legitimately under Arakan's sway; on the other hand, there may not have been
one single dramatic conquest, but rather a progressive military and political
domination of the city. Parallel to the Arakanese political and military ascent,
the Luso-Asian community in Chittagong and its neighbourhood (their major
basis was Chittagong's suburb, Dianga) gained unprecedented strength.
Many Portuguese and their descendants entered the service of the Arakanese
and were richly paid for their efforts. The Arakanese chronicler celebrates the
reign of Man Phalaung as a time when religious life prospered, trade
flourished, and foreign rulers sent presents to the court.

                

Man Phalaung's regin has been unduly overshadowed by the even more
active reign of his son, King Man Raja-kri (1593-1612). In 1597-98, he
accepted an offer from the king of Toungoo (Taungngu) to join him in an
attack on Pegu, the capital of the already weakened Burmese empire. The
Arakanese sent a fleet that took part in the siege of the city. After the emperor
Nandabayin surrendered without a fight, the Arakanese king took home the
famous white elephant, a  daughter of the emperor, possibly some other
members of the royal household, and hundreds of war prisoners. When the
Siamese under King Naresuan invaded the ruined empire, the king of
Toungoo felt directly threatened, abandoned Pegu, and fortified himself in
Toungoo. The intervention of a fleet under the Arakanese crown price (the
future King Man Khamaung) saved Toungoo. The Arakanese cut off the lines
of supply of the Siamese troops who finally returned home empty-handed.
The Arakanese then asked for their share in the booty that the prince of
Toungoo had earlier taken to his home city. This was no mean issue if we
believe contemporary western descriptions which portray the events as the
pillaging of an amazing treasure (Guedes 1994, 221-2, 232). Jesuit sources
also say that the Arakanese king was furious when he heard that the prince of
Toungoo had assassinated the old emperor Nandabayin and immediately
ordered an expedition against Toungoo, mainly to collect what he could get
from the riches of Pegu (Guerreiro 1930, 14:47). In 1598, Goa instructed the
Portuguese trades of the Bay to keep away from Peguan ports, and the rubies
of Ava reached the Bay of Bengal over the trans-Arakanese road (Blackmore
1985, 30)

                

While the forces of Toungoo and Arakan may have been roughly equal,  the
Arakanese were in a better position to control the waterways. They occupied
Syriam, the key to Upper Burma's trade. The king of Arakan was thus in a
position to give a new lease of life to Lower Burma, which had been desolated
and depopulated by a decade of warfare.

                

At the Arakanese court, two factions were battling to gain control over the
trade of Syriam: a Muslim faction representing the interests of Masulipatam
traders, and a Portuguese faction which had to its credit the military help
given to the king over many years. The king saw greater opportunities trusting
the latter. Around 1600, king Man Raja-kri entrusted Syriam to one of his
Portuguese captions, Filipe de Brito. After his appointment, De Brito mainly
pursued his own interests. There was an Arakanese garrioson in Syriam, but
it was not strong enough to constrain De Brito and his entourage. In 1601, De
Brito went to Goa to seek official support for establishing a Portuguese
outpost under Goan protection. Which Portuguese trader came back to Syrian
(Guedes 1994, 128, fn. 37), a certain Salvador Ribeiro, who was in charge of
the port, was enmeshed in conflicts with a local Mon lord (the Binnya Dala)
whom he ultimately subdued (Mouzinho 1990). De Brito returned to Syriam in
June 1603, and began to transform the city into the centre of his own
principality. A stone walled fort took the place of the old wooden stockade.
Despite his obvious treason, he still tried to be on good terms with King Man
Raja-kri arguing that the Portuguese king's support was vital for defending the
northeastern border of Arakan againt the Mughal threat. He sweetened his
rhetotric with rich donations to the Mrauk-U court and ingratiated himself also
with the lords of Martaban and Toungoo (Guedes 1994, 133, 233).

                

Astonishing, the Arakanese king took a long time to react to events in Syriam.
It was only in 1605 that he renewed his alliance with Toungoo and sent an
expendition force to gain back control over Syriam and put an end to Fillipe de
Brito's sudden ascent. But the Arakanese crown prince was captured on the
river up to Pyay (Prome) by De Brito's men and the whole expendition failed.
De Brito either went himself to Mrauk-U (as an Arakanese source says) or
sent an embassy to negotiate peace. Finally the crown prince was set free. 
The Portuguese captain asked for one third of the customs revenues at
Chittagong, but he likely got no more than what U Kala's report of the events
suggests: a grudging recognition of his sovereignty over Syriam. Two years
later in 1607, the Arakanese tried once more to regain control of Syriam (Brito
1607). The Arakanese had to ask for peace terms and the Puge adventure of
the Arakanese king was over. Charney argues that 1599 was “the most
important year in Arakanese imperial history” as it brought Arakan “a decisive
victory over its ancient enemy (i.e. Puge).” But eight years later, the result of
the enormous investment in military efforts was nil.

                

At least during the first decade of Arakan's control over Chittagong the port
was administered by a local Muslim lord under the authority of a member of
the Arakanese court. The king dispatched a fleet to suppress an occasional
revolt and enforce his authority. A disgraced rebel or a newly sanctioned lord
then submitted to the king of Arakan and sent tribute. Such was the traditional
way of administering a conquered territory. It did not work in Syriam because
the Arakanese failed to establish in Lower Burma what succeeded so well in
Chittagong: a fort, a garrison, and an active control over the trade of the local
Portuguese and Muslim communities. The reasons for this failure are not
difficult to find. Man Raja-kri called himself emperor of Pegu (Guedes 1994,
216-7) but had no sound concept for administering Lower Burma or parts of it.
Unlike Chittagong, the port of Syriam was not put under the authority of a
close member of the royal family. Prince Man Khamaung, the heir apparent,
was commader in chief of the fleet, but was not entrusted with the government
of Syriam. The Arakanese king deported several thousand Mon from Lower
Beurma to Arakan, with the result that the remaining people tended to hide in
the jungle. De Brito succeeded in attracting the population to Syriam by
reviving trade and restoring normalc. He thus bolstered his troops and
extended his control over Syriam's hinterland. De Brito also had the support of
local Mon lords while the Arakanese king could not rely on his ambiguous
alliance with the king of Toungoo, his de facto rival for the control of Lower
Burma. Moreover De Brito, at least temporarily, enjoyed the political and
military support of Goa.

                

Unlike in Chittagong at the time of its conquest, the socio-economic situation

in Lower Burma was disastrous. Treasures had been pillaged, trade was
disrupted, and the settled population was sparse. Contemporary Portuguese
accounts contend that the Arakanese had enough people to populate the
devastated country, but there was obviously no will no behalf of the
Arakanese court to take the lead in rebuilding a country much larger than their
own.

                

A further reason for this failure was the political turmoil in eastern Bengal
which required Man Raja-kri's full attention. De Brito himself had failed to gain
any influence over the Luso-Asian community in the northeastern Bay of
Bengal. But while the Afghan landlords were strenuously resisting the
progression of Mughal power, some enterprising members of the Luso-Asian
community in southeastern Bengal shared De Brito's ambitions and created
their own power base in the neighbourhood of Chittagong. They colluded with
the zamindars (landlords) of Sripur and Bhallua and put themselves in control
of the salt-producing island of Sandwip. With their ships and an intimate
knowledge of local conditions, they became an immediate threat to the
Arakanese hegemony. Sebastiao Tibau ruled Sandwip. With their ships and
an intimate knowledge of local conditions, they became an immediate threat
to the Arakanese hegemony. Sebastiao Tibau ruled Sandwip between 1609
and lords. In 1610, the Arakanese governor of Chittagong rebelled and fled to
Sandwip. Man Raja-kri replaced  him with one of his younger sons,
Cakrawate. Two years later, Prince Man Khamaung inherited the throne and
immediately turned against his rival brother. While the local Portuguese
community supported Cakrawate, Man Khamaung could not rally the help of
Sebastiao Tibau to defeat his brother who succumbed nonetheless after a
siege. After betraying most of his allies , Tibau found some support in Goa
where the government deplored the lost opportunity to secure a stronghold at
De Brito's Syriam. Tibau's suggestion to conquer Mrauk-U and lay the
foundations of a territorial establishment on the northeast coast of the Bay of
Bengal came as a welcome invitation to invade Arakan. But the Portuguese
fleet under admiral De Menezes was repulsed on the Kaladan at its first
encounter with the well-armed Arakanese who had secured the assistance of
two Dutch VOC ships. De Menezes was shot and his successor was not
ready to give any further support to Tibau (Guedes 1994, 166-7). In 1616,
Sandwip became an Arakanese dominion and over the next years the Luso-
Asian community was firmly integrated into the political and economic system
of Arakan. Approximately at the same time, a first Mughal attempt at invading
Arakan failed (Nathan 1936, 1:404-5).
                

At the end of Man Khamaung's rule (1612-1622). Arakan did not only enjoy
the reputation as a strong contestant in the regional power struggle, but also
gained sufficient recognition to send embassies to Bengal, Goa, Burma, and
Siam. Peace nonetheless did not prevail, as the geopolitical situation was
rapidly changing. In 1600 there had been no unquestioned authority or central
control either in Burma or Bengal. The First Toungoo empire had been torn
apart by the political ambitions of provincial lords. Bengal was divided among
those who supported the Mughals and those who resisted them. The two
countries thus offered opportunities for military intervention from outsiders.
Two decades later, Mughal power was strongly entrenched in Bengal and a
renewed Burmese kingdom, with its capital relocated at Ava, was on the rise.
But Arakan's military resources and natural defences repelled these threats.
In 1618, the Mughal general Ibrahim Khan Fath-Jang attacked Tripura whose
king (Yashodharamanikya) vainly tried to flee to Arakan (Majumdar 1973,
165). Tripura's capital was taken and given as a jagir (land grant) to a Mughal
general. All this was meant as a preliminary step to an invasion of Arakan that
the emperor Jahangir was calling for. The Arakanese king reacted without
delay by mobilizing a substantial fleet. Nathan gives the inflated figure of
“007ghurabs (two-mast sailing ships) and 4000 jaliya boats (moved by oar).”
Fath-Jang prepared himself for a naval encounter (“within a short time 4000 to
5000 war-boats were found ready”), but Man Khamaung's troops turned back
“leaving 2000 jaliya boats in the frontier of his kingdom” (Nathan 1936, 2:630).
The governor of Bengal undertook another expedition some two years later
(the date, somewhere between 1621 and 1623, is difficult to ascertain). It
turned into a complete failure as the troops starved in the jungle before
reaching Arakan (Nathan 1936, 2:632-3: Qanungo 1988, 262). The repeated
Muslim failures to challenge Arakan's position in the Bay fostered the belief
among Bengalis that Arakan was invincible. The annual raids and endemic
deportations of East Bengal villagers nurtured the arrogance of Arakan's
court.

AN  AGE OF PRIDE AND CONTENTMENT

During the first part of the reign of King Sirisudhammaraja(1622-1638), the
open conflict with the Mughals in East Bengal continued unabated. Father
Manrique who stayed in Arakan between 1629 and 1634, reports that when
he arrived for the first time in Arakan, missionaries had not been able to cross
the Bay of Bengal due to seven years ongoing Arakanese raids. The Mughal
chronicler Talish notes that “in no other part of the Mughal empire has any
neighbouring infidel king the power to oppress and domineer over Muslim: but
rather do infidel kings show all kinds of submission and humility in order to
save their homes and lands, and the Mughal officers of those places engage
in making new acquisitions by conquest” (Sarkar 1933, 423). In October 1623,
Sirisudhammaraja led an attack against Bengal which may be idenitified with
the raid against Dakhin Shabazpur referred to by Mirza Nathan. Ibrahim Khan
Fath-Jang immediately dispatched a fleet, but “towards the close of the day,
information was received that the Raja of the Mags had returned to his own
country in order to fight against an enemy of his named Barhama [Burma]
who had attacked his country from the other side” (Nathan 1936, 2:639-41).
Neither Arakanese nor Burmese sources provide any information on this
Burmese attack. In December 1625, Dhaka was attacked by a fleet of 1,600
boats that plundered the city with impunity. One year later, an Arakanese fleet
pillaged Syriam and Pegu, a raid on which the Burmese sources are mute.

                

In April 1624, Shah Jahan revolted against his father, the Mughal emperor
Jahangir, and took control of Bengal. Sirisudhammaraja sent him precious
gifts, and the Mughal nobleman responded favourably by sending “a valuable
dress of honour along with many presents and a peremptory farman was
issued confirming the sovereignty of his territory” (Nathan 1936, 2:710-1).
Shah Jahan's revolt failed in October 1624. But Sirisudhammaraja's skilful
diplomatic initiative was far from useless as four years later,  Shah Jahan
became emperor. During his long reign (1628-1658), no serious attempt was
made by the Mughals to invade Arakan, despite the constant slave raids by
the Luso-Asian community in East Bengal.

                

In 1628, the murder of the king of Burma, Anaukhpetlun, by his son provoked
a succession crisis. The parricide son hoped to gain the support of King
Sirisudhammaraja to prop his claim for the throne, but was killed by his own
guards. Nonetheless it turned out to be a welcome situation for the king of
Arakan who had an opportunity to interfere in Burma's affairs. The decision
who would succeed on the throne was not immediately taken as
Anaukhpetlun's brothers were fighting rebellious governors in the Shan
country. An Arakanese embassy was sent to Burma with a royal letter
containing the barely veiled threat of an intervention. The early 1630s saw
three more embassies to Burma and at least one Burmese mission to Arakan
as well. We know nothing of the outcome of this diplomatic exchange, but an
open conflict was obviously put off. Somewhere between 1630 and 1635,
King Prasaatthong of Siam sent an embassy to Mrauk-U which may have
suggested an alliance between the two kingdoms against a menacing
Burmese state (Van Vliet 1975,95).

                

But in the late 1620s and early 1630s, the field of political and military options
became narrower than it was at the beginning of the century. The second part
of Sirisudhammaraja's reign was marked by a gradual change in Arakan's
relations with Bengal and Burma.While the reigns of the Warrior Kings
Sirisudhammaraja and his successors could at best defend and maintain
Arakan's acquired position. Burma recovered its formers strength and Mughal
power was solidly established in Bengal. Under these circumstances, new
conquests were nearly impossible. Dissuading any major attack from either
the Burmese or the Mughals became the only reasonable and practical choice
for Arakan's leaders. From this perspective, the annual raids against Bengal
should be seen as pre-emptive strikes against impending Mughal invasions.
                

There is no doubt that in the middle of the seventeenth century, the kingdom
of Arakan reached its apogee. Mrauk-U had become a prosperous,
cosmopolitan city where traders from all over the Indian Ocean were found
(Bhattacharya 1999). While the king remained attached to a secular
Arakanese tradition of Hindu-Buddhist court ceremonial and the practice of
Buddhist dhamma, the advice of Muslim officers was welcome as long as, we
may surmise, it shared the anti-Mughal stance of their royal master. The
poetry written by Daud Qazi and Alaol with the encouragement of their
Arakanese protectors figures among the masterpieces of Bengli literature. For
the historian, this fact illustrates the sophistication of a polyglot court which
sponsored a remarkable cultural efforescence. Persian was used by the royal
chancellery. The Japanese, Christan, and Muslim guards further contributed
to the international flair of Mrauk-U's palaces.

                

The strength of the monarchical power and the political order were such that
even a dynastic that even a dynastic revolution in 1638 (ominously the year
1000 of the Arakanese era) did not weaken the foundations of the kingdom.
The Arakanese annals pay considerable attention to the simmering conflict
between King Sirisudhammaraja and Kusala, the powerful lord of Laung Krak,
who had an intimate relationship with Queen Natshinmay. Na Lak Rum, an
adviser, tried to persuade the king that Kusala wanted to evict him from the
throne through secret magical means. Father Manrique indirectly confirms-in
a very confusing account of animal and human sacrifices initiated by the king
to obtain longevity (sic! ) --the violence of the clash which stamped the second
part of Sirisudhammaraja's reign . According to Dutch sources, the king had
some of Kusala's men executed, but later gave his rival a high appointment at
court. After the king had passed away, the heir apparent, possibly still a child,
was killed, reportedly with the helping hand of Queen Natshinmay. While the
members of the royal council, intimidated by the queen, were wavering in their
resolution to whom they should hand power, the personal guard of the lord of
Laung Krak took possession of the palace and indulged in a bloodbath in
which most members of the court were ruthlessly slain. On 3 July 1638, the
usurper made himself king and adopted the title Narapati, “Lord of men.”
Narapati's massacres did not spare him several years of effort to establish his
own network of power. He convened an assembly of the abbots of the
capitals's twelve major monasteries under the pretence of seeking guidance ,
but more likely with the desire to enhance his legitimacy. Most of his
supporters were “new men,” unfamiliar with court procedure and wealth.
Narapati also appealed to Sirisudhammaraja's senior adviser, Na Lak Rum
(who had prudently sought refuge in the southern Chittagong area), to resume
his former place at the court. Narapati remained on the throne for seven
years, but his active reign covered only five. After 1643, the king grew
seriously sick and his son, the future King Satuidammaraja (1645-1652) took
care of daily court business. Dutch sources about this period and a revolt by
the Chittagong governor in 1638, the export of rice and the slave trade were
flourishing and secured a continuous flow of revenue into the royal treasury.
The king led an expedition in the Chittagong hinterland and invaded the
Bhallua area (Noakhali) where, according to the Na Mi rajawan , seven “kings”
acknowledged the authority of the Arakan rular (CL 1932, 2:220).

                

King Candasudhammaraja's long reign (1652-1684) brought to an end the

golden age of Arakanese court life. He is remembered as a great king and so
he was. But he was not a conqueror and leader of men as most of his
predecessors. In 1665, he lost the island of Sandwip, famous for its sugar and
salt production. One year later, he lost Chittagong, the economic basis of the
kingdom's commercial wealth.

                

The conquest of Chittagong was the culmination of the political consolidation

in Bengal which had begun earlier in the century. In 1660, Shah Shuja, the
governor of Bengal, had lost a decisive battle against his brother Aurangzeb
which sealed the contest for the imperial throne. With his family and a retinue
of several hundred, Shah Shuja ran for his life and, ironically, sought refuge in
Arakan. He refused to give one of his daughters to the Arakanese king. His
followers were accused of fomenting a revolt and setting the palace ablaze.
When Shah Shuja tried to sneak out of the country, he found death in
uncertain circumstances (Schouten 1727, 299-36; Bernier 1830, 150-6;
Qanungo 1986, 645; Harvey 1922; Hall 1936, 88-9). Later, envoys of
Aurangzeb were humiliated and molested when they came to Mrauk-U and
asked for the release of Shah Shuja's relatives. But due to unfavourable
circumstances, it was not until 1664 that Shaysta Khan, a newly appointed
governor of Bengal, undertook serious steps to prepare a military expedition
against Arakan. The Arakanese swiftly reacted and manned a formidable
armada which sacked the Mughal fleet moored near Dhaka. But this attack
merely strengthened the determination of Shaysta Khan who did not leave
anything to chance, but meticulously prepared the invasion of Chittagong by
sea and by land.

                

After the fall of the city, Candasudhammaraja did nothing to retrieve it from
the hands of the Mughals (Sarkar 1936, 182-209; Hall 1936, 95-7; CL 1932,
2:222). The Mughal chronicler Talish plainly recognized that the treason of the
feringhis (Portuguese) had been crucial for the conquest of Chittagong
(Habibullah 1945, 38). We may thus wonder why the king failed to retain the
long-standing loyalty of the Luso-Asian community which had monopolized
the mutually profitable slave trade. In less than a year, the royal domain
shrank from the Feni River in the north to the area of Ramu, south of
Chittagong, from where the Arakanese expansion had started two hundred
years earlier. The year 1666 marked the onser of a decline that remained
barely perceptible until the king passed away nearly twenty years later.

                
For his Arakanese subjects, Candasudhammaraja was above all a virtuous
and pious Buddhist king. The chronicles suggest that the loss of Chittagong
did not distract the king from one of his regular pilgrimages to the Mahamuni
image. The king built three impressive pagodas which belong to the series of
five maraung (victory over [the evil] Mara) pagodas which display the
Irrawaddy valley's architectural influence on Arakan's religious art.

                

Wouter Schouten, a doctor of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), wrote an
enchanting description of Arakan's wealth and of the boisterous self-
confidence of its king after his visit in 1660-61 (Shouten 1727). He stayed four
months in Mrauk-U, extensively visited the capital's surroundings, and left
vivid and sometimes surprisingly romantic descriptions of the country and its
people. The major items of the VOC's trade were slaves and rice which the
Dutch needed on their plantations in Java. When Satuidehammaraja became
king in 1645, the Dutch factor Arent van der Helm, who had openly supported
a rival candidate to the throne, hastily left the country. But in 1653, the VOC
returned to Mrauk-U. A 1656 VOC mission led by Jacobus Hensbroeck,
according to Subrahmanyam's recent analysis, was hobbled by mutual
misunderstanding, compromise over commercial interests, and breaches of
etiquette (Subrahmanyam 1997). Yet Candasudhammaraja agreed to even
more favourable trading conditions than earlier. So the VOC kept on importing
textiles from Coromandel and buying rice for Batavia (Raychaudhury 1962;
Hall 1936). Like his predecessors, Candasudhammaraja was very much
aware of the importance of trade which furnished an essential part of the royal
revenue. Today's historians may not be able to quantify the falling volume of
trade, but commercial decline during the last two decades of the seventeenth
century was directly liked with political decline. The tragedy of Arakan's
commerce lay in the fact that when Chittagong was lost to the Mughals, not
only a majority of Luso-Asians (both slave raiders and traders) left the
kingdom, but, under Mughal pressure, the Dutch VOC (a major consumer of
rice, coarse cloth, and slaves) did so as well. The Indian Muslim traders who
bought rice, beeswax, lac, rubies, and cotton, still came to Arakan, but their
number probably declined as well when the political disorder in the country
became endemic.

                

When king Candasudhammaraja passed away (1684), royal authority was

already undermined by rival groups of palace guards. For over twenty years,
no king or usurper on the throne was able to obtain any lasting recognition of
his power beyond the surroundings of the capital. The chronicles specifically
state that Uggabala, Candasudhammaraja's eldest son and successor,
entered monkhood during the life of his father.This could indicate that he
sought protection from political infighting at court. Bow can we explain this
sudden deterioration of Arakan's social and political order? Hunderds,
possibly thousands, of troops had manned the forts of Chaittagong, Sandwip,
Chocoria, Ramu, and other places conquered since the sixteenth century.
When Chittagong fell, the garrisons fled to Arakan's heartland. As long as the
royal revenue was sufficient, an extensive military establishment was
affordable. But the military disaster of 1666 entailed a deadly blow to trade.
After the fall of Chittagong, the kings probably had to live off the wealth
amassed during more prosperous days. Dissent at the court and rebellions in
the countryside sprang not only from political strife, but also from growing
competition for the control of shrinking resources. Weak kings despoiled the
treasures of the palace to secure some loyalty among their troops and gain
some legitimacy (CL 1932, 2:225). The political and economic crisis was
further intensified by the heterogeneous character of the Arakanese troops.
Probably one third of them were kui ran (read ka-ran), recruited from royal
service groups. Besides the native Arakanese, there were men from diverse
cultural, religious, and ethnic backgrounds: Muslims of Bengali origin,
descendants of deported Mons, and survivors of Shah Shuja's bodyguard who
had been recruited as royal archers. The chronicles refer to Mon and “Indian”
leaders of the royal guards who led revolts in various parts of Arakan's
heartland and set up king at will. The sudden implosion of the political order
that resulted from the infighting among these elite troops between

1685 and 1710 illustrates how much the stability of the monarchy had
depended on their loyalty.

                

The political order was restored in the first half of the eighteenth century and
Arakan's fame lingered on for some years, but the kingdom never fully
recovered from the loss of its connections to the trading network of the Bay of
Bengal. The prestige of the kings faded away in a tepid eighteenth century
when the kingdom became a Southeast Asian backwater.

EXPANSION AND INTEGRATION: THE DYNAMIC OF

GROWTH
                 Arakan's autonomous history is a thing of the past. After its
conquest by the Burmese in 1785 and the later occupation by the British
(1825), the country underwent economic change and demographic revolution
(mainly due to successive waves of immigration and emigration). Parts of its
old cultural heritage were lost. Modern Arakan's history is regional history that
takes its place in the political context of British colonialism and the post-
colonial destiny of Burma/ Myanmar. So the main difference here between
“autonomous” and “regional” is political rather than economic or cultural.
Before 1785, Arakan, as a geopolitical unit, evolved around a centre or
centres of its own, while after this date, the dominating centre on which the life
of the country depended, lay outside the region itself (Calcutta until the 1860s,
the Rangoon).

                 The emergence and survival of small states at the periphery of

much greater and more powerful neighbours raises questions about the
particular set of conditions which explain their success. Quite naturally our
attention is first drawn to the geographic conditions. But important as they
were in the case of Arakan, they alone do not provide satisfactory answers. In
the eighteenth century, just as one or two hundred years earlier, Arakan lay
on the Bay of Bengal within the reach of Indian traders, enjoying the natural
protection of a steep mountain range to the east and fertile plains to support
its population. But, unlike one hundred years earlier, trade around 1750 was a
shadow of its former volume, the political conditions had deteriorated, and the
Arakanese pirates, for all the misery and damage they caused, were rather
more annoying than dangerous to Bengal.

                 We have to turn to the economic and political conditions to

understand the dynamic of growth. The histoire evenementielle shows that
Arakan's territorial expansion occurred when central power was weak or civil
war prevailed in Burma and/ or Bengal. King Man Pa's invasion of southeast
Bengal happened after the disappearance of the Ilyas Shahi dynasty (1539),
during the brief reign of Sher Shah. King Man Phalaung's military exploits
profited from an altogether favourable environment: large parts of Bengal ,
and particularly east Bengal, had not yet submitted to the Mughal rule, Tripura
was in the grip of dynastic rivalries, and the reign of King Nandabayin saw
royal authority in Burma in rapid decline. In 1663, after the death of the
government for a full year and the Arakanese immediately saw an opportunity
to strike at the Mughal fleet lying at Dhaka.

                 I have argued that Arakan's integration into the commercial

network of the Bay of Bengal was a crucial element in its success (Leider
1998). Seventeenth-century Arakan does not fit into the usual categories of
mainland Southeast Asian states because the wealth and the well-being of
the state depended so heavily on its maritime connections in the Bay of
Bengal. While the Arakanese themselves were only marginally involved in
trade, Portuguese, Dutch, and, above all, Muslim traders from the Red Sea,
Gujarat, Coromandel coast, or Aceh commercialized the natural and
agricultural products of the kingdom : cotton cloth , rice, sugar and salt.
Arakan was sadly famed as the main provider of slave in the Bay of Bengal. It
also sold elephants captured in its jungles and rubies from Upper Burma. But
voyages to Arakan were risky because of difficult climatic and maritime
conditions, and because access to the Kaladan River leading to the capital
required skiful and experienced pilots. So the kings had to keep the markets
of their kingdom attractive. The Arakanese conquest had no negative impact
on the regional production of rice, cotton cloth, and sugar which continued  to
grow (Ven Galen 1999).

                 The country's size, power , prestige, and wealth in the first half of
the seventeenth century were the product of its territorial expansion. But
conquest did not only fit royal ideology and was not merely seen as a matter
of self-interest. The Arakanese kings believed that they had a legitimate kings
reigning at Vesali had been related to the Candras of Herikela (which included
the Chittagong area) (Leider 1999).

                 The key to this expansion was Arakan's naval power. The kings
were able to muster fleets of several hundreds vessels of diverse size. These
fleets did not patrol the open sea. They moved along the coast, went swiftly
up the rivers, landed troops to raid the countryside, and retreated at short
notice. A fleet of a hundred boats was garrisoned at Chittagong and annually
renewed. The most common craft was the Arakanese war canoe (tuik lhe) , a
heavy sea-going boat, propelled by oar and said and used on the rivers as
well as along the coast. Nowhere else in the Indian Ocean did Portuguese
mercenaries contribute their maritime expertise to such an extent. From the
end of the sixteenth century to the eve of the fall of Chittagong , a great
number of resident Portuguese captains commanded royal ships and were
richly rewarded for their service (Guerrerio 1930, 1:44). It was Arakan's fleets
that gave them an edge over the Burmese kings at Puge, the sultans of
Bengal, the bharah bhuyan , and the Mughals (at least during the first half of
the seventeenth century). They provided the kings with a strategic advantage
over their neighbours and secured the control over conquered territories,
though conquest may have meant sometimes little more than a nominal
allegiance. (Leider 1998, 1999; Tak Htwan Ni 1985).

                 Until the middle of the seventeenth century, Arakan was not
touched by the demographic weakness prevalent elsewhere in Southeast
Asia. There were no deportations of Arakanese and the population of
Arakan's heartland was only rarely touched by war. Foreign observes like
Wouter Schouten are unanimous that Mrauk-U and its surroundings were
densely climate, absence of contagious disease, and low number of people
killed during battles (Schouten 1727, 1:245). Nonetheless, the kings felt an
urgent need to bolster their human resources by raiding lower Burma and
southeast Bengal. Most people deported to Arakan by the Arakanese
themselves were not sold into slavery but organized in royal service groups
who lived on lands in the vicinity of Mrauk-U. They provided the sweepers,
craftsmen, guards, and artists at the palace, the rowers for the fleet, or simply
the farmers on the royal lands. Some were even entrusted with higher
functions at court. The heavy presence up to the late eighteenth century of
Bengali deportees, many of them Muslim, is suggested by Arakanese and
later English sources alike. The Mons deported after the fall of Pegu formed a
group which could still be identified until the end of the eighteenth century.
Afghan soldiers fleeing the Mughal advance and Portuguese traders and
adventures settled in Arakan and gladly accepted appointments in the royal
troops. The hill chiefs of northern and southern Arakan provided troops who
were ethnic Thet, Mrung, Chin, or other lesser known minority groups. The
king's men were thus of great ethnic diversity and came from various cultural
backgrounds.

                 As long as the kings could manage the inflow of wealth to allocate
a share to each man, the balance of power played in their favour, and
members of the court and troops remained loyal armada were the major tool
of the kings' political and military success, but they basis of the kingdom was
eroded. So and analysis of the dynamics of growth highlights the ambivalence
of political and military successe.

                 Coutinuity is not a virtue by itself. It has to be matched by a

sufficient degree of flexibility. On the one hand, when we compare the Mrauk-
U period with the same period in Burma, the political stability stability is
striking. The reins of power were held by several generations of strong and
able leaders who enlarged the king's land and increased their resources and
manpower. Succession struggles did not weaken the centre of political
decisions. The dynastic break of 1638 was the only serious internal political
crisis between 1531 and 1685 and it had little impact on the kingdom's
general situation. Mrauk-U remained the kingdom's capital from 1430 down to
1785. On the other hand, the Arakanese kings failed to adjust to a rapidly
changing political and economic environment in the second half of the
seventeenth century. The Burmese monarchs tapped both the agricultural
surplus and the flow of customs dues, but a decline in trade probably entailed
a lesser risk for them than for their Arakanese colleague. While the Burmese
kingship was invigorated by successive cycles of rise and decline, the
traditional political order in Arakan was in shambles around 1690 and never
fully recovered over the next hundred years. One of the difficulties in restoring
the order clearly was the loss of the earlier maritime connections.

                 As elsewhere in mainland Southeast Asia, deportations of people

had been an answer to a chronic lack not of troops but also of agriculturists
and craftsmen. The 1644 deportation of large numbers of Chittagong's cotton
weavers to Arakan heartland shows how such a traditional economic policy
could backfire. Dutch sources report that Narapati wanted to settle an
impressive thirty thousand people along the Kaladan. These weaves should
have laid the basis for a flow of royal income. But insufficient provisions were
made to sustain them and most of them starved to death. It is interesting to
note that there had actually been a hot debate at court on the viability of the
project (Van Galan 1999).

                 The kings reigned thanks to a network of loyal men. Where an

overriding political or economic interest called for compromise, power was
devolved. This was definitely the case in Chittagong. During the initial years of
Arakan's control, the city and the surrounding country were still governed by
local Muslim lords. After 1590, the Arakanese governors of Chittagong were
close relatives of the king and enjoyed the rare privilege of minting their own
coins. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, they were granted the
impressive titles even after Sirisudhammaraja and his successors abandoned
that fashion (Chowdhury 1997). The relationship between the kings of Arakan
and the Luso-Asian communities of Chittagong's suburbs betrays a similarly
pragmatic attitude to the advantages of a somewhat decentralized political
order. The descendants of the Portuguese with their nebula of Christians of
mixed origins enjoyed a remarkable autonomy as long as their loyalty to the
king remained unquestioned and the royal treasury got its share of the
lucrative slave trade.

                 We have a few seventeenth and eighteenth-century lists of

members of the court hierarchy who ran the country (e.g. Havart 1693; Tak
Htwan Ni 1996). They leave us with the impression that Arakan did not have
the kind of well-structured inner circle of ministers and secretaries typical of
Burma's contemporary court. Typically, most Arakanese titles we know are
associated with military functions.
                 The pran-cui-kri (read: presogri) was probably the highest
functionary at court, equivalent to a kind of prime minister and supreme judge.
In 1581, for instance, he was in charge of negotiations with the Burmese
invaders. The tha-puin-kri (read:dabaingri) was a general or commander in
chief. The kui-ran-kri(read: karangri) commaded the palace guard and,
according to Western and Indian sources, was frequently in charge of royal
expeditions against Bengal. The terms cac-ke (read: sikay) and jun-tat (read:
zonedat) refer to senior military officers whose numbers varied between four
and nine. The cac-ke also exercised the function of judge, and took care of
protocol and foreign visitors to the court. A re juntat was an admiral. The san-
ke-kri was in charge of the royal elephants. Superior positions like the
governorships of Chittagong and Sandoway were held by members of the
royal family, particularly princes, brothers, or uncles of the king. Other
functions were inherited or transferred from generation to generation in a few
high-ranking families, as for example the “dynasty” of the minister
Mahapanakyo who was the advisor of three kings during the second half of
the sixteenth century. The accounts of Father Manrique and Schouten provide
a few glimpses of the efficiency of the Arakanese government. Thanks to the
rapid communications by water, fleets of considerable size could thus be
tackled before they gained pace. The government could also exert a strict
control on the movement of people. Manrique mentions that some Christians
he visitede in the mountains of “Maum” were forbidden to leave their villages
and remained under close surveillance. Schouten describes the severe
controls on all outbound ships after the sudden disappearance of Shah Shuja
in early 1661.

                 Arakan's territorial expansion and its integration into the trading
networks of the Bay of Bengal shaped the dynamic of growth between the
early  sixteenth and mid-seventeenth century. Growth generated a hitherto
unknown wealth for an elite which could spend freely on luxury goods and
works of merit. The vestiges of art and archaeology prove that Arakan's artists
found inspiration both in India and Burma. During the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, Bengal's architecture and the refinement of Islamic ceremonial at
the courts of the Bengal sultans and Mughal governors had an undoubted
impact on Arakan's art and elite culture. During the second quarter of the
seventeenth century when Mrauk-U had become a cosmopolitan and
attractive place for traders, artists, and mercenaries, the kings put a greater
emphasis on their Buddhist identity. Sirisudhammaraja and his successors
were known only by their Pali titles and no longer adopted Muslim titles.
Monolingual Arakanese coins replaced the earlier bilingual (Arakanese /
Bengali) or trilingual (Arakanese/Bengali/ Persian) coins and the title “Lord of
the Golden Palace” became the standard appellation of all the kings.
Moreover the architecture of Mrauk-U's increasingly bigger pagodas was
inspired by Lower Burma models. Art reflects a change in Arakan's cultural
identity.

                 This change echoes as well the pride of Arakan's kings who were
no longer overawed by their powerful neighbours. But as Arakan's fleets had
spread unrivalled terror in Eastern Bengal, pride could turn into arrogance and
produce a complacency detrimental to the kingdom's and the monarchy's
long-term interests. Inner political tensions built up as Southeast Asia's age of
commerce came to an end and Mughal imperialism became even more
threatening. The most remarkable aspect of king Candasudhammaraja's long
reign of over thirty years was its political stability and the king's capacity to
preserve a semblance of power and wealth after the fall of Chittagong in 1666
had cast gloom over Arakan's future.

                                  APPENDIX: KINGS OF ARAKAN AT MRAUK U, 1404-

1710

 Man Co Mwan (aka Naramitlha) 1404-1433

Man Khari (aka Ali Khan)   1434-1459

Bha Co Phru 1459-1481

Dolya 1481-1491

Bha Co Nui 1491-1493

Ran Aung 1494

Calanka Su1494-1501

Man Raja 1501-1513

Gajapati 1513-1515

Man Co, the old one 1515?

Sajata 1515?-1521?

Man Khaung Raja 1521?-1531?

Man Pa 1531-1553

Man Tikkha 1553-1555

Man Co Lha 1556-1564

Man Cakrawate 1564-1571

Man Phalaung 1571-1593

Man Raja-kri(“the Great”) 1593-1612

Man Khamon 1612-1622

Sirisudhammaraja 1622-1638
Man Cane 1638

Narapati (aka Kusala, the former governor of Laung Krak) 1638-1645

Satuidhammaraja 1645-1652

Candasudhammaraja 1652-1684

Uggabala 1684-1685

Waradhammaraja 1685-1692/93

Manisudhammaraja 1692/94

Candasuriyadhammaraja 1694/96

Noratha, the child 1696

Maruppiya 1696-1697

Kalagandhat 1697-1698

Naradhipati 1698-1700

Candawimaladhammaraja 1700-1706

Candasuriyaraja 1706-1710

                                                                                     NOTES

                 I would like to thank U Tin Htway (Heidelberg) for his remarks on a
first draft of this chapter. U Tun Aung Chain (UHCR Yangoon) and Prof.
Michael Smithies (Thailand) made useful comments at the conference in Hua
Hin (May 1999). I deeply appreciate Chris Baker's extensive comments which
made it clear to me that the chapter in the from presented at the conference
would be of limited interest to people who had never heard of Arakan. It also
contained an amount of information that had little connection to understanding
the Arakanese kingdom in its Bay of Bengal context.

                 1.  For practical reasons, the name “Arakan” is used in this chapter.
The Arakanese dialect maintains a number of features archaic in modern
Burmese. The most obvious difference is the Burmese pronunciation of “r”.
For the transcription of geographical terms, preference is given to the
conventional English transcription which retains the “r” in names like Mrauk-U
(instead of Yanbye). Arakanese kings are occasionally known under different
titles. In this chapter only one title has been used to refer to each king.
Arakanese and Burmese authors have used various transcriptions of the
king's names and titles which sometimes makes it difficult to correctly identify
them. For reasons of simplification, titles have been transliterated, though
without using any diacritics to mark the tones. A list of kings appears in an
appendix to the chapter.

                 2. The terms Magh, Mag, Mug are identical. An investigation on the
origins of the expression was done by Lucein Bernot (1967)

                 3. The most important is the New Chronicle Arakan, written by the
Arakanese monk Candamalakara and published in Mandalay in 1931-32. His
work will hereafter be referred to as CL.

                 4. Manrique's account was abundantly used by later writers like

Tosi(1669), Ovington (1696), and Salmon (1735). C.Federici's account
(Federici 1581; Pioto 1962) contains useful information on Chittagong.

                 5. Arakan workshop at the ICAS conference at Nordwijk,

Netherlands, 25-28 June 1998; KNAW conference on Coastal Burma in the
Age of Commerce, Amsterdam, October 1999.

                 6. Phayre made the first noteworthy contributions to the study of

Arakan's history and numismatics: see Phayre (1841, 1844, 1846, 1882).

                 7. We find a different perspective in works dealing with the history

of Bengali literature at the court of Arakan as for example, Sukumar Sen ,
History of Bengali Literature, Delhi,1960; Suniti Kumar Chatterji, The origin
and Development of the Bengali Language, Calcutta 1926; M.E. Haq, Muslim
Bengali Literature, Karachi 1957, and recently, S.Bhattacharya (1999).

                 8. British Library OR 3465 A, f.128 (of the Burmese pagination). It

is noteworthy that CL (1931, 2:7) did not include the sentence referred to by
Phayre.

                 9. The recently published guidebooks of Mrauk-U (Tun Shwe

Khaing 1995, 1996; Shwe Zan 1994) contain some useful information. Ashin
Okkantha's supposedly academic research on Arakan's Buddhism (Okkantha
1990) lacks depth and is of limited interest to Buddhist scholars. A group  of
Arakanese based in Yangon is editing texts, research papers , and an
literature (PEAL, Publications of Eminent Arakanese Literature).

                 After the Second World War, the Muslims of northern Arakan
organized themselves politically and militarily in separatist movements under
the name of Rohingyas. After several waves of persecution in the 1970s and
early 1990s which most likely hit both local Muslims and illegal immigrants,
many so called Rohingyas cultivated their own brand of “Arakan” nationalism
abroad. Unfortunately their interpretation of the Mrauk-U period and their
insistence on a presumed Muslim identity of the country and its kings, distorts
the available historical evidence.

                 10. Tome Pires (1944, 277-9) mentions the presence of Arakanese
traders in Melaka at the beginning of the sixteenth century.
                 11. The minister Wimala is mentioned as the original author (1536)
of parts of the Great Chonicle of Arakan summarized by Tha Thwan Aung
(1927).

                 12. Charney (1993, 44-5) links the 1534 attack against Arakan to a
conflict between the sultan of Bengal, Mahmud Shah, and Goa. In 1533, the
sultan threw Martim Afonso de Mello and fifly-three other Portuguese into
prison ,and a Portuguese fleet cannonaded Chittagong. Charney does not
explain why there should be a connection between these events and he does
not seem to admit the existence of a resident Portuguese community in the
area.

                 13. The Burmese chronicler U Kala and an anonymous Portuguese

source from around 1607 contend that the Burmese were close to attacking
Mrauk-U but retreated when they learned of the death of king Bayinnaung.
According to the Arakanese sources , the Burmese had not proceeded further
than Laung Krak, the former capital south of Mrauk-U.

                 14. Harvey (19667.141) unfairly passed over Arakan's expansion to

the northeast under Man Phalaung who is not even mentioned in his account,
while Phayre (1883, 163) confines himself to a single sentence which merely
acknowledges the conquests: “Meng Phalaung held all Chittagong, part of
Noakhali, and of Tippera”. Georg Christoph Fernberger's account of the siege
of an unnamed fortress during his visit at Chittagong in 1589 illustrates the
difficulties that the Arakanese had in maintaining their hold over the whole
area (Fernbergger 1999).

                 15. It is at time that the Portuguese are mentioned for the first time
in the Rajamala, the chronicle of Tripura (Long 1850).

                 16. CL (1931, 2:92-93) literally says that the Mughal and Afghan
lords sent annual presents and further mentions that the kings of Sri Lanka
and Portugal and the Muslim king paid their respect and sent trading ships.

                 17. Information on Narapati's reign found in the VOC archives was
kindly provided by Stephan van Galen, oral communication, February  1999.

                 18. CL 1932, 2:71. The term is sometimes used in Burma for a
village chief.

                 19. Oral communication by Stephan van Galen (August  1999).