Narapatisithu (Sithu II)

Who he is

Name

Narapatisithu (Sithu II)

Title

King (min) of Pagan

Since

1174 (between 27 March and 10 August on the Hmannan; most likely April or May)

Born

not pinned (8 October 1150 or 1138)

Family

Son of Narathu and Myauk Pyinthe; brother of Naratheinkha, whom the chronicle has him kill in 1174; consorts listed on English Wikipedia: Weluwaddy, Min Aung Myat Saw, Saw Lat, Ahlwan Taung, Pyinthe Myauk, Pyinthe Wadanthika and Saw Mya Kan (rank and order not pinned); sons named there: Zeya Thura, Yaza Thura, Ginga Thura, Pyanchi Zeya and Theinkha; his heir in the end is Htilominlo, son of Saw Mya Kan, born 4 February 1175 (Zatadawbon).

Confidence

high

English Wikipedia (Narapatisithu, Htilominlo, Pagan Kingdom) citing the Hmannan, Zatadawbon, Maha Yazawin and Yazawin Thit; the dated inscriptions are known second hand. Confidence is high for the office and the reign (1174 to 1211) and low for the family details.

What it holds

• The walled city of Pagan (three walls on the river bluff, the Tharabha gate of about 1020), its palace and its royal landing at Lawkananda
• The crown villages and workshop villages of the temple plain: Myinkaba, Nyaung-U, Minnanthu, Otein Taung (potters), Tuyin Taung (stone)
• The royal granaries filled from Kyaukse, Minbu and the Mu canals, and the river tolls at the Chindwin mouth and Pakhangyi
• The Palace Guards (inner and outer companies) and the king's right to call the hereditary service villages
• The right to name governors for the delta and peninsular ports and to confirm lords of the districts
• The royal foundations: the Sulamani (1183), the Dhammayazika (1196), the Gawdawpalin (start not pinned: 1203 on one page), and the chronicle's lesser pagodas (Zetawun in Myeik district, the Shwe Indein in Nyaungshwe)

How it was acquired

By the chronicle's story, by killing his brother Naratheinkha in 1174 (a palace plot led by Aungzwa with eighty men); Luce's interregnum of nine years (1165-1174) that would drop Naratheinkha is disputed (Htin Aung; Aung-Thwin rejects it).

Allies and rivals

Allied by gift and exchange with Ceylon after the war of 1180; heirs of Alaungsithu's line against the memory of Narathu's usurpation; the Sangha is both his client and his chief claimant on the revenue (the quarrel of the two orders); the old Arahan line (Thaton, Mon) and the Ceylon-ordained order are both at his court.

How things stand that morning

Alive and secure, in the twenty-sixth year of his reign, with the realm at peace on every record we could read. The two great works of the reign are standing (Sulamani, Dhammayazika) and the Gawdawpalin is not shown to be rising yet. The heir is not pinned (see the royal house record). He is remembered after death as a nat enshrined at the Kuni shrine at Pakhan.

Wealth

The royal share of the Kyaukse and Minbu rice, the tolls, workshop output, the gifts of ports; he gives much of it away to the Sangha. Money is lump silver by weight; no coinage.

Military

The Palace Guards; his own inscriptions claim 17,645 soldiers in one and 30,000 soldiers and cavalry in another (English Wikipedia, Pagan Kingdom; the inscriptions were not read: royal claims, not counts). A fleet is implied by the ports but not described.

Threats

• The Sangha's growing claim on land and people
• A rival among his sons at the succession (the chronicle's usual pattern; nothing dated for 1200)
• Sea-borne attack on the delta (1180)
• Old age: he has eleven years to live

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

1. 1203Gawdawpalin begun (English Wikipedia, no source); finished 26 March 1227.Depends on: The works continue. Stopped by: A fiscal strain.
2. 18 August 1211Death in his Burmese-era year 573; succession of Htilominlo (reign 1211-1235); the dying king urges his five sons to live in brotherly love (Hmannan).Depends on: Natural death. Stopped by: An earlier death or a coup.

Places of note

• The Sulamani: His foundation of 1183.
• The Dhammayazika: His five-sided pagoda of 1196 (English Wikipedia coordinates).
• Kuni shrine at Pakhan: Where the dead king is honoured as a nat.

Where the sources disagree

• The campaign board entry pagan-bagan 'who has reigned since 1174 and will not die until 1211': agreed.
• The campaign board entry dhammayazika (begun 1196, dedicated 1198) against the brief and English Wikipedia (1196): see the Dhammayazika record.
• English Wikipedia's infobox names seven consorts and five sons, but says no heir is named in his lifetime; the campaign board's 'roughly in his fifties' is an unsupported guess.

Evidence: Reign by inscription, the building by inscriptions quoted second hand, the palace politics by the Hmannan of 1829.

"The campaign board" is OMNIA's working map. These notes record where its earlier claims were checked against the sources.

On the map: The zone is drawn on today's archaeological area; the walled city proper was only about 140 hectares, with the temples and monasteries spread across the plain outside it.

Primary sources for Kingdom of Pagan

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• The Glass Palace Chronicle of the Kings of Burma, The Royal Historical Commission of King Bagyidaw (Monywe Sayadaw and others), drawing on U Kala's Maha Yazawin (about 1724) and earlier chronicles (1829 to 1832). The standard Burmese court chronicle, compiled six centuries after 1200 from older chronicles now lost. Read online
• The later Tai, Lao and Mon chronicles of the north, Ratanapanna (Jinakalamali); Bodhiramsi (Chamadevivamsa); anonymous monks and court scribes (the Chamadevivamsa about 1410; the Jinakalamali 1516 to 1528; the Chiang Mai Chronicle in its surviving form 1827; the Nithan Khun Borom 16th to 17th century). There is no text of 1200 for the Mon kingdom of Haripunjaya, the Tai muang of Ngoenyang (Chiang Saen), Chiang Rung, the Yom and Nan valleys, or the Lao middle Mekong.
• History of Song, chapters 488 and 489: Jiaozhi, Dali, Champa, Zhenla, Pagan, Srivijaya, Java, Brunei, Chola and Tambralinga, Toqto'a (Tuotuo) and the Yuan history office, from the Song court records (1343 to 1345, from Song veritable records and court diaries). The Chinese court's record of its southern neighbours, compiled from Song archives. Read online
• Epigraphia Birmanica, being lithic and other inscriptions of Burma, Various, edited by Taw Sein Ko, C. Duroiselle and C. O. Blagden (inscriptions of the 11th to 15th centuries; the series ran from 1919 to 1936). The Archaeological Survey of Burma's series of edited inscriptions with full translations. Read online
• Inscriptions of Pagan, Pinya and Ava; Inscriptions of Burma, Various (the Pagan kings, queens, ministers and donors), edited by Tun Nyein, Taw Sein Ko, G. H. Luce and Pe Maung Tin (inscriptions of the 11th to 14th centuries; editions 1899 and 1933 to 1956). The dedicatory inscriptions of Pagan are the only contemporary texts for the kingdom of Narapatisithu (reigning 1174 to 1211). Read online
• A Description of the Foreign Peoples (Records of Foreign Nations), Zhao Rukuo (Zhao Rugua) (1225 at Quanzhou). The best single text for the island world around 1200, written by the superintendent of maritime trade at Quanzhou from merchants' reports a generation after the date. Read online
• Notes in Answer to Questions about the Lands beyond the Passes, Zhou Qufei (周去非) (1178, after service in Guangxi). A Guangxi official's notes, written twenty years before 1200, on the south-western frontier of the Song and the countries beyond. Read online