Saya San was born on 24 October 1876 in Shwebo, a center of monarchist sentiment and birthplace of the Konbaung dynasty, which ruled Myanmar from 1752 until the Third Anglo-Burmese War in 1886.

[3] Saya San's transition to political activism is unclear, but it's believed he joined the General Council of Burmese Associations (GCBA) in the 1920s.

In the second half of the 16th century, the Taungoo dynasty reunified the country, and founded the largest empire in the history of Southeast Asia for a brief period.

Eventually, Burma was fully annexed into the British Raj in 1886, but the more difficult task of maintaining stability remained, as the colonial government authorities immediately faced a number of uprisings that erupted throughout the former Burmese Kingdom.

Attached as a province of India, British Burma would be subject to administrative policies established in New Delhi as well as the vast array of procedural structures that characterized the Indian Civil Service.

Through the prism and experience of British India, Burmese people, culture, language and history was constructed by imperial surveys that now sought to map the new territories.

Indigenous healing practices, rituals, folktales, notions of authority and village life would be organized and categorized according to how well the district officer understood what he was observing.

Some of these rebellions were led by former members of the court, like the Myinzaing Prince son of King Mindon, who continued to wield considerable influence over troops and villagers in provincial centers that had once been in alliance with the throne.

[7][8] In the late 1890s, a small group of Buddhist associations with contemporary forms of organization and structure were founded by lay members in an effort to preserve the religion and its place in society.

This would pave the way for formation of the General Council of Burmese Associations (GCBA) which planned to participate more directly in political protest and demonstrations.

[6] In order to engage rural communities, members of the GCBA would travel into the countryside conducting interviews, collecting data, and filling reports to establish lines of communication with emerging village activists.

Saya San would soon after join the GCBA and work in the countryside for more than two years, wherein he became familiar with rural places and had direct connections with peasants.

On 21 December 1930, the Galon Raja moved to his palace on Alaungtang Hill in Tharrawaddy, where a royal city, known as Buddharaja Myo, or "Buddhist King’s Town", was ceremonially plotted out.

[12] Thus, rural cultivators, already frustrated by the drop of the price of rice were quick to respond to Saya San's courting appeals involving a mixture of anti-tax rhetoric, Buddhist prophecies and guarantees of invulnerability.

The rebellion spread to the districts of Pyapon, Henzada, Insein, Pegu, Toungoo, Prome, Thayetmyo, Naungcho Township, and the Northern Shan States.

This cosmic battle between galon and nāga would come to represent ideas about the power of nature, the dualities of the world, and the challenges of the human conditions.

In Eastern mythology, the Galon represents the sun-force or solar energy, in natural opposition to the liquid quality of earthly waters.

Scholars have studied on it and produced several interpretations in order to locate Saya San's position in Burmese history and examine the rebellion from different aspects.

On the eve of the rebellion, the leading Burmese newspaper, Thu-ri-ya (The Sun) had published an article "A Warning to the British Government" which spoke of Burma as a "keg of dynamite" which could explode at any time.

He used a vast amount of British documents, including parliamentary papers and police reports, to create a narrative by recognizing the localized form of political expression.

In his book A history of modern Burma, Cady wrote that "it was a deliberately planned affair based on traditional Burmese political and religious patterns".

For these scholars (like their earlier Burmese colleagues), the traditional vocabulary of the rebellion was less a factor in the cause of the insurgency than the unforgiving demands of the rational state's economy.

[19] From 1970s onwards, the "autonomous history" seems to become the tendency of historiography, which reconstructed those historical figures and events by analyzing indigenous culture from the local people's point of view.

For example, if the colonial government falsified and overstated Saya San's role in the revolt so as to make his execution seem more meaningful than it actually was.

Several details of the trial, including a diary produced by the police which outlines Saya San's plan, are not considered to be trustworthy.

[21] 1930 1931 The Saya San rebellion left thousands of people dead by the time it had concluded, making it one of the most violent anti-colonial movements in Southeast Asia in the 20th century.