Mon

Intro

  • Aka Talaing, Peguans, Raman (ရာမန်) from pALi Rāmañña(ရာမည)-desha, their heartland in burmese coast. The Tailang name suggests that they may have had some Indian Telanga ancestry.
  • The Mon adapted pallava alphabet.

Religion

  • They became theravAda bauddha-s.

Spirit cult

  • “Other than language, the most distinctive cultural characteristic of the Mons was the spirit cult. Halliday said that one of the distinguishiug marks of a Mon, without which one could not be a Mon, was interest in house spirits. 32 These spirits are quite characteristic; the Thais have nothing even remotely similar to the best of my knowledge. They are totemic-like spirits that are inherited in the male line, as indicated above. "

Kingdoms

  • They founded Dvaravati in Central Thailand (including Lavo or lavapura), Sri Gotapura[16] in central Laos.
  • Along Andaman sea, they founded the Thaton kingdom.
  • “The legendary Queen Camadevi from the Chao Phraya River Valley, as told in the Northern Thai Chronicle Cāmadevivaṃsa and other sources, came to rule as the first queen of Hariphunchai (modern Lamphun) kingdom around 800 AD.”

Decline in Chao Phraya Valley

  • “After 1000 AD onwards, the Mon were under constant pressure with the Tai peoples migrating from the north and Khmer invasions from the Khmer Empire in the east.”
  • “The Mons of Dvaravati gave their way to the Lavo Kingdom by around 1000 AD. A significant portion of Mon of the Dvaravati fled west to present-day Lower Burma. Descendants of the Dvaravati Mon people are the Nyah Kur people of present-day Isan (IshAnya-thailand). The Mon as an entity virtually disappeared in Chao Phraya Valley. However, Hariphunchai kingdom survived as a Mon outpost in northern Thailand under repeated harassment by the Northern Thai people.”
  • “Hariphunchai prospered in the reign of King Aditayaraj (around early twelfth century), who allegedly waged wars with Suryavarman II of Angkor and constructed the Hariphunchai stupa. In 1230, Mangrai, the Northern Thai chief, conquered Hariphunchai and the Mon culture was integrated into Lanna culture. The Lanna adopted the Mon script and religion.”

Decline in Burma

  • “In 1057, King Anawrahta of Pagan Kingdom conquered the Thaton Kingdom. The Mon culture and the Mon script were readily absorbed by the Burmese and the Mons, for the first time, came under Bamar rule. The Mon remained a majority in Lower Burma.”
  • “Wareru, who was born from a Mon mother and a Tai father eloped with the dauther of the (pagan) king… His Hanthawaddy Kingdom (1287–1539) was a prosperous period for the Mon in both power and culture. The Mon were consolidated under King Rajathiraj (1383–1422), who successfully fended off invasions by the Bamar Ava Kingdom. The reigns of Queen Shin Sawbu (1453–1472) and King Dhammazedi (1472–1492) were a time of peace and prosperity.”
  • “Hanthawaddy fell to the invasion of Bamar King Tabinshwehti of Taungoo in 1539. After the death of the king, the Mon were temporarily freed from Bamar rule by Smim Htaw, but they were defeated by King Bayinnaung in 1551. The Bamar moved their capital to Bago, keeping the Mon in contact with royal authority. Over the next two hundred years, the Mon of Lower Burma came under Bamar rule.”
  • “The Mon rebelled in 1661 but the rebellion was put down by King Pye Min. … Mon rebelled again at Bago in 1740 with the help of the Gwe Shan people. A Bamar monk with Taungoo royal lineage was proclaimed king of Bago and was later succeeded by Binnya Dala in 1747…. Alaungpaya, the Bamar ruler U Aungzeya, invaded and devastated the kingdom, killing tens of thousands of Mon, including learned Mon priests, pregnant women, and children. Over 3000 priests were massacred by the victorious Bamar in the capital city alone.”

Thai refuge

  • By 1584, Phraya Kiat and Phraya Ram joined Naresuan’s campaigns against the Bamar’s Toungoo court. A Mon monk became a chief advisor to King Naresuan.
  • During all the setbacks in Burma, Mon, either forced or voluntarily, moved to Ayutthaya (now Siam or Thailand).
  • “Mon refugees were granted residence in western Siam by the Siamese king. The Mons then played a major role in Siamese military and politics… A special regiment was created for the Mon serving the Siamese king.”
  • “On the one hand in Siam side, after the fall of Ayutthaya in 1767, two descendants of Mon aristocrats; Phraya Pichai and Phraya Chakri became the left and right hand man of King Taksin of Thonburi, and they largely helped Taksin’s campaigns in the liberation of Siam from Burmese occupation and reunion of Siam. After the collapse of Taksin’s Thonburi Kingdom, Phraya Chakri founded the Chakri Dynasty and ascended the throne in 1782 as Rama I. Rama I was born to Thongdi, a leading Mon nobleman serving the royal court in Ayutthaya in 1737. Rama I’s queen consort Amarindra was born to a wealthy Mon family who migrated to Siam in the earlier times. …. When a huge wave of Mon migrations from Burma (now Myanmar) to Siam (now Thailand) happened in 1814, His grandson, the Child-Prince Mongkut (later Rama IV) proceeded to welcome the Mon himself at the Siam-Burma border.”

Assimilation into Thais

  • Over time, the Mons were effectively integrated into Siamese society and culture, although maintaining some of their traditions and identity.
  • “Change was apparently pretty slow… A nirat of Sun thorn Phu, which deplores the loss of Mon cultural characteristics in Pakret; this would probably have been before 1850. It specifically refers to women’s hair style, which does not seem like a very profound change. We know from Halliday and Graham that by the early twentieth century most Mons were bilingual in Thai and Mon 36 ; we also know from Halliday that by the early twentieth century they built their houses like the Thais,37 and that their language had experienced strong lexical influence from the Thai language38 But really rapid change, by which people began to lose the language and to lose virtually all their Mon identity, probably did not begin until World War II. "
  • “A further revealing aspect of marriage is that the Mons and Thais do not seem to think of each other as of significantly diff erent ethnic groups for purposes of marriage. Many times people have told me that they wouldn’t have their children marry into a different ethnic group (khon tang chaat} (e.g., Thai-Islam, Cambodian, or Chinese), but that Thai would be all right. "