The Arakan State is situated on the boundary of Bangladesh and Burma. It is a constituent unit of the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma. It is separated from Burma proper by a range of barrier against inter-communication between the people living on either side of it. Though descended from the same stock, worshipping the same faith and speaking the same language as the Burmese, the Arakanese have witnessed the flowering of a distinct culture, and have preserved a distinct dialect.
In olden days, Arakan was a thriving, independent ancient border state beyond ancient India. Situated east of Vanga and Sematata. Indologists, writing about the history and culture of ancient India, never mentioned this area where high standards of living, culture and art flourished. The present work is an attempt to fill the missing link between ancient India and Burma proper by presenting a few aspects of the rich cultural heritage of Arakan.
Images in stone and bronze, representing the Buddhist Art of Ancient Arakan (before 1000 A.D) are presented in this book.
A Fat Monk image, miniature stupas, a tablet of auspicious symbols, dedicatory inscriptions fallen out of old ruined stupas and caityas, a relief sculptures found on the platforms of the Mahamuni Shrine are all sculptured out of, or inscribed on stones.
The miniature cetis (caityas), bells, lamps and numerous Buddha images, crowned and uncrowned, are all made of bronze. These bronze artifacts provide evidence of all made of bronze. These bronze artifacts provide evidence of a flourishing school of bronze castings. The time of casting ranged from the 5th century A.D. to the 10th century A.D.
I have presented many varieties of bronze Buddha images, both crowned and uncrowned, of Arakan having different gestures. I have also explained these gestures one by one. Any one who is interested in Buddhist iconography, I hope, will be able to find in the images I have presented, new types and variations till now unknown to them, and also remarkable affinities with those that they are more or less familiar with. In both cases, I fervently hope that, a really interested mind will have much to take delight in.
လိုခ်င္ေရဆႏၵဟိေက အထက္ကပံုကို Click လုပ္ပနာ Download လုပ္ယူႏိုင္ပါေရ။
To downlad the book, click the above picture of the book.
About This Book
Mrauk-U was from the 15th to 18th century the cosmopolitan capital of Rakhine (formerly Arakan), the coastal state in Western Myanmar. This illustrated account of the city includes discussion of its significance and the varied inscriptions, artefacts and monuments found by archaeological research over the years. With sketch maps, photographs and graphics, chronologies, bibliography and index.
အထက္ကစာအုပ္ပံုကို Click လုပ္ပနာ Download လုပ္ယူႏိုင္ပါေရ။
All of you can download the book by clicking the picture.
Sunday Island -December 12, 2006 published in Colombo, Sri Lanka
By Bandu de Silva
Sunday Island -December 12, 2006 published in Colombo, Sri Lanka
The ancient port of Trincomalee, referred to as Gokanna or Gona Thittha in the Mahavamsa occupied a very strategic and central position in maritime activity in the Bay of Bengal... It was the southernmost point from which ships sailing to South East Asia and further departed and returned after the voyages (Queyroz). The coastline north of Trincomalee harbour was dotted with small landing places. The 8th century Tiriyaya Sanskrit inscription which was evidently incised by a group of merchant-mariners from Northern Indian ports speaks of the amity that prevailed among mariners and between them and the populace. The same inscription refers to the earlier visit of two merchant-mariners by the names Tapasra and Vallaka (Pali: Tapassu and Bhalluka) which the tradition associates with the Buddha’s first two lay disciples who traded between the east Indian ports and lands beyond. Queyroz who gives a long description of the port, bay and sea environs says that the Trincomalee, Cottiyar and Batticaloa ports "commanded the whole Gulf of Bengal".
This material was originally published in 1891, a year after Forchhammer died, according to a reference to it in Harvey’s 1926 “History of Burma”. A new impression was made in the 1970s by the Burmese Education Ministry: the minister at that time was Arakanese, and passionate about the history of his native province. The original plates and artwork were presumably lost by this time. A somewhat damaged copy of the 1891 book has been
used to make a new set of offset plates. If the original had a title page, it had either disappeared from the original copy or was deliberately excluded from the reprint. The book was renamed “Report on the Antiquities of Arakan” and the year was put as 1892 on a typewritten slip of paper bound into the sub-title page. The publisher of the reprint is sometimes cited as "Archaeology Department, Burma", although as the department was established in 1902, it could not have been the publisher of the 1891 version. The reprint was bound in soft blue paper.
Some photographs are missing from the reprint. It is possible that they originally appeared as individual photos stuck on the plates, perhaps in an attempt to provide high quality illustrations for a book with a limited print run. For example, Plate IV No 7 is missing, and the blank space is marked with a small pencilled cross, perhaps by the owner of the book that was used for the reprint. Two complete pages of plates, XII and XIII, pictures from the Shittaung pagoda, are also missing. Original copies of the book may still have these plates, and all the illustrations. On the first page of the text in the 1970s edition are two marks in ink, circling an incorrect 20 miles as the distance from Vesali to Mrohaung, and an incorrect 10th century as the date for King Anawratha. These were presumably also made by the owner of the book that was used for the reprinting. This circling of the 20 on page 1 is instantly diagnostic of the reprint. In the original book, the numbering on Plates I to VIII starts from No 1 oneach plate. From Plate X, No 1, picture numbers then continue in sequence. Pencilled changes to the numbering by the owner of the copy version have been reproduced in the reprint, but they do n ot match the references in the text, and are best ignored.
I am still trying to get hold of an original copy of the book to compare it with the reprint. There are versions (seen on WorldCat) at SOAS, Indiana University, National Art Library (V&A) London, Newberry Library Chicago and Northern Illinois University, but their online catalogues all use the 1970s title, and mention the paper insert. The Archaeology Dept library in Rangoon also holds a 1970s copy. The 1891 (?92) original might be hardbound, perhaps with a tissue overlay to protect the plates. In 1926, Harvey referred to copies of the book at the Bodelian (it’s not in their online catalogue), the British Museum (their copy was transferred to the British Library, which will not give it out on international loan) and the India Office and Oxford India Institute Libraries. The SOAS journal has a reference to Forchhammer, Emil. 1892. Papers on Subjects Relating to the Archaeology of Burma: A Report on the History of Arakan. Rangoon: Government Press. A collection called Papers on Subjects Relating to the Archaeology of Burma dated 1891 or 92 is in the Yale, Cambridge and Leiden libraries. The Leiden catalogue mentions that this contains “Notes on early history and geography of British Burma” (1891), but does not specify Arakan. The “Notes” title also appears with Forchhammer’s separate works on the Shwedagon and Suvannaphumi.
To keep the book of the name of 'Arakan by Forchhammer, E 1891', click the above picture and can download it.
အြန္လိုင္းမွာတိုက္႐ိုက္ဖတ္ခ်င္ေက ေအနိန္ရာကိုလာပနာဖတ္ႏိုင္ပါေရ။
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