Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Dr Emmanuel GUILLON
(INALCO, Paris)
In order to know more about Mon archaeology, I think that it is necessary to insert it into South
East Asia as a whole, first in the peninsula, later with the islands, Sumatra for instance. And, of
course, not to limit it to Burma or Thailand. It is the direction being taken in current archaeological
field-work in proto-history in Thailand and Vietnam, for instance. Here I just want to present the
ways in which I having been working for some years now.
The most ancient mention of Mon words (Tun Sun, "five cities", third or fourth century A.D.) was
found in Chinese Chronicles. I have already discussed this fact in my book A Civilisation (p. 69-
71). According to our present knowledge these kingdoms where situated in the north of the Malay
peninsula ("Cross-Road of the Maritime Silk-Road", according to M. Jacq-Hergoualch). But, if we
follow the recent works of the Mergui Archipelago Project (2004), almost all have to be done in
archaeology, in the Tenasserim area, even in study of the toponyms.
Nevertheless we know, from the Liang –shu (chapter 45, folio 9), that, at the beginning of the third
century A.D., the "five cities" were attacked by the king of Fu-nan, Fan-man. Even if it is not sure
that this king actually won or not, the most important fact is the mention of links between pre-
Angkorian power and ancient Mon states of the Malay peninsula and lower Burma.
In a recent article (2003, in Vietnamese), published in the journal Dan Toc Hoc, Professor Luong
Ninh, of Hanoi University, who has worked on Fu-nan and ancient Champa, mentions the
importance of Mon Tun Sun and believes that there are Mon people not only in lower Burma, but
also at the east of Khorat.
* * * * *
Some centuries later we again find the mention of the Môn, but, this time, in an inscription on a
stele, found in present Cambodia
In this inscription appears, for the first time, it seems, the word Ramanya, the ancient name of the
Mon (people and kingdoms). This inscription, in two parts, is called "inscription of Snay Pol" (K
66), after the name of the village (Prei Ven province). where it was found at the end of nineteenth
century. It was published several times, and is now in the Pnom Penh Museum. It was dated, by
palaeography, to the seventh century A.D. by Georges Coedès. Some words in Cham mention titles
and one name of the goddess. But the text is mainly a list of men and women given as slaves to a
temple of the goddess Bhagavati. And, on line 25 of the A side we can read va ramañ, meaning "a
male Mon" (the vowel a of va is long)
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Image 1 : The Snay Pol inscription
This word ramañ is here an ethnonym, and linguistically the same as Ramanya. Its presence in a list
of people bears witness, in a seventh century inscription, to the existence of a Mon population at
that time. This may correspond to one of the three waves of migration of the Khmers into the
territories of Fu nan (again according to Professor Luong Ninh).
And later, in the middle of 10 th century A.D., there was again mention of Ramanya in Khmer
epigraphy.
In 1937 a French archaeologist, Bezacier, discovered, near Ben Vien (near Roluos, Siem Rap
province) a Buddhist Sanskrit inscription, carved on the southern engaged pier (northen face) of a
Prasat which had fallen into ruins (K 872). It was dedicated to King Rajendravarman , and was
made just after 946 A.D. In stanza seven we can read (following the translation by Coedès) :
«victorious in the battle with the powerful and malicious Râmanya and Campa, throwing his
arrows tot left and right he [the king] was like another Râma» The last nasal of the word Râmanya
became, from a front nasal, a cerebral nasal, because the word is Sanskritised.
Therefore this text proclaims that, if we except Burma, there were in peninsular South East Asia and
in the middle of tenth century three powers : Môn (Râmanya), Khmer and Cam.
As a provisional conclusion, I will say that we have the clear beginnings of proof that the Mon
were living in the Malay peninsula, at least from the third century A.D. , and living at the East of
Khorat, at least by the seventh century. Work still needs to be carried out upstream, with
archaeological excavations of proto-historical sites, and downstream, with more detailed studies of
the Mon kingdoms, from Dvaravati to Pegu.
My second example is from a small seated bronze Buddha found at Twente, near Rangoon. The
Buddha images seated in pralambapadasâna are very rare in mainland South East Asia. I thought
before (Guillon 2003 p. 273) that the ninth century seated Buddha image of Son Tho, now in the
Fine Arts Museum, Ho Chi Minh City, was the missing link between the ancient Buddhist Champa
and Dvaravati. We can see now that the small bronze image of Twente should be compared with
other works bearing a resemblance to it, outside Burma. A well-known seated Buddha is in the
Khao Ngu cave of Ratchaburi province of Thailand and another, also well-known, was found at the
Cham Buddhist site of Dong Duong, in Vietnam. All have the same position of the legs, the same
kind of hair, and the same upper part of the cloth on the right shoulder (except the one from Dong
Duong).
But they do not show the same mudrâ.
The closest image to the Twente one is to be found in Thailand, in a carved relief on the wall of the
Bodhisattva cave, in Saraburi province (South of Lopburi). We shall see that the Buddha (on the left
of the relief with halo) has the same position of the legs, and above all the same mudrâ, the vitarka
mudrâ, the mudrâ of teaching.
Image 4. Seated Buddha images
Fortunately we can date this last image, as did Virginia Di Crocco in 1999, by the swallowtail
garments of the apsaras. This was found in the Buddhist art of the Northern Wei dynasty, around
the fifth century AD, and this seems to me to be characteristic of a Buddhist sect, which was living
from Mon states in lower Burma to Buddhist Champa for centuries.
Therefore we can also infer that the Twente image must be dated much earlier than G.H. Luce did.
It is surely not ninth century, but at least sixth.
At last we have proof here that there were Buddhist exchanges between early Mon places and the
rest of mainland South East Asia, with a Chinese Buddhism influence.
The first step was to examine what the plates are: glazed figures with one short sentence engraved
in old Mon.
Image 5.1. The glazed plates
Image 5. 2. Distribution of the plates
The life of the Buddha, found in a Mon manuscript of the end of eighteen century AD, then at the
National library of Rangoun, describes an army of Mâra very close to the one at the Ananda. And it
is very different from other traditions of the same date found in Burma.
I further compared the texts of different lives of the Buddha, according to the most important
Nikaya. And I found that this Mâra's Army representation belongs to the Mulasarvativadin Buddhist
school, which used Sanskrit and not Pâli.
Image 5.4. Text describing this episode
To make a comparison with other representation of this part of the life of the Buddha, I chose
another temple of the same period, and also bearing Mon writings, the temple of Myinkeba
Kubiaukgi murals : it is not the same tradition
Image 5.5. Different from Myinkaba Kubyaukgyi temple
Therefore we have proof that there were different Buddhist schools amongst Mon people of Pagan.
Unfortunately, according to my knowledge, nobody has att
empted to continue this work in this way.
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This school, that I would like to call "of one of Mon Buddhist schools", we can find again some
centuries later. More precisely in the Mon kingdom of Pegu particularly in the Shwegugyi temple in
fifteenth century.
Image 5.6. Mâra soldiers at Pegu
And according to the late Professor Boisselier, this discovery can help to understand some
iconography of ancient Thailand, and its religious history, particularly in the nineteenth century. In
brief, there were traces of multiplicity of Nikaya at that time (as show in the modern history of
Nikaya in Sri Lanka).
At that time, and to the best of our knowledge, no complete list existed of the Mon monasteries
possessing manuscripts. We have located these monasteries by firstly following a booklet by
Boussaba Prapasapong, and then making local enquiries.
I believe that our working method can be useful for scholars who want to continue this task, which
is why I am giving some technical details here.
After the abbots had given their agreement, the manuscripts were taken from their cupboards, taking
care to keep them in their original order. After having them cleaned, we made a quick classification,
then we proceeded to identify each manuscript according to the model partly inspired by the
Academica Sinica. We consider that each manuscript is unique, even if it is a copy of another, older
one.
The title was given either by page heading if it existed, by the incipit or eventually by the colophon.
This work was done in groups of two who were aided by the monks of the monastery. The
manuscripts were book-marked for future identification.
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As for the classification, the catalogues are classed according to their province number. This
number is preceded by a number given in the order by which it was visited.
Each monastery is identified in three ways. By its name, by its photo and by the translation of its
name in French and English. The date of the visit is at the end of each card. The card includes a
photo of the Abbot.
We first classified the non Buddhist manuscripts. This classification may be reused for further
study.
Each card contains, in order,
1. Its number.
2. The field or the name of the manuscript.
3 The romanization of its Mon title (for future comparison with other languages).
4. The title in Mon writing.
5. The number of pages.
6. The number of lines on each page.
7. Whether it is complete or not.
8. The exact size
9. A notable characteristic (for example the gilded edge).
10. The date in Christian era.
12. A brief mention of the contents of the manuscripts.
We were helped by the Cultural service of the French Embassy, who published a booklet of one
hundred thirty eight pages entitled Working Paper: Preliminary Survey of Mon Manuscripts , which
is now out of print.
Image 7. Working paper: Preliminary Survey of Mon Manuscripts
Later, a CD ROM was made from this booklet at Sangkhlaburi, with the help of Mathias Jenny and
the Mon Cultural and Literature Survival Project,. This CD is also now out of print.
Image 8. The CD of Mon Manuscripts
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Provisional conclusions (methodology)
We can see that there has been, for more than twelve years now, a real revival of Mon culture in
Thailand. Of course I am happy about this revival. But I think, and I have attempted to demonstrate
it here, that Mon studies need to be pursued in greater depth. Much may well be discovered in the
proto-history of the Mon. But we need the help of independent archaeologists, in order to know
more about the ancient cities of lower Burma and the Malay peninsula, for instance.
Our archaeological vision should zoom in, and consider that ancient Mon people and states, the
Ramanya, were known to the Cham and Khmer states and people. This outlook may help towards a
better understanding of the cultural and trading exchanges between the kingdoms, and to refresh
the history of South East Asia on the whole.
The method that I propose here should be applied to the Mon inscriptions, which must be
considered as a part of the most ancient - and considerable - corpus of inscriptions together with
Khmer and Cham ones. They belong to the same family of palaeography, which means that the
birth of writing appears in mainland South East Asia at the same time, in three cultures, some
centuries after the Iron age, all influenced by several Hindu and Buddhist Schools of Thought,
coming from India and China. (On this subject, to my knowledge, nothing, or almost nothing, has
been done to compare Indonesian and Môn epigraphy). It was also the birth of the State age.
In the same way detailed iconographic study of ancient sculptures in old Mon territories can bring
new visions, if we bring it closer together with neighbouring cultures. One good example is the
relations between Buddhist iconography of present-day Bangladesh and of several sculptures of
Pagan.
Of course the field study of vestiges has to be completed by the text that is illustrated there or
commented, and through the centuries. It is not always easy, for lack of the original texts, mainly in
Buddhism.
It is why it is so important, and so urgent, to study and to make as complete as possible (not to
collect, of course) the huge collections of Mon manuscripts of the Mon monasteries of Thailand (it
is now impossible in Burma). This can be done more easily now with computer technology. Here
we need the help of more Mon specialists on the square writing of the manuscripts, learned Mon
monks who are well-versed in Pâli, and the input of linguists for obsolete words. Here too, one
needs experiences made outside, from China, Japan, to Cambodia, etc. This cultural treasure will
bring many gems which will decorate the Mon civilization.
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Selected references
COEDES George, 1942, Inscriptions du Cambodge II, EFEO, collection de textes et documents sur
l'Indochine, III, Hanoi 1942.
GUILLON Emmanuel, 1985, L'Armée de Mara au pied de l'Ananda (Pagan – Birmanie), Paris,
Recherches sur les Civilisations, mémoire n° 60, 108 p.
1999, The Mons, A Civilization of Southeast Asia, Bangkok, 1999, The Siam Society, 349 p. 47 .
2003, "Architecture and Symbolic Landscapes, The cases of Ancient Champa and Mon Kingdoms"
A. Karlstrom & A. Källén, ed. Fishbones and Glittering Emblems, South Asian Archaeology 2002,
Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stokolm : 271-279.
GUY, John, 1989, Ceramic Traditions of South-East Asia, Singapore, Oxford University Press, 68
pages.
JACQ-HERGOUALC'H Michel, 2004, The Malay Peninsula, Cross-Road of the Maritime Silk-
Road (100 B.C-1300 A.D.), E. J. Brill, 2004
LUCE H.G., 1985, Phases of Pre-Pagan Languages and History, Vol. 1 & 2, Oxford University
Press.
LUONG Ninh, 2003, "Su thien di va hinh thanh nhung nhom cu dan co o Dong Nam A (Luc dia)"
(The migration and establishment of inhabitant groups in South – East Asia), Hanoi, Dan Toc Hoc,
5 (125), 2003 : 3-11.
Mergui Archipelago Project : 2004,"L'archipel Mergui : une liberté surveillée et un littoral à
conquérir en Basse Birmanie", 2004 : http://www.mapraid.net/pages/articleaseanie.htm >
SCHWEYER Anne-Valérie, 1999, "Chronologie des inscriptions publiées du Campa – Etudes
d'épigraphie cam –I", B.E.F.E.O. 1999 : 322-352.
2005 , Le Viêtnam ancien, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, Guide Belles Lettres des Civilisations.
SHORTO H. L. , 1971, A Dictionary of the Mon Inscriptions, from the sixth to the the Sixteenth
centuries, London, Oxford University Press, 406 p.
WHEATLEY Paul , 1966, The Golden Khersonese, Kuaala Lumpur, University of Malaya Press,
388 p.