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    About Arakan Kingdom

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    ေက်ာက္ၿဖဴသားေခ်
    The document provides background information on Arakan (Rakhine State) including: 1) Arakan was formerly known as Rakhapura by Arakanese people and the name Arakan was derived from Arakha-de-sha. 2) Buddhism was introduced to Arakan during Buddha's lifetime and the Mahamuni image was created to commemorate his visit. 3) The independent Arakan Kingdom was lost in 1784 when it was invaded and occupied by the Burmese, losing its sovereignty and national identity. 4) Today, Arakan is located in western Myanmar but Arakanese people still see it as a distinct region with its own history and culture.

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    About Arakan Kingdom

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    ေက်ာက္ၿဖဴသားေခ်
    6K views5 pages
    The document provides background information on Arakan (Rakhine State) including: 1) Arakan was formerly known as Rakhapura by Arakanese people and the name Arakan was derived from Arakha-de-sha. 2) Buddhism was introduced to Arakan during Buddha's lifetime and the Mahamuni image was created to commemorate his visit. 3) The independent Arakan Kingdom was lost in 1784 when it was invaded and occupied by the Burmese, losing its sovereignty and national identity. 4) Today, Arakan is located in western Myanmar but Arakanese people still see it as a distinct region with its own history and culture.

    Original Description:

    I love my father land

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    The document provides background information on Arakan (Rakhine State) including: 1) Arakan was formerly known as Rakhapura by Arakanese people and the name Arakan was derived from Arakha-de-sha. 2) Buddhism was introduced to Arakan during Buddha's lifetime and the Mahamuni image was created to commemorate his visit. 3) The independent Arakan Kingdom was lost in 1784 when it was invaded and occupied by the Burmese, losing its sovereignty and national identity. 4) Today, Arakan is located in western Myanmar but Arakanese people still see it as a distinct region with its own history and culture.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    6K views5 pages

    About Arakan Kingdom

    Uploaded by

    ေက်ာက္ၿဖဴသားေခ်
    The document provides background information on Arakan (Rakhine State) including: 1) Arakan was formerly known as Rakhapura by Arakanese people and the name Arakan was derived from Arakha-de-sha. 2) Buddhism was introduced to Arakan during Buddha's lifetime and the Mahamuni image was created to commemorate his visit. 3) The independent Arakan Kingdom was lost in 1784 when it was invaded and occupied by the Burmese, losing its sovereignty and national identity. 4) Today, Arakan is located in western Myanmar but Arakanese people still see it as a distinct region with its own history and culture.

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    Arakan [အာရကန္]

    The land that is known as Arakan


    by the foreigners is called
    ‘Rakhaing-pray’ [ရခုိင္ျပည္] by its
    own peoples, Rakhaing-thars
    (Arakanese) [ရခုိင္သား]. The word
    “Arakan” was a derivation of the
    ancient word “Arakha-de-sha”
    [အာရက ေဒသွ်] (the land of
    Arakan) which is found in line
    forty of Anandachandra
    inscriptions of Shitethaung pillar.

    Rakhapura [ရကပူရ]

    Rakhapura [ရကပူရ] is the former name of Rakhaing-pray [ရခုိင္ျပည္].


    Arakanese people today do not use the term 'Rakhapura' to mention their
    land. But, every Arakanese love the word “Rakhapura” [ရကပူရ] as they
    assume that it is a unique word for only Arakanese in this universe. It can
    also be found in both classical and modern Arakanese plays, poetry and
    songs.

    Both Rakhapura and Rakhaing-pay means the land that is owned and
    inhabited by the Arakanese.

    Rakhaing [ရခုိင္]

    According to the Arakanese chronicles, the word ‘Rakhaing’ [ရခုိင္] was


    originated from Rakhapura [ရကပူရ] and it means the original inhabitants of
    Rakhapura [ရကပူရ].

    Arakhadesha [အာရကေဒသွ်] > Rakhasa [ရကသွ်] > Rakkha [ရက] > Rakkhaing [ရကၡိဳင္] > Rakhaing
    [ရခုိင္]

    1
    In Pali [ရပါဠိ] the word ‘Rakhaing’ [ရခုိင္] is used to honour the people who
    love their nation, and preserve their national heritage, and their traditional
    ethics or morality [သီလ].

    History

    The
    Arakanese
    history
    records
    the early
    Arakanese
    to migrate
    in Arakan and settled down in their true land since time immemorial. The
    independent and sovereign Buddhist Kingdom of Arakan had been splendidly
    flourishing from 3325 B.C. till the Burman invaders occupied it in 1784.

    The history of Arakan can be divided in to four major period throughout its
    thousand-years-long history. They are:

    - Dhannyawaddy Period

    • The 1st Dhannyawaddy Period (King Marayu, BC. 3325 – BC. 1483)
    • The 2nd Dhannyawaddy Period (King Kanrazagree, BC. 1483 – BC. 580)
    • The 3rd Dhannyawaddy Period (King Chandra Surya, BC. 580 - AD.
    326)

    - Vesali Period (King Dvan Chandra, AD. 327 – AD. 1018)

    - Laemro Period (King Nga Tone Munn, AD. 1018 – AD.1406)

    - Mrauk-U Period (King Munn Saw Mwan, AD.1430 – 1784)

    Dhannyawaddy Era [ဓည၀တီေခတ္]

    The 1st Dhannyawaddy Period (BC. 3325 – BC. 1483)

    2
    According to the legend, Dhanyawadi [ဓည၀တီႏုိင္ငံေတာ္] (the first independent
    Arakan kingdom) was established in 3325 B.C by King Maryu [မာရယု] (the
    Arakanese legendary hero-ancestor). It is said that King Rarayu [မာရယု] had
    married the daughter of the chief of Mro [ၿမဳိ] tribe and had founded
    Dhanyawadi [ဓည၀တီႏုိင္ငံေတာ္] after defeating the bilus [ရခုိင္] (demon-like
    creatures) who arrived earlier in the area.

    Religion

    Buddhism was introduced into Arakan during the lifetime of Buddha himself.
    According to Arakanese chronicles, Lord Buddha, accompanied by his five
    hundred disciples, visited the city of Dhannyawadi (Grain blessed) in 554 B.C.
    King Chandra Suriya (Sun and Moon) and all the people converted to
    Buddhism and became Buddhists since then. The king requested Lord Buddha
    to leave the image of Himself to commemorate the event before he left
    Arakan and Lord Buddha consented it. This was the famous Mahamuni (Great
    Sage) image, known throughout the Buddhist world and desired by kings who
    sought to conquer the country in order to carry away this powerful prize. The
    history of this image is entwined with that of Arakan. After casting the Great
    Image Mahamuni, Lord Buddha breathed upon it which resembled the exact
    likeness of the Blessed One.

    The tradition of the origin of the Mahamuni image can be interpreted as an


    allegorical account of the introduction of Buddhism to Arakan. The first
    evidence we have of Buddhism is in the early sculpture of the Mahamuni
    shrine at Dhanyawadi.

    Arakanese, to show their utmost respect to King Chandra Suriya who had
    donated Mahamuni Shrine and introduced Buddhism into Arakan, have been
    using the signs of Sun and Moon as the most sacred symbols throughout the
    history until today.

    These symbols can be found in all ancient coins of Arakan, as well as present-
    day flag and seal of Rakhaing state under Burma.

    3
    The Lost of Chittagong and Twelve Bengal Districts

    Even though Arakan had reached zenith of power in the Bay when it was
    under the rule of the skilled and powerful kings, the country's glory and fame
    has steadily declined when it was succeeded and ruled by the unqualified
    kings. Chittagong and other districts of Bengal were invaded and occupied by
    the Moghal in 1666 AD.

    The Lost of Arakan Kingdom, its nation and national identity

    After the Moghal invaded and annexed part of the Arakanese territories,
    internal instability and dethroning of kings had happened very often in Arakan
    Court. Taking opportunity in the overall weakness inside the country, the
    Burmese King U Wine violated the good-friendly neighbour's ethics and
    dispatched his invading forces into Arakan in mid-November, 1784 and
    occupied it by the end of 1784.

    The national independence of Arakan and sovereignty of the Arakan Kingdom


    were lost on 31 December 1784 (7 waxing day of Pratho 1146 AE.) when it
    was invaded and subjugated by the Burman King Maung Wyne. The people of
    Arakan became enslaved. The national flag hoisted in honour of the nation on
    the top of the Royal Assembly Hall was dropped. The dignity, the honour and
    the prestige of the Rakhine as
    a FREE NATION had
    terminated immediately after
    loss of independence.

    Area of Arakan

    Arakan is situated among India


    in the North, Burma in the
    East and People's Republic of
    Bangladesh in the West. To
    the south, it extends up to
    Haigri Islands and is bounded

    4
    on the southwest by the Bay of Bengal.

    The area of Arakan was more than 20,000 sq. ml. till the British period. But,
    Burmese ruler, without the consent of Arakanese people, split up a north
    western Arakan Hill Tracts area bordering India and a southern most part of
    Arakan (from Kyauk Chaung River to Cape Negaris) from the Arakan
    mainland. Due to these partitions, the present day total area of Arakan was
    reduced to 18, 500 sq. ml and it comprise less than half of historic Arakan
    territory.

    The Rakhine State of Burma

    The Rakhine state, consisting 17 townships was created by the then Burmese
    Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) government led by General Ne Win after
    granting Arakan region the state status. But it was done by the Burmese for
    administrative purposes.

    Today area of Arakan is located between Lat. 16' 00" N- Lat. 21' 20" N and
    Long. 92' 20" E- Long. 95' 20" E. Arakan is known as one of the poorest
    states under so called Union of Burma ruled by military junta called SPDC
    (State Peace and Development Council) with its official name, Rakhine State.

    Arakanese, however, use the term "Arakan" to mean the area which was
    historically and traditionally known as Arakan before the 1784 Burmese
    invasion. Despite over 200 years of Burmese occupation of Arakan, the
    Arakanese peoples refuse to be conquered and subjugated by the Burmese.
    Arakan independent movement started just after it lost independent and is
    carrying on until now.

    http://www.rakhapura.com/arakan/

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