Article

Burma

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Burma

Burma, the sovereign state to the north and east of the Malay Peninsula, appears in the Society’s literature primarily as a point of reference in debates over ancient geography, a source of contested identifications in early Malay historiography, and the theatre of a major military conflict with British colonial interests. The island’s significance to the study of the Malay Archipelago is considerable: it was the subject of one of the most sustained and ambitious arguments in the English-language literature of the early twentieth century, in which the ancient toponyms Yava-dvipa, Iabadiou, Ye-po-ti, and their Chinese variants were re-located from Java or Sumatra to Borneo, with Burma’s position in the broader maritime geography of the region serving as a critical frame of reference for the navigational and commercial routes that connected the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea [1, pp. 21–74].

Ancient Geography and the Borneo Hypothesis

The most extensive treatment of Burma in the Society’s literature is found in Roland Braddell’s 1941 essay, the fifth instalment of a multi-volume reconstruction of the ancient geography of the Malay Archipelago from Chinese, Greek, and Indian sources [1, pp. 21–74]. Braddell, a British colonial administrator in the Straits Settlements, mounted a sustained argument that the ancient toponyms Yava-dvipa, Iabadiou, Ye-po-ti, Tchou-po, Tou-po, and Cho-po referred to Borneo rather than Java or Sumatra, a conclusion that had profound implications for understanding the maritime geography of the region including the waters off Burma’s southern coast [1, pp. 28–68].

The argument proceeded from several converging lines of evidence. Ptolemy, writing in the second century A.D., placed Iabadiou two and a half degrees of longitude east of the Golden Chersonese (the Malay Peninsula), with its eastern extremity twenty minutes of latitude north of its western extremity—positions that Braddell demonstrated were incompatible with either Java or Sumatra but consistent with the western coast of Borneo from Cape Api to its northern promontory [1, pp. 32–33]. The Ramayana described Yava-dvipa as “the isle of gold and silver, adorned with mines of gold,” and beyond it stood a mountain called Cicira whose summit touched the sky; Braddell, following Moens, noted that Mount Kinabalu in Borneo was a candidate for this mountain [1, p. 31].

The navigational evidence was perhaps the most decisive. Braddell demonstrated that the Buddhist monk Fa-hien, who arrived at Ye-po-ti in 413 A.D. and departed on the 16th day of the 4th moon (May) on a north-east course for Canton, could only have sailed from a position north of the equator during the south-west monsoon; from Java, the prevailing east-south-east wind would have made such a direct course impossible [1, pp. 55–56]. Braddell cited Gerini’s conclusion that “no ship ever proceeded from India to China via Sunda Strait until the advent of the Portuguese in the eastern seas,” supported by the absence of any such route in I Tsing’s seventh-century itineraries or in the Chinese chart of c. 1399 [1, p. 53]. The normal sea-route from India and Ceylon to China was through the Straits of Malacca, and the west coast of Borneo was favourably situated as a southern entrepôt for this trade [1, pp. 51–52].

The mineral evidence reinforced the geographical case. Ma Tuan-lin recorded that Tou-po contained gold, silver, and iron and used a gold coinage; Braddell noted that Borneo was the only island in the region documented as containing all three metals, while Java was described in the Encyclopaedia Britannica as “poorest in metallic ores” [1, pp. 44–45]. The Sung Shu recorded that in 430 A.D. the kingdom of Ho-lo-tan, situated on the island of Cho-po, sent as tribute “a diamond mounted in a ring, parrots, Indian and Ye-po clothes”; Braddell observed that Borneo was the only place in Malaysia famous for diamonds [1, p. 60]. The reputation for silver, which the Ramayana attributed to Yava-dvipa, was explained by Braddell through the native name batu perak (silver rock) given to antimony ore in Borneo, which in its outcrop form “shines like silver during the day, and may be seen several miles distant” [1, pp. 38–39].

Braddell’s conclusions were not without controversy. Moens had identified Yava-dvipa and Iabadiou as names for the Malay Peninsula itself, while Ferrand had favoured Sumatra on the grounds of its gold wealth, and Pelliot, the great French sinologist, had in 1904 identified all the toponyms with Java before later modifying his position to “Sumatra-Java” [1, pp. 30–31]. Braddell’s essay represented the most systematic attempt to resolve the question by applying the fundamental rules of reasoning to the navigational, mineralogical, and geographical evidence simultaneously, and he concluded that “if the seven toponyms do represent the same place, then it could not have been Sumatra or Java or the Malay Peninsula but must in all probability have been Borneo” [1, p. 68].

The Kedah Annals and the Burma Identification

A separate and more limited reference to Burma appears in a short note by R.O. Winstedt, who addressed the correct romanization of a Raja’s name in the Kedah Annals [2, p. 152]. Braddell had proposed in 1937 that the name variously spelled Galungi, Kalungi, and Kelinggi in the Annals should be corrected to Kalinga and geographically located in Burma [2, p. 152]. Winstedt rejected this identification, arguing that the Annals’ author was saturated in the romance of the Hikayat Amir Hamzah, from which he had borrowed the name Zamin Turan for Kedah itself, and that the Raja Gulanggi (or Kulanggi) was a character from that same romance, with the spelling varying across fifteenth-century Malay manuscript traditions [2, p. 152]. The dispute, though brief, illustrates the manner in which Burma entered the Society’s literature as a candidate location for names in early Malay historical texts, and the caution with which such identifications were received.

The First Anglo-Burman War

The most direct treatment of Burma as a political entity in the Society’s literature is G.P. Ramachandra’s 1978 article on the outbreak of the First Anglo-Burman War (1824–1826) [3, pp. 69–99]. The article, comprising approximately thirty-one pages, examines the causes and circumstances leading to the conflict between British colonial interests and the Burmese state. The war was significant for the Malay Peninsula in that it represented the first major military confrontation between the British and a major Southeast Asian power in the early nineteenth century, and its aftermath reshaped the political geography of the region. The article’s publication in the Society’s journal reflects the continued interest in the military and diplomatic history of the region’s interactions with neighbouring states, even as the Society’s priorities had shifted from the philological and geographical debates of the earlier decades toward more conventional historical narrative [3, pp. 69–99].

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on Burma reveals a clear evolution in the nature and purpose of engagement with the subject. In the earlier period, Burma entered the literature primarily as a geographical and philological reference point: Braddell’s 1941 essay used the maritime geography of the region, including the waters off Burma’s southern coast and the monsoon patterns that governed navigation between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, as the framework within which to resolve the ancient toponymic question [1, pp. 28–68]. The argument was inherently comparative, requiring a detailed understanding of the positions of all the major landmasses—Java, Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, Borneo, and the Indochinese coast—to demonstrate that only Borneo satisfied the full body of evidence. Winstedt’s 1940 note, though brief, similarly placed Burma within a framework of textual criticism and comparative literature [2, p. 152].

By the late 1970s, the Society’s engagement with Burma had shifted to the political and military history of the colonial period, with Ramachandra’s article on the First Anglo-Burman War representing a move toward the conventional historiography of interstate conflict [3, pp. 69–99]. This shift mirrors the broader trajectory of the Society’s journal from the philological and geographical scholarship characteristic of the early twentieth century toward the social, economic, and political history that came to dominate the field in the post-war decades. The rice industry survey by Cheng Siok-hwa (1969), while not directly concerned with Burma, belongs to the same period of renewed interest in the economic history of the region and its connections to neighbouring states [4, pp. 130–144].

The Braddell essay remains the most substantial contribution to the subject in the Society’s literature, and its arguments, while not universally accepted, established a methodological precedent for the rigorous application of navigational and geographical evidence to ancient toponymic problems. The essay’s reliance on contemporary British colonial reports on Borneo’s mineral wealth, the sailing practices of Chinese junks in the early nineteenth century, and the monsoon patterns documented in Admiralty sailing directories illustrates the interdisciplinary character of the Society’s scholarship at its most ambitious [1, pp. 36–39].

MBRAS Sources

History

References

  1. R. Braddell (1941). An introduction to the study of ancient times in the Malay Peninsula and the Straits of Malacca JMBRAS 19(1): 21–74.
  2. R.O. Winstedt (1940). Kulanggi or Gulanggi JMBRAS 18(2): 152.
  3. G.P. Ramachandra (1978). The outbreak of the first Anglo-Burman War JMBRAS 51(2): 69–99. Read on JSTOR
  4. Cheng Siok-hwa (1969). The rice industry of Malaya: a historical survey JMBRAS 42(2): 130–144.