Introduction
The term tayok (spelled either tarup [
] or taruk [
] in different sources) is an exonymFootnote 1 used by the Burmese to refer to the Chinese today, but a survey of the Burmese chronicles indicates that the term has not always been used to refer to a single homogenous entity. Tarup may have been used at various times and in various sources to refer to at least two or three different groups who came from the region to the north, northwest and northeast of Burma. The phrase ‘tarup amyomyo’ contains a pun on the words ‘amyomyo’ depending on the spelling and pronunciation of the words. ‘Amyomyo’ (
) can refer to ‘varieties’ or ‘all sorts’.
This current discussion of the Tarup in Burmese sources represents an important contribution to the study of early Southeast Asian perceptions of the Chinese. Few indigenous Southeast Asian sources discuss the Chinese except for those from Vietnam. Most Southeast Asian sources only discussed the Chinese in the context of the Mongol invasions. The fourteenth-century Javanese text Desawarnana describes the rulers of China as ‘Tartar’;Footnote 2 it does not refer to the Chinese at all. Little work has been undertaken to examine Southeast Asian views of ancient China by using indigenous texts. On the contrary, most work has focused on Chinese textual sources' descriptions of early Southeast Asian polities, which are then compared with Southeast Asian indigenous textual evidence.Footnote 3 This however does not mean that Southeast Asian texts do not discuss China or any groups associated with the Chinese at all, but few scholars have used indigenous sources to examine Southeast Asian perceptions of ancient China. Scholarship has largely focused on anthropological study of the Chinese in Southeast Asia in colonial and postcolonial times.
The principal exception is Vietnam. The earliest Vietnamese texts, including the Annam chi luoc and Dai Viet su luoc, were largely derived from Chinese records.Footnote 4 The ultimate motivation of most scholars who have studied these indigenous sources has been to gain a better understanding of the workings of early Vietnamese polities and their relations with China. Rarely have they looked at Vietnamese views of the Chinese. Burmese descriptions of early Bagan–Tarup relations emphasise a shared Buddhist culture; this approach to the description of relations is unusual in Southeast Asian sources. For example during the early Bagan period, in the competition for Buddha's relic, the Burmese chronicles describe the Tarup (‘China’) as the successful possessor of the relic (to the detriment of the Burmese).
The Burmese chronicle or yazawin is one of many different genres of the Burmese textual tradition. Yazawin, commonly translated in English as ‘chronicle’, focuses on the royal genealogy of kings, and the rise and fall of dynasties and kingdoms. It is similar to the rajavamsa of the Sri Lankan tradition. We do not know when the genre was introduced; the earliest extant yazawin can be dated to 1520 CE. Burmese chronicles contain numerous accounts of the relations between Tarup pyi (‘Tarup country’, presently used to refer to China) and Burma. The best-known example of the use of the word ‘Tarup’ appears in the epithet ‘Taruppye’ (‘he who fled from the Chinese’) infamously borne by Narathihapate, king of Bagan (1257–87), who fled his capital during the Mongol invasion of 1284/1287.Footnote 5 In this instance, Tarup clearly refers to the Mongols. However, a chronological assessment of events pertaining to Tarup reveals that at other times the term has referred to different groups of people. This is the first study to look in depth at how a Southeast Asian society perceived China in the precolonial period.
Why is it important to define the identity of the Tarup, and how does understanding the Burmese perception of the Tarup contribute to historical scholarship of not just Burma but the larger world? On one level, the Burmese representation of Tarup is not unique; it is a common practice by a single community, nation, kingdom or a nation-state to apply a single label to a diverse group of people. Examples of such categorisation include the Chinese use of ‘Kunlun’Footnote 6 to refer to Southeast Asians regardless of their ethnic, geographical and cultural diversity; the western European appropriation of the term ‘Tartar’ to refer to both Turks and Mongols as the latter two groups were seen in the same light as marauders on horseback;Footnote 7 and the Burmese use of the term ‘Kula’ (
) to refer to people from South Asia regardless of whether they were Chola or Mughal.
How did the Burmese in the thirteenth century perceive ethnicity? What does it matter whether the Burmese of the 1280s could distinguish between Chinese, Mongols and Yunnanese/Tibeto-Burman speakers? Understanding whether the Burmese distinguished these identities in the 1280s would enable us to compare the relative compatibility between the emic (internally generated set of primordial and ascribed traits) and the etic categories of ethnicity. Ethnicity theorists such as Fredrik Barth emphasise that the fluctuating and dynamic nature of the boundary between ethnic groups is constantly being negotiated and determined;Footnote 8 in the case of Burma, Edmund Leach's work represents the most famous study of ethnic distinctions in postcolonial Burma.Footnote 9 Exploration of additional dimensions of the important insights Leach obtained for the Shan and Kachin in the same general area has the potential to illuminate further aspects of this topic. History as well as anthropology can be studied through this perspective. This Tarup study fits within this framework of enquiry by examining the process through which ethnic relations between two groups of varying composition developed over a long period of contact. Therefore the Burmese perception of the Shans is associated with a negotiable frontier. The Tarup-Burmese boundary, by contrast, was not negotiable. The spatial division between the Tarup and Burmese was clearly marked by a stable border which could not be simply crossed over by either ethnic group.Footnote 10
It is possible that the Burmese during the eleventh to thirteenth centuries perceived ethnicity differently from the Burmese of the eighteenth century. Thus the referent of the linguistic term ‘Tarup’ could well have been characterised differently in these two periods. In order to settle this point, it is necessary to determine whether ‘Tarup’ referred to an ethnic category or a political entity. It is suggested here that the ethnic definition of the Tarup was fluid, but its geopolitical association was less flexible. Tarup pyi designated the area north and northeast of what later Burmese chroniclers considered to be the northernmost extent of classical Burmese kingdoms' spheres of influence.
The earliest extant Burmese chronicle, the 
Yazawingyaw [‘Celebrated Chronicle’] begun by Shin Thilawuntha (Silavaṃsa) in 1502, does not describe the eleventh-century ruler Anawrahta's expedition to Tarup, but refers to Taruppye Min's reign as signalling the end of the Bagan dynasty.Footnote 11 The most elaborate accounts of Burma's relations with the Tarup appear first in the early eighteenth-century chronicle by U Kala (c. 1678–1738), the 
Mahayazawingyi [‘Great Chronicle’]. The Mahayazawinthit Footnote 12 [‘Great New Chronicle’] completed by Twinthin Taikwun Mahasitthu (1726–1806) in 1798Footnote 13 contains much reduced descriptions of the same events. Scholars such as G.H. Luce, Pe Maung Tin, U Thaw Kaung and Dr Yi Yi have regarded this chronicle as a critical history, which represents ‘a serious attempt to check history by means of inscriptions’.Footnote 14 The 
Hmannan Yazawindawgyi [‘Great Glass Palace Chronicle’] was commissioned in 1829,Footnote 15 and the compilers replicated almost verbatim the elaborate descriptions of accounts of figures, events and kingdoms found in U Kala's chronicle at least up to the Inwa period, which marks the end of volume three of the latter's work. The Hmannan does vary slightly from the latter chronicle in terms of the organisation of the narrative sequence, insertions of certain short statements justifying the sequence of events, and the commentaries inserted by the compilers. When these chronicles were compiled, China was ruled by the Qing dynasty, and Chinese government was more highly centralised than at any previous period. This situation may have led the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Burmese writers to project the concept of Tarup as an all-encompassing category that referred to the Chinese in the past. This could explain the chroniclers' tendency to see Tarup/China as a single political unit. The chroniclers may have assumed that the Tarup of the earlier periods conformed to this categorisation. The chronicles contain perhaps the largest repository of information on Burma's relations with neighbouring polities, including Tarup. This is one major justification for the use of the Burmese chronicles as important sources of information on early Burmese history. The chronicles also contain hitherto relatively unexplored Burmese perceptions of their neighbours.
Even if the Burmese writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw the term ‘Tarup’ as the unified polity China, this is a very broad subject which cannot be resolved in one article. Instead, this contribution focuses on one aspect of the chronicles: their treatment of ethnicity. It is not possible to state that the chronicles are entirely accurate, nor are they completely fantastical. Instead it is likely that there are areas and sources of concern which reflect genuine historical situations, whereas others – such as political factionalism, for example – are much more likely to be altered by subsequent editors. When the compilers of sixteenth- through nineteenth-century Burmese chronicles used the term ‘Tarup’, they were referring to the ‘Tarup’ of the specific time periods they were discussing. The rendering of ‘Tarup’ as ‘China’ or ‘Chinese’ is likely a nineteenth- and twentieth-century modern construction imposed on earlier Burmese texts and the past in general. There are two variables to note here: first, the Burmese perception of who they think the Tarup were and second the actual territory of Tarup which might have consisted of quite diverse groups.
The reliability of the Burmese chronicles has often been questioned and that has made historians reluctant to use them as reliable sources. J.D. Legge's statement that ‘it can be argued that — with the exception of Vietnam whose dynastic historians did attempt to preserve a record of events — there was no genuinely historical tradition in Southeast Asia’ shows that the reluctance to use traditional chronicles extends to other writing traditions in the region too.Footnote 16 Most Western scholars, such as G.E. Harvey, D.G.E. Hall, John Cady and even Gordon Luce himself, refused to accept chronicles as histories, criticising their use of legends and folktales on the one hand and their concern with legitimisation on the other. Cady wrote in his preface: ‘the dependable sources covering Burmese-British relations are almost entirely in English. The relevant historical chronicles prepared by the Burmese Court down to 1885 were often designed not to record actual happenings but to salve royal prestige.’Footnote 17 Hall even went to the extent of questioning the ability of contemporary Burmese scholars to produce serious historical works. He noted in his review of Maung Htin Aung's book, The stricken peacock: ‘it seems highly doubtful whether a work of adequate critical standards can be produced by a Burmese scholar’.Footnote 18
Burmese scholars, on the other hand, were split into two camps: Western-educated scholars like the late Than Tun tended to treat the chronicles with a tinge of distrust, whereas others such as Maung Htin Aung and U Tet Htoot tended to treat them as factual histories.Footnote 19 Within the last three decades, scholars in general have become more open to the idea of using the chronicles as sources for specific periods of Burmese history. Lieberman, for instance, suggests at least two reasons which support the historicity of Burmese chronicles such as the Mahayazawingyi: the influence of the Theravada historiographic tradition, which emphasises ‘accurate history’, and the degree of discretion the Burmese chroniclers exercised by not discussing contemporary issues.Footnote 20 By avoiding discussion of contemporary issues, writers were able to eliminate at least one potential source of biased interpretation. In a recent article, Michael Aung-Thwin argues that the Burmese chronicles provide accurate descriptions of the notion of ‘Mranma Pran’ and its reality.Footnote 21
The usage of ‘Tarup’ was not new; it can be found in the 1285 inscription of Shin Dissapramok. The twelfth-century Bagan temple, Kyanzittha Umin, also contains a depiction of what the Burmese now refer to as Mongol warriors with their bows and arrows. The eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Burmese writers would have been aware of these references to the Tarup. By attempting to distinguish between the Tarup at different periods, it is possible to get a better idea of how to use the chronicles. A comparison of the chronicles with Chinese sources reveals that in spite of the cultural bias of each country's histories, it is possible to glean from them a perspective on the distant past. This perspective will allow one to understand the worldview of the eleventh-, thirteenth- and eighteenth-century Burmese, diverse as they were.
It is possible to isolate two variant forms of contact in a diachronic study of the interactions between the BurmeseFootnote 22 rulers and the Tarup Utibhwa (
). The first appears to be conducted within the scope of a religious network which spanned the region from India and Sri Lanka across Burma and northern Thailand to southeastern China and parts of Central Asia between the tenth and thirteenth centuries. The other appears to represent a shift of ideology, from one informed by religion to one that is concerned with territorial expansion and political sovereignty. This transformation took place when large states disintegrated some time after the Mongol invasion of 1284/87. The first form of interaction can be perceived within the scope of religious cosmopoleis whereby individual cities such as Bagan and Tarup (Gandhara Division) represent two among numerous cities which comprised a religious oikoumene or commonwealth.Footnote 23 An analysis of the accounts of Burmese–Tarup relations provides clues to who and what was Tarup and thus contributes to a better understanding of the complex relations between Myanmar and ‘Tarup’ (China) today. The second theme of contact is represented by the smaller socio-political and urban Burmese cosmopoleis which emphasised ethnic differences, fought with each other and often enlisted the help of the Tarup to resolve these conflicts. In this later period, competition for resources such as people, land and commercial gains determines the nature of the Tarup–Burmese relationship, not religious values.
Tarup Amyomyo (‘varieties of Tarup’)
The question of who and what was Tarup is not new; it is rather a revisiting of an old question posed by G.H. Luce in 1959. What is interesting is not that Luce never resolved the controversy but rather that this issue, like numerous other questions which emerged in the study of Burmese past, was never picked up by another scholar or student, except Michael Aung-Thwin. In a footnote in Myth and history in the historiography of early Burma, Aung-Thwin wrote, ‘The word Tarup or Tarok is a current reference to the Chinese, but was said to have been a reference, at the time [i.e., the thirteenth century], to Turks in the Mongol armies. However, the latter interpretation is not entirely correct, since contemporary (Pagan period) and near-contemporary (Ava period) inscriptions clearly used the word to refer to the Chinese.’Footnote 24 Aung-Thwin refers here to Sir Arthur Phayre's suggestion that Tarup is derived from the Chinese word for the Turks, who comprised a large contingent of the Mongol army during the thirteenth century. Luce, on the other hand, notwithstanding the fact that he was writing at an earlier time, found it a perplexing enigma. He wrote, ‘whether the Taruk in Old Burmese ever means, as it does today, the Chinese, is highly questionable’.Footnote 25 Luce believed that Taruk ought to refer to the Mongols based on the inscription of 1285, which describes Shin Dissapramok's peace mission to China. In this inscription, the ‘Taruk king’ is Kubilai Khan. Luce also tended to accept Phayre's allusion to the Turks: ‘the word Taruk (probably ‘Turk’) comes in first with the Mongols, at the end of the Pagán dynasty'.Footnote 26
Phonetically Tarup and Tujue Footnote 27 (突厥, the Chinese term for Turk) sound a little different; although it is possible that the former could have been a mispronunciation of the latter. In addition the word ‘turuk’, which sounds close to the Burmese Tarup, was used in the eighth-century inscriptions of the Orkhon valley in Mongolia, regarded as the heartlands of the Mongol civilisation. The Orkhon inscriptions are bilingual, comprising both minor Chinese-language texts and inscriptions written in a form of Turkic script (Orkhon).Footnote 28 Though these do not by any means prove with certainty that the Burmese term Tarup indeed was derived from the Chinese term for the Turks, it is a possibility which requires further investigation.
Paul Pelliot, on the other hand, tended to think of Tarup as originating from Daliguo (大理國), the old kingdom of Nanzhao (南詔), based on his reading of the Hledauk inscription of 1110–11 CE.Footnote 29 Pelliot was an influential Sinologist whose research on Chinese sources pertaining to Southeast Asia and Burma in particular was considered by scholars such as Luce to be most reliable. Luce had studied early Chinese sources with Pelliot and Louis Finot, another famous Sinologist, at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1917. Luce suggested that it is likely that the Burmese, reflecting their perception of the Mongols, saw the Nanzhao troops as also being Tarup.Footnote 30
Here I will suggest two other possible origins of ‘Tarup’: first as a literal transliteration of ‘Dayue’ from Chinese references to the group they called ‘Dayuezhi’ (大月支 or 大月氏) and second as a corruption of ‘Tangut’. ‘Dayue’ supports the argument that ‘Tarup’ did in fact refer to a Turkic-speaking group of people, in this case, the Kusan or Kushan Huns. ‘[T]he Annals of Wei (c. CII fol. 15) say that “the kingdom of Ta Yüe-Chi (Kušan Huns) … was bordered on the north by the Jwen-Jwen [the Juan Juan or Avar Turks], and they were often exposed to their attacks. They therefore moved westward and established themselves in the city of Po-lo”.’Footnote 31 This westward migration supposedly began around the year 450 CE. By 468 CE, most of the Kušan had settled in India following Peroz's victory over them. C.A. Macartney describes how the term ‘Turk’ or the Greek rendering of it, ‘Toue-Kioue’,Footnote 32 was used ‘almost in consecutive breaths to describe different peoples…’.Footnote 33 This is a common problem with using ethnonyms and exonyms,Footnote 34 which can be used to refer to more than one specific language group or ethnic group or sometimes to a group of people occupying a particular geographical location. It is possible that ‘Tarup’ represents the Burmese attempt to render the Chinese name of the Dayuezhi or Kushan, known to be Buddhists. In the context of the eleventh century, and considering that the references to Tarup during Anawrahta's reign emphasise the Buddhist character of the Tarup polity, it is probable that in the universal history of Buddhism the Burmese chroniclers of later times continued to refer to the former territory once occupied by the Kushan as ‘Tarup’, derived from Dayue. That the meaning of Tarup of the pre-Mongol invasion period is closely tied up with the history of Buddhism should be acknowledged as an important factor in determining the identity of the Tarup during this early time period.
‘Tarup’ as a corruption of ‘Tangut’ fits well within the context of Burmese historiographers' interest in relating Burma's history of kingdoms with the history of Buddhism, particularly in the case of the reference to Tarup-‘China’ in the period before the Mongol invasion. Tangut refers to the ethnic group which established the state of Xia (1038–1227), which also came to be known as Xixia. ‘Tangut’ is an ethnic name which first appeared in Orkhon Turkic runic inscriptions of 735.Footnote 35 The Tangut elite spoke a language which is related to Tibetan, and referred to themselves as ‘Mi’ or ‘Mi-nyag’ in Tibetan. They never called themselves ‘Tangut’, a name attributed to them by outsiders, particularly the Chinese who called them ‘Dangxiang’ 黨項. Tangut Xixia began building its empire around the same time Bagan rose to prominence as a Buddhist centre around 1038. It is probable that the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Burmese chroniclers knew that Tangut Xixia was a Buddhist contemporary of eleventh-century Bagan. It had requested and received numerous Buddhist scriptures from Song China, and was an important nexus of the Buddhist communications and trade network between India and China. There were at least three overland routes linking these various Buddhist polities: a Tibetan route through Central Asia, a route from Khotan through Gilgit and Chilas, and the third and by far the oldest, which could be divided into two sub-routes, both of which crossed Burma.Footnote 36
Along these overland routes and networks religious persons, texts and relics circulated. It would thus not be surprising if Burmese chroniclers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries recorded Tangut Xixia as representing the contemporary and powerful Buddhist polity of Tarup pyi, especially since Buddhism was on the wane in Song China. The Tangut court was said to have ‘commemorated 150 relic fragments of the Buddha with lavish gifts and donations’ in 1038,Footnote 37 illustrating the devout Buddhist character of Xixia. In addition, the latter was a militarily strong neighbour of Song China which, having suffered countless defeats in battles with the Khitans, Jurchens and Tanguts, agreed to send it an ‘annual tribute of 50,000 tales of silver, 130,000 bolts of silk, and 10,000 catties of tea in exchange for peace’ in 1044,Footnote 38 coincidentally the first year of King Anawrahta's reign.
It would appear that before the Mongol invasion Tarup could have referred to one of several different ethno-political groups, although it is likely that the Tarup of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, particularly during Anawrahta's reign (1044–77) could only have been either Tangut or Nanzhao. By contrast, the 1285 Dissapramok inscription clearly suggests that the Tarup referred to were the Mongols or Yuan, and this is a point agreed upon by several scholars from Luce through Chen Yi-sein and Aung-Thwin. The main points of dispute revolve around the actual date of Dissapramok's mission, whether it preceded or followed another mission by Anantapisan and Mahabuiw, and whether there were two journeys instead of one.Footnote 39 As these issues lie beyond the scope of my article, it will be sufficient to note that the Tarup described in this inscription and referred to in the chronicles with reference to King Narathihapate were the Mongols. Whether the Mongols actually reached Bagan or whether Narathihapate fled in fear as stated in the chronicles is irrelevant. It will be noted that in the inscription, during the year Sakkaraj 647 (1285 CE), the king who was then staying in Hlaykya, in the western part of the country, wished to be informed of the coming of the Tarup.Footnote 40 This suggests that during the year 1285, the latter had not yet reached where the king was staying and therefore most likely had not reached Bagan.
The Yuan shi contains numerous accounts of campaigns against the Mian (Burmese) and tribute missions by them. One account describes a campaign sent against the Burmese in 1284, which succeeded in invading Tagaung, attacking with 200 boats.Footnote 41 The Yuan shi stated that Mian country sent a diplomatic mission led by ‘Ma-la-bu’ and ‘Ti-ban-de’ with tribute.Footnote 42 The mission by Mahabuiw and Anantapisan is therefore corroborated by the Yuan shi, even though that source contains many references to campaigns against the Burmese which are not mentioned in Burmese inscriptions or later chronicles.
The account of the Mongols is one of the better-known episodes in the Burmese chronicles, but it is not the only description of the Tarup; there are other accounts of Burmese interactions with the Tarup prior to and after the reign of King Narathihapate. Examples may be taken from King Pyuminhti's reign (Tharehkettara or Sriksetra kingdom) to the Ava-Burma period (reigns of Rajadhiraj and Ava king Minkhaung). Several Burmese texts contain variant versions of the same events. These include U Kala's Mahayazawingyi, Twinthin Taikwun Mahasithu's Mahayazawinthit, and the Hmannan Yazawindawgyi, which were referred to earlier. Others, which have not been discussed yet, are: (1) a palm-leaf recension of the Bagan Yazawin [Bagan Chronicle], believed to have been compiled some time during the later part of the nineteenth century; (2) the Bagan Yazawinthit or Yazawunthazalinikyam [New Bagan Chronicle], whose date of composition is unknown but is believed by most scholars to have been compiled after the original Bagan Yazawin; and (3) the Zatadawpon Yazawin [Chronicle of Royal Horoscopes], which was most likely compiled over a long span of time by different authors, although the introduction to the 1960 printed edition suggests that the text was compiled during the reign of King Minyeh Kyawhtin (c. 1672–98).Footnote 43 Aung-Thwin, however, believes that ‘the earliest portions of this text appear to have been written sometime in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth centuries’.Footnote 44
These chronicles discuss the subject of Burma–Tarup relations more extensively than inscriptions and other sources of information. Even though the information in the chronicles was not necessarily recorded at the time of the events which they are supposedly describing, they are still the primary source that historians must rely on. The accounts in the Burmese chronicles will be discussed in conjunction with references corresponding to the events, figures or time periods taken from Chinese sources such as the Yuan shi and Ming Shilu wherever possible. Even though the Burmese chronicles are not contemporaneous with the Chinese sources, their descriptions of the events which involve both countries characterise important information on the Tarup.
The Tarup in Burmese chronicles
The earliest extant Burmese chronicle to mention ‘Tarup’ is Shin Thilawuntha's Yazawingyaw, which was composed in 1520. It appears in the infamous epithet Taruppye (
) bestowed on King Narathihapate. In the chronology of Burmese history, the earliest reference to ‘Tarup’ appears in the accounts describing the destruction of Tagaung kingdom in roughly the fifth century CE. This account can be found in the Hmannan Yazawindawgyi, but not the other two earlier chronicles, U Kala's Mahayazawingyi and Twinthin Taikwun Mahasitthu's Mahayazawinthit. The Hmannan states:
During the reign of King Bheinnaka, the last of those kings of Tagaung country called Sanghassaratha, the Tarup and Tayek from Sein country [
is an archaic word used to refer to China], Gandhalaraj division came to disrupt and destroy the great country of Tagaung named Sanghassatha. King Bheinnaka assembled all his remaining troops and they entered Malaykhyaung where they remained.Footnote 45
According to this account, the Tarup attacked Tagaung with another ‘ethnic’ group, Tayek. Who were these Tayek? Were they the ‘Dayue zhi’, a term used by the Chinese to refer to the Kushan? It is now known that the Kushan spoke Tokharic, which has been identified as an Indo-European language, but Kushan chronology remains ‘an unresolved problem’; as ‘much has been built up on indirect sources’, it is possible that the Kushan have been characterised as ‘Turks’ as a result of later writings. Benjamin Walker argues that ‘Kushan’ is the name of ‘a group of Mongolian tribes of Central Asia known to the Chinese chroniclers as Yu-chi (or Yueh-chi), and to medieval historians like Kalhana as the Turushka (Turks or Tartar)’.Footnote 46 Considering that the earliest extant Burmese chronicle (Yazawingyaw) was compiled in the early sixteenth century, it is possible that the Kushan were characterised as Turks or Turkic speakers by the medieval period. The Tarup and Tayek could very well refer to two related groups, the Kushan and the Turkic groups who did inhabit the Gandhara region from which the Buddha's tooth relic originated. Even though ‘Sein’ is an archaic termFootnote 47 used to refer to China, it was used to designate a general area in which China was located in relation to Burma. Gandharalaj, Sein country, refers thus to the Central Asian homeland from which the Kushan (Tarup and Tayek) came from. Chronologically when this attack on Tagaung took place around the fifth century, the Kushan of Gandhara were close to completing their mass exodus from Central Asia into northern India. Could this purported attack on Tagaung represent a foray made by the fleeing Kushan on the kingdom located in the northern region of Burma? It is possible, but only a speculation, since it would be difficult to prove.
Another reference to ‘Tarup’ appears in the section of the chronicle under the first kingdom of Arimaddana-Bagan. This account describes the legendary King Pyuminhti's victory over a numerically superior army of Tarup soldiers, an event purportedly celebrated as one of the twelve great festivals of Pyuminhti. Other festivals include the king's slaying of the four great enemies of Bagan: giant boar, giant flying squirrel, giant bird and giant tiger. ‘It is one festival [to commemorate] the time when the great king on elephant marched with his cavalry and elephant troops to do battle as a unified whole against more than ten million and hundreds of Tarup soldiers arrived at Kawthambhi town, which had formerly been a village in the country.’Footnote 48 Another chronicle, Bagan Yazawin, contains an elaborate description of the actual battle, noting that it took place over three months.Footnote 49 These first two accounts of ‘Tarup’ clearly characterise it as a military power, capable of wreaking destruction in the first instance, and not a match for the supernatural legendary prowess of Pyuminhti in the second.
Burmese depictions of the Tarup in connection with the Bagan period
The first religious allusion to the Tarup is likely the account contained in the Yazawunthazalini, otherwise known as the Bagan Yazawinthit [New Bagan Chronicle]. Although the version of the text used here is undated, Luce and Pe Maung Tin noted that it ‘was said to have been written in 1785’.Footnote 50 In the Yazawunthazalini, an unusual connection is made between Tarup and the ‘heretical’ Ari monks of Bagan which cannot be found in the main chronicles of Yazawingyaw, Mahayazawingyi, Mahayazawinthit and Hmannan Yazawindawgyi. This description interestingly points out the unsavory aspects of Tarup monks' behaviour. In one instance, it refers to Tarup arahant robes: ‘Those Ari monks do not wear the dye-cloths of hermits or monks (which is made with boiled tree bark) but like the Panlaung and Tarup monks, when they wear indigo blue dark cloths they place a new bamboo in their heavy hair.’Footnote 51
The passage is not found in U Kala's Mahayazawingyi, however, which gives an account of the Ari monks and their followers, their practice of the wrong law and their use of charms to beguile others, but does not refer to their appearance. The description is also omitted in the Hmannan Yazawindawgyi and Bagan Yazawin. This suggests that the description was probably inserted during the compilation of the Yazawunthazalini. Whether the description was inserted at a more recent time is perhaps not as important as the two following points: Ari, Tarup and Panlaung monks do not belong to the same school of Buddhism as the Burmese hermit monks (who practice the ‘correct’ Law), and there are distinctive differences in the dress code. As an integral part of establishing the ‘correct’ form of Buddhism (Theravada) in Bagan, Anawrahta carried out a purging of Ari monks who were considered heretics. Religiously, the similarity between Ari, Tarup and Panlaung monks suggests that they belong to what could have been a branch of Mahayana Buddhism, especially one which emphasises the use of spells, incantations and other means of aiding people in their path toward salvation.
The next reference to ‘Tarup’ in the Burmese chronicles appears in the account of King Anawrahta's march to Gandhara division in Tarup country. The Yazawunthazalini states that King Anawrahta based on the saying that the Buddha's tooth relic is in Gandhara division, marches toward Tarup kingdom once the weapons and artillery for the purpose of besieging are assembled.Footnote 52 A similar description can be found in the Mahayazawingyi:
Anawrahtaminsaw wanting to generate a lot of faith in the noble religion begins to form a plan. 'There is a noble Buddha's tooth relic in the Gandhalaraj division which became/which will be Tarup country. In asking the Tarup Utibhwa for the noble Buddha's tooth relic, all sentient beings together will be able to worship it and as such the noble religion also to a large extent exceedingly shall shine, and all sentient beings will also enjoy the many rewards until the end of 5,000 [years] of the noble religion'. In stating this and when the plan is made, [he] assembles the elephants, horses and soldiers in the whole nation and [once he] gathers [all] 36 million [soldiers] by water route, 36 million [soldiers] by land route together with the four spirit horses [implying that it would include his four warriors, Kyansittha, Ngahtweyu, Ngalonlekhpek, and Nyaung U Bhi] and the Shwephya brothers, to march to Tarup country.Footnote 53
The versions of this account in Bagan Yazawin Footnote 54 and Mahayazawinthit Footnote 55 contain some major variations. The Hmannan Yazawindawgyi contains an almost verbatim description of what was recorded in U Kala's chronicle with few differences.Footnote 56 There are several important points pertaining to this description of Anawrahta's interest in marching to Tarup country.
First, the title of the Tarup ‘ruler’ or Tarup Utibhwa (
) is of interest. There are two possible literal meanings of utibhwa: one which refers to the hereditary nature of the position where ‘bhwa’ (
) in Burmese suggests ‘to be born (with)’, as in the case of the Burmese rendering of Shan ‘saopha’ as ‘sawbhwa’ (
),Footnote 57 and the other suggesting a woman leader, which seems less likely. Utibhwa is most likely a hereditary rank passed down through a line of chiefs. It is also highly likely that the utibhwa is not the ruler of Tarup, but an official appointed by the Chinese ruler. Should the emperor of China be referred to, the title of mingyi (
) or ekayaj (
) would have been used, as in the context of the Dissapramok inscription, which refers to the mingyi Kubilai Khan, and other contemporary Burmese inscriptions where the king is mentioned. Luce suggested that ‘utibhwa’ was a term derived ‘from titles conferred by Tibet on the Nan-chao [Nanzhao] emperor in the 8th century — lorded it over the plains’.Footnote 58 He also wondered whether ‘bhwa’ might have been derived from the Burmese term sawbhwa.Footnote 59 It is very likely that utibhwa relates to the Nanzhao leader, even though etymologically it is difficult to prove the origin of the term. A noteworthy point is that utibhwa certainly does not refer to the Chinese emperor and implies a title conferred by a higher authority, either the Chinese emperor or – as argued by Luce – by Tibet on a leader of Nanzhao.
The next question pertains to whether Tarup is the name of an administrative region, a protectorate or a vassal country of China. Tarup is described as a ‘pyi’ (
) in both chronicle and epigraphic references, which means simultaneously two different spatial categories: a country and a royal city. In this context it certainly refers to a country, but this does not necessarily imply any inherent autonomy. There are examples in the chronicles which refer to entities such as Bagan, Tharehkettara (Sriksetra), Thaton and Pegu, as a ‘pyi’ in one instance and a ‘myo’ in another. Obviously the latter is used to refer specifically to the city or capital (another variation of which is the term naypyidaw [
] or place/seat of the abode or country) while the former pertains to the area which falls directly under the circle of influence of the sovereign of the country. This, however, does not negate the possibility that a pyi may have an overlord to whom it pays tribute or pledges allegiance. ‘Tarup’ may perhaps refer to China after all and it is only through transference of identity that the utibhwa, an official or vassal of the emperor of China becomes known as the hereditary leader/chief of Tarup.
The next issue concerns the location of Gandhalaraj (or Gandhara in some cases). In the history of the noble Buddha's tooth relic, the upper left eye-tooth of the historic Buddha was first taken to the Gandhara division (in the Indian context, it is traditionally believed to be in the vicinity of present-day Taxila, a northwestern province of Pakistan) by a local Gandharan monk and placed in a cedi (
) to be worshipped. The tooth relic was moved at different times to various places ranging from the Khotanese capital (Xinjiang province) to its final resting place in Beijing.Footnote 60 According to Kyaw, by 1071 CE the mother of a chief over governors in the internal palace of the Liao emperor (Khitan dynasty) had built a cedi in which she placed the revered tooth relic; it was located on the southeastern corner of the enclosure of the Lingguang monastery to the west of Beijing.Footnote 61 If this is true, the tooth relic which Anawrahta eagerly sought, is indeed in what constitutes China today, but during that earlier time it was considered a part of Khitanese territory. In order to get there, Anawrahta would have to travel across either Song-ruled territory or the Xixia kingdom. In addition, the location of the tooth relic was no longer at Gandhara, so what would ‘Gandhalaraj division’ have meant? Does it mean an administrative district within a country, or a kingdom with that name which perhaps traced its roots to the Gandhara dynasty that came to an end in the fifth/sixth centuries CE?
The Huns captured Gandhara around the mid-fifth century and by the next century the Sassanians aided by Turks defeated the Huns. When the Muslim Arabs defeated the Sassanians in 644 in Persia, Buddhist Turks ruled Gandhara from Kabul. In the same year, the Buddhist monk Xuanzang visited Gandhara and noted that Buddhism was on the decline.Footnote 62 He wrote Datang Xiyou Ji [大唐西域記 Journey to the West during the Tang Dynasty], which is an important primary source for studying medieval Buddhism in Central and South Asia. By the early eleventh century, the new Muslim ruler Mahmud of Ghazni had ordered the destruction of all remaining standing monuments.Footnote 63 Gandhara no longer existed by the reign of King Anawrahta.
Monywe Hsayadaw (1766–1835), a Konbaung-period scholar and one of the main compilers of the Hmannan Yazawindawgyi, similarly found it highly unlikely that Gandhara and Tarup were both in the same location, although he arrived at a different conclusion, believing that the tooth relic had remained the whole time in Gandhara.
Gandara division where the noble Buddha's tooth relic is placed is not Tarup country but the Gandara division within the Central Indian continent [Mizzima taik] as is evident [in the] decisive treatise [written] by the intelligent and educated Monywe Hsayadaw. In that decisive treatise, Gandara division is [situated] at a distance of 45 yuzana [Sanskrit yujana; 1 yuzana=12.72 miles] from Thawutti country, Tarup country [would then] be more than 5000 yuzana from Gandara division. Therefore Tarup country is not the Gandara division where the Buddha's tooth relic is placed.Footnote 64
To a fair extent, one can conclude that the famous Gandhara kingdom of the Buddhist Kushan kings (first to fifth century CE) was not the same entity as the Tarup of the eleventh century, although the question of whether there was a division or a kind of administrative area called Gandhara in Tarup remains unanswered. Tarup in this context could thus have referred to China at the time (either the Liao, Xixia or Song kingdoms), or it may have referred to an administrative region, probably a small country to the north of Burma ruled by an indigenous leader who was either an official of the Chinese emperor (Song or Tangut?) or a vassal with high degree of internal autonomy.
If Tarup were a country with a high degree of autonomy but nevertheless a vassal of the Chinese, the likeliest candidate would have been Nanzhao, as the French Sinologist Pelliot believed. The area of Nanzhao, which roughly corresponded to what is western Yunnan province today, was an independent polity until the seventh century, when the Tang assumed control of much of Yunnan and made it a tributary of China. By the beginning of the ninth century, Nanzhao had regained autonomy from China and in a series of attacks seized numerous captives from central Burma (Pyu), resettling them at Kunming.Footnote 65 The Man shu, written in China in the 860s, described the kingdom as a multi-ethnic society with a complex administrative system similar to that of China.Footnote 66 From the eleventh century Nanzhao was probably weakening, a process which accelerated as Thai principalities began to emerge around the late twelfth century. The Mongols attacked and conquered Nanzhao in 1253, and by 1257 they controlled most of Yunnan.Footnote 67
Another piece of description which must be discussed before deciding whether the Tarup of eleventh century was indeed Nanzhao or rather Tangut Xixia is the term ‘pyigyi’ (
) or large country. Its use suggests that Tarup was a country that was either larger than Bagan or if not, then at least comparable in autonomy and strength. The text also refers to 
(‘[the] utibhwa [who] governs this large country…’),Footnote 68 suggesting that the utibhwa was not an official or minister nor a king, but a leader administering Tarup pyi.Footnote 69 The same phrase was used in the section regarding Alaungsithu's march to Tarup pyi to request the tooth relic. Both Anawrahta and Alaungsithu failed in the end to get the relic, plainly because it elected to stay in Tarup. In a sense these events recognise the superiority of Tarup's glory to that of Bagan; though the reasons given are couched in indirect terms, they acknowledge the need to abide by the Buddha's prophecy that the tooth relic has to remain in Tarup. As a result of this, Anawrahta built a pagoda at the place where the tooth relic hovered in the sky. It is also implied that he continued to pay tribute in the form of gold and silver items sent as objects of worship for the relic.Footnote 70 It is important to note that the nature of the contact between Anawrahta and Alaungsithu on the one hand and the Tarup Utibhwa on the other is characterised by negotiation and unity in terms of religious values and knowledge, not military might. In fact the Burmese word nyinywat (
) is used in both accounts, suggesting the union of minds, not disagreement.
It is unlikely that the Tarup of the pre-Mongol invasion period were the Kushan or Turks or even the Song Chinese. Based on religious comparison and geography, the ‘Tarup pyi’ of Anawrahta's reign could have been the kingdoms of either Tangut or Nanzhao (known as Daliguo by the tenth century). Both kingdoms were Buddhist and located to the north of Burma, outside the Gandhara division where the Buddha tooth relic previously inhabited. Tangut Xixia was known to have been an important procurer of Buddhist relics which were brought to the kingdom via the overland routes by South Asian traders.Footnote 71
Brian Ruppert has also noted the resurgence in demands for Buddha relics around the eleventh century and the role played by merchants in their circulation throughout East Asia.Footnote 72 In terms of religion, Nanzhao Buddhism shared several similarities with the earlier practices of the Ari monks in Bagan. As described earlier, the Yazawunthalini describes Tarup and Ari monks as wearing the same robes, suggesting that they engaged in the same religious rituals, notably those belonging to an esoteric Mahayana school. As Angela Howard, one scholar of Nanzhao Buddhism, describes the Azhali (achārya) Esoteric Buddhism which was practiced in Nanzhao-Yunnan: ‘The term “achārya” translated into “azhali”, thus lost the connotation of someone well-versed in yoga practices and in orthodox Buddhist ritual, and conjured up instead, in the mind of Nanzhao people, incantation, superhuman powers and the control of events through magic.’Footnote 73 Once the foreign azhali monks received support from the ruling class, they did not try to transform the people's view of their training and mission, which highlighted their possession of supernatural powers through the use of spells.
This similarity in the form of Buddhist practices between the azhali and Ari monks of Nanzhao and Bagan respectively should be noted as an indication of the state of interaction which had already existed between the two kingdoms prior to Anawrahta's establishment of Theravada Buddhism in Bagan. Howard suggests that Buddhism went from India to China via Burma around the first centuries CE.Footnote 74 In addition, considering the esoteric character of Nanzhao/Daliguo Buddhism, Anawrahta might have felt compelled to take any Buddha tooth relic from Nanzhao to Bagan, where the ‘true’ and ‘correct’ form of Buddhism was practised.
Geographically, Nanzhao/Daliguo in Yunnan was a lot closer to Bagan than Tangut Xixia. A Song-period text, Lingwai daida 嶺外代答, describes the proximity of Dali to Bagan: ‘Pugan is distant from the country of Dali by five cheng (程, route marches) and 60 cheng from the country of Wali’.Footnote 75 It was likely that by the eleventh century, Nanzhao/Daliguo, then weakened, was a tributary vassal of Song China or even possibly of Tangut Xixia, playing both polities against each other. In which case, Nanzhao/Daliguo was by transference of authority and identity a ‘stand-in’ for Tarup-China (Song or Tangut?).
Furthermore, there has been controversy over the ethnic identity of the Nanzhao people. Nanzhao was long viewed as the ‘first Thai kingdom’, but it is now generally accepted that it was ruled by Tibeto-Burman speakers.Footnote 76 The title of the Tarup ruler or leader, ‘utibhwa’, appears to bear resemblance to the Burmese title given to Shan chiefs, ‘sawbwa’. This suggests that it is possible that Burmese used the title to indicate the leader's connection to the Tai. According to Backus, the Nanzhao rulers were known to have used lowland ‘proto-Thai’ peoples as fighters in their armies,Footnote 77 which might have influenced the Burmese characterisation of the Tarup leader.
In terms of the kingdoms' relative political might and size, Tangut Xixia was a powerful contemporary of Song China and Jin-Jurchen kingdom, unlike Daliguo, the successor to Nanzhao, which then ‘controlled considerably less territory than had Nan-chao during its most expansive decades in the middle of the ninth century’.Footnote 78 The chronicles' description of Tarup suggests that Tarup pyi, though a pyigyi, was positively alarmed by the approach of the Burmese military led by Anawrahta. Though this could have been a literary device to characterise the Burmese might, the description of Tarup suggests a kingdom or state which paralleled Bagan in political autonomy and size, rather than one which was much stronger.
The Chinese sources appear to support the argument that Bagan was at least by the early twelfth century considered a country of major importance to Song China. The Zhufanzhi 諸番志 is perhaps the only Song text to describe the earliest mission made by Bagan in 1004/05.Footnote 79 Other Song sources mention the tribute mission of 1106;Footnote 80 the Song shi 宋史, in particular, states that Bagan should not be treated like a minor country, and must be accorded respect given to countries such as Dashi (Arab countries) and Jiaozhi (Vietnam).Footnote 81 Among these countries of major importance were Sanfoqi (Srivijaya) and Dali.
The connection between Bagan and Daliguo was first established in the Chinese source, Song huiyao jigao 宋会要辑稿. It describes the joint tribute mission sent by Bagan and Daliguo in 1136 which comprised local products.Footnote 82 The Yuhai 玉海 mentions the same missionFootnote 83 and the Ke Shu 可書 contains an elaborate description of the envoys and the objects of tribute.Footnote 84 It is possible that by the mid-twelfth century, Daliguo's reduced status caused it to send a joint mission with Bagan. It is impossible to know whether Daliguo prior to that time served as a default receiver of tribute from Bagan to Song China, as it was only in 1136 that both countries had to send their tribute via the Guangxi Regional Commission. Could Dali somehow have served in this capacity as a regional nexus along which tribute that was being sent to the Chinese capital was evaluated before being forwarded to the capital? This remains a point to be resolved and an issue which requires more deliberation, particularly on the subject of the routes along which tribute to Song China was sent.
Bagan's tradition of paying tribute was to continue through the reigns of all Bagan kings until Narathihapate, when his refusal to send tribute and his supposed killing of the envoys sent by the Mongols led to the Mongol attack and his downfall. Even the kings of the dynasties following the fall of Bagan at times received orders to continue to deliver the tribute. As the account of Narathihapate and the identity of the Tarup during his reign have to a fair degree been examined in the earlier part of this paper, the next section will touch largely on descriptions of Tarup in connection with fifteenth century Burmese kingdoms.
However there is one particular observation regarding the Tarup-Mongol invasion which should be discussed here. This refers to a particular characterisation of the Tarup which appears only in Twinthin's chronicle: he described the Tarup soldiers as ‘Panthe’ or ‘Panse’ 
,Footnote 85 identifying them as Muslims. This description appears in the account characterising the chaos and commotion following the Burmese king's flight from the palace. The limited resources available made it impossible for all palace maids-in-waiting to be transported out of Bagan. As the story alleges, it was decided then that 3,000 of them were to be drowned to prevent their falling into the hands of the Tarup soldiers. This description of Mongol Muslims does not appear in any other texts, including the Hmannan. There is no indication as to how Twinthin came to this conclusion that the Tarup soldiers were Muslims or that there were Muslims among them.
The known presence of Central Asians among the Mongols does support the view that there were Muslims among the Tarup. The Yuan rulers, especially since the reign of Kubilai Khan, employed Muslims in government, particularly in financial administration.Footnote 86 Not many Muslims led military expeditions or were appointed to the highest ranks in the Mongol army, largely because rulers like Kubilai remained suspicious of them. However, in 1277 the Yuan court dispatched Nāṣir-al-Dīn (Na-su-ting) to lead a military campaign against Burma.Footnote 87 He was the son of the first Muslim governor of Yunnan, Saiyid Ajall Shams al-Dīn, appointed by Kubilai in 1274. Prior to the latter's conquest of much of Yunnan in 1252–53, that region had become a main centre for Muslims in the region. Southwest China had attracted a steady flow of Muslim merchants and craftsmen who were interested in exploiting its strategic location along the trade routes between China and Burma and India. By 1254, the Mongols had already captured Dali-Nanzhao's capital. It is thus within this context that we should understand the Burmese characterisation of the Tarup: for them, the Tarup of the Mongol invasion period or even during the twelfth century leading up to the invasion were the Dali-Nanzhao people including the Central Asians of Yunnan regionFootnote 88 and the Mongol soldiers ruled by the great king or mingyi, Kubilai Khan.
The title ‘mingyi’ is used to refer to the khan only in the Burmese inscriptions; the chronicles continue to refer to the utibhwa, which I argue is in fact the title of the Mongol-appointed administrator in Yunnan/Dali-Nanzhao rather than the emperor. The strongest evidence lies in the Yuan shi descriptions of Mian.Footnote 89 The first description in the Yuan shi describes the envoys sent by the Dali Pacification Commission and Shanchan Chief Military CommandFootnote 90 to Mian country in 1271/72.Footnote 91 The mission returned with a Burmese envoy; another mission was sent in 1273 by the same two institutions. The two envoys sent were to deliver an imperial command. The missive contains an interesting allusion to the presence of a Buddha relic in the ‘great country’ (大國), likely the same Buddha tooth relic which was said to be residing in Kubilai's new capital (Beijing) since 1071.
In the subsequent descriptions of missions and campaigns undertaken by the Mongols, the actions were largely carried out by Mongol officials such as the Pacification Commissioner or high-ranking administrator from the Yunnan Branch Secretariat. It is clear that Yunnan (Dali-Nanzhao of old) represented the regional capital where tribute missions, particularly those from Mian-Burma and other lesser polities, gathered before being escorted to the capital if they were allowed to proceed.
It is highly unlikely that utibhwa was a title used to refer to the Mongol khan. This title, previously used to refer to the Nanzhao hereditary ruler during Anawrahta's and Alaungsitthu's reigns, was likely transferred to the position of the Pacification Commissioner of Yunnan Branch Secretariat or the Governor of Yunnan, an appointee of the Mongol ruler. Both were subordinate positions in comparison to the title of mingyi, and the main difference is characterised by the transition made from indirect to direct ‘rule’. In terms of geography and territorial identification, Tarup refers both to the Yunnan region and to its overlord, Mongol-ruled China, though what the Burmese saw as Tarup was likely very much determined by the regional administration in Yunnan.
In the post-Mongol period, descriptions of Tarup in Burmese chronicles increased in frequency and length. To some extent, this may have something to do with Ming China's more coercive methods of collecting allegiance and tribute, a point which Wade has strongly argued.Footnote 92 Burma's relations with Tarup were clearly transformed by the Mongol invasion and by the numerous wars (largely described in Yuan sources) that occurred between the two polities; Burmese interactions with Tarup (in this case, Ming China) were characterised solely by wars between the two parties. References to Buddhism and Buddha relics no longer appear in Burmese or Chinese sources. Unlike Yuan China, particularly during the reign of Kubilai Khan, which not only tolerated but also promoted Buddhism, the religion did not feature prominently in Ming China's relations with other polities which it considered its vassals.
Burmese descriptions of Tarup in association with the Inwa period
Following the Mongol ‘invasion’ and the fall of Bagan, there are at least two separate accounts of contact between the Burmese and Tarup, one of which occurred during the Myinsaing period (c. 1298–1364). However the most elaborate accounts pertain to the fifteenth-century period in which corresponding records from the Chinese Ming shilu (based on Wade's translation) can be used to give a more complete picture of not only the nature of the interactions but also the biases embedded in the perceptions of each party. The following description refers to an attack carried out by the Burmese on the Shan sawbwa of Theinni, who then enlisted the Tarup's assistance to defend his city against the Burmese attack:
During Sakkaraj 773 (1411 CE)Footnote 93 all the sawbwa of Theinni (Seinni) together with his hordes and multitudes [people] came marching to Ava to do battle. … Minyekyawswa also after presenting to his royal father the captured prisoners-of-war, elephants and horses, marched and reached Theinni. Theinni sawbwa's sons and sons-in-law also called for military assistance from Tarup and when they successfully completed the work to strengthen their city, [even] if there were no more rations they withheld. Minyekyawswa also attacked Theinni city a number of times without success for approximately the duration of five months. In formulating a plan to resolve that [conundrum] [Yinthosi] Minyekyawswa even as he heard of the arrival of the reinforcements of 2,000 horses, and 20,000 foot soldiers from Tarup, [waited] until the night of Tamahti [or until the depths of night when no one was awake in Theinni city] to pull away from Theinni city. With [his] 200 battle elephants, 3,000 horses and 40,000 soldiers, [he] stayed in Sinkhan forest. By splitting the Tarup reinforcements into three groups, they destroyed the Tarup by attacking them as they came out from the forest. [He] captured as prisoners-of-war five Tarup officials with close to 1,000 horses and almost 2,000 persons. An estimate of 500 horses died. As he was victorious over the Tarup, he returned to besiege Theinni city as always.Footnote 94
Although the dates of the Burmese and Chinese sources appear to be inconsistent, the above episode must refer to the following account in the Ming shilu, which describes an envoy from Mu-bang (Hsenwi) to the Ming court:
In the early years of his reign, while vying with Ava-Burma for influence in Yun-nan, Yong-le was particularly concerned about the polity of Mu-bang (Hsenwi). When the Mu-bang envoy came to the Ming court in 1409, reportedly complaining about Na-luo-ta, the Ava-Burma ruler, the response by Yong-le included the following: ‘Na-luo-ta, with his petty piece of land, is double-hearted and is acting wrongly. I have long known of this. The reason that I have not sent troops there is that I am concerned that good people will be hurt. I have already sent people with instructions requiring him to change his ways and start anew. If he does not reform, I will order the generals to despatch the army. The troops will attack from the ocean route and you can arrange to have your native cavalry attack overland. The despicable fellow will not be equal to that.’Footnote 95
‘When the Ming intended to attack Ava-Burma in 1409, Mu-bang was ordered to prepare its troops for an overland attack, while the Ming forces were to attack from the sea. Mu-bang (Hsenwi) was a frequent pawn in the Ming-Burma machinations, as it lay between the two and was subject to demands by both polities.'Footnote 96 Wade's statement, though not conclusive as to which side won the battle, does suggest that if Hsenwi usually ended up the victim of these tugs-of-war, the Burmese account may be true to some degree. The statement made by the Yongle emperor not only did not promise Chinese help but was phrased in a vague manner. Probably the Chinese did send a small reinforcement of cavalry and foot soldiers, either because the naval Fleet of the Western Ocean was engaged in some other battles and unable to send reinforcements, or because the logistics of moving troops across Burma from either the coast of Arakan or from the delta region would have exhausted the soldiers if not their food rations by the time they reached Hsenwi.
The following account in the early eighteenth-century Mahayazawingyi describes another episode in which a war took place between the Burmese and Tarup as a result of a request for intervention made to the latter by a chief, in this case, a Shan chief or myosa, Mawtonmawkaysa. This particular account, however, is not substantiated in the Ming sources, probably either because the event did not take place or because the Chinese turned out to be the losers in this battle.
In Sakkaraj 774 (1412 CE)Footnote 97 when the account came to be said [that] Mawtonmawkaysa [and the] Shans [intended to] attack Mye Tu city. When the king, Minkhaung, heard [of this], he appointed [his] son, the crown prince Minyekyawswa, to start organizing 11 military units [for the] march. Minyekyawswa marched without gathering the last unit of the 11 military units of countless elephant and horse troops comprising 300 battling elephants, 4,000 horses, [and] 80,000 soldiers. They faced no obstacles in reaching Myetu, [and even] if [they] fought courageously, Mawtonmawkaysa [and his men] could not defeat the military units [and therefore] reached the point of destruction. Therefore [even] before the unit was destroyed, the two brothers of Mawtonmawkaysa assembled [and] together with soldiers and people [who were] not captured rode horses and fled to Tarup country. Prince Minyekyawswa also by taking as prisoners of war their sons, wives, elephants, horses and people returned to Ava. … [The] Mawtonmawkaysa brothers went to the Tarup Utibhwa and implored, ‘Our sons and wives have been seized and placed in the place of the Sun King where they [now] are. Please be compassionate and ask the Sun King from [whom] we will get our sons and wives [back]’. Therefore the Tarup Utibhwa gathered all the sawbwas from all places near and far from Tarup city and sent an ultimatum to the Sun King demanding the return of Mawtonmawkaysa's sons and wives to him. ‘If [you] don't give, there will be a war’, and he stated, ’and when [my] 200 battle elephants, 4,000 horses and 40,000 foot soldiers arrive, the dirt they stir shall resemble the great battle of the fourth level of the purgatory of hell with the appearance of the mountain ogres and victory will be fixed and established at that very place’.Footnote 98
The Chinese then sent their demands to the Burmese king ordering the release of the Shan chief's wife and children. Refusing to comply, King Minkhaung sent Thameinpayan, Rajadhiraja's (a Mon king, r. 1384–1420) son-in-law. The crown prince Minyekyawswa had won Thameinpayan's loyalty when he took the latter's elephant after his victorious battle over Rajadhiraj's Mon country. By capturing Thameinpayan's elephant, the crown prince won his service. The Burmese–Chinese battle is epitomised as a battle between two individuals, a joust on horseback between Thameinpayan and a Tarup soldier, Kammani. Equipped with god-like weapons given by the king, Thameinpayan engaged in an amazing battle with Kammani, using his elephant goad to hook onto Kammani's body, cutting his head off and dropping it into a basket before re-entering the city. The Tarup soldiers exclaimed in awe, ‘no longer a human, [he] became a nat’. The Burmese term ‘nat’ refers to three general categories of supernatural beings: devas (deities), natural spirits such as those which inhabit trees or rivers, and malevolent spirits which have died ‘green’, unnatural deaths, but stayed on in the living world in order to disrupt the order of the living. In death Kammani obviously became a nat of the last category.
The following account, also taken from U Kala's chronicle (see also the pages in Hmannan and Mahayazawinthit) and the last example to be given for this section, is corroborated in the Ming sources. Again the Burmese and Chinese dates differ, in this case by four years.
In Sakkaraj 806 (1444 CE)Footnote 99 after stating, “I [referring to Minngeh Kyawhtin] shall welcome the Tarup who come to attack,” he marched with five military units on land among which were 800 battle elephants, 15,000 horses, and 250,000 soldiers. With [his] water military unit comprising 500 battle boats, 300 royal boats (with high and ornamented prow and stern) made of iron, 80,000 soldiers, he rode his golden royal barge and advanced strong on the water. The land and water military units settled on Nga Yin U island on which they landed and liked. After the vestments of cloths had been given out on Tagaung's Thintwe island, [together] with [the] four Tarup generals and tens of millions of soldiers who could not cross the water, they came asking for the Maw official [min here most likely refers to the status of the official, implying his subordinate status to the Burmese] Tho Ngam Pwa [Bhwa]. King Narapati also said to Tho Ngam Bhwa, ‘You slave being in my possession I shall not give’, and in saying so gave his order. The Tarup also descended into Kaung Ton with all their generals. At that time the Tarup general killed the ‘eater’ [of Kaungton] Maw Thaung Pein. The Tarup soldiers also died in great numbers. Having suffered losses, the Tarup troops having scarce food and water, retreated to Mo Wun and stayed there. King Narapati also returned [to his capital] after he had assigned elephants, horses and people to [assist] the Mo Kaung and Mo Nay sawbwas who were to stand guard at Ban Maw. At that time, the On Bhaung sawbwa Tho Khin Bhwa also came to Kaung Ton with presents and weapons to pay obeisance at the feet…The Tarup soldiers also stayed at the place to which they withdrew during the time when food and water were scarce. Having gotten their provisions, they would return advancing on their march, [as] they would not return until after they had taken Tho Ngam Bhwa … Three days having passed since the Tarup reached [Yamethin city], the envoy came, bearing the statement, ‘Give us the person Tho Ngam Bhwa. If [you] don't give [him up] we will go to war’…
When King Narapati also had [finished] selecting the skilled elephant riders, he assembled, with 100 battle elephants, men skilled in [using] shields and 10,000 soldiers, and marched toward Yamethin city. On the Tarup side, the four generals and horses together with 10,000 assigned men placed a boat across a small river to form a bridge and crossed over. Having reached Hlaing Tek, Minngeh Kyaw Htin also did not dare to stay in the hole [hiding place?] in the city and together with all his people exited from Yamethin city. When Minngeh Kyawhtin fled, all of Yamethin was able to stand firmly together with Bhaya Kyawhtin.
When the Tarup went back, Tho Ngam Bhwa having reached Ava, also ate poison and died. King Narapati happily packed Tho Ngam Bhwa's corpse and sent it to the Tarup. The Tarup also having gotten Tho Ngam Bhwa, chopped off his head and placed it on an iron spit and having finished roasting it, dried it out in the sun and took it with them.Footnote 100
The above description very likely refers to the following account contained in the Ming history:
A further major Ming military expedition which was to greatly affect the upland Southeast Asian polities was that launched in 1448 to capture Si Ji-fa, a son of Si Ren-fa [a Tai-Mao political leader]. At a date equivalent to April/May 1448, Imperial instructions were issued to Wang Ji requiring him to capture Si Ji-fa and the chieftains of Meng-yang. The surrounding polities of Ava-Burma, Mu-bang, Nan Dian, Gan-yai and Long-chuan were also required to provide troops for deployment against Si Ji-fa. The imperial orders sent to Wang Ji presaged the disruption which such an expedition would have wrought in the region. ‘He [Si Ji-fa] may flee into Ava-Burma's territory and be concealed by the people there. If so, capture persons as the situation demands, so that the yi people will know fear and the Great Army will not have been sent in vain.’ While Wang Ji reported success in his attack on Si Ji-fa's stockade, later accounts tell of how Wang Ji had sought personal advantages from the ‘native officials’ and how in fact he had been defeated by Si Ji-fa.Footnote 101
The Burmese chronicle cites the date of the Tarup attack as 1444, whereas the Ming account gives 1448. Besides the relative proximity in dates, the Mahayazawingyi further refers to the prior long-standing enmity between the Tarup Utibhwa and Tho Ngam Bhwa's father which led to this particular episode related above. The significance of the four-year discrepancy in dates is not known, but it probably resulted from inherent flaws within the Burmese Sakkaraj system. The term 'Sakkaraj' can be rendered as ‘Myanmar Era’, and refers to the number of years which should be added to the dates used in the Burmese chronicles in order to calculate corresponding dates in the Gregorian calendar. After incorporating two prior modifications, the year 638 CE was selected to mark the first year of the Myanmar era. Discrepancies in the dates of events are known to exist between different Burmese chronicles.
Who are the Tarup in the chronicles?
Evidence from the accounts of Tarup in the Burmese chronicles leads one to conclude that the territory of the Tarup most likely corresponds to the region of Yunnan, at one time the autonomous polity of Nanzhao-Dali, next a polity which was directly governed by a Mongol-appointed administrator during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and finally a tributary of Ming China in the fifteenth century. That said, however, the word ‘Tarup’ does not merely relate to a bounded territory with an unchanging population, but rather to an imagined space, the actual size of which the Burmese were perhaps never absolutely sure. The Burmese consistently use the term to refer to an entity located to the north of Burma and considered an ‘other’ administrative region; ‘Tarup’ was thus an exonym referring to peoples living beyond northern Burma. Politically and geographically, the referent of Tarup likely switched from the Central Asian polity of Kushan-Gandhara to Nanzhao-Dali, and by transference of authority to the overlord of Dali, which was at one time the Yuan and subsequently the Ming. The various Tarup remain nevertheless in the region north of Burma's kingdoms. Ethnically the identity of the Tarup is a complex issue to resolve; even ‘Chinese’ remains a problematic ethnic term to define if one is to consider the variety of dialect groups which fall under this general category.
From the fifth through the fifteenth centuries CE, what constituted the Tarup underwent many changes. Clearly the composite group would have included Turkic speakers (many of whom were Central Asians, some of whom were Muslims who settled in the Yunnan region); Nanzhao peoples who were Tibeto-Burman speakers and soldiers in their armies from what Backus refers to as the ‘Proto-Thai’ groups; Mongols, Han Chinese, etc.Footnote 102 To attempt to attribute a fixed ethnic identity to the Tarup is clearly not just problematic, but wrong. ‘Tarup’ in the context of the twentieth century does refer to the broad category, ‘Chinese’ and ‘China’, but such a definition is inadequate in explaining its historical ramifications. To problematise Tarup as a term of identity is thus a necessary pursuit, not one undertaken for the pure pleasure of intellectualising an unchallenging characterisation.
As discussed earlier, the original root of ‘Tarup’ is likely taruk (
), derived from the Orkhon inscription rendering of ‘turuk’ for the Turkic speakers or Ta yue, a Chinese characterisation of the Kushan of Gandhara. It is clear that Burmese descriptions of the Tarup, particularly by the Bagan period (especially beginning with Anawrahta's reign), emphasise the Buddhist character of the Tarup polity. That Tarup is mentioned often in relation with Gandhara is telling in its indication that the Burmese saw the ‘Tarup’ of later times as synonymous or at least related to those of earlier periods, which were likely the Kushan rulers of Gandhara, where the famed Buddha tooth relic resided before being transported to China proper. Thus the identity of Tarup should be perceived in connection with its Buddhist character and connotations. For the Burmese, whether it was Kushan-Gandhara or China-Gandhara, Tarup pyi was the place which possessed the Buddha tooth relic.
At various times in the past, the Tarup corresponded to populations of differing ethnic composition, which might have been autonomous polities that pledged allegiance to the Chinese emperors of various dynasties during some periods or at other times vassals directly governed or submissive to the Chinese government. Hence whether or not the attacking party referred to as the Tarup actually claimed to be representing the ‘Tarup’ who were the Chinese, it was nevertheless perceived by the Burmese to be the Tarup. By observing that these people came from the region which the Tarup supposedly inhabited, the Burmese identified them as the Tarup, regardless of any differences in their ethnic makeup, language or attire. Of course the Chinese were not and never have been a homogenous ethnic group, like any other, but the Burmese like all ethnic groups sometimes speak and act as though such homogenous entities exist.
Conclusion
The following description of Mian-Burmese in the Yuan shi is particularly telling of the ways the identities of individuals, groups and polities were determined: ‘Mian country is of the Southernwestern Yi [Chinese term for barbarians, used to refer to the groups living beyond the ‘Han’ borders], of which type it is [however] not known’/緬國為西南夷不知何種.Footnote 103 Just as the Yuan could not clearly characterise the type of yi the Mian-Burmese were, the Burmese probably were equally unable to classify the Tarup as simply one single type. ‘Mian’ is an exonym the Chinese used to refer to peoples of Burmese ethnicity, whereas in earlier Chinese sources of the Tang and Song periods, descriptions of Myanmar comprised kingdoms' names. Just like ‘Tarup’, which has come to refer exclusively to the Chinese ethnic group, ‘Mian’ also referred to the peoples of the country, Myanmar.
This analysis of Burmese–Tarup relations challenges historians to confront the problems of classifications which involve geographically mobile populations within boundaries which not only have shifted but were probably measured by a different set of principles in the premodern mindset. ‘Tarup’ cannot be ascribed to any specific ethnic population because it was not the nature of Tarup ethnicity which changed; rather, the population referred to as ‘Tarup’ actually changed physically. Tarup is thus closely tied in with a specific geographical region (the area beyond northern Burma) and this fixedness of Tarup pyi is not negotiable. The Burmese envisioned the Tarup as the inhabitants of a region to the north of what was the northernmost extent of the Burmese kingdom par excellence,Footnote 104 Bagan. Just as the form determines the perception regardless of its content, the Tarup were always seen as Tarup whether they were Nanzhao, Mongol, Yunnanese, Ming Chinese, Turks, or any other. However one important point which makes a group Tarup, and not Maw Shan or another ethnic minority, is that the space where the Tarup are is ‘other’, beyond the boundary and suzerainty of Burma. In this sense there is a perception of an imagined boundary which may not be clearly marked by either military outposts or natural environmental features.
The observation that a number of the Burmese chroniclers' accounts of the Tarup are corroborated by Chinese historical sources suggests that the Burmese chronicles can be treated as valid primary historical records for this particular type of information. Similar to most other primary sources, a researcher must exercise discretion in the use of these documents, often checking them against other contemporary sources, including those of external origins or more established traditions such as the Chinese histories. Even though Burmese chronicles of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries still contain descriptions which celebrate and possibly exaggerate the glory of former Burmese kings and their courts, there remain sufficient narrative descriptions of activities, events and personages which can prove important in filling the gaps of knowledge which still exist in the relatively barren field of Burmese history,Footnote 105 especially in the case of Burmese–‘Chinese’ relations via the borderlands of Yunnan and Shan areas.
Mhanˋnanˋ” Mahārājavaṅˋto ˋkrī” (Hmannan Maha Yazawindawgyi) (Ranˋkuinˋ: Myui” Khyacˋ Sitˋdhātˋ Thakˋsanˋre”, 1992), 3 vols.
U Ngyein Maung (U Nrimˋ” Moṅˋ), Rhe”hoṅˋ” Mranˋmā Kyokˋsāmyā”. Tatiyatvai. Sakkarājˋ622 mha 699 (Ranˋkuinˋmrui': Rhe”hoṅˋ Sutesana Usī”ṭhāna, 1983), p. 141. An account of these events is discussed in Aung-Thwin, Myth and history, pp. 42–3; Aung-Thwin is the first scholar to mention and demonstrate that Hlaykya was the place to which Narathihapate fled.
U. Hla Tin, Jãtãtoˋpum. Rãjawaṅˋ (Zatadawpon Yazawin) (Ranˋkunˋ: Praññˋtoṅˋcu Yañˋkye“mhu vanˋkrī” ṭãna, Rhe“hoṅˋ” Sutesana Ññvhanˋkrã“ re”vanˋruṃ, Rhe“hoṅ” cãpe nhaṅ'ˋ yañˋkye” mhu ṭãna, 1960), p. 1.
Pugaṃ Rājavaṅˋ, palm-leaf manuscript Accession no. 585 (Yangon: Universities Historical Research Centre, 1895), leaves 
to 
leaves 
to 
1895 refers not to the original year of composition, but rather to the date on which this particular manuscript was copied.
U Bhe, Rāzavaṁsarālinī maññˋso Pugaṁ Rāzavaṅˋsacˋ, p. 106. This text contains no publication date.
to 
.
), which is often defined as ‘king’ or ‘prince’ in Shan language, and refers to the Shan chieftains of olden days. Saw in Shan language refers to ‘lord or master’ (Cushing's Shan-English dictionary: A phonetic version, ed. Thomas J. Hudak (Tempe: Arizona State University, Program for Southeast Asian Studies, Monograph Series Press, 2000), p. 205.
