Arakan
Arakan, formerly romanized as Aracan, is the historical geographical name for the northeastern coastal region of the Bay of Bengal, covering present-day Bangladesh and Myanmar. Historically known as "Arakan" for several centuries, the region is now generally associated with the geographically smaller Rakhine State, situated in western Myanmar. The people of the region were known as the Arakanese. When Burma gained independence from Britain in 1948, the Burmese part of the region was called Arakan State. The Burmese military junta changed its name to Rakhine State in 1989 – along with the country's name being changed from Burma to Myanmar, and its capital name from Rangoon to Yangon, while Burmese language name remained unchanged as မြန်မာ and ရန်ကုန်.
Arakan's first states can be traced to the 4th century. Arakan was one of the first Indianised kingdoms in Southeast Asia. It was home to the sacred Mahamuni sculpture of Buddha, which was later transferred to Mandalay by Burmese conquerors in the 18th century. For 356 years between 1428 and 1784, Arakan was ruled by the Kingdom of Mrauk U from the city of Mrauk U. In 1784, Arakan was annexed by the Konbaung Dynasty under the reign of King Bodawpaya.
Arakan Division was a part of British India and later fell under British rule in Burma. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, Arakan was one of the world’s leading rice exporters. During World War II, several Arakan Campaigns were conducted by Allied forces against the Japanese as part of the Burma Campaign. After Burma became independent in 1948, Arakan saw a movement for autonomy. Human rights deteriorated in the country after the 1962 Burmese coup d'état. In 1974, a discriminatory citizenship law was enacted. In 1982, most Arakanese Muslims were stripped of citizenship. A segregated system of citizenship was introduced by Burma's military rulers. Both Arakanese Buddhists and Muslims experienced growing nationalism, including hopes for self-rule. The region was the site of the Rohingya genocide in 2016 and 2017.
Etymology
According to Arthur Purves Phayre, a report by the Royal Geographical Society in November 1882 included a drafted paper by one Colonel Yule who discussed the oldest records of a sea route to China from the Middle East. Yule identified Arakan with the country of "Argyre" which means The Land of Silver or Silverland mentioned by the Greco-Roman geographer Claudius Ptolemy.According to Aananda Candra Inscription inscripted in 8th Century CE, Arakan Region was mention as Arakkhadesha by Ananda Candra King.
In early 15th Century CE, Niccolò de' Conti, a Venetian merchant and explorer mentioned Arakan as Rachani in his book the travels of Nicolo di Conti as recorded c. A.D. 1445 by Poggio Bracciolini.
Portuguese records spelled the name as Arracao. The name was spelled as Araccan in many old European maps and publications. The area constituted Arakan Division under British rule in Burma. The name “Arakan” State was in use until 1989 when the military government of Burma changed the Latin spelling name to Rakhine State.
Geography
The region known in Europe as Arakan is the -long eastern coastal shore of the Bay of Bengal. It comprises a long narrow strip of land and stretches from the banks of the Karnaphuli River on the border of the Chittagong Hills area in Bangladesh in the north to Cape Negrais in the south.The Arakan region is shaped moreover like a crescent around the eastern Bay of Bengal. Its geography is wider in the north and becomes narrower southward. It is about wide at its broadest. The Arakan Mountains, a range that forms the eastern boundary of the region, isolates Arakan from the rest of Myanmar. The coast has several sizable large islands and multiple small islands and islets including Ramree Island, Cheduba, three Baronga Islands and Kun Chaung Island.
Arakan has a tropical monsoon climate with a dry season from mid-November to mid-April and an extreme monsoonal wet season from mid-April to mid-November. Between June and August when monsoonal winds drive saturated air onto the high Arakan Yoma, most of the region receives over of rainfall per month.
The region's principal rivers from north to south are:
- Naf
- Mayu
- Kaladan
- Lemro
- Yaw Chaung
- Dalet Chaung
- Ma-e River
- La Muu Chaung
- Tann Lwey Chaung
- Toungup Chaung
- Thahtay Chaung
- Thandwe Chaung
- Gwa Chaung
- Tan Chaung
The major cities and main towns are Sittwe, Mrauk U, Sandoway, Kyaukpyu, Kyauktaw, Ramree and Taungup.
History
Antiquity
Arakan has been recognized “as one among other Burmese kingdoms competing for the control of power in Lower Burma”. The cities of Bago, Bagan, and Inwa were centers of political power in Burma proper. In contrast, independent Arakanese states were based in the capitals of Dhanyawadi, Vesali, Laungyet, and Mrauk-U. The ruins of these cities are located in northern Arakan in proximity to the borderland of Bengal.It is unclear who the earliest inhabitants were; some historians believe the earliest settlers included the Tibeto-Burman people Mro tribe but there is a lack of evidence and no clear tradition of their origin or written records of their history. Arakanese traditional history holds that Arakan was inhabited by the Rakhine since 3000 BCE, but there is no archaeological evidence to support the claim. According to British historian Daniel George Edward Hall, who wrote extensively on the history of Burma, "The Burmese do not seem to have settled in Arakan until possibly as late as the tenth century AD. Hence earlier dynasties are thought to have been Indian, ruling over a population similar to that of Bengal. All the capitals known to history have been in the north near modern Akyab".
Arakan came under strong Indic influence from the Indian subcontinent, particularly the ancient kingdoms of the Ganges delta. Arakan was one of the first regions in Southeast Asia to adopt Dharmic religions. It became one of the earliest Indianized kingdoms in Southeast Asia. Buddhist missionaries from the Mauryan Empire traveled through Arakan to other parts of Southeast Asia. Paul Wheatley chronicled the "Indianization" of Arakan.
According to Pamela Gutman, "Arakan was ruled by kings who adopted Indian titles and traditions to suit their own environment. Indian Brahmins conducted royal ceremonies, Buddhist monks spread their teachings, traders came and went and artists and architects used Indian models for inspiration. In the later period, there was also influence from the Islamic courts of Bengal and Delhi". Gutman writes that “the maintenance of a state appropriate to kingship required the ministrations of increasing numbers of craftsmen and artisans, the most skilled of whom were often accommodated within the royal compound. It required the labour of a peasantry who contributed the surplus produce of their fields as a kind of tax in kind for the support of the court, and a band of armed retainers who acted as household guards, organised the peasantry as militia and enforced the authority of the ruler. Material defences – walls and moats protecting the palace and the city – were constructed and the city-state, the nagara, evolved. These transformations saw the tribal chieftain replaced by a divine king, shaman by brahmin priest, tribesman as cultivators by peasants, tribesmen as warriors by an army, and favoured the development of occupational specialisation. They were reflected in the conversion of the chief’s hut into a palace, the spirit house into a temple, the object of the spirit cult into the palladium of the state, and the boundary spirits which previously had protected the village into Indianized Lokapalas presiding over cardinal directions. This process can clearly be traced in Arakan, which received Indian culture by land from Bengal and by sea from other parts of India”.
First states and cities
According to Arakanese old legendary Chronicles, the first Arakanese state flourished in Dhanyawadi between the 27th Century BC to 6th Centuriy CE.The city was the center of a large trade network linked to India, China and Persia. Power then shifted to the city of Waithali, where the Candra dynasty ruled. Waithali became a wealthy trading port. The Candra-ruled Harikela state was known as the Kingdom of Ruhmi to the Arabs. Evidence points to the use of the ancient Bengali script in Arakan. The Anandacandra inscription recorded the reign of the Candra dynasty.
Since in the 8th century, Arab merchants began conducting missionary activities in southeast Asia. Some researchers have speculated that Muslims used trade routes in the region to travel to India and China. A southern branch of the Silk Road connected India, Burma and China since the Neolithic period. It is unclear whether the Rakhine people were one of the tribes of the Burmese Pyu city-states because the people in those states at the time spoke a Tibeto-Burman language while Arakan speakers are from the Sino-Tibetan language family. They began migrating to Arakan through the Arakan Mountains in the 9th century. The Rakhines settled in the valley of the Lemro River. Their cities included Sambawak I, Pyinsa, Parein, Hkrit, Sambawak II, Myohaung, Toungoo and Launggret.
Le-Mro Period
Following the decline of the Waithali Kingdom around 818 CE, the political center of Arakan shifted to the Lemro Valley. Four principal cities known as Pyinsa, Parein, Hkrit, and Launggyet served as successive capitals.The Lemro period was an era in Arakanese history that lasted from the 9th to the 15th centuries CE. It is defined by the establishment of several successive capitals along the Lemro River, known collectively as "Lemro," which translates to "four cities" in the Rakhine language.
The Launggyet Dynasty later marked the final phase of the Lemro period in Arakan's history.