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Hierarchy and Order in Pre-Colonial Burma

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

Michael Aung-Thwin
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Extract

In the classical Burmese state, land and labour were categorized as either crown or private. State or crown land (mye-taw) was composed largely of the best irrigated tracts in the dry zone, usually worked by crown labour called kyun taw or ahmudan—depending upon the period of study—subject to service tenure, whose produce went to kyi-taw or royal granaries. These crown lands and labour were administered by temporary and permanent clients of the king in return for certain rights and privileges. Exempt communal or ancestral land (bòbábaing mye) was owned collectively, usually by villages of non-indentured people (athi) who, in lieu of corvée, submitted per capita taxes to the crown, determined by a complicated system based on their occupations. Sańghika or religious lands (wáthúkan mye) were either owned outright by the church or held in perpetuity as endowments. The tax exempt produce from glebe lands paid for the maintenance of religious buildings and monasteries, the monks, and for the care of their students and their servants (hpayà-kyun) who were exempt from both corvée as well as per capita tax.

Type
Symposium on Societal Organization in Mainland Southeast Asia Prior to the Eighteenth Century
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , September 1984 , pp. 224 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1984

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References

1 Aung-Thwin, Michael, “Jambudipa: Classical Burma's Camelot”, Contributions to Asian Studies 16 (1981): 38–61Google Scholar.

2 Becker, Alton, “A Linguistic Image of Nature: The Burmese Numerative Classifier System”, International Journal of the Sociology of Language 5 (1975): 109–21Google Scholar.

3 Michael Aung-Thwin, “The Origins of the Classical Burmese State”, manuscript.

4 I owe the original insight to Louis Dumont's inspiring Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications, tr. Sainsbury, Mark, Dumont, Louis, and Gulati, Basia (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980)Google Scholar.

5 Smail, John R.W., “On the Possibility of an Autonomous History of Modern Southeast Asia”, Journal of Southeast Asian History 2 (1961): 72–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 One devotee while donating to the saἠgha stated: “I too am a servant [kyun] of the Three Gems.” SeeSelections from the Inscriptions of Pagan, ed. Tin, Pe Maung and Luce, G.H. (Rangoon: Rangoon University Press, 1928), p. 78 (hereafter cited as SIP)Google Scholar.

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9 Pagan Kyauksa Let Ywei Sin [Selections of Pagan Inscriptions], ed. Maung, U.E. (Rangoon: Pannya Nanda Press, 1958), p. 86Google Scholar (hereafter cited as EM).

10 Ibid.

11 SIP, pp. 29-30.

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15 SheHaung, pp. 155, 178.

16 SIP, p. 20. The word ciy, “to employ”, is often used with the word “to hire” as in cit ἠhá.

17 EM, pp. 87-88.

18 Furnivall, J.S., “Some Records of Hlesatun”, Journal of the Burma Research Society II(1912): 114–16Google Scholar.

19 EM, p. 1.

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22 For a comprehensive study of patron-client ties, see Friends, Followers, and Factions: A Reader in Political Clientelism, ed. Steffen Schmidt, W. et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977)Google Scholar.

23 I am, of course, referring to the level plains corridor created by the Irrawaddy and the coastal areas of Burma along with a few centers of power periodically under Burman hegemony such as Arakan and occasionally parts of the Shan States.