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Vesāli : Evidences of Early Historical — City in Rakhine Region ( In English)
By Ye Myat Lwin — MA (Thesis) – Department of Archaeology, University of Yangon, Burma.
Vesali was on the valley between Kaladan and Lemro Rivers. It was the second Capital of Rakhine and political power moved from Dannavat in six century AD. Although it grew up under Indian Civilization, architecture, city-plan, sculpture and coinage show the indigenous aspect of Southeast Asia. This study attempted to approach not only the general view of urbanization and state formation but also material cultures from sculptural, architectural, numismatic and epigraphic remains of Vesali and also attempted to progress comparative study on Vesali with the contemporary neighboring, especially Pyu cities.
The Vesali Old City is located in the northern region of Rakhine. This cultural area is one of the coastal cultures of Southeast Asian countries. The coastal culture means the relationship among the different countries relying on the sea route for mercantile. With the purposes of trade aids in ancient time, the cultural exchanges was indirectly correlated each other especially in the important places of coastal regions. So, the coastal regions had so many diversifications of cultural materials and traditional practices. Among them, the cradle land is some parts of India such as Tamilnadu, Amaravati and Sri Lanker.
The Srivijaya Land of Sumatra Island and central Java Island had got the Indian cultural influences together with Buddhist culture. In the same way, the Malay Peninsula involved the Indian cultural dissemination through the sea route to reach the Far East regions such as the coastal regions of Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Tonkin. Likewise, the Vesali Old City is very near the coastal regions of western gateway of Mainland Southeast Asia. Vesali Old City has about 48 miles distance to sea mouth through the waterways. There are many remains of removable and unremovable archaeological materials in this area. The context of Vesali culture is mostly resembled to both of Pyu in hinterland of Myanmar and the ancient culture of the eastern Bangladesh.
The material cultural remains, which related to the Vesali can be found obviously in and around the entire regions of Rakhine. In this study, author attended to give the context of westernmost culture of Mainland Southeast Asia in comparison with some other context of neighbouring cultures such as Pyu and the architectural context of Eastern Bangladesh. In Chapter I, the fundamental of historical background concerning the Vesali Old City was described with the reference of former scholars and legendary. The study on background knowledge can provide for the better interpretation of confused about the trading and royal administration pattern. Moreover, these numismatic evidences can be traced to have some information about the religious concept and the chronology between kings and their descendent.
In Chapter III, the architectural and iconographic evidences are emphasizing on the descriptive method. It can tell that the ancient architectural context and technological aspects. But the architectural remains are very rare in Vesali Old City because it needs the systematic excavations a lot. For the iconographic remains, there are dramatically found in many ways and displayed in museums. The diversifications of iconographic remains are useful to identify the original sources of Vesali visual culture. Moreover, intangible cultural factors can be analyzed from the visual object with many contexts. Therefore, the study will be taken in the aspect of descriptive method because of some controversies which both of the affinity to the southeast Bengal and western Inland of Pyu. The contribution of Vesali study can be traced to the ancient civilized area of Mainland Southeast Asia and as one of the coastal cultural regions.
There are no evidences for Paleolithic Age of Rakhine through the Neolithic tools, which have been found in the entire Rakhine regions. Although Rakhine State is situated between India and Myanmar, both Indologists and Myanmar scholars are still less interested. Most of the early historical evidences are of incidental finds and surface monuments are very rare. Although traditional Rakhine chronicles are largely mythical, it can give some traces for early history. Folk tales and handed speech can also help to reveal the ancient culture.
At the beginning of British rule, a number of scholar- administrators began to study its antiquities1 Sir Arthur Phayre, a British commissioner which ruled Rakhine was collected antiquities of Myanmar and he wrote about the coins of Myanmar,2 which mentioned the earliest interpretation about Chandra coin. In 1885, Dr Emil Forchhammer, a Swiss Pāli Scholar, undertook a survey of the sites of the old cities and major monument. In 1920, Charles Duroiselle visited to Rakhine and he also mentioned about Candra coin of Vesāli in “Report of Archaeology Survey at India”. For details please see original Thesis of Vesali.
