Manuha ( my, မနူဟာ; mnw, မကုတရာဇာ;

Old Mon The Mon language (, mnw, ဘာသာမန်, links=no, (Mon-Thai ဘာသာမည်) ; my, မွန်ဘာသာ; th, ภาษามอญ; formerly known as Peguan and Talaing) is an Austroasiatic language spoken by the Mon peop ...

), or Makuta, was the last king of

Thaton Kingdom The Thaton Kingdom, Suwarnabhumi, or Thuwunnabumi ( my, သထုံခေတ် or ) was a Mon kingdom, believed to have existed in Lower Burma from at least the 4th century BC to the middle of the 11th century AD. One of many Mon kingdom ...

. Manuha ruled Thaton from 1030s until 1057 when he was defeated by King

Anawrahta Anawrahta Minsaw ( my, အနော်ရထာ မင်းစော, ; 11 May 1014 – 11 April 1077) was the founder of the Pagan Empire. Considered the father of the Burmese nation, Anawrahta turned a small principality in the dry zone ...

Pagan Kingdom The Kingdom of Pagan ( my, ပုဂံခေတ်, , ; also known as the Pagan Dynasty and the Pagan Empire; also the Bagan Dynasty or Bagan Empire) was the first Burmese kingdom to unify the regions that would later constitute modern-da ...

. According to the Mon tradition, Manuha was the 59th in the line of kings who supposedly founded Thaton during the time of the

Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist tradition, he was born in L ...

in the 6th century

BCE Common Era (CE) and Before the Common Era (BCE) are year notations for the Gregorian calendar (and its predecessor, the Julian calendar), the world's most widely used calendar era. Common Era and Before the Common Era are alternatives to the or ...

. Traditional Burmese and Mon reconstructions also hold that Anawrahta, a recent convert to

Theravada Buddhism ''Theravāda'' () ( si, ථේරවාදය, my, ထေရဝါဒ, th, เถรวาท, km, ថេរវាទ, lo, ເຖຣະວາດ, pi, , ) is the most commonly accepted name of Buddhism's oldest existing school. The school' ...

, asked for the Theravada Buddhist canon from Manuha. The Mon king reputedly rejected Anawrahta's request, saying that the uncultured Burmans of the north were not worthy of the religion. This refusal was used by Anawrahta as pretense to invade and conquer the Mon kingdom.Htin Aung 1967: 32–33 Despite this account, it is more likely Anawrahta conquered Thaton in order to check the westward advance of Khmer Empire in the Tenasserim coast. Still according to traditional belief, Manuha and his family along with some 30,000 monks and artisans, were brought back to Pagan (Bagan). Between 1050 and about 1085, Mon craftsmen and artisans helped to build some two thousand monuments at Pagan, the remains of which today rival the splendors of Angkor Wat.South 2003: 67 However, recent research—still a minority view—argues that Mon influence on the interior after Anawrahta's conquest is a greatly exaggerated post-Pagan legend, and that Lower Burma in fact lacked a substantial independent polity prior to Pagan's expansion.Lieberman 2003: 91 Historian Michael Aung-Thwin (Aung-Thwin 2005) argues that the existence of Thaton is not supported by contemporary evidence.Aung-Thwin 2005 Manuha asked and was allowed to build the

Manuha Temple Manuha Temple ( my, မနူဟာဘုရား) is a Buddhist temple built in Myinkaba (located near Bagan), by captive Mon King Manuha in 1067, according to King Manuha's inscriptions. It is a rectangular building of two storeys. The buildi ...

in Pagan in 1059. Inside the temple three giant Buddha statues—two sitting, and one reclining—seem too large for their enclosures, and their cramped, uncomfortable positions are said to represent the stress and lack of comfort the 'captive king' had to endure.

References

Bibliography

* * * * * {{Burmese monarchs Burmese monarchs Thaton dynasty Burmese people of Mon descent