Mon Queen Mi Chao Bu (Banya Htao)

1453-71 Queen Shin Saw Pu of Mons (Bartaban) (Myanmar-Burma)

Also known as Byih-nya Daw, Shinsawbu or Shengtsambu, she was daughter of Razadarit, king of the Mons in Hanthawaddy (Bago) in Lower Myanmar, who was succeeded by her brother. She married Sinphushin Thihathu of Bamarl. After his death three years later, she married his successor Minhla Nge, who died after three months, and his successor Kalay Taung Nyo died after seven months. She then moved back to Hanthawaddy, which was then ruled by her brother King Byinnya Yan. Within a year he was succeeded by Byinnya Baru and Byinnya Gyan, before she finally became Queen of the Mons Kingdom. Her reign was peaceful, quiet and prosperous. She abdicated and retired to the Shwedagon Pagoda, built new pagodas and monasteries and devoted to rest of her life to religious activities. She died at the age of 79.She is still revered today for giving the pagoda its present shape and form. She gave her weight in gold (40 kg) to be beaten into gold leaf and used to plate the stupa.  copy from: http://www.guide2womenleaders.com/womeninpower/Womeninpower1450.htm

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Biography: Queen Shin Saw Bu (Mi Chao Bu or Bannya Htao)

by John Louie Ramos
Created on: April 21, 2010
Bana Thau popularly known as Queen Shin Saw Bu of Burma is one of the most famous queens during the her time. It is said that the elegant and valiant Queen have reincarnated in the 19th century as the British Queen Victoria.
Shin Saw Bu was the daughter of Mon King Razadarit, the ninth king of the Hanthawaddi Pegu, and the chief queen of Thuddhamaya . She was born sometime in March 1394 on the 12th waxing of Tabaung and was given the birth name Viharadevi which means "queen of monastery."

She was married to a certain Binnya Bwe - her distant cousin. She had two daughters and a son, Binnya Waru who later ruled the Hanthawaddy kingdom from 1446-1450.
Before reaching the age of 25, Shin Saw Bu's husband died. Shortly after her husband's death, Shin Saw Bu together with her son two and daughters moved to Ava.
Her brother, Binnya Kyan the rebellious crown prince of Pegu sent her to the king of Ava, King Thihatu. The king was very much attracted to Shin Saw Bu but the latter's feeling isn't mutual.
Sometime during a military expedition in 1426, King Thihatu was killed thus Shin Saw Bu freed herself from the tyrant ruler of Ava. However, Shin Saw Bu remained in Ava for an additional 4 years before deciding to leave after a 7-year exile.
She returned to Pegu in 1430 and remained silent until she was named ruler of Pegu in 1453. During her reign in Pegu, Shin Saw Bu restored peace and justice throughout the region.
In 1460, after seven years of successfully ruling the Pegu region of lower Burma, Shin Saw Bu relinquished her throne with plans of moving and having a peaceful and quiet life in Dagon.
In Dagon, historians claim that Shin Saw Bu still wears a crown and thus, theorized that Shin Saw Bu remained the ruler of Pegu. However, stone inscriptions written in the old Mon language that describes the passing of power from Shin Saw Bu to her son-in-law, Dhammaceti discredit such theories.
Shin Saw Bu devoted her last years to religion and monastery.  She died in 1470 or 1472. She was reportedly buried in a stupa on a monastery in the area of Sangchaung district which is believed to be the modern day Yangon.
During her reign that lasted for around 17 years, Shin Saw Bu was loved by the people because of her religious devotion and justice.

Source: http://www.helium.com/items/1810462-biography-of-queen-shin-sawbu

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မြန္သူေဌးႀကီးႏိုင္ေအာက္

မြန္သူေဌးၾကီးနိုင္ေအာက္သည္ သာမန္လူမ်ားစိတ္ကူးေတာင္မယဥ္ရဲေသာ အဂၤလိပ္ကုမၸဏီႏွင့္စီးပြါးေရး အရ ယွဥ္ျပိဳင္ရဲေသာသူတစ္ဦးအျဖစ္ အမည္ေက်ာ္ၾကားခဲ့သူတစ္ဦးျဖစ္သည္။ ေအာက္ျမန္မာျပည္တြင္သာမက  ကရင္နီျပည္နယ္ ထိုင္းနိုင္ငံ ဇင္းမယ္နယ္အထိ သစ္ကုန္သည္သူေဌးၾကီးအျဖစ္ နာမည္ၾကီးခဲ့သူတစ္ဦးျဖစ္သည္။ သို႕ရာတြင္သူေဌးၾကီးတစ္ဦးအျဖစ္ျဖတ္သန္းခဲ့ေသာသူ၏သမိုင္းေၾကာင္းမွာလည္းစိတ္၀င္စားစရာအလြန္ေကာင္းလွေပသည္။ အလြန္ဆင္းရဲေသာကြ်ဲႏြားေက်ာင္းသားဘ၀မွ ၾကိဳးစားရုန္းကန္ခဲ့ျပီးမွ ပစၥည္းဥစၥာၾကြယ္၀လာသူလည္းျဖစ္ သည္။

          ဦးနိုင္ေအာက္ကို ကရင္ျပည္နယ္ ဖါးအံျမိဳ႕နယ္ ေကာ့ဂြမ္ေက်းရြာအုပ္စု ရြာသိမ္ဇနပုဒ္ျဖစ္သည့္ ခရဲရြာတြင္ ဖြါးျမင္ခဲ့သည္။ ေမြးခ်င္း(၅)ဦးအနက္ တတိယေျမာက္သားျဖစ္သည္။ မိဘမ်ားမွာ ဆင္းရဲလြန္း၍ငယ္စဥ္ကေက်ာင္း မေနရေပ။ ခရဲရြာႏွင့္မနီးမေ၀း မဲခရက္မြန္ဘုန္းၾကီးေက်ာင္းတြင္ မြန္စာေပႏွင့္ဂဏန္းသခ်ၤာကို သင္ယူခဲ့သည္။ မဲခရက္ေက်ာင္းရွိ ကုန္းတြင္ကြ်ဲႏြားအငွါးေက်ာင္းခဲ့ရသည္။ ယခုအခါမဲခရက္ကုန္းတြင္ လူအိမ္ေျခမရွိေသာ္လည္း ဦးနိုင္ေအာက္ေဆာက္လုပ္လွဴဒါန္းထားေသာ ေက်ာင္းေဆာင္ေဟာင္းႏွင့္ေစတီတစ္ဆူရွိေနဆဲျဖစ္သည္။ ပါးစပ္ ရာဇ၀င္အရ ဤကုန္းေျမတြင္ဦးနိုင္ေအာက္ အိမ္မက္အရေရႊအိုးတစ္လုံးတူးေဖၚရသည္ဟု ခရဲေက်းရြာ သက္ၾကီး ရြယ္အိုမ်ားမွ ေျပာဆိုေနေသာ္လည္း အတည္ျပဳ၍မရေသးေပ။ (ဤကား စကားခ်ပ္)

          အရြယ္ေရာက္ေသာအခါ သံလြင္ျမစ္ကမ္းနေဘး ကဒိုးေကာ့ႏွပ္ေက်းရြာအုပ္စု သံခပိုင္(ၾသင္ခပိုင္)ရြာသူ မိေရႊမွဳတ္ႏွင့္ အေၾကာင္းပါခဲ့သည္။ လယ္သူရင္းငွါးအျဖစ္အသက္ေမြး၀မ္းေၾကာင္းျပဳခဲ့သည္။ မိေရႊမွဳတ္ကြယ္လြန္ ေသာအခါ အလုပ္ကိုၾကိဳးစားလုပ္ကိုင္သူျဖစ္သည့္အားေလ်ာ္္စြာ ေယာကၡမမွ ခယ္မျဖစ္သူမိေရႊရုပ္ႏွင့္ အိမ္ေထာင္ ထပ္မံခ်ေပးခဲ့သည္။ အသက္(၃၅)ႏွစ္အရြယ္တြင္ ကဒိုးေကာ့ႏွပ္ေက်းရြာသစ္ကုန္သည္ၾကီးနိုင္ေထာထံတြင္ အလုပ္ သမား(ယခင္အေခၚကူလီ) အျဖစ္အလုပ္ေျပာင္းလဲလုပ္ကိုင္ခဲ့သည္။ အလုပ္ကိုအပတ္တကုပ္ၾကိဳးစား လုပ္ကိုင္သူျဖစ္သည့္အားေလ်ာ္စြာ မၾကာမီအလုပ္သမားေခါင္းေဆာင္အျဖစ္ သစ္ကုန္သည္ၾကီးနိုင္ေထာမွ ယုံၾကည္စြာခန္႕အပ္ခဲ့သည္။ လုံးလ၀ိရိယအားစိုက္လုပ္ကိုင္ရင္း ေငြေၾကးတစစစုေဆာင္းခဲ့သည္။ ထိုအခ်ိန္တြင္ ဒုတိယဇနီးထပ္မံကြယ္လြန္ျပန္သျဖင့္ ကဒိုးေကာ့ႏွပ္ရြာသူ မိဇာအုပ္ႏွင့္ထပ္မံအိမ္ေထာင္ျပဳခဲ့ျပန္သည္။

          အသက္(၅၀)အရြယ္တြင္ သစ္ကုန္သည္ၾကီးနိုင္ေထာထံ ေခါင္းခြဲေခၚ သစ္ေခါင္းအလုပ္ကိုခြဲေပးရန္ေတာင္းခံ ခဲ့ျပီး ကိုယ္ပိုင္အလုပ္ကိုခြဲ၍လုပ္ကိုင္ခဲ့သည္။ ဦးေထာ္မွလည္း ရိုးသား၍ၾကိဳးစားေသာ ဦးနိုင္ေအာက္ကို တူသားသဖြယ္ခ်စ္ခင္ျပီး ၄င္းပိုင္ဆိုင္ေသာသစ္လုပ္အကြက္မ်ားကိုခြဲေပးခဲ့သည္။ ဦးနိုင္ေအာက္သည္ ကရင္နီနယ္ သစ္ေတာမ်ားတြင္သစ္လုပ္ပိုင္ခြင့္ရရွိခဲ့ျပီးၾကိဳးစား၍လုပ္ကိုင္ခဲ့ျပီး စီးပြါးေရးမွာလည္းဒီေရအလားတိုးတက္ခဲ့သည္။
ထိုစဥ္က ကရင္နီျပည္နယ္အစိုးရႏွင့္ အဂၤလိပ္အစိုးရတို႕အၾကား သစ္ေတာပိုင္ဆိုင္မွဳအတြက္ အျငင္းပြါးေနခ်ိန္ ျဖစ္ေသာေၾကာင့္ အခက္ခဲျဖစ္ေနေသးေသာ္လည္း ေနာက္ပိုင္းဦးနိုင္ေအာက္၏ ရိုးသားၾကိဳးစားမွဳကို အသိ မွတ္ျပဳလာျပီး အခက္ခဲမ်ားကိုေက်ာ္ျဖတ္လာနိုင္ခဲ့သည္။ သစ္လုပ္ငန္းမ်ားသာမက အဂၤလိပ္တပ္မွ အ၀တ္ အထည္ႏွင့္ အျခားအသုံးအေဆာင္ပစၥည္းမ်ားကိုလည္း၀ယ္ယူျပီး ကယားျပည္နယ္ ကႏၱရ၀တီ လိြဳင္ေကာ္ ေဘာ္လခဲ ၾကယ္ၾကီးဖိုး ေနာင္ပုလဲ ေငြေတာင္သို႕ ကူးသန္းေရာင္း၀ယ္ေဖါက္ကားခဲ့သည္။ ထို႕အျပင္ ထိုင္းနိုင္ငံ ဇင္းမယ္ေဒသရွိ သစ္ေတာၾကိဳး၀ိုင္းမ်ားကိုအခြန္ေဆာင္ျပီး ဆင္ေကာင္ေရ(၄၀)ေက်ာ္ျဖင့္လုပ္ေဆာင္ခဲ့ရာ လုပ္ငန္းေအာင္ျမင္မွဳ မ်ားစြာရွိလာခဲ့သည္။ တတိယေျမာက္ဇနီးကြယ္လြန္ေသာအခါ ဘုရား၊ေစတီ၊ တန္ေဆာင္း၊ သိမ္၊ေက်ာင္း ဇရပ္မ်ား ကိုေဆာက္လုပ္လွဴဒါန္းကာကုသိုလ္ေကာင္းမွဳျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့သည္။ (၁၈၇၈)ခုႏွစ္တြင္ မႏၱေလးျမိဳ႕ မဟာ၀ိသုဒၶါရံုေက်ာင္း တိုက္တြင္သီတင္းသုံးေနေသာ မြန္ဆရာေတာ္ဦးပညာဓမၼကို ပင့္ေဆာင္ေတာ္မူျပီး ပရိယတၱိသာသနာ ျပန္႕ပြါးေစရန္အတြက္ ေက်ာင္းတိုက္၊စာသင္တိုက္မ်ားကိုေဆာက္လုပ္လွဴဒါန္းခဲ့သည္။ ထိုအခ်ိန္တြင္ တတိယဇနီး ကြယ္လြန္ျပီး စတုတၴဇနီးျဖစ္သူ ကဒိုးေကာ့ႏွပ္ရြာသူမိဗ်ဳႏွင့္ထပ္မံအိမ္ေထာင္ျပဳခဲ့သည္။

          ဦးနိုင္ေအာက္သည္ မ်ိဳးခ်စ္စိတ္ျပင္းထန္သူျဖစ္သလို မဟုတ္မခံတတ္ေသာစိတ္ရွိသူတစ္ဦးလည္းျဖစ္သည္။ ထိုကာလတြင္ ခ်စ္တီးကုလားမ်ား ဘာဘူကုလားမ်ားမွ ေငြေခ်းလုပ္ငန္းမ်ား ဆန္စပါးအေရာင္၀ယ္လုပ္ငန္းမ်ားကို လုပ္ကိုင္ျပီး တိုင္းရင္းသားမ်ားအေပၚ ေခါင္းပုံျဖတ္အျမတ္ၾကီးစားေနသည္ကိုမရွဳဆိတ္နိုင္ေပ။ လယ္သမားမ်ား သက္သာေစရန္ရန္ ေငြေခ်းငွားလုပ္ငန္းႏွင့္စပါးေရာင္း၀ယ္ေရးလုပ္ငန္းကိုလုပ္ကိုင္ခဲ့သည္။ အစပထမတြင္အရွံဳးေပၚ ခဲ့ေသာ္လည္း ေနာက္ပိုင္းတြင္ ေအာင္ျမင္မွဳရရွိလာခဲ့သည္။ ဦးနိုင္ေအာက္သည္ေခတ္ပညာမတတ္ေသာ္လည္း ၾကိဳးစားမွဳ ၀ိရိယၾကီးမွဳ စည္းကမ္းရွိမွဳ အေမွ်ာ္အျမင္ေကာင္းမွဳတို႕ေၾကာင့္ လုပ္ငန္းေအာင္ျမင္ခဲ့သည္။ မည္သို႕ခ်မ္းသာပါေစ ပလႊားမွဳမရွိ။ ရိုးရိုးကုတ္ကုတ္ႏွင့္ သာမန္လူလိုသာေနထိုင္ခဲ့သည္။ ေရွးလူၾကီးမ်ား၏ အဆိုအရ အျမဲတမ္းေမာ္လျမိဳင္ခါးတိုအက္်ီႏွင့္ ပုဆိုးျဖဴကိုသာ၀တ္ဆင္ေလ့ရွိသည္ဟုဆိုသည္။

          ထိုေခတ္ကာလတြင္ သံလြင္ျမစ္တစ္ေၾကာ၌ ဧရာ၀တီဖလိုတီ အဂၤလိပ္ကုမၸဏီကသာ ေရေၾကာင္းခရီးကို လႊမ္းမိုးၾကီးစိုးေနသည္။ အဆိုပါေရေၾကာင္းခရီးသြား မီးသေဘၤာမ်ားကို၀ယ္ယူျပီး စီးပြါးေရးအရယွဥ္ျပိဳင္ရန္စိတ္ကူး ေပါက္ခဲ့ျပီး (၁၉၀၀)ခုႏွစ္တြင္ ေသြးသားရင္းျဖစ္သူ သူေဌးၾကီးနိုင္ေရႊေလွးအကူအညီျဖင့္ စေကာ့တလန္နိုင္ငံ မက္ကီးအင္ဘက္စတား သေဘၤာကုမႁဏီမွ ႏွစ္ထပ္သေဘၤာ(၇)စီးႏွင့္ တစ္ထပ္သေဘၤာ(၂)စီးကို က်ပ္ေငြ (၄၉၀၀၀၀)အကုန္က်ခံ၍ ၀ယ္ယူခဲ့သည္။ မုတၱမသေဘၤာက်င္းတစ္ခုကို က်ပ္တစ္သိန္းအကုန္က်ခံ၍ တည္ ေဆာက္ခဲ့သည္။ ထို႕ေနာက္ ဧရာ၀တီဖလိုတီ အဂၤလိပ္ကုမၸဏီႏွင့္ ယွဥ္ျပိဳင္ကာ သံလြင္ျမစ္တေၾကာရွိေရေၾကာင္း သယ္ယူပို႕ေဆာင္ေရးလုပ္ငန္းကို လုပ္ေဆာင္ခဲ့သည္။ ဦးနိုင္ေအာက္ပိုင္သေဘၤာအမည္မ်ားမွာ(၁) ေအာင္သီတာ (၂)ေအာင္မဂၤလာ(၃)ေအာင္မာလာ(၄) ေအာင္ဒီပါ(၅) ေအာင္စၾကၤာ(၆) ေအာင္သိန္း(၇) ေအာင္တင္ (၈)ေအာင္ေဇယ်ႏွင့္ ေအာင္နိဗၸာန္တို႕ျဖစ္သည္။ ဧရာ၀တီဖလိုတီသေဘၤာကုမၸဏီႏွင့္ အျပိဳင္အဆိုင္သေဘၤာခေလ်ာ့ ယူေျပးဆြဲခဲ့သည္။ ေနာက္ဆုံးသေဘၤာခမယူဘဲ ပု၀ါတစ္ပိုင္လက္ေဆာင္ေပးခဲ့သည္အထိျဖစ္သြားခဲ့သည္။ ေနာက္ဆုံးအရင္းအႏွီးမ်ားျပားေသာ အဂၤလိပ္ကုမၸဏီကိုမယွဥ္နိုင္ေတာ့ဘဲ သေဘၤာေျပးဆြဲျခင္းကိုရပ္နားခဲ့ရသည္။ သေဘၤာကိုလည္း  ဧရာ၀တီဖလိုတီကုမၸဏီကို က်ပ္ေငြ(၆)သိန္းျဖင့္အျပီးအပိုင္ေရာင္းခ်ခဲ့သည္။ ထိုအခါသံလြင္ျမစ္ တစ္ေၾကာ၀ယ္  ဧရာ၀တီအဂၤလိပ္ကုမၸဏီကသာျပိဳင္ဘက္မရွိ မင္းမူသြားခဲ့သည္။ ထိုေခတ္ထိုအခါက  အဂၤလိပ္ ကုမၸဏီကို ျပိဳင္၀့ံသူမွာအလြန္ရွားပါးလွကား ဦးနိုင္ေအာက္၏ယွဥ္ျပိဳင္ရဲေသာသတၱိကိုခ်ီးက်ဴးၾကသည္။ ရင္းႏွီး ျမဳပ္ႏွံမွဳမ်ားျပားျပီးအစိုးရမွေနာက္ခံေပးထားေသာ အဂၤလိပ္ကုမၸဏီကိုယွဥ္ျပိဳင္ရာတြင္ရံွဳးနိမ့္ခဲ့ေသာ္လည္း နယ္ခ်ဲ႕ အရင္းရွင္စံနစ္စီးပြါးေရးလုပ္ငန္းကို တုပျပိဳင္ရဲေသာသတၱိမွာ နည္းနည္းေနာေနာမဟုတ္ေခ်။

          ဦးနိုင္ေအာက္၏ေနာက္ဆုံးဇနီးမွာမိျငိမ္းေမျဖစ္ျပီး သားသမီးတစ္ဦးမွမထြန္းကားခဲ့ေခ်။ ၄င္း၏အေမြကို ေသြးသားရင္းျဖစ္သူကိုစံနစ္တက်လႊဲေျပာင္းအပ္ႏွံခဲ့သည္။ ဦးနိုင္ေအာက္သည္အသက္(၈၁)ႏွစ္အရြယ္(၁၉၁၃) ခုႏွစ္ ဇြန္လ(၃၀)ရက္တနလၤာေန႕ေန႕လည္(၁၂)နာရီခြဲေက်ာ္ေက်ာ္တြင္ကြယ္လြန္သြားခဲ့သည္။ သူ၏ဂုဏ္သတင္းကို ေနာင္လာေနာက္သားမ်ားအမွတ္ရေစရန္ ပုံတူေက်ာက္ရုပ္တစ္ခုကို ကဒုိးေကာ့ႏွပ္ဘုန္းၾကီးေက်ာင္း၀င္းအတြင္း (၁၉၂၇)ခုႏွစ္ေအာက္တိုဘာ(၁၅)ရက္တြင္ ထုလုပ္စိုက္ထူခဲ့သည္။ ပုံတူရုပ္ထုေအာက္တြင္
          “ေကာ့ႏွပ္ရြာေန ေကာင္းမွဳပုညရွင္ၾကီးျဖစ္ေသာ သစ္ကုန္သည္၊ဆန္စက္ပိုင္ရွင္၊ျမန္မာျပည္မီးသေဘၤာ သူေဌးၾကီးဦးနာေအာက္သည္ သကၠရာဇ္(၁၂၇၅) နယုန္လဆုတ္(၁၂)ရက္ေန႕(၁၂)နာရီ(၃၅)မိနစ္အခ်ိန္တြင္ ကြယ္လြန္ေလသည္။”ဟူေသာစာတမ္းေရးထိုးထားသည္။

          ဦးနိုင္ေအာက္သည္ ငယ္စဥ္ကဆင္းရဲသား ကြ်ဲေက်ာင္းသား လယ္သမား သစ္အလုပ္သမားဘ၀မွ ရုန္းကန္ၾကိဳးစားကာ သိန္းေပါင္းရာေက်ာ္ခ်မ္းသာေသာသူေဌးတစ္ဦးအျဖစ္ထင္ရွားယုံမက ျဗိတိသွ်ပိုင္ဧရာ၀တီ သေဘၤာကုမၸဏီႏွင့္ စီးပြါးျပိဳင္ရဲေသာ မြန္အမ်ိဳးသားလုပ္ငန္းရွင္တစ္ဦးအျဖစ္ သမိုင္း၀င္ပုဂၢိဳလ္တစ္ဦးျဖစ္ခဲ့သည္။

Credit to go to https://sites.google.com/site/myanmarsite1/home/ma/nineaut 

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The Mon People Became a True Phoenix Kingdom

25 Mar 2013 History & Geography 

Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon is one of the most recognizable features of Myanmar. It is hard to find a book or brochure that lacks at least one illustration of this magnificent landmark.

image source from: Christopher Voitus
It would be considered another architectural treasure of the Bagan period…if it were a Bagan-era monument. It is not. Was it built by the Konbaung kings, the predecessors of colonial Burma? No.
Shwedagon Pagoda, like a number of other architectural gems, belongs to the time of the Mon kingdom, one of Burma’s lesser known historical states.
The Mon kingdom can be considered the phoenix of Burma. It achieved significant influence during several periods of history, then fell, only to return later. Its name changed depending on the period, but it never lost the features that made it unique.

Older than Burma

Mon history predates Burmese history. It is said that Mon settlers arrived in the Irrawaddy area from the north at some point in the late first millennium BC. The Burmese settled in the area around the beginning of the ninth century AD, so it can be said that there was no Burma at that time.
The early history of Mon statehood is still a mystery to the historians and archaeologists that research the period. It is believed that the first Mon kingdom was founded after 500 AD, but the estimated date is still debatable. Traditional Mon narratives place these events in the fourth century BC. By the ninth century AD, there was already a kingdom with a capital in Thaton. The state was called Ramannadesa at that time.

First Buddhists

The Mon kingdom was the first state in Burmese history to adopt Buddhism as the official religion. The Mon wrote manuscripts in their own language, preferring it to Sanskrit or Pali. The earliest version of Shwedagon Pagoda was also built in that period.
An unsuccessful war with Bagan put an end to this period. In 1507, Thaton fell before the forces of King Anawratha and the land was absorbed into Bagan. For the next two centuries, the Mon-populated areas were a province of the biggest empire of classical Burma.
But when Bagan, in turn, was destroyed by the Mongols in 1287, the region did not hesitate to declare independence. Hatharwaddy Kingdom—this became the new name of the Mon state. The city of Thaton did not regain the status of capital. In the first decades, the king’s seat of power was at Martaban, but in 1363 the royal court was relocated to Pegu (modern-day Bago).

Prosperous Times

The kingdom prospered through trade in the following centuries. Many of Pegu’s great pagodas, temples, and payas were constructed in that period. Construction works took place in other parts of the country as well; Shwedagon Pagoda, for instance, was expanded by 15th-century rulers.
Nevertheless, 16th-century Burma was going through a period of unification wars. The Mon kingdom did not avoid becoming part of the conflict and was brought down by the Toungoo dynasty in 1539.
However, the opportunity for a rematch came in the middle of the 18th century. Toungoo rule had been weakened by internal hardships and a coalition of Mon nobles revolted in 1740, restoring the Hatharwaddy Kingdom. The Toungoo dynasty fell to Harthwaddy in 1752 when the Mon sacked Inwa and put an end to their old foes.

Recaptured again

Independence was short-lived. The Konbaung, the successors of Toungoo, recaptured the Harthwaddy kingdom five years later.
The Mon kingdom has a special place in Burma’s history, not just because it was one of the oldest. After all, there have been a number of ancient states within the country’s boundaries. However, most of them simply faded away. Only the Mon state faded and kept returning, like a phoenix.

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More ideas on what to see and do in Mon State? Check out our list of top attractions in the region.
http://www.myanmarburma.com/blog/638/the-mon-people-became-a-true-phoenix-kingdom 

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Investing in women leading the change

Mi Win Thida, one of Wedu’s rising star, comes from a village in the state of Mon, Myanmar. She is an MSc student in Health Economics  and Health Care Mangement at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand.

Mi Win Thida aspires to create an affordable health care for all in Myanmar. When she was little, her mother and sister suffered from chronic health problems, with serious financial implications.

“[My] father had to save his earnings for my mum and sister’s medical fees instead of consumption and investment”. The experience made Thida realise the importance of what is often so taken for granted: affordable health care. “Just like my family, I am confident that there are millions of families facing similar problems in economic burden and catastrophic health care payment. I ponder that our family would not encounter such financial and health burden if there would be a robust and smart health program in my country.”

She is determined to complete her education and change her community through her knowledge, passion, dedication, and experience. “[If] I want to help my people, I have to be educated and have to upgrade myself first. Without starting to change myself, I can’t change the behaviours, concepts and lifestyles of other people.”

Over time, her mother and sister have had to spend an ever increasing amount of money on medical care. Thus, the expenses incurred from their illnesses continue to loom. Supporting a family of nine on a farmer’s income is not easy in the first place. What is more, her father was arrested and put into the prison for three years for political reason. So the responsibility for their family income fell on the shoulders of her two elder brothers, one of them staying behind to farm, the other moving to Malaysia as a migrant worker. Thida’s ambitions of pursuing a Masters and reforming Myanmar’s health care system was put on hold despite wishes her family.

Now she is an MSc student in Health Economics and Health Care Management at the Chulalongkorn University in Thailand. Thida benefits from financial support from Wedu and mentorship by an experienced health expert. Her mentor has instilled in her a sense of purpose and direction in her quest to establish an affordable health care system for Myanmar.

It is her success that Wedu exists to support. We offer high potential young females an opportunity to solidify their vision of positive change by providing financing for university, and offering mentorship for personal and professional development. We do this because we believe that where you are born or where you come from should not hamper your potential to change your world.

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The DeBoer Fellowship

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

The DeBoer Fellowship team is pleased to announce that our full website is now available at www.deboerfellowship.com. The DeBoer Fellowship is an all-Myanmar program to assist and equip high-potential, mid-career Myanmar citizen leaders, both in professional competence and also personal character.

DeBoer Fellows will grow their leadership skills through world-class instruction, personal coaching, and peer interaction. The Fellow Events' topics will include management, human resources, critical thinking, marketing, proposal-writing, career planning, mission and vision, transparency, and integrity.

I am attaching a Word template of the Application, which describes "Who Should Apply." I would be most grateful if you would forward the attached Application to contacts who might be good candidates, or to people who might pass it on to other potential candidates.

The deadline for application submission is August 15, 2013. Fellow selections will be announced on October 1, 2013. The first Fellow Event will occur in January 2014.

We are delighted to be able to invest in Myanmar's future, and I thank you in advance for any assistance you can provide. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or suggestions, at info@deboerfellowship.com.

Sincerely,

Fritz Kling
President, DeBoer Family Foundation

fkling@deboerfoundation.org
(804) 714-4066
7310 Normandy Drive
Richmond, VA 23229
USA
Skype: fritz1959
Myanmar cell: 09 425 330748

For 25 years, the US-based DeBoer Family Foundation has focused on serving Myanmar’s most vulnerable people. As Myanmar opens dramatically, DeBoer now also aims to help strengthen the country’s citizen leaders, through the new DeBoer Fellowship. During three five-day Fellow Events over the course of nine months, DeBoer Fellows will grow their leadership skills through world-class instruction, personal coaching, and peer interaction. The Fellow Events' topics will include management, human resources, critical thinking, marketing, proposal-writing, career planning, mission and vision, transparency, and integrity.

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How has mentorship inspired me?

12 July 2013 by Svenn

Editor’s Note: Thida is the author of Wedu’s first mentorship program blog. She is a student in Health Economics, mentored by Tricia who lives in the USA and is a consultant with the Clinton Foundation. Thida learned about Wedu’s scholarships and mentorship program when she met Co-Founder, Mario at a Myanmar student meeting in Cha Am, Thailand. Read Thida’s blog below on her experiences thus far as a mentee in Wedu’s mentorship program.


How has mentorship inspired me?
This mentorship drew my attention in Cha Am beach town in November 2012. I was selected to attend a Myanmar scholarship students’ meeting in Cha Am. During our meetings, a man introduced this program after exhibiting with pamphlets and marketing about his organization’s visions and missions. His promotion attracted my interest and I was curiously to learn about the idea of mentorship program. I pondered about how does it work and how can be bridged between this program and my Mon Community in Mon State.

My burning desire to apply to this program could not stop and I applied to the mentorship program from Wedu Fund through an online application within a month. Fortunately, I was selected to be a mentee. I am humbly delighted, as one of my dreams became a reality. After that, I was matched with Tricia as my mentor. Tricia is originally from the Philippines and now living in America. She has been working with many organizations as fellow and consultant.

There are three specific reasons that the mentorship program has inspired me. Firstly, the mentorship manager sends the leadership lessons monthly and mentees are requested to read the questions and write their opinions prior meeting. Moreover, what I love about mentorship is the scheduled learning process with a time frame. I believe that learning about new things through a schedule and guidance is more effective than a process of self-study. From my experiences, the leadership lessons from the mentorship manager encouraged me to learn more from other sources and prepare to discuss with my mentor before meeting. Even it is required to meet two times a month, the mentees could ask the questions and discuss with mentors apart from meeting.

Secondly, during our discussions, we mainly focused on some topics that related to health economics. However, we also discussed some issues with regards to leadership lessons for personal development. What makes me feel very special about mentorship is that it is long term human-to-human (H2H) relationships. Being honest, I realized that I have been given someone to consult about challenges in my studies and career life. Before I met her, I was confused how to achieve to become a good health economist. However, after discussing and consulting with Tricia, my career and life goals become a crystallized clear.

Thirdly, this mentorship program builds bridges between mentees and mentors. We have similar educational, regional and cultural background. From my experience, my mentor and I have a common field of study, e.g. health economics. People with similar academic field or research background have more understanding because we exchange technical and common languages. I am not only learning from my mentor but also have a chance to share my experiences, obstacles and opportunities of my country. Besides, my mentor also connects with some of the prominent individuals in health economics field in order to extend my network.

In conclusion, the mentorship program offers a great opportunity for me to learn new things through scheduled lessons, matching similar background with the opportunity for mentees to consult any challenges and share their experiences. I therefore, am confident that if I will continue with this mentorship program, I will unquestionably see the progress in my learning process in the near future.
- Thida

For more information about how you can apply for mentorship or to mentor with Wedu, please contact Noor, Wedu’s Mentorship Coordinator, aka. The Mentorship Champion at mentorship@wedufund.org

Source: http://www.wedufund.org/how-has-mentorship-inspired-me/ 

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‘We Have to Be Careful With the Language of Federalism’

By SAMANTHA MICHAELS / THE IRRAWADDY| Monday, July 15, 2013 |

Ashley South is an independent consultant and senior adviser for the Myanmar Peace Support Initiative (MPSI), a Norwegian-led group formed at the request of Burma’s government last year to build confidence in the ceasefire and peace processes. (Photo courtesy of Ashley South)

In the ceasefire agreement in Mon State [in 1995], there was a semi-official concession by the government that educators in the state could teach Mon language after school hours, although classes at government schools were officially still taught in Burmese language. Have you heard of similar arrangements being made for ethnic language instruction in other ceasefire agreements?
A: Most of the other armed groups have made these demands, but in terms of an actual discussion, I don’t believe that has started yet. In the peace process, there are quite a range of issues that have been identified by the armed groups—political, social and cultural concerns that need to be addressed. And that’s an important start. There’s an agenda that’s been mapped out by the armed groups, and civil society and political actors, and education and language use is a priority for many of them. There have been some initial discussions in specific peace talks—for example in Chin State, in talks between the Chin National Front and the government in December last year, there was talk about Chin language use, and I think the KNU [Karen National Union] have talked about this. However, I don’t believe there’s been much progress yet in terms of actually a formal agreement on these issues. But at least the subject is on the agenda.
Probably most progress has been made by the New Mon State Party’s Mon National Education Committee, which administers some 300 schools, about half of which are ‘mixed’ schools—government schools, where the MNEC provides some teachers and curriculum materials. I think this is an important model for other parts of the country. The MNEC system provides education in the mother tongue, in this case Mon, especially at the primary level. In middle and high schools, the MNEC system follows the government curriculum in most respects, with additional units on Mon language and history and culture. This means that Mon National School graduates can sit government matriculation exams, and enter the state higher education system, if they choose, while at the same time retaining their ethnic national identity and culture. The Mon system provides ‘the best of both worlds,’ a locally owned and delivered education system, which is nevertheless integrated with the state system, which itself is undergoing significant reforms.

Q: Leaders of the Kachin Independence Army [KIA] have said that before agreeing to a ceasefire, they want the government to hold a more inclusive meeting with all the ethnic groups. The government has reportedly promised to follow through with a meeting in Naypyidaw, maybe even this month. Do you think it will actually happen?
A: I’d have to ‘no comment’ on that. It’s too sensitive! I could say more, in terms of other things that need to happen in the peace process, in a more general sense. Ceasefires are just the first step toward peace. What also needs to happen is the beginning of substantial political discussions. There are some issues which are of great concern to ethnic communities and to non-state armed groups, and which require quite broad participation in order to have a legitimate dialogue. When we’re talking about ceasefires, I think it’s appropriate for the main discussion to be between the government and the Myanmar Army, and the non-state armed groups, because the subject is security. But when it’s getting on to political issues, there are a wide number of stakeholders who would want to be included in discussions—political parties, civil society groups, conflict-affected communities—really, everyone in Myanmar is a stakeholder for political discussions. That makes the logistics of organizing political talks very difficult.
If political talks do not start soon, this will raise questions about whether the peace process is really serious. What distinguishes the peace process now to the ceasefires of the 1990s is that the earlier round of ceasefires occurred in a situation where there was very little chance of real political dialogue at the national level. What underpins the peace process today is a promise and commitment by the president to have substantial political talks with representatives of ethnic communities. That’s an incredibly positive thing—it’s unprecedented in the history of the country, and should be applauded. But the talks haven’t actually started yet, so while the commitment is hugely symbolic and definitely should be supported, it’s important to start those talks sooner rather than later, in order to maintain the momentum in the peace process. The meeting in Chiang Mai [in north Thailand] on Saturday between the Myanmar Peace Center and the UNFC [theUnited Nationalities Federal Council, an alliance of ethnic minority groups] represented a step in the right direction, but can hardly be considered the beginning of substantial political discussions.
There are a number of pressing issues—I think language in schools and government administration is one, but there are also issues, for example, with widespread land-grabbing in a number of areas, and also the proposed implementation of major infrastructure projects in some ethnic areas. Different communities will have their own list of priorities, and armed groups will have their own interests and concerns. One widely held set of concerns relates to the incursion of government authority into previously autonomous, ethnic nationality-populated areas, in the context of the peace process. This is problematic for many communities, and non-state armed groups, who still do not regard the government or Myanmar Army as legitimate. Some of these issues need to be discussed rather urgently.
Q: And with political dialogue, I assume that would encompass discussions about the possibility of creating a federal state? Do you think Burma will likely move along that path, toward federalism?
A: I think it has too, really. Ethnic conflicts in Burma can only be addressed through some kind of federal settlement. However, we have to be careful with the language of federalism for a couple of reasons. There’s a danger that some people from the Myanmar government and the military will hear the language of federalism and think that what is being talked about is the disintegration of the union. I think there needs to be more work done to explain that federalism is something that, for most armed groups and ethnic communities, is a way of strengthening the union. Also, there are many different types of federalism—constitutional politics is quite complex, and any discussion of revising the Constitution will have to involve multiple stakeholders, in a drawn-out and complicated process of negotiation.
In the meantime, it might be useful to explore ways of supporting ethnic education, decentralization and local participation in schooling and other sectors, empowering local agency and communities—which can be achieved by supporting concrete projects on the ground. You don’t necessarily need have to have top-down political change to achieve all these things. So I think federalism is important, but it shouldn’t be considered a panacea, or the only thing that’s necessary in this country.
Q: Critics have said that President Thein Sein has no control of the military, in light of continuing clashes in some areas, such as Kachin State, even though he has called for a ceasefire. Does it seem to you that he lacks control over the military?
A: I wouldn’t say no control. I think there are many different scenarios, but I guess the two main things that people talk about are: Either the government has its reform and peace agendas, and the Myanmar Army has its own responsibilities for security and national defense, and the Myanmar Army might not always have the same priorities or agenda—or interests—as the government. Or there is a conspiracy theory that, actually, behind closed doors the government and the Army have quite well-worked-out “good cop, bad cop” roles: While the government is engaging in reforms and the peace process, the Myanmar Army is at the same time still pursuing a policy of military expansion to defeat the armed groups, one by one. I would not say on the record which one of those I think is more likely, but whichever scenario is correct, I think the reform process has momentum and the peace process has a momentum, which means Myanmar is not going back to a one-party military dictatorship.
Peace and politics are made by doing, and whatever conspiracies, plans or strategies may be in play on the part of the government, the army, the armed groups and international actors—there is a lot of geopolitical interest in Myanmar from different regional and international powers—not any one of those players is really in a position to impose an outcome on the peace process. That makes this an incredibly interesting time to be working in Myanmar. Although there are many substantial problems in the peace process, I don’t think this is a good enough reason to turn one’s back. Rather, I think international support should be undertaken in a way that builds trust and confidence—but at the same time tests—the realities of the peace process, and above all attempts to ‘do no harm,’ by not exposing already vulnerable communities to increased risk. We also have to keep our eyes on the big picture, which is inherently political. Peace will not come to Burma as a result of technical fixes, or even widespread economic development, but only in the context of the discussions between different stakeholders, at different levels, on the relationship between state and society, which, as I said, is an inherently political process.
<<Sources:www.irrawaddy.org>>

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