106 On the History of the Burma Race. [No. 2, 



some events have been made to fit into, what was supposed to be, an 

 absolute necessity. But on the whole, there appears to have been an 

 honesty of purpose, and a painstaking care in the writers of the Bur- 

 mese national history, which is highly creditable to them. 



In Bobinson's history of Assam, we are informed, on the authority 

 of Pemberton, that the Shans, about the year 80 of the Christian era, 

 established the kingdom of Pong, of which Mo-gaung was the capital. 

 This city is on a feeder of the Irrawaddy, about eighty miles north 

 from Ba-mau. It was not until seven hundred years later, that they 

 extended their territory, eastward to the country around Ba-mau; 

 and westward to Munnipur and Assam. In the latter country they 

 are called Ahom. It was the decline of this kingdom which enabled 

 A-nau-ra-hta to re-assert the rights of the Burmese people to the 

 territory of the upper Irrawaddy, in the eleventh century ; and it has 

 remained, with a few intervals, under the Burmese kings ever since. 



In the early part of the eleventh century of the Christian era, the 

 great hero of the later Burmese history, A-nau-ra-hta, ascended the 

 throne. That this king conquered Tha-htun and procured the Buddhist 

 scriptures from thence cannot be doubted. His reform of religion is 

 minutely and graphically described. He had intercourse with India 

 and China. He appears to have established and maintained the in- 

 fluence of his government in the upper Irrawaddy. In the reigns of 

 his immediate successors, and during a period of little more than one 

 hundred and fifty years, were built the magnificent temples which still 

 remain uninjured at Pu-gan. They show a grandeur of design seen 

 nowhere else from the Indus to the Cambodia river, and have rather 

 the appearance of gothic Cathedrals than of Buddhist temples. It is 

 remarkable that the most elaborate of these, in internal sculptured de- 

 coration, if not in general design, was the first erected. It is that 

 called A-nan-da, which was built by Kyan-tsit-tha supposed son of 

 A-nau-ra-hta, who ascended the throne in the year 1064, A. D. 

 Nearly the last of these great temples, called Dham-ma-yan-gyi, was 

 built by king Na-ra-thu amidst general discontent at his tyranny and 

 extortion, which were exercised apparently to provide funds for the 

 building. It was unfinished at his death, and from its present ap- 

 pearance was probably never completed. The intercourse which at 

 this period existed between Pu-gan and the countries of India and 



