1873.] 
Sir Arthur P. Phayre —On the History of Pegu. 
39 
kings, the sum of the years they are stated to have reigned, amounts to only 
two hundred and eight. The first part of the history then closes as if a 
great crisis had been endured. A new chapter is opened which simply states 
that the destinies of Hanthawati were accomplished; the line of kings 
broken ; and the writer then bursts forth in lamentation over the rule of 
foreign Burmese kings and their hateful governors. Three of these are men¬ 
tioned and reviled, and the narrative then passes on to events near the close 
of the thirteenth century of the Christian era, when Mongols and Turks 
overthrew the Burmese monarchy ; Pugan was captured, and her king a 
fugitive. Supposing that the seventeen kings represent in some fashion the 
events of five hundred years, then the close of king Tiktha’s reign would be 
about A. D. 1073. From that time until the capture of the Burmese capi¬ 
tal by the Mongols, there is a period of about two hundred and eleven years, 
of which the Mun chroniclers say nothing, except the loss of their native 
kings, and the rule of three hated foreign governors. This hiatus is not 
peculiar to the manuscript history which I possess, but may be traced in 
others. Thus Dr. Mason from the copy which he followed, dates the founda¬ 
tion of Pegu A. D. 573 and the death of Tik-tha A. D. 841, but immediately 
after this, there is a blank of more than three hundred years. In Major 
Lloyd’s Gazetteer of the District of Rangun, in which a list of the kings of 
Pegu is given from native records, this blank does not appear. But that is, 
because the foundation of Hanthawati has been post-dated to A. D. 1152, a 
year quite impossible to be reconciled with the histories of Burma, Tha-htun, 
and the subsequent history of Pegu itself. The cause of these great discre¬ 
pancies arises from the Tailing historians having sought to conceal the reli¬ 
gious revolutions in their country, during the ninth and tenth centuries, and 
to avoid narrating the conquest of their country by Anauralita, king of Pugan, 
about A. D. 1050, with its continued subjection to Burma for more than two 
hundred years. And it is strange that in the Burmese Maha Radza weng, 
though the conquest of Tha-htun is narrated at great length, nothing is 
said of the occupation of the city Hanthawati. Yet no doubt, the city was 
then taken by the Burmese king. Either then it was supposed that the 
capture of the ancient city of Tha-htun rendered special mention of Pegu 
unnecessary, or the chroniclers hesitated to record the first instance of the 
falsification of the legend, which in the cause of religion assigned to Pegu 
a perpetual succession of kings in the line of Thamala kumara. The 
Tailing historians have endeavoured to represent their country as having 
been uniformly orthodox Budhist, while the records they present to us, show 
that there have been frequent alternations of Budhism and Brahmanism. 
The names of the two last kings of the native dynasty, Punnarika and 
Tiktha, witli the few notices we have regarding them, show that their 
reigns represent periods of religious strife between the two great sects, and 
