SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This paper looks at a new generation of court literature in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Konbaung court in Burma, that positioned itself in a “traditional” Burma constructed by the monks of the Sudhamma Reformation from the 1780s. This literature eschewed recognition of the increasing inflow of European and Muslim learning in favor of Sudhamma and court-defined orthodoxy regarding both the secular and religious spheres of knowledge. Authentic sources for this knowledge were isolated to Sanskrit and Pali learning respectively. Particular attention will be paid to how, in their texts, court literati attempted to disguise or explain real late eighteenth change, in the context of Burmese historical narrative, within the constraints placed upon them by the court-backed Sudhamma Orthodoxy, such as permitted vocabularies and forbidden subjects. The paper will also examine how, in its reconfiguration of Burma’s past and its present, the new literature revitalized Burmese links to and interaction with both India and Sri Lanka.