1 BURMA. KINGS & GENERALS (Albatross, 2009) Chapter II THE KINGDOM OF PAGAN – ORIGINS OF BURMAN POWER First Empire If I am worthy to disseminate the faith, may I win. (battle-cry ascribed to King Anawrahta) They called them Mien. It might be this term that the military junta referred to when in 1989 it changed the name of the country from the Union of Burma to the Union of Myanmar. The ancestors of today's Burmans appeared on the Irrawaddy River in the ninth century AD. They were said to have come from the regions lying somewhere between the Gobi desert and northeast Tibet. They started their long wanderings as early as the second century BC, being pushed by the Chinese farther and farther south, until they reached the area of present-day Burma. At first they found themselves not very fortunately under the rule of the Nan-chao Kingdom (the land of present-day Yunnan), which was just in the process of settling accounts with other protoplasts of the Burmans – the Pyu. The latter had appeared in the Irrawaddy valley even earlier (in the fifth century AD) and had founded the capital of their small state in the vicinity of the present city of Prome. If we want to learn something about the vicissitudes of Asia we are forced to rely on Chinese chroniclers. Not only on the way they perceived the world but also on their interests and choice of topics. The Pyu deserved attention because, according to historiographers of the Middle Kingdom, they were civilised – a proof of which laid not only in numerous monasteries and wall-encircled cities but also in the fact, often highlighted by the chroniclers, that every local state clerk knew his place in the royal suite – it was what the Chinese considered a criterion for development. The Pyu practised Mahayana and Theravada. They also worshipped Indian gods, especially Vishnu. In 832 AD the Nan-chao put a halt to the development of this civilisation. They looted Prome and took away thousands of people to Yunnan. No one heard of the Pyu any more. They lost their cultural identity and were wiped from the pages of history.