Title: Kambawza: A modern review

Author: Daw Mi Mi Khaing

Number of Pages: 60 A4 size

There are a lot more in the booklet that one can read and smile or grimaced. Because the author was, right or wrong, brutally frank about what she wrote. What impresses me is not just the facts but her impressions bluntly expressed.

One that won’t fail the reader from smiling is about the legend of the much-visited Pindaya cave. To make her story short, a princess was imprisoned in the cave by a sorcerer her mut. The hero, who came to save her, shot at him with arrows but to no avail, because he was endowed with a charmed life. That is until the princess “lifted her longyi (skirt) and covered his head with it. This laid him out at once. Hurrahs for being the weaker sex, the lower sex, which can by a fling of the contaminating defiling longyi, dispel all manhood, all mental powers of those vaunted superior beings, the Men!”

Cheers to her, I’m just glad I had never been at the receiving end of her caustic sarcasm.

And there’s one for the Burmans who believe they are the descendents of the Sakya, the Lord Buddha’s clan, and displaying so much pride on it, they make others sick. Here it is:

“From Tagaung (meaning Drum Ferry City in Shan), (the chronicles) say a descendent of Abiyaza (Pali: Abhiraja said to be of the Sakya clan) came to found the old kingdom of Mongmao, further north, which was the original Kambawza of the Shans. From here stemmed four sons taking rule over various North Burma capitals, one of them being Mongmit (Momeik) and On Baung (Hsipaw) combined.”

If today’s Shans are to take it as gospel, then maybe we’ll soon be witnessing the rise of a Shan Ma Ba Tha (Association for Protection of Race and Religion). Then maybe they can merge together to form a bloc against other races and religions. The likelihood however is that they may each claim to be the true clan of the Lord Buddha and wind up fighting against each other, despite what He had always said about war and peace:

The conqueror begets enmity

The defeated lie down in distress

Those who give up both victory and defeat

Only they rest in happiness

Anyway, being proud of one’s race didn’t appear to help the Buddha’s kinfolks much. They were destroyed by the neighboring Kosala in the end.

Here is where her grim story comes.

Twet-Nga-Lu, having made his debut by an attack on Mongnai town, was later appointed Administrator of Kengtawng State by King Thibaw. Mongnai Sawbwa, objecting, petitioned against the appointment. King Thibaw flew into a rage at such officiousness and sent for the Sawbwa. The Sawbwa sent his sister instead. Vain sacrifice of a girl — she was arrested, not honored, and Mongnai was summoned again. He shilly-shallied and the Sitkegyi, interpreting this delay as an intent to flee, instructed the Sawbwas of Mawkmai and Kengtung not to harbor Mongnai if he fled to them. This drastic order touched off a Shan rebellion led by the Sawbwa. Wholesale massacre of the Burmese followed; no hiding for nay Burman, the Shan had a formula for detecting all masquerades. Pointing their dahs they ordered every man to say in Shan “Tomato!”, “Makhersohm” it was, but alas, no Burmar can produce any such sound, and all their broad rendering of “Makaisun” and such like were cut short with a thrust. It was a bloody debacle. Five Burmese regiments were rushed down from Mandalay together with auxiliaries from the loyal states. Mongnai fled.

This reminds me of the 1996-68 forced relocation when more than 300,000 Shan villagers from 1,500 villages in 11 townships were displaced, many of them killed. One of the commanders reportedly told a pro-government militia, “I’d regret the loss of a tomato than the death of ten Shans.” To this day, I have no idea whether or not he was referring to the 1882 episode in Mongnai.

Coming to this, her remark on war is thought provoking:

“It is no use to count old scores and remember that the Burmese burnt here and the Shan there —wars were the fashion in those days all over the world, a luxury which power-seeking nation makers could afford better than their modern counterparts because their weapons were less cruel and destructive.”

Well, what more can I add? Eloquence was one her gifts. It has never been mine.

So what does she think about the Shan, one of whom, she had married?

In one chapter, Mongnai and the Southeast I, she writes: The Shan race today is not only spent by the constant warring of the past but also sapped to its vitals almost, by malaria.

Then in a previous chapter, Hsenwi II, she says:

When the last of King Anawrahta’s dynasty died, however, the Shans were still going strong and divided Burma between them, holding sway for over 2 centuries. But soon after this power waned and from King Bayinnaung’s time till the turn of the 19^th century, the Shan have steadily spent themselves fighting, valley against valley, principality against principality.

Like it or not, what she had written was what Shan historians have been thinking all along. Probably, they are thinking on similar lines in Mongolia, where its greatest son Genghis Khan was born. What went wrong?

The day they find the answer may be the day when they take their first step into a place in the sun again.

Until then, I’ll stick to the saying: “A ship does not sail with yesterday’s winds.”

Neither does a people become great with yesterday’s glory, we may add.