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SCRIPT WITHOUT BUDDHISM: BURMESE INFLUENCE ON THE TAY (SHAN) SCRIPT OF MÄNG2 MAAW2 AS SEEN IN A CHINESE SCROLL PAINTING OF 1407
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 July 2012
Abstract
This article substantiates for the first time that Tay (Shan) script was written on a Ming dynasty scroll dated 1407. In the past, Tay scholars have assumed that early Tay script exhibited uniquely Tay characteristics from the outset, and only gradually acquired Burmese features after the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The data presented here demonstrates beyond doubt that the Tay borrowed heavily from the Burmese script to create their writing system before the fifteenth century. It also shows that the 1407 Tay script resembled the Ahom script more than the lik6 tho3 ngök6 script, and on the basis of this similarity concludes that lik6 tho3 ngök6 was not the progenitor of Tay scripts, as previously thought, and that the Ahom script preceded it.
The impact of Burmese script on the Tay writing system from the outset raises the broader issue of borrowing from Burman culture during the Pagan and early Ava periods. The Tay of Mäng2 Maaw2 and surrounding polities turned to Pagan and Ava for a written script, but shunned Theravada Buddhism, the religious apparatus that we assume always accompanied the spread of writing. Their adoption of a writing system stands out as a rare case of script without Buddhism in northern continental Southeast Asia. To the Tay, Pagan and Ava were dominant political powers worthy of emulation, and the adoption of their writing system attests the magnitude of its influence. It is hypothesized that such borrowing arose out of Tay aspirations for self-strengthening their polities, possibly in an endeavour to rival the Burman monarchy. Tay script emerged in an age when the Burman language had just become predominant among the elites of Pagan and early Ava. Two features of this case stand out. First, the Tay borrowed at a time when Burmese script was relatively novel and still the preserve of the Burman elite, a fact which reinforces the notion of borrowing for prestige value as well as practical utility. Second, the Tay gravitated towards the northern parts of Pagan and Ava, rather than the southern areas where Mon language retained predominance in inscriptions.
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