Bodawpaya

King Bodawpaya (1795)

Bodawpaya ( Burmese : ဘိုးတော်ဘုရား , born as Maung Shwe Waing , also Badonsachen , later Badon Min ; born March 11, 1745 in Ava, today's Inwa ; † June 5, 1819 ) was the sixth king of the Konbaung dynasty in Burma .

Life

Bodawpaya was the fourth son of the founder of the Konbaung dynasty, Alaungpaya (ruled 1752 to 1760). After his nephew Phaungkaza Maung Maung declared himself king illegally in early 1782, he drowned him and sat himself on the throne of Burma. His throne name was Hsinbyumyashin (Lord of the White Elephants); however, posterity will remember him as Bodawpaya. After the bloody intrigues surrounding the succession to the throne, he felt the palace was stained with blood and therefore desecrated. In addition, he always feared for his life because of plans for revenge by the disempowered branch of the family. Therefore, he moved the capital from the well-developed Ava to the swampy Amarapura . He also forced the population to relocate and the old capital was destroyed.

Bodawpaya had 62 sons and 58 daughters with more than 200 wives. He ignored his father's legacy that his sons (Bodawpaya and his brothers) should be king one after another and instead appointed his eldest son, later King Bagyidaw , as heir to the throne. He executed his younger brothers who protested against their expulsion from the throne.

Military conflicts

Illustration of the palace of Amarapura in An account of an embassy to the kingdom of Ava by Michael Symes (1795)

1784 Bodawpaya let the Burmese army under his son Thado Minsaw in Arakan invade. At the end of 1784 Mrauk U , the capital of Arakan, was taken. Several Buddha statues , including the Mahamuni image , were brought back to Burma and can still be viewed in Mandalay today. In 1794 Arakan revolted, now on the border of British India. The British tried to gather information and the then British Governor General of India, Sir John Shore , dispatched a mission to Burma in 1795, then known as the Kingdom of Ava.

The Burmese had fought successfully against the Siamese of Ayutthaya for a long time , but after the devastating defeat in 1767 with their new king Taksin (r. 1768 to 1782) and his successor Rama I (r. 1782 to 1809) they were good due to improved administrative structures armed against further attacks. In 1785 Bodawpaya sent his troops to Bangkok without success. In 1791 Bodawpaya was more successful when the governor of Tavoy revolted with the help of the Siamese and the Burmese king had a punitive action carried out across the sea, which the Siamese bowed to in a treaty concluded in 1793 for the surrender of the Tenasserim peninsula to Burma. He turned against Siam again in 1808, but this campaign was also unsuccessful.

Culture and religion

In 1790 Bodawpaya ordered the construction of the largest stupa in the world, the Mingun Pagoda , which was to tower over the largest Buddhist sacred building to date, the Phra Pathom Chedi in Thailand. This should be built by slaves and prisoners. However, the work was never completed and was canceled after Bodawpaya's death in 1819. The Mingun bell intended for the pagoda is still the largest intact bell in the world today.

When Bodawpaya declared himself to be the coming Maitreya , he was rejected by the Buddhist denomination, the Sangha . Nevertheless, Bodawpaya was successful in establishing the Buddhist faith in Burma. The Thudhamma sect was established as a kind of regulatory power among the Buddhists to which all believers had to submit. Bodawpaya had monks who did not obey the rules of the order disciplined.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Carl Ritter: The geography of Asia. Volume IV, Berlin 1835, pp. 236-237.
2. ↑ Carl Ritter: The geography of Asia. Volume IV, Berlin 1835, p. 237.
3. ↑ Michael Symes: An Account of an Embassy to the Kingdom of Ava, Sent by the Governor-General of India, in the Year 1795. London 1800.
4. ↑ Bischoff (1955), pp. 110-118.
5. ↑ Mo Mo Thant: plurality, politics and criticism. Burmese Buddhism during the Mandalay era. In: Criticism within Religions and Religious Pluralism in Contemporary Southeast Asia. Peter Lang, Frankfurt 2008, p. 42.

literature

• Roger Bischoff: Buddhism in Myanmar - a short history Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society 1995.
• Victor B. Lieberman: "Political Consolidation in Burma Under the Early Konbaung Dynasty, 1752-c. 1820." Journal of Asia History Vol. 30 (1996), H. 2, pp. 152-168.