Mawlamyine


Mawlamyine, formerly Moulmein, is the fourth-largest city in Myanmar, southeast of Yangon and south of Thaton, at the mouth of Thanlwin River. Mawlamyine was an ancient city and the first capital of British Burma. It also serves as the capital of Mon State.

Etymology and legend

The Mon name which was previously used for Mawlamyine, Moulmein means "damaged eye" or "one-eyed man." According to legend, a Mon king had a powerful third eye in the centre of his forehead, able to see what was happening in neighbouring kingdoms. The daughter of one of the neighbouring kings was given in marriage to the three-eyed king and managed to destroy the third eye. The Burmese name "Mawlamyine" is believed to be a corruption of the Mon name.
Moulmein was also spelled as Maulmain or Moulmain or Maulmein in some records of the 19th century. The people of Moulmein were referred to as ''Moulmeinian.''

History

Early history

Early Mon reigns

According to Kalyani Inscriptions erected by King Dhammazedi of Hanthawaddy Pegu in 1479, Mawlamyine was mentioned among the '32 myo' or thirty-two Mon cities within the Martaban division. Binnya U, a deputy of Viceroy Saw Binnya, was one of the notable governors of Mawlamyine in the early history of the city.

Toungoo dynasty

In May 1541, King Tabinshwehti and his deputy Bayinnaung captured Mawlamyine. During the reign of Bayinnaung, Toungoo Empire became the largest empire in the history of Southeast Asia. After his passing in 1581, his son Nanda Bayin and successors faced with rebellion by Lan Na, Siam, Lan Xang and renewed Portuguese incursions. In 1594, the governor of Mawlamyine who being in league with Siamese King Naresuan revolted against Toungoo court. Since then, the city became under the control of Siam until 1614.

Konbaung dynasty

In 1760, General Minkhaung Nawrahta of the Royal Burmese Army repaired Mawlamyine on his way back from Burmese–Siamese War in Ayutthaya. Kyaikthanlan Pagoda Inscription hinted that in 1764, General Maha Nawrahta repaired Kyaikthanlan Pagoda on his way to capture Tavoy, and before finishing the repairment, Mawlamyine faced utter destruction.

Colonial Moulmein (1824–1948)

Mawlamyine was the first capital of British Burma between 1826 and 1852 after the Tanintharyi coast, along with Arakan, was ceded to Britain under the Treaty of Yandabo at the end of the First Anglo-Burmese War. After the first Anglo-Burmese war, the British made it their capital between 1826 and 1852, building government offices, churches and a massive prison. In 1829, the Moulmein Bar Association was founded by the Barristers in Mawlamyine. They started business enterprises and the country's first newspaper, The Maulmain Chronicle. Between 1826 and 1862, colonial Mawlamyine was the center of British Burma and the first port city that became a strategically important area and a geographical nodal point for the newly occupied British territory in Southeast Asia. Ever since the first British occupation in 1824, the growth and prosperity of Mawlamyine had steadily increased due to timber trade. Nevertheless, the decline in prosperity of Mawlamyine began when the supply of marketable timber from Salween Valley started to decrease in the 1890s.
During British colonial times, Germany, Siam, Persia, Denmark, Norway and Sweden opened and maintained consulates in Mawlamyine led by either consuls or vice-consuls while Italy and the United States placed consular agencies in Mawlamyine. German explorer Johann Wilhelm Helfer's landing at Moulmein shore on 8 February 1837 made him the first German to arrive in Burma in the history.
Mawlamyine was the setting of George Orwell's famous 1936 essay Shooting an Elephant, which was inspired by Orwell's posting to the city as a police officer in 1926. The story, which is most likely a mixture of fact and fiction, opens with the striking words:
During colonial times, Moulmein had a substantial Anglo-Burmese population. An area of the city was known as "Little England" due to the large Anglo-Burmese community, many of them running rubber plantations. This has since dwindled to a handful of families as most have left for the UK or Australia.
It was probably best known to English speakers through the opening lines of Rudyard Kipling's poem Mandalay:
During WWII, the city and the Tanintharyi Region were the first objectives during the Japanese invasion of Burma.

"The old Moulmein pagoda" - Kyaik Than Lan

The "old Moulmein pagoda" Kipling cites is thought to be the Kyaik Than Lan pagoda in Mawlamyine. It stands on a ridge, giving a panoramic view of the city, and is surrounded by 34 smaller temples. Among its sacred treasures is a hair relic of Buddha, received from a hermit in Thaton, as well as a tooth relic conveyed from Sri Lanka by a delegation of monks in ancient times.

Contemporary Mawlamyine

Soon after Burma's independence in 1948, the city fell into the hands of Karen insurgents. The Myanmar military retook the city with the help of UBS Mayu in 1950. Later, many colonial names of streets and parks of the city were changed to more nationalistic Burmese names. Mawlamyine stood as the third-largest city of Myanmar until the recent rise of Naypyidaw.

Geography

Mawlamyine is in the Salween River delta, where the mouth of the Salween is sheltered by Bilugyun Island as it enters the Gulf of Martaban and the Andaman Sea. It is flanked by low hills dotted with ancient pagodas to the east and west.

Climate

Mawlamyine has a tropical monsoon climate similar to the climates of Dawei and Sittwe. There is a lengthy dry season between mid-November and mid-April, and an extremely wet season due to the southwest monsoon between mid-April and mid-November. Between June and August when the surface westerly winds are strongest and supersaturated air is advected onto the nearby mountains, Mawlamyine averages around of rain per month.

Transport

Airport

has regular flights to Yangon.

Bus and taxis

Mawlamyine is the main gateway to south eastern Myanmar. Thanlwin Bridge, the longest road and rail bridge in Myanmar is the most prominent landmark in the area. It stretches over the Thanlwin River connecting the country's south eastern region with Yangon. The city has a central highway bus station. The city is connected to Pa-an in Kayin State in the north-east and Dawei and Myeik in Tanintharyi Division in the south by road. Via Kawkareik, the city is also connected with Thai-Myanmar border town Myawaddy. Newly opened Bogyoke Aung San Bridge connects Mawlamyine with nearby Bilu island, lies about 500 metres west off the shore of Mawlamyine.
In Mawlamyine, motorcycles and tuk-tuk motorised tricycles cumulatively registered for use as taxis. Mawlamyine is also served by bus networks which radiate mostly from the north to the south.

Railways

It was the rail head to Ye, linked to Yangon by rail only from Mottama across the river by ferry, but today connected by the Thanlwin Bridge opened in April 2006.
Mawlamyine Railway Station, which was reportedly built to the standards of an "ASEAN railway station", is the terminus of Myanmar Railways' Yangon–Mawlamyine Railway and Tanintharyi Line.

Water transport

In colonial era, Mawlamyine port was served by European shipping companies including Scottish-owned British-India Steam Navigation Company and Irrawaddy Flotilla Company.
The port was important not only for inland navigation but also for international shipping. Rice and teak from sawmills at Mawlamyine were exported worldwide by those shipping companies. The 1880 handbook of British-India Steam Navigation Company listed:
In 1894, the journey between Barr Street Jetty of Rangoon to the Main Wharf of Moulmein took about nine hours at a fare of 10 Rupees for second class.
Nowadays, although much diminished from its past prominence, water-based transport still plays an important role in connecting between Mawlamyine and the immediate upstream towns. The Port of Mawlamyine is currently under the management of Myanma Port Authority and is located on the Thanlwin River about 28 nautical miles inland from the Kyaikkhame point on the Gulf of Martaban, 2 kilometres from Mawlamyine railway station.

Cityscape

Around the city

Heritage buildings

  • Kyaikthanlan Pagoda: It was built in 875 AD during the reign of Mon King Mutpi Raja, it was raised from its original height of to the present by successive kings including Wareru, founder of the Kingdom of Hanthawaddy Pegu. In 1831, to prevent Moulmein's identity from fading away, Sitke Maung Htaw Lay, who later served as Magistrate of Moulmein restored the pagoda with the funds raised by public subscriptions. Being situated on the range of hill, the pagoda overlooks the city, nearby islands, Gulf of Martaban, surrounding rivers and the limestone mountains of Kayin State in the east. Rudyard Kipling is believed to have written his famous "Lookin' lazy at the sea" line at this pagoda in 1890.
  • U-zina Pagoda: The pagoda is one of the principal pagodas situated on the range of hill. According to legend, the pagoda contains a hair of Buddha and was built during the reign of King Ashoka, the great protector of Buddhism. The U-zina pagoda was named after the sage, U-zina who restored it in 1838. Prior to this the pagoda had been known as Kyaik Pa-dhan pagoda.
  • Princess Ashin Hteik Suhpaya's tomb: Princess Ashin Hteik Suhpaya who was the fourth daughter of King Thibaw, the last king of Konbaung dynasty returned to Burma from exile in 1915 and lived at her mansion on West Cantonment Road, Mawlamyine until her death in 1936. Her tomb is located near Kyaikthanlan Pagoda. The remains of her son, Prince Taw Phaya Nge and her daughter, Princess Hteik Su Phaya Htwe were also buried in the tomb in the later years.
  • First Baptist Church: The church is Myanmar's first Baptist church and it was initially built in 1827 by the legendary Adoniram Judson, a 19th-century American missionary who compiled the first Burmese-English dictionary. The church is regarded as a landmark for its significance to the Baptist movement worldwide.
  • St Matthew's Church: It was the first English Church built in Myanmar. It was initially erected in 1832 and the current handsome structure was rebuilt in 1887. It was designed and restored by the English architects James Piers St Aubyn and Henry J. Wadling of London and the foundation stone was laid by Sir Charles Crosthwaite, then Chief Commissioner of Burma. It is of red brick, the capitals of interior pillars being stone, and is said to be a model of English Church at Dresden. George Orwell attended the church during his days as Imperial Policeman in Moulmein in 1926 and the church compound has grave stones of his relatives. During the Japanese conquest of Burma in WWII, the Japanese Army stored salt in the church. Though the church is still in use, it is in a state of decay and is in urgent need of conservation.
  • St Patrick's Church: The St Patrick's Roman Catholic church was built in 1829; the French people constructed the clock tower of the church around 1854. St Patrick's school in the church compound was once a boarding school for the children of the elite in colonial times. The tragic love story of Thailand's Prince Sukkasem, the heir to the Lanna throne, and a Mon commoner girl started during his time at this school in the 1890s and was immortalised in Thai folk song and Thai literature.
  • Police Commissioner Headquarters: Built in 1826 on a hill in Than Lwin Park. The impressive colonial building was the place where George Orwell worked as Assistant District Superintendent in 1926.
  • Old Moulmein Prison: The Mawlamyine's colonial-era prison was initially built in the 1830s. Sir Richard Hieram Sankey, an Irish military engineer who is credited with designing much of the infrastructure of the Indian city of Bangalore, used to work at this prison as Superintendent of the jail in 1860. George Orwell was believed to have witnessed hanging there and it is the setting of his short story "A Hanging ". During WWII, following the Fall of Singapore in 1942, Allied soldiers transferred from Changi Prison were held in the Moulmein Prison by the Imperial Japanese Army before they were sent to the notorious death railway construction. In 2015, the prison was closed and relocated to a new facility near Yedwingone village in Kyaikmawyaw township.
  • Yadanabonmyint Monastery: It is also known as Queen Seindon Monastery. It is known for its craftsmanship.