[Paper originally presented at the Workshop, “The Forgotten Kingdom of Arakan: A Public Seminar on the People of Present Day Arakan State of Myanmar,” 23 November 2005, First Hotel, Bangkok, Thailand, listed under the title of “Buddhism in Arakan: Theories and Historiography of the Religious Basis of Ethnonyms”] “Theories and Historiography of the Religious Basis of Ethnonyms in Rakhaing (Arakan), Myanmar (Burma)” By M.W. Charney Interest in Rakhaing (Arakan), has resurged after a considerable period in which few studies appeared outside of Myanmar (Burma).1 This newly found interest, at least newly found in terms of foreign scholars, is indicated in the numerous publications which have appeared since the early 1990s and in the holding of the present workshop. One frequently discussed topic that has not yet yielded a satisfactory conclusion, is the association between religious identity and local ethnonyms, which is the subject of the present paper. “Rakhaing” (Arakanese) used as both an ethnonym and as a geographical and political name for the littoral and the district on the eastern shores of the Bay of Bengal, has become inextricably associated in the prevailing scholarly and popular literature with a Buddhist identity. As one Rakhaing scholar, U Tha Hla, has recently explained: The Rakhaings are Buddhists who have embraced Theravada discipline … The Buddhist culture forms the main fabric of the society and dominates the attitude of the people. No Rakhaing professes any other religion but Buddhism.2 Further, 1 One of the few works during this period that kept the study of Rakhaing alive was Pamela Gutman, “Ancient Arakan (Burma) With Special Reference to Its Cultural History Between the 5th and 11th Centuries” (Ph.D. Dissertation. Australian National University, 1976). Recently, Gutman has also published idem., Burma’s Lost Kingdoms: Splendours of Arakan, photography by Zaw Min Yu (Bangkok: Orchid Press. 2001). 2 Tha Hla, “The Rakhaing,” Rakhaing Guardian 1.1 (Spring, 1997): 2 1 Literally embodiment of Rakhaing is an ethno-religious affiliation. Ethnicity is Mongoloid and religion is Buddhism. Neither race nor faith alone constitutes the unique breed of Rakhaing. Of Mongoloid stock, the Rakhaings sprung from the Tibeto-Burman group along with the Burmese and other Proto-Burmese races who migrated from Central Asia.3 The contemporary wedding of ethnonyms with connotations of exclusive religious affiliation is frequently read backwards. When the term presently used as an ethnonym is encountered in earlier historical documents, this religious affiliation is then read, and transposed, backwards in time, providing ‘evidence’ for the existence of some religious identities and excluding others. Thus, understanding Rakhaing’s religious past correctly, requires separating religious from ethnic and other connotations bundled together in contemporary referrents. This approach is also necessary because of the peculiarities of the multi- cultural strands (not quite syncretic) of Rakhaing statecraft. While an entirely separate issue, the Rakhaing reading of political court culture in ways that have made it appear that religious identities were at work created substantial historiographical problems regarding Rakhaing religion. Thus, the Rakhaing borrowing of certain Islamicate motifs, including Muslim regnal names, as well as Persian numismatic incriptional styles (such as the inclusion of the kalima) was viewed as evidence of a Muslim presence in the court or of the later, its religious identity.4 The implications of the possibilities of this interpretation were profound for two reasons. First, those who accepted this view, linked this evidence to a later Rohingya Muslim identity and projected the Rohingya presence in Rakhaing backward in time to the early fifteenth century (and earlier), drawing back a religious identity and more recent ethnonym anachronistically.5 Numerous stories -- whether or not they are myths remains to be 3 Ibid., 1. 4 Bernot, Les Paysans Arakanais du Pakistan Oriental, 38; Arthur Phayre, Coins of Arakan, of Pegu, and of Burma (London: Trübner & Co. 1882): 2. 5 As Aye Chan argues “Rohingya historians have written many treatises in which they claim for themselves an indigenous status that is traceable within Arakan State for more than a thousand years.” Aye Chan, “The Development of a Muslim Enclave in Arakan (Rakhine) State of Burma (Myanmar),” SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research 3.2 (Autumn 2005): 396; See also the introduction to Michael W. Charney, “Where Jambudipa and Islamdom Converged: Religious Change and the Emergence of Buddhist Communalism in Early Modern Arakan (Fifteenth to Nineteenth Centuries),” (PhD dissertation. University of Michigan. 1999). 2 seen -- were mobilized to fill in the ‘dark spaces’ across the chronological map were used to demonstrate these early origins and their continuity to the present. As one summary of Rakhaing history from the Rohingya point-of-view explains: Arakan was a Hindu kingdom in the distant past . . . The Mongolian [Burmese-speaking Rakhaing] invasion of 957 put an end to the Chandra dynasty and Hinduism in Arakan. The Mongols later assimilated with the locals-the Rohingya Muslims and the Magh [Bengalis, according to this account] Buddhists. In the 15th century, a number of Muslim Kings ruled Arakan, which was a golden period in the history of Arakan. During this period, Rohingya Muslims played a dominant role in the political life of Arakan . . . Burmese rule of Arakan [after 1784] was short lived but bloody and brutal. Historically, the Rohingya's association with Arakan is much older. The ancestors of the people, now known as the Rohingyas, came to Arakan more than a thousand years ago. They became [an] integral part of the Arakan [Littoral] socially, politically and economically. On the other hand, the Burmese have always been identified as the plunderers and despoilers.6 For the same reasons, some Muslim scholars also delimit the period within which Buddhism predominated in Rakhaing. Ahmed Sharif suggests that Buddhism spread into Rakhaing in the eleventh century with the “infiltration” of Burmese people, culture, and religion, for before this time the historical evidence is unavailable.7 Second, those who opposed such suggestions, because of ‘Rohingya’ being a religious as well as an ethnic term, also sought to explain away seeming indications of Islamic culture in the Rakhaing court by presenting their own stories that ought to explain why Muslim titles did not represent Islamic religious affiliation. In doing so, this latter approach attempted to confine strictly the temporal and spatial frameworks within which to view the Rohingya presence in Rakhaing, sometimes stressing that a Muslim population in Rakhaing was a relatively recent development: 6 Abdur Razzaq & Mahfuzul Haque, A Tale of Refugees: Rohingyas in Bangladesh (Dhaka: Centre for Human Rights, 1995), 15. 7 Ahmed Sharif, “On Arakan and the Arakanese,” in A. B. M. Habibullah (ed.), Nalini Kanta Bhattasali Commemoration Volume (Dacca: Dacca Museum, 1966): 352. 3 [T]here is a danger posed by the increasing Muslim population. The Muslims have entered Arakan mostly during the British times and after [the] independence of Burma.8 Similarly, the Buddhist Rakhaing school paralleled Muslim historiographical efforts to push the presence of their religious identity and community back to a far earlier time than is historically feasible: Two thousand five hundred years have passed since the time of parinirvana of Gautama Buddha. Throughout the centuries, ever since the introduction of Buddhism, up to the present time, Arakanese have professed Buddhism without a break.9 Western scholarship has sometimes followed these two approaches, thus compounding rather than resolving the problem. In more recent times, scholarship has more successfully disassociated understanding Rakhaing royal culture and Islamicate borrowing from the Rohingya issue altogether.10 I. Mugh Mugh is a referrent for the Rakhaing with very early roots. In 1585, Fitch referred to the “Kingdom of Recon and Mogen.”11 On the basis of this reference, one must reject Sukomal Chaudhuri’s assertion that the Rakhaing came to be known as Mugh in the from the start of the seventeenth century.12 In the seventeenth century, references to Mugh do increase rapidly. Portuguese accounts, for example, used Mogo to refer to 8 Ashin Siri Okkantha, “History of Buddhism in Arakan” (Ph.D. diss., University of Calcutta, 1990), 177-178. 9 San Tha Aung, The Buddhist Art of Ancient Arakan (An Eastern Border State Beyond Ancient India, East of Vanga and Samatata) (Rangoon: Ministry of Education, 1977): 108; this is echoed by Aye Kyaw, who observes that “The tradition has it to say that Rakhaing got Buddhism at the time when the Buddha was still alive.” Aye Kyaw, “The Night the Buddha Came,” Rakhaing Guardian 1.1 (Spring, 1997): 7. 10 Alamgir M Serajuddin, “Muslim Influence in Arakan and the Muslim Names of Arakanese Kings: A Reassessment,” Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh 30.1 (June 1986): 17-23, esp. 19-20. 11 Ralph Fitch, “An Account of Pegu in 1586-1587,” SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research 2.2 (Autumn 2004): 168. 12 Sukomal Chaudhuri, Contemporary Buddhism in Bangladesh (Calcutta: Atisha Memorial Pulishing Society, 1982): 21. 4 the population of Rakhaing (1605, c. 1638), the King of Rakhaing (c. 1620, c. 1638), and to Rakhaing language. In 1798, Buchanan referred to the Marma in Southeastern Bengal as Joomea Mugs. In 1835, Foley referred to the Rakhaing people within Rakhaing as Mughs or Magas. Persian accounts also used Mugh to refer to the Rakhaing in the early modern period, as in “the tribe of the Magh” (1590, c. 1641) and the ‘Magh Raja’ (1604, 1638, c. 1641). From the seventeenth century, Bengali sources also used Maghi to refer to the Rakhaing era.13 Westerners remained inconsistent in their references into the nineteenth century, using Rakhaing (and its versions) as a political term and as an ethnonym, while also using Mugh as interchangeable with Rakhaing in both usages. Thus, Bernier (1665) referred to the “Kingdom of Rakan, or Mog.”14 Heath refers to “Muggs or Arrackanners” (1689), Ovington refers to “this Kingdom of Arracan, or Empire of Mogo.” (1696),15 and one anonymous account of Rakhaing refers to the“Mugs or Aracaners” (1777).16 There was a simultaneous trend for using Mugh as an ethnonym together with Rakhaing as a political or geographic term, as indicated in Fitch (1585). This occurred as well in some Persian accounts, as in the Tuzuk-I-Jahagiri (c. 1620) which referred to the Maghs, as opposed to state of Arracan.17 Likewise, the Baharistan-I-Ghaybi (c. 1641) applied ‘Mag’ to the king and the people of Rakhaing, but “Achrang” and “Rakhang” to the country.18 This usage as also adopted by British officials in the early part of the nineteenth century, for as Bayfield uses the terms, “Mugs, or native 13 Fernão Guerreiro, Relação Annual das Coisas que Fizeram os Padres da Companhia de Jesus nas suas Missões . . . nos Anos de 1600 a 1609, ed. Artur Viegas (Coimbra: University of Coimbra. 1930): 3.286; Boccarro, 1.122; Sebastião Manrique, Itinerario de Sebastião Manrique, Luís Silveira, ed. (Lisboa: Agência Geral das Colónias, Divisão de Publicações e Biblioteca, 1946): 1.89; 1.116, 1.119, 2.9; Francis Buchanan, Francis Buchanan in Southeast Bengal (1798): His Journey to Chittagong, the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Noakhali and Comilla, edited by Willem van Schendel (Dhaka: University Press Limited. 1992): 32; William Foley, “Journal of a Tour Through the Island of Rambree, with a Geological Sketch of the Country and Brief Account of the Customs, &c. of Its Inhabitants,” Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 5 (1835): 82, 201; Yule & Burnell, Hobson-Jobson, 594; Mirza Nathan, Baharistan-I-Ghaybi, translated from the Persian by M. I. Borah (Gauhati: Government of Assam, 1936): 2.629, 2.710; Sharif, “On Arakan and the Arakanese,” 360. 14 François Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire AD 1665-1668 (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1992): 174. 15 John Ovington, A Voyage to Suratt, in the Year 1689 (n.p.: for Jacob Tonson, 1696): 568. 16 William Heath [1689], “The Adventure of Captain William Heath,” Bengal: Past and Present 29: 198, Ovington, A Voyage to Suratt, 1696, 568; Anonymous, “History of the Mugs, 1777,” SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research 1.1 (Spring, 2003): 316. 17 Jahangir, Tuzuk-I-Jahagiri (or Memoirs of Jahangir), translated by Alexander Rogers & edited by Henry Beveridge (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1909): 1.236. 18 Nathan, Baharistan-I-Ghaybi, 1.419, 2.629, 2.632, 2.710, 5 inhabitants of Arracan” (1834).19 The last case can be explained, however, according to the annexation of Rakhaing and its establishment as a British province, which left Rakhaing on both sides of the provincial borders; hence, Rakhaing was used after the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824-1826) in its strictest geographical and political sense. The origins of ‘Mugh’ are murky at best and have led to confusion at least since the eighteenth century. In 1696, John Ovington complained that he could not ascertain from “whence they [the kings] derive that Appellation of Moghi.”20 There are perhaps as many, mutually irreconcialable, theories to explain the origins of Mugh as there are for Rakhaing. Nevertheless, Mugh appears to have been entirely an external ethnonym, applied to the Rakhaing, rather than accepted by them.21 Hamilton (Buchanan) explained in the late eighteenth century that while the Rakhaing at Calcutta were called ‘Muggs,’ they “are scarcely known by that name in their native country” 22 As Buchanan further explained in 1799: Arakan, or the kingdom of the Mugs, as we often call it. Whence this name of Mug, given by Europeans to the natives of Arakan, has been derived, I know not; but, as far as I could learn, it is totally unknown to the natives and their neighbours, except such of them as, by their intercourse with us, have learned its use.23 Likewise, Leyden explained in 1810 that the “term Mugg, these people assured me, is never used by either themselves or by the Hindus, except when speaking the jargon commonly called Hindustani by the Europeans.”24 Arthur Phayre also admitted that the Rakhaing people themselves “do not know this term.”25 Some of the major theories can be identified a follows. 19 G. T. Bayfield, “Historical Review of the Political Relations Between the British Government in India and the Empires of Ava,” in R. Boileau Pemberton (ed.) Report on the Eastern Frontier of British India (Gauhati: Government of Assam, 1966): xvi. 20 Ovington, A Voyage to Suratt, 582. 21 H. H. Risley, The Tribes and Castes of Bengal. Ethnographic Glossary, vol. II. (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1891): 28. 22 Francis Hamilton, “An Account of the Frontier Between Ava and the Part of Bengal Adjacent to the Karnaphuli River (1825),” SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research 1. 2 (Autmun 2003): 14. 23 Francis Buchanan, “A Comparative Vocabulary of Some of the Languages Spoken in the Burma Empire,” SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research 1.1 (Spring 2003): 43. 24 Cited in Yule & Burnell, Hobson-Jobson, 594. 25 Arthur P. Phayre, “Note on the Name Mag or Maga Applied to the Arakanese by the People of Bengal,” in Phayre, History of Burma, 47. 6 A. The Magus/Magi Theory One theory that became popular in the nineteenth century was that Magha came from the Persian word Magus/Magi for “fire-worshipper.” Yule suggests that Muslim writers mistake Buddhists to be fire-worshippers.26 In 1834, one anonymous Western account appears to have held the same view: “Mugs, [comes] from Mogo, holy, a word properly applicable to their priests and kings.”27 B. The Pirate Theory Another theory that emerged among Bengali scholars was that Magh came from the Sanskrit word Magdu “meaning a sea-bird and therefore a pirate.”28 Ahmed Sharif’s recent explanation of this theory, however, suffers from a misunderstanding of the origins and nature of Rakhaing seafaring. Sharif argues that Before the seventeenth century, Maghs did not practise piracy. They adopted piracy as a profession…when they came in close contact with the Portuguese who allured them to piratical; activities. With Portuguese assistance the Maghs became adept in sea-faring.29 After they did so, from the seventeenth century, Magh became associated with raiders and the terms “Magh and Magher Muluk stood for tyrant and tyranny respectively.”30 C. The Miscegenation Theory The miscegenation theory holds that the Mughs are unclean, of mixed race, the results of ‘inter-breeding’ between Rakhaing migrants/refugees and Bengali mothers: 26 Yule & Burnell, Hobson-Jobson, 594. 27 Anonymous, “Monosyllabic Languages of Asia. Notices of the Monosyllabic Languages of South- eastern Asia,” [translated from the German text of Adelung], The Biblical Repertory and Theological Review 6 (1834): 105. 28 Sharif, “On Arakan and the Arakanese,” 358. 29 Ibid., 358, 360. 30 Ibid., 360. 7 [Phayre]: “a class held in contempt, viz., the descendants of Arakanese settlers on the frontier of Bengal by Bengali mothers.”31 [Wilson]: “The People of Bengal contemptously referred [to] the Rakhaings as Magh which suggests mixed race or unclean beings, a smearing racial slur.”32 [Tha Hla]: “the Rakhaing chroniclers pointed out that Magh applies to the descendants of the Rakhaings who married the Bengali wives during the time when parts of Bengal were under the wing of the Rakhaing monarchy...”33. The miscegenation theory centred on a population group who had migrated out of Rakhaing into the Chittagong area in the late eighteenth century. This population, who called themselves the Râjbansi, were Buddhists, but spoke a Chittagong dialect of Bengali. According to prevailing European theories of race and physiognomy in the nineteenth century, they were not Mongolian, which was peculiar since the Rakhaing were viewed as a “people of the Mongoloid race.”34 The inconsistency between physiognomy and language on the one hand and national origins and religion on the other, led some of the authorities mentioned above to view them as the results of intermarriage. Buchanan provides some interesting information in this regard in 1798: “[the] people by the Bengalese called Mugs. … These Mugs, although they speak a dialect of the Burma language, are not the Rakain, who fled from the Burmas. They came into this province some years before the conquest of Arakan, but during the troubles that facilitated that event. Many of the Rakain, who fled from the Violence of the King of Ava, have settled in this island.35 31 Cited in Yule & Burnell, Hobson-Jobson, 594. 32 Cited in Ibid., 394. 33 Ibid., 2. 34 Phayre, “Note on the Name Mag or Maga,” 47. 35 Buchanan, Francis Buchanan in Southeast Bengal (1798), 47. 8 In the 1780s, after the Burman conquest of Rakhaing, one Muslim account even created two separate countries, one called Rakhaing and the other called Mugh: And between the south and east of Bengal, is situate a large tract called Arkhang (Arracan); Chittagong adjoins it…Their religion is distinct from Islam and Hinduism [14/15…And bordering on this tract is the country of Mag. The inhabitants are so many animals dressed up in human forms. Their religion and law are all unsound…And the pronunciations of their language are similar to those of the people of Tibet.36 The advantage of the miscegenation theory is that it would be reconciliable with the fact that Mugh was an external ethnonym. However, even some of the chief adherents of this theory ultimately rejected it. In 1883, Phayre explained that he had made a mistake in assuming that the Râjbansi were of mixed race and had after further research and reconsideration had come to an altogether different conclusion, discussed under the Buddhist refugee theory further below.37 D. The Regional Theory Phayre’s ultimate rejection of the miscegnation theory raised another dimension to the use of Mugh, whether it really did refer, or was intended to refer, to a sub-group of Rakhaing, or that was used to refer to the Buddhist or non-Muslim population of Southeastern Bengal. Phayre argued that it was intended to refer only to one small ethnic group, but had been extended to the Rakhaing as a whole because “an ethnological error which has caused confusion among Europeans on the subject.”38 Willem van Schendel explains that Mugh is a “general term for people living to the east of the Bengal” and includes Rakhaing, Borua, Burman, Kuki, Marma, Mru, etc.39 Ahmed Sharif specifies that Mugh is applied as a blanket term, but specifically for Buddhists: “‘Magh’ is used by the Chittagong people to mean the follower of Buddha in general, and all Buddhists whether living in Chittagong or 36 Ghulam Hussain Salim, Riyazu-s-Salatin (A History of Bengal), (Delhi: Idarah-I Adabiyat-I Delli, 1903): 14-15. 37 Phayre, “Note on the Name Mag or Maga,” 47. 38 Ibid., 48 39 Schendel’s notes to Buchanan, Francis Buchanan in Southeast Bengal (1798), 202. 9 Arakan or in other parts of the world are termed ‘Magh.’”40 This does not appear to be correct, at least not until after the late eighteenth century. A Buchanan found in his travels in Bengal, the Manipuris, known to the Burmans as Kathee (Kathi), were known as ‘Muggaloos’ by the Bengalis. Again, this led, as Buchanan complained, to the creation by Rennel of a country that really was not there. As Buchanan explained: Muggaloos…Europeans have applied to the country [Manipur], turning it at the same time into Meckley. Kathee is the name given to this people by the Burmas, which we also have taken for the name of the country, and corrupted into Cussay. Mr. Rennel having from Bengal obtained information of Meckley, and from Ava having heard of Cussay, never conceived that they were the same, and, accordingly, in his map of industan, has laid down two kingdoms, Cussay and Meckley, for which, indeed, he had sufficient room, as by Captain Baker’s account he had been induced to place Ava much too far to the east.41 As mentioned in this account, Bengalis referred to Manipur, a Hindu, not a Muslim country, using a variation of Mugh as well. If we consider that European and Muslim usage of Mugh was restricted to the period when Rakhaing kings ruled the northern Rakhaing littoral, it may be tentatively be suggested that Mugh was a Bengali term whose use by Bengalis for the Rakhaing in the northern Rakhaing littoral (Southeastern Bengal) was extended to the Rakhaing as a whole as a result Rakhaing’s incorporation of the northern littoral from the sixteenth century until the mid-seventeenth century. Nevertheless, this theory merely identifies the external source of the term. It does not help us to understand why the term emerged among the Bengalis in the first place or why the term was borrowed by Europeans from the sixteenth century to refer specifically to the Rakhaing and not to other population groups, kings, or countries in the region. E. The Magadha Theories 40 Sharif, “On Arakan and the Arakanese,” 359. 41 Buchanan, “Comparative Vocabulary,” 48. 10