(His father was a "rich man" who descended from regional administrative officers (myosas) of the crown, and his mother was of mixed Shan and Burman noble descent.)

He justified his work by explaining that the study of past events would help to demonstrate the impermanence of all things, including political authority, and that meditation on this theme would actually promote religious insight.

[11] Though he used a variety of local chronicles, Kala did not include the history of Tagaung Kingdom, which would be claimed as the beginning of the Burmese monarchy a century later by Hmannan Yazawin.

The third part relates the founding of Threhkittara and Pagan and proceeds to provide accounts of the Pinya, Sagaing, Ava and Toungoo dynasties, and takes the history down to his own time to 1711.

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.

[7] Indeed, the later chronicles corrected many of Maha Yazawin's Pagan Dynasty and pre-Pagan dates based on epigraphic evidence.

[13]) Later British colonial period scholars further asserted that Pagan received religious reforms and civilization from Thaton.

Recently, the historian Michael Aung-Thwin has argued that the Thaton conquest story cannot be found in any prior extant texts or inscriptions.

"[6] The chronicle's existence was especially made important because many of the original sources on which he relied were destroyed by a fire at Ava (Inwa) some twenty years later.