Lord Buddha comes to Arakan : Relics, Statues and Predictions
Investigating the political and social meanings of an apocryphal Arakanese Phaya-Samaing
Jacques P. Leider,
Arakan (or Rakhaing) is today a state of the Union of Myanmar. Until its conquest by the Burmese in 1785, it was for several centuries an independent Buddhist kingdom. The presence of Buddhism can be traced back at least to the 6th century AD, but little is known in detail on Arakan’s religious and political history before the 15th century AD. For that reason, it is still difficult to ascertain the origins in Arakan of Theravada Buddhism that referred itself to the Sinhalese Mahavihara. For the moment, we may reasonably assume that the history of Theravada Buddhism in Arakan followed a similar course to what little we know on Burma’s early monastic history and it may go back to religious developments of the 12th and 13th centuries.
The text on which this paper is based was kindly put at my disposal by Ashin Rammawadi Pinyasara, an Arakanese monk based in Sittway, the provincial capital of Arakan. The Venerable monk owns two paper versions of the text (hereafter called “version 1”, referred to as T BS-1, and “version 2”, referred to as T BS-2). Both text versions go back to one single palm-leaf manuscript that was in the possession of San Shwe Bu, a local Arakanese scholar still well known by Burmese historians for a number of papers on Arakanese history that he published in the 1910s and 1920s in the Journal of the Burma Research Society6. Both versions refer in their colophons to a copy made in 1924 of San Shwe Bu’s manuscript7. This palm-leaf manuscript had four angas and seven leaves of an eight lines-per page text. Version 1 is a hand-written copy of a shortened and partially summarized text prepared in January 1976 by U Aung Chit8 from a 45-pages-foolscap-paper copy in the hands of the famous Arakanese scholar U Oo Tha Htun whose copy dated from 1963. The last part of the text describing Lord Buddha’s sojourn in the Mon country is entirely missing in this version. Version 2 gives the text of a copy made in 1978 by the Venerable Munidhaja who based himself on a hand-written copy made by U Kitti from a copy made of San Shwe Bu’s palm-leaf manuscript by the monk Lemyosa Phondawgyi. Version 2 gives both a fuller and generally more correct text. The text of Version 1 is often doubtful, misleading and occasionally meaningless because of its obvious misspellings9. While we have generally relied on Version 2, in a few instances though the readings of Version 1 appear as superior to the ones of Version 2.
No clear subdivisions were made by the authors of the text as we have it in its present form. For the sake of clearness, the contents can be presented in four parts. The first lines of the text are missing in both versions. The text starts in the middle of a talk of Lord Buddha to Ananda while they are both standing on Mount Sirigutta. Any Arakanese Buddhist would immediately recognize this as the place where the Buddha landed together with 500 followers when he came flying through the air from Majjhimadesa to Arakan. Any Arakanese Buddhist would also know that King Candasuriya came to receive the Buddha at that place and invited him to his palace, requesting him before his departure to allow him to carve a live-size copy of the Master. Our text does not mention anything of this until a much later stage. It starts with a long, tedious monologue delivered on Mount Sirigutta. This takes about a quarter of the whole text and the Buddha lists close to two hundred places, all referred to as ‘mountains’, where he had lived in his former lives in northern Arakan, his human or animal existences, and the relics of his present human body that would be found at such places after his parinibbana, “predestined relics” as John Strong calls them.
A second, consistently longer part alternates short questions of Ananda and extensive answers by Lord Buddha. An account is given of the encounter of Lord Buddha with King Candasuriya followed by the making of the famous statue known as the “Mahamuni”. The mythical record of Arakan’s earliest dynasties is presented in a summarized form and leads to a number of predictions on Arakan’s capitals and succeeding dynasties in the future. We also find notes on the way that King Ashoka will take care of Buddha’s relics, on the meritorious or de-meritorious treatment of the Sangha by Arakanese kings and the enshrining of relics and the foundation of pagodas around Mrauk-U, the capital of Arakan from 1430 to 1785.
A third smaller part concerns Lord Buddha’s stay in Dvaravati, a city identified with Sam-twè (or Sandoway) in southern Arakan. Here we find a similar content: the mythical past of Dvaravati, predictions on Dvaravati’s history that tie up with statements made earlier on Arakan’s kings, and last but not least, the listing of over fifty places where Buddha lived in former existences and the relics to be found there after his parinibbana.
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