Myawaddy Mingyi U Sa.

Myawaddy Mingyi U Sa ( Burmese မြဝတီ မင်းကြီး ဦး စ ), other transcription Myá-wadi Wun-gyì Ù Sá, also Myá-wadi Mìn-gyì Ù Sá (born October 28, 1766 in Migyaungtet Chaung near Sagaing , Myanmar ; † August 6, 1853 in Ava ), was a Burmese poet, composer, musician, and general in the country's cultural heyday during the Konbaung Dynasty . He is recognized as the most important author of courtly songs and as the most famous player of the saung gauk bow harp of his time , he wrote plays and was instrumental in the translation of the Thai epics Ramakien and Inao into Burmese.

Over the course of his 87-year life, he was entrusted with various tasks by four kings. In the first Anglo-Burmese War from 1824 to 1826 he commanded a military unit that won two battles against the British in Arakan . As Minister of War under King Bagyidaw , he successfully negotiated from 1828 with the British who wanted to add an area in northwest Burma to the British-occupied Manipur . After 1836, U Sa no longer held any public office; he continued to compose songs that are now considered classics of Burmese music .

Life

Maung Sa was born in October 1766 in the village of Migyaungtet Chaung (Mí-gyaùng tet-chaùng) near Sagaing on the central Irrawaddy . In this short form of the name, Maung means the address of a boy ("younger brother"), which is also used instead of "Lord"; Sa is the personal name and stands for the birth on a Tuesday. Burmese do not know family names. For identification, the name of the father or the place of origin are placed in front; in this case Myawaddy Mingyi ("Lord of Myawaddy") is a respectful designation which the later minister and fiefdom of the country of the same name received. According to Burmese courtesy, the U is the salutation for an older man. His birthplace was on the opposite side of the river from the old royal city of Ava .

The father U Pauk Kyaw came from the village of Mauk-tet near Alon (north of Monywa ). He was an armed guard at the royal court and died when Maung Sa was six years old. Maung Sa's mother was called Shin Nyein Tha, she was a granddaughter of Binnya Gyandaw (Banyà-Kyàn-dàw), a minister of King Thalun (ruled 1629-1648). Under his rule, the capital of the Taungoo Kingdom was relocated from Bago to Ava from 1634 . At the age of eleven, the boy came to a Buddhist monastery in the village of Mehti near Ava, where he was taught as a student of the monk U Parama for the next few years. Maung Sa left the monastery and, before he was 18, married Má Eì (Ma Aye), the daughter of the royal goldsmith and silversmith Nyun in Sagaing. After the wedding, Maung Sa worked as a jewelry dealer until his wife died in 1785 when he was just 19 years old. At the same time he played the circular gong game kyi waing in one of the royal orchestras under the direction of U Tayok and probably other instruments as well.

After the death of his wife, U Sa moved to the new royal city of Amarapura , ten kilometers northeast of Ava , where he initially accepted a servant position with the Crown Prince. He only got the job because he came from a family that had been in royal service for generations. Inspired by the artistic atmosphere at court, he began to compose in the classical song genres kyò and bwé at the age of 19 . Soon he rose to serve as the private servant of the Crown Prince. At the age of 23, U Sa was a member of a royal commission, along with princes, ministers and writers, whose task it was to translate Thai and Laotian dramas into Burmese. These plays were adaptations of the Thai Ramakien , derived from the Indian Ramayana , which became Yama Zatdaw in Burma , or they had court life as their theme. The pieces contained many songs, for which he also composed the melodies.

In 1808 he was appointed herald ( Than-daw-zín ) and commander of a warship. To suppress a rebellion, U Sa moved in 1813 at the head of 150 horsemen and 1,500 foot soldiers via Tamu (border town in the Sagaing Division ) to Manipur and there put the local king Marjit Singh of the Meitei (main ethnic group in Manipur) on the throne. For this, the Manipur ruler handed the Khambat valley over to Burma. When King Bodawpaya (Bò-daw-phayà, ruled 1782-1819) died in 1819 , the Crown Prince ascended the throne as King Bagyidaw (ruled 1819-1837) and made U Sa his private secretary ( Atwinwun ).

In the first Anglo-Burmese War in 1824, U Sa was appointed general. He led a unit towards Cox's Bazar , where he defeated the British troops at Panwa (previously: Ramu, 15 kilometers east of Cox's Bazar), then he joined the army of Commander-in-Chief Maha Bandula (1782-1825) to defeat the British at Gawdawpalin strike back. When his troops finally tried to take Cox's Bazar, they were repulsed by the British who had previously defeated Maha Bandula at Danubyu (Irrawaddy Division ). Maha Bandula and U Sa together commanded 6,500 men who won two victories against the British. To counter the main attack of the British troops advancing from Rangoon , Maha Bandula was ordered with most of the troops to the south, where they were finally worn out by the British troops after long marches in the monsoon through the jungle mountains. During these battles for Rangoon, U Sa and his unit held the position in Arakan. In February 1825, an invasion force with 11,000 men, far superior, attacked the Burmese positions in Arakan. At the end of March the positions in Mrauk U , the capital of Arakans, and Danubya fell. U Sa escaped with his life and withdrew from Arakan with his troops.

In 1828 King Bagyidaw appointed him Minister of War and Supreme Minister ( Wun-gyi ) with Myawaddy, a large area in today's Magwe Division at the confluence of Irrawaddi and Made (Ma-tè) as a fief ( myó-sà ), from which he Tax revenue related. U Sa let himself be called Myawaddy Mingyi , he began to conduct diplomatic negotiations with the British and got them to give up their claims to the Khambat Valley as part of Manipur.

The British negotiator, Major Henry Burney and the American missionary Judson spoke in admiration about U Sa. Burney reported that U Sa led all negotiations with the British on administrative matters. To Burney's astonishment, U Sa sang a few stanzas of three Christian songs to him; Burney heard one of these melodies at the beginning of one of the songs composed by U Sa.

In the 1830s, King Bagyidaw's mental health deteriorated rapidly, leading to a palace revolt by his brother, Prince Tharrawaddy (Tha-ya-wadi), in 1836. U Sa and other ministers loyal to Bagyidaw were arrested. In 1837 Tharrawaddy took power. After three years of heavy imprisonment, in which U Sa was used for forced labor and had to clear roads in the jungle, he was only released in 1839 by a fortunate circumstance. Tharrawaddy's main wife and their daughter, Supayagyi, were on their way to visit a remote monastery. When they passed prisoners who were busy with road works, the daughter recognized U Sa, stopped and spoke to him. As the seventy-two-year-old began telling his story, his daughter and mother began planning his release. Before doing this, let him write a song in praise of the king. The royal puppeteer integrated this song into the performance of a puppet theater . When the ruler heard the new song, he is said to have asked for its author, which the princess took as an opportunity to ask for the release of U Sa. He was released on April 6, 1839.

From then on, U Sa composed songs for King Tharrawaddy and, after his death in 1846, for his son and successor Pagan Min (r. 1846-1853), the ninth king of the Konbaung dynasty. U Sa was no longer employed at the court, but had received a village from Tharrawaddy, from whose tax income he could live. Only King Mindon , who ascended the throne in 1853, the year U Sa died, gave him another position at court.

effect

A Minister of the Interior ( Attawun ) with his wife (left) and a State Secretary ( Seredogi ) in ceremonial costume, 1795

The end of the great Burmese kingdom of Taungoo was the result of several attacks by Chinese from the north, Siamese from the east, Meitei from Manipur and the Mon from the south. The latter succeeded briefly in 1752 in taking the capital Ava. When the Burmese ruler Alaungpaya forced the Mon to withdraw from Ava in the same year , and in 1757 conquered the Mon capital of Bago (Pegu), other cities in Burma and Imphal in Manipur, he laid the foundation for the rise of the Konbaung dynasty. This not only conquered an area in a short time that reached far beyond today's national borders, the spirit of optimism of the young empire also enabled a cultural heyday. Thousands of Manipur residents were deported to Burma in 1758 and astrologers from Manipur have been engaged at the royal court in Ava ever since. In 1767, King Hsinbyushin conquered the Siamese kingdom of Ayutthaya . All musicians, dancers and other entertainers of the royal family who brought their tradition into Burmese culture were abducted from the looted and burned down capital Ayutthaya .

U Sa grew up in the environment of a court society that had found refined forms of cultural expression from its warlike origins. The king had become a patron of the arts; scholars at court conducted Buddhist studies in the languages Sanskrit and Pali , while the king was entertained by poets. The performance practice of Burmese music and theater changed under the influence of Thai songs and the Ramakien .

At the request of the Crown Prince, U Sa 1798 had the prisoners of the Siamese court, who had already reached their age at this time, recite their version of the epic love drama Inao and transferred the palace intrigue story to the Burmese court. The drama comes from Indonesia, where the hero is called Panji or Inu . In Myanmar, it is known as Enaung Zatdaw . The compositions of all the songs and the music for this performance made U Sa known to the prince, who gave him the post of treasurer ( Banda sayeì ) in gratitude .

U Sa's adaptation of the Thai epic Ramakien (in Burma: Yama Zatdaw ) is performed as a pantomime dance, the dramaturgy of which is based on the original Khon mask dance.

From 1805 he began collecting the mythical stories of the nats and researching the rituals with which these spirits were worshiped. Of all 37 nats , he described their character traits, clothing and the rituals with which they worshiped special media, musicians and dancers. In 1820, U Sa expanded and improved its work on the nats in collaboration with the nat medium Kawi Deva Kyaw and the historian U Nu. At this time he also completed the second part of the Inao epic.

In an inscription by King Narapadi (r. 1443–1469 in Ava) at the Tupayon Pagoda in Sagaing from 1444, a group of entertainers at this venerated place is mentioned, among them the oldest known professional puppeteers. Although there were puppeteers with marionettes as early as the 15th century, U Sa is seen as one of the inventors of the Burmese puppetry yoke thé .

Usually a classic Burmese song consists of a text and an accompanying melody. Only rarely is a new text written to an existing melody. The lyrics were recorded on palm leaf manuscripts , collected by Crown Prince (later King) Mindon from 1850 and first published in several anthologies at the end of the 19th century. Song melodies and instrumental interludes were only passed on orally until the 20th century. There was no pre-European notation . U Sa is considered to be the most important composer of these classical songs, most of which are orchestrated with the saung gauk bow harp and summarized under the name Mahagita (Pali: "great song", Burmese: thachin gyi ). Three song genres in the collection form the ancient court chants, the basis of Burmese literature. About 30 short songs are dedicated to the nats . In 1965, the saung-gauk player Inle Myint Maung began to translate the collection of songs into Western music notation.

At the time of U Sa the bow harp had seven strings, he expanded this number to 13 and thus created roughly the instrument played today (16 strings have been common since the middle of the 20th century). In addition to U Sa, some princes, princesses and other members of the royal family also composed songs for the bow harp. The last great saung-gauk player of the Konbaung era was Maung Maung Gyi (1855–1933). The result was a virtuoso, fast style with extensive instrumental introductions and sometimes improvised solos between the verses.

U Sa composed great musical forms, influenced by Thai and Mon music styles, for the oboe hne and hsaing waing orchestra with drums and gong playing. This orchestra accompanies all kinds of dance dramas and spirit worship rituals ( nat pwe ).

literature

• Muriel C. Williamson: A biographical note on Myá-wadi Ù Sa, Burmese poet and composer. In: Laurence Picken (Ed.): Musica Asiatica. Vol. 2. Oxford University Press, London 1979, pp. 151-154

Web links

• Burma Press Summary. (PDF; 87 kB) Working People's Daily, Vol. 2, No. 5, May 1988

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Maung Thuta: Sahsodaw-Mya Ahtouppati. ( စာဆိုတော်များ အတ္ထုပ္ပတ္တိ ) 3rd edition, Zwe, Rangun 1968 (Burmese)
2. ↑ Burma Press Summary
3. ^ Williamson, A biographical note, 1979, p. 154
4. ^ Williamson, A biographical note, 1979, p. 153
5. ↑ John Villiers: Southeast Asia before the colonial era. Fischer Weltgeschichte, Vol. 18. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1965, pp. 155f
6. ^ Zat Pwe, The Burmese Dance-Drama. Asian Traditional Theater & Dance
7. ^ Williamson, A biographical note, 1979, p. 152
8. ^ Noel F. Singer: Burmese Puppets. Oxford University Press, Singapore a. a. 1992, pp. 2, 5
9. ↑ Muriel C. Williamson: The basic tune of a late eighteenth-century Burmese classical song. In: Laurence Picken (Ed.): Musica Asiatica. Vol. 2. Oxford University Press, London 1979, pp. 155-195, here p. 156