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Anuruddha and the Thaton Tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

H. G. Quaritch Wales
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Extract

The Burmese chronicles are emphatic that it was from the Mon city of Thaton that King Anuruddha in a.d. 1057 obtained the Pāli canon. Yet students of Burmese history have been by no means insensitive to the difficulty of reconciling this with the exclusively Hindu character of the more or less contemporary archæological remains at Thaton. The late Prince Damrong even went so far as to suggest that P'rӑ Paṭhóm, in the neighbouring Buddhist kingdom of Dvaravatī, rather than Thaton in Burma, must have been the city that Anuruddha conquered, and from which he derived his Hīnayāna Buddhism. I now propose shortly to reconsider the archæological evidence, in the light of recent advances in our understanding of the mechanics of Indian cultural expansion and of a certain passage in one of the Mon chronicles to which attention has not hitherto been directed in this particular connection. I believe that this may help us to resolve the difficulty.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 79 , Issue 3-4 , January 1947 , pp. 152 - 156
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1947

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References

page 152 note 1 JSS., vol. xiii, pt. 2, p. 31.

page 152 note 2 Ray, Nihar-ranjan, Brahmanical Gods in Burma, pp. 30–32, figs. 5, 6, and 20Google Scholar. The plaques of the Thaya paya considered by Ray and others to be Śaivite are perhaps more probably Jātakas, dating from eleventh to twelfth century a.d. See ARASI., 1930–34, pp. 196–202.

page 152 note 3 Ray, op. cit., fig. 30.

page 153 note 1 Wales, Quaritch, “Recent Malayan Excavations and some Wider Implications, JRAS., 1946, pts. 3 and 4Google Scholar.

page 153 note 2 Ray, , Sanskrit Buddhism in Burma, p. 91Google Scholar.

page 153 note 3 Ibid., p. 32.

page 154 note 1 Cœdès, , “Documents sur l'histoire politique et religieuse du Laos occidental,” BEFEO., xxv, p. 16Google Scholar.

page 154 note 2 “Art de Dvāravatī et Art Khmer,” RAA., 1935, p. 72.

page 154 note 3 Loc. cit., p. 23.

page 155 note 1 BEFEO., loc. cit., p. 160.

page 155 note 2 Duroiselle, C. in Revealing India's Past, London, 1939, p. 331Google Scholar.

page 155 note 3 Stewart, J. A., “Excavation and Exploration in Pegu,” JBRS., vol. vii, pt. 1, 1917Google Scholar.

page 156 note 1 Duroiselle, loc. cit. And a bronze image of Dīpankara Buddha, in late Gupta style, found at Thaton (ARASI., 1930–34, p. 204, pl. oxii) may be a relic of this early period.