Burmese chronicles
The chronicles were written on different media such as parabaik paper, palm leaf, and stone; they were composed in different literary styles such as prose, verse, and chronograms.
[4] Latest research shows that even the pre-11th century narratives, dominated by legends, do provide a substantially accurate record of "social memory", going back over three millennia.
The chronicles by themselves offer little or no commentary on the situation of the kingdom of the regular people inside or outside the capital unless the king happened to be involved in the event.
Other royal records such as legal treatises and precedents (dhammathats (ဓမ္မသတ်)) and censuses (sittans (စစ်တန်း)) and the chronicles of regional courts as well as temple histories (thamaings (သမိုင်း)) need to be consulted to get a glimpse of the life outside the palace.
They can be inscriptions on stone (ကျောက်စာ) and bells (ခေါင်းလောင်းစာ), or more commonly, they were written on palm-leaf manuscripts (ပေစာ) and on special thick sheets of paper called parabaiks (ပုရပိုက်).
Likewise, King Bayinnaung's Shwezigon Pagoda Bell Inscription (1557) provides the exact dates of 17 key events of his first six years in power, enabling modern historians to check the chronicles.
[18] European scholars in the British colonial period greatly expanded the collection effort, with a 1921 edition of Epigraphia Birmanica by Charles Duroiselle listing some 1500 inscriptions in original spelling and a large photograph of each text.
[26]) The cost of producing manuscripts (creating as well as recopying) did come down in the Ava period as literacy rates improved, and the Burmese literature "grew more voluminous and diverse".
Even for those that survived the wars, "there were no record-room methods; mildew, ants, the accident of fire prevented many manuscripts reaching a great age".
The Maha Yazawin (Great Chronicle),[note 6] completed in 1724[32] with a minor update in 1729,[33] was composed by U Kala, an official at the Toungoo court.
It shows that Kala did not have the full versions of earlier chronicles, and that he did not check any inscriptions, which would have yielded more specific dates and double-checked the events.
The commission consulted several existing chronicles and local histories (thamaings) and the inscriptions collected by Bodawpaya, as well as eigyins, poetry describing epics of kings and mawguns, panegyric poems.
Usually named ayedawbons, biographic chronicles cover the life of more celebrated kings such as Razadarit, Bayinnaung, Nyaungyan and Alaungpaya in detail.
The chronicle tradition continued only in farther major tributaries such as Kengtung and Lan Na, and indeed in the independent kingdom of Mrauk-U until it was conquered by Konbaung Dynasty in 1785.
Nidana Arambhakatha ("Preface to the Legend") covers the genealogy of kings, and was supposedly part of a larger treatise called Ramann'-uppatti-dipaka ("An Explanation of the Origins of Ramannadesa").
Pak Lat weaves together all existing Mon narratives, including the history of Thaton Kingdom, Gavampati's linkage with the Buddha, the Hanthawaddy Chronicle from monarchs Wareru to Shin Sawbu (1287–1472), and Nidana's genealogy of kings.
Harvey, a colonial period scholar, found the extant Shan chronicles "consistently reckless with regard to dates, varying a couple of centuries on every other leaf", and discarded them.
Eigyins are elaborate lullabies for young princes and princesses, written to inform the royal children of their genealogy and the achievements of their forebears.
The two most well known, Zabu Kun-Cha Po Yaza Mu Haung (ဇမ္ဗူကွန်ချ ဖိုးရာဇာ မူဟောင်း) (c. early 15th century)[90] and Mani Yadanabon (မဏိရတနာပုံ) (1781) are compilations of precedents but also provide an outline of the prior dynasties down to the era in which they were written.
The annals of Siam do not appear to have been kept with the same regularity and fullness as those of Burma, though they furnish an outline of prominent events.The overall number of the chronicles outside the inscriptions is "modest" due to their destruction in the country's repeated bouts of warfare.
Most of the extant material is that of Upper Burmese dynasties, which by the virtue of winning the majority of the wars "possessed an abiding palace and a continuous tradition".
[4][8] British colonial period scholars, who were the first ones to reconstruct Burma's history in a "scientific" way and made invaluable efforts to systematically preserve the records, and cast a highly sceptical eye toward the chronicle narratives, nonetheless praised the relative completeness of the extant Burmese material compared to those of Southeast Asian and even Indian states.
But much of the extant chronicle tradition (both in prose and verse) and the "sophistication in use and manipulation of an expanded Burmese vocabulary and grammar" are legacies of the Ava period.
[113] Even the later portions of the chronicles, which have been shown to be largely factual, still were not written purely from a secular history perspective but rather also achieve what Aung-Thwin calls "legitimation according to religious criteria" of the Burmese monarchy.
Latest research shows that when stripped of the legendary elements, which are now viewed as allegories, the chronicle narratives largely conform to the evidence.
[6] On the other hand, evidence suggests many of the early "kingdoms" (Tagaung, Sri Ksetra and Pagan) were contemporary to each other for long periods, and did not exist in a serial fashion as reported in the chronicles.
It was not the case in Champa, Cambodia and Siam, where "scripts have in the course of centuries undergone such profound changes that the compilers of later chronicles could not read the earlier inscriptions".
[20] Likewise, a 1986 study of Maha Yazawin by Lieberman finds much of the history for the 16th century, which was also witnessed by many Europeans, largely factual.
[4] Moreover, the troop figures reported in the chronicles for the various military campaigns are at least an order of magnitude higher than the actual number possible given the size of the population and transportation mechanisms of the era.
Many more rolls of palm-leaf manuscripts remain uncollected, and are moldering in monasteries across the country without proper care as well as under attack by unscrupulous treasure hunters.
