The Mon of Lower Burma

Abstract

Researchers have long suggested that Mon culture centered in Lower Burma contributed to the formation of Pagan in Upper Burma. However, a recent thought-provoking book by Michael A. Aung-Thwin, The Mists of Rāmañña: The legend that was Lower Burma, has argued that Mon were not only absent from Lower Burma before the rise of Pagan, but that Pagan owed far more to the Pyu, whose first-millennium centers are located in Upper Burma. Such far-reaching thinking about early Burma requires a fresh examination of previous assumptions about the sources for Pagan civilization.

This article describes the rich range of cultural artifacts found in Lower Burma in the first millennium, indicating that Lower Burma was equal to Upper Burma, inhabited by the Pyu. It then connects this cultural activity to the Mon; this second objective is more challenging, primarily because the early Mon epigraphic record in Lower Burma is far less rich than for the Pyu in Upper Burma.