3 - Safe Haven: Mon Refugees

Summary

OLD MON AND NEW

Over the course of the past millennium, a succession of Mon (or Raman) migrations crossed the Tenasserim divide from their Irrawaddy delta heartland in present-day Burma to settle in Siam's Chaophraya watershed. The earliest known instance of such migration created the fabled Mon kingdom of Dvaravati, centred along what centuries later came to be the western rim of the Thai kingdom of Ayutthaya (Dhida 1999). Each new migration encountered earlier well-established Mon communities at their journey's end. In many cases the encounter raised tensions between the old and new settler groups, and in each case the newly arrived groups, or “New Mon”, became, in due course, established communities, or “Old Mon”, who were to face yet newer bands of Mon immigrants in their turn. The distinction between Old and New Mon thus historically presented a “moving target” in the history of Mon migration into the Chaophraya watershed and their interaction with Thai civilization.

Ramanya Desa (Land of the Mon) is remembered as one of the great early civilizations of Southeast Asia. At its height, the configuration of Mon states collectively termed Ramanya Desa reached from the Irrawaddy basin and Andaman littoral over the Tenasserim hills across the Chaophraya watershed, from the Bay of Bengal to the Gulf of Siam. Over a millennium ago the Mon people adopted Theravada Buddhism as the cultural foundation of their vibrant civilization. Having absorbed and adapted much of their lifestyle from South Asia, the Mon in turn contributed greatly to the cultural evolution of their Southeast Asian neighbours, including the Khmer, Thai, Lao, and Burmans. But the halcyon days of Mon hegemony withered away many centuries ago under the mounting pressure of Thai, Shan, and Burman southward expansion, leaving a reduced Mon empire long known to the Thai as Hongsawadi (Mon: Haṃsavati; Burmese: Bago; English: Pegu). Subsequent centuries of Burmese depredations upon the Mon heartland radiating from Pegu to Yangon (English: Rangoon), Satem (Syriam), Sutham (Thaton), Molamloeng (Moulmein), Maotama (Martaban), Tawai (Tavoy), and Tanao-si (Tenasserim) left a much-diminished culture zone (Dhida 1999; South 2003, pp. 49–77).