ABSTRACT

The pervasive use of Buddhist terms and notions in the political field is a well-known example of Buddhism's dominance as a cultural force throughout premodern Southeast Asia. While scholars have duly recognized the key concepts pertaining to Buddhist kingship, the tendency to generalize the meaning of common concepts such as dhammarājā may have obscured the fact that expression of such concepts is always local and meanings may have varied over time and place. This paper offers a case study and may contribute to comparative approaches. As he was relentlessly waging war against the Mon king Banya Dala, the Burmese king Alaungmintaya sent letters to Pegu to demonstrate his political claims, letters that were countered by similar claims on behalf of Banya Dala. Read against the background of the political record as drawn out in Burmese historiography, an examination of the letters offers an exceptional insight into diplomatic practice carved out of the ethical and cosmological stuff of Burma's Buddhist environment. The paper presented here offers an example of the practical and complex use of Buddhist rhetoric at a critical moment of Burma's eighteenth century history.

Alaungmintaya (r. 1752–60, aka Alaungphaya) was the founder of the third Burmese dynasty (1752–1885). Banya Dala (r. 1747–57) was the ruler of the predominantly Mon kingdom of Pegu (Hamsawadi). The years 1755–56 were the key years of Alaungmintaya's war efforts to gain supremacy over the whole of the territory traditionally understood to have been the realm of Burmese kings.

INTRODUCTION

Addressing the plural dynamics of Buddhist culture across geography and time, this paper offers a study of Buddhist diplomacy with its rhetorical modes as they are revealed in the letters that a Burmese and a Mon king exchanged while they were waging war against each other. Both kings were Buddhists sharing in the same Weltanschauung and religious background. They were also new men without proven links to preceding dynasties.

From the early seventeenth century onwards, a single kingdom had existed in the Irrawaddy valley. Its unity was broken when in 1740, a new, predominantly Mon kingdom was refounded in the old and prestigious city of Pegu.