The Royal Historical Commission ( my, တော်ဝင် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ သမိုင်း ကော်မရှင်, ) of the
Konbaung Dynasty
The Konbaung dynasty ( my, ကုန်းဘောင်ခေတ်, ), also known as Third Burmese Empire (တတိယမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော်) and formerly known as the Alompra dynasty (အလောင်းဘ ...
of
Burma
Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...
(Myanmar) produced the
standard court chronicles of Konbaung era, ''
Hmannan Yazawin
''Hmannan Maha Yazawindawgyi'' ( my, မှန်နန်း မဟာ ရာဇဝင်တော်ကြီး, ; commonly, ''Hmannan Yazawin''; known in English as the '' Glass Palace Chronicle'') is the first official chronicle of Konbaun ...
'' (1832) and ''
Dutiya Yazawin'' (1869).
[
]
Commission (1829–1832)
In May 1829, three years after the disastrous First Anglo-Burmese War
The First Anglo-Burmese War ( my, ပထမ အင်္ဂလိပ်-မြန်မာ စစ်; ; 5 March 1824 – 24 February 1826), also known as the First Burma War, was the first of three wars fought between the British and Burmes ...
(1824–1826), King Bagyidaw
Bagyidaw ( my, ဘကြီးတော်, ; also known as Sagaing Min, ; 23 July 1784 – 15 October 1846) was the seventh king of the Konbaung dynasty of Burma from 1819 until his abdication in 1837. Prince of Sagaing, as he was commonly know ...
created the first Royal Historical Commission to write an official chronicle of Konbaung Dynasty. The standard official chronicle at the time was ''Maha Yazawin
The ''Maha Yazawin'', fully the ''Maha Yazawindawgyi'' ( my, မဟာ ရာဇဝင်တော်ကြီး, ) and formerly romanized as the ,. is the first national chronicle of Burma/Myanmar. Completed in 1724 by U Kala, a historian at ...
'' (The Great Chronicle), the standard chronicle of Toungoo Dynasty
, conventional_long_name = Toungoo dynasty
, common_name = Taungoo dynasty
, era =
, status = Empire
, event_start = Independence from Ava
, year_start ...
that covers from time immemorial to October 1711. It was the second attempt by Konbaung kings to update ''Maha Yazawin''. The first attempt, ''Yazawin Thit
''Maha Yazawin Thit'' ( my, မဟာ ရာဇဝင် သစ်, ; ; also known as ''Myanmar Yazawin Thit'' or ''Yazawin Thit'') is a national chronicle of Burma (Myanmar). Completed in 1798, the chronicle was the first attempt by the Konbau ...
'' (The New Chronicle), commissioned by Bagyidaw's predecessor and grandfather Bodawpaya
Bodawpaya ( my, ဘိုးတော်ဘုရား, ; th, ปดุง; 11 March 1745 – 5 June 1819) was the sixth king of the Konbaung dynasty of Burma. Born Maung Shwe Waing and later Badon Min, he was the fourth son of Alaungpaya, fo ...
, had not been accepted because the new chronicle contained severe criticisms of earlier chronicles. Although it was Bodawpaya himself who had ordered the author of ''Yazawin Thit'', Twinthin Taikwun, to verify the accuracy of ''Maha Yazawin'' by consulting a variety of sources including hundreds of inscriptions, the king did not accept the new chronicle when it was presented to him.[Thaw Kaung 2010: 50–51]
The members of the commission consisted of learned monks, court historians and court Brahmins:[Hmannan 2003: xxxvi–xxxvii] The commission first convened for the first time on 11 May 1829 (1st waxing of Nayon 1191 ME). Three years and four months later, the commission had brought up the history to 1821, producing ''Hmannan Yazawin''.[Hmannan 2003: v–vi]
Commission (1867–1869)
The second commission was formed in 1867. It was about 15 years after an even more disastrous Second Anglo-Burmese War
The Second Anglo-Burmese War or the Second Burma War ( my, ဒုတိယ အင်္ဂလိပ် မြန်မာ စစ် ; 5 April 185220 January 1853) was the second of the three wars fought between the Burmese Empire and British Em ...
(1852), and about a year after a serious rebellion that killed Crown Prince Kanaung Mintha
Kanaung Mintha ( my, ကနောင်မင်းသား; 31 January 1820 – 2 August 1866) was crown prince of Burma and son of King Tharrawaddy and younger brother of King Mindon of Burma. Towards the end of the Second Anglo-Burmese Wa ...
. A shaken King Mindon commissioned another committee of scholars to update ''Hmannan''. The commission consisted of five members—senior court officials, a librarian, and a scribe.[Khin Maung Nyunt 2009: 1] Whereas the first commission had stopped short of the First Anglo-Burmese War, the second commission had no choice but to tackle the two disastrous wars that had their dismembered kingdom on the brink. The commission updated the chronicle up to 1854, right after the second war. The Second Chronicle's account of the two wars, according to historian Htin Aung
Htin Aung ( my, ထင်အောင် ; also Maung Htin Aung; 18 May 1909 – 10 May 1978) was a writer and scholar of Burmese culture and history. Educated at Oxford and Cambridge, Htin Aung wrote several books on Burmese history and culture ...
, was "written with the objectivity of a true historian, and the great national defeats were described faithfully in detail."[Htin Aung 1967: 254] The second chronicle in ten volumes was completed in 1869.[Allot et al 1989: 13–14]
See also
* Burma Research Society
The Burma Research Society ( my, မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ သုတေသန အသင်း ) was an academic society devoted to historical research of Burma (Myanmar). Its aims were "the investigation and encouragement of Art, Sci ...
* Myanmar Historical Commission
The Myanmar Historical Commission ( my, မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ သမိုင်း ကော်မရှင်; formerly, the Burma Historical Commission) is an academic research organization focused on Burma studies. The commi ...
Notes
References
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* {{cite book , last=Thaw Kaung , first=U , title=Aspects of Myanmar History and Culture , year=2010 , publisher=Gangaw Myaing , location=Yangon
Burmese chronicles
History of Myanmar
1829 establishments in Burma