The Shan plateau river above the Irrawaddy watershed towards the east, where the landmass extends upwards of 3,500 feet and drained by the Salween and the Shewli rivers.The Mandalay road to Lashio now reached to the borders of China at Mongla through the quaint town of Kengtung. Lashio the capital of the Shan State reached its zenith of glory during the British time, under the rule of the Sao Phas.
The British left the Shans under a political officer and for the first time since the Konbaung dynasty founder Alaungpaya, the Shans regained their past glory. The Shan State by then were divided into principalities each under a Chief or Sawbwa, a hereditary position that left the population more or less content, until the Burmese independence.
As early as 1763 argues Ken Kirigaya, writing on the Konbaung and Shan State principalities relations, reveals that although the Burmese monarchs institute a modicum of reforms they reduced the principalities to mere feudatory status. (The Sitan of Mone: Shan Principality and Nyangyan Burma 1633-1763).
The imperial court at Ava began to exert more authority by placing their governors at the Shan principalities, and placing troops for the imperial army on notice, made the relationship more autocratic.
The early history of the Shans in Burma is very obscure. There is little doubt that a powerful Shan kingdom called Mong Mao Long grew up in the north in the neighbourhood of the Shweli river. The late Mr. Ney Ellas identified the capital as the modern Mong Mao, but there can be no doubt that he was wrong. That place was not adopted as capital until long after the kingdom had reached its period of greatest power. Everything points to the fact, however, that the kingdom was that of the Mao Shans, the Shans who settled along the Shweli river. New kings very often chose new sites for their capitals. These were always near the Nam Mao, and the site which was most often adopted was that of Cheila according to Ney Ellas’ manuscript. There can be scarcely any doubt that this was the modern Se Lan, about 13 miles east of Nam Hkam and close to the frontier, where flows the Shweli river or Nam Mao, beyond which at no very great distance is the modern Mong Mao.
The modern Se Lan is a village of no great size. It stands on the highest point of an irregular four-sided plateau, which rises to a height of 260 or 300 feet above the valley level and is about a square mile in area. This plateau is completely surrounded by an entrenched ditch, which is in many places 40 or 50 feet deep. There no doubt was once also a wall, but this has completely moldered away.
Most Northern Shah Chronicles begin with the legend that in the middle of the sixth century of our era two brothers descended from heaven and took up their abode in Hsen Wi, or in the valley of the Shweli, or of the Irrawaddy, or wherever local pride requires
the settlement. There they found a population which immediately accepts them as kings. This is probably the folks-myth fashion of stating a historical fact. A great wave of Tai migration descended in the sixth century of the Christian era from the mountains of Southern Yunnan into the Nam Mao or Shweli valley and the adjacent regions, and through it that valley became the centre of Shan political power.
Tradition and the statement of all the hitherto discovered chronicles assert that the Nam Mao or Shweli valley and its neighbourhood, Bhamo, Mong Mit, Hsen Wi, is the first home of the Shans in Upper Burma. It seems most probable that this wave of migration followed the path already traversed by earlier Tai colonists, who had sought a home in these parts, but had attained no political importance. From the Nam Mao the Shans spread south-east over the present Shan States, north into the present Hkamti region, and west of the Irrawaddy River into all the country lying between it, the Chindwin, and Assam. Centuries later they overran and conquered wesali-Long or Assam itself.
Not only does tradition assert that these Shans of Upper Burma are the oldest branch of the Tai family, but they are always spoken of by other branches as the Tai Long, or Great Shans, while the other branches call themselves Tai Noi, or Little Shans.
The name Tai Mao referring to the Shweli river is also frequently used. Even the Siamese use the term, though they misapply it. They call themselves Htai Noi or Little Htai, and the Lao Shans, from whom they say they are sprung, they call Htai Yai, the Great Htai. But the Lao in their turn call themselves Tai Noi and acknowledge the Northern Shans of Burma to be the Tai Long. The Shan-Chinese, whose States indicate the line followed
by Shan migration into Burma, also share this title of Tai Long. No doubt the name is due to the fact that the earliest political centre was established by the northern branch of the family as well as to the probability that it was the strongest when the kingdom of Nanchao came to an end.
These earliest settlers and other parties from Yunnan gradually pressed southwards, but the process was slow. It was not until the fourteenth century that the Siamese Tai established themselves in the great delta of the Menam, between Cambodia and the Mon country. It seems probable enough that this latest movement, which must also have been made in the greatest strength, was the direct result of the conquest of the Shan kingdom of Ta-li-fu by Prince Kublai in AD 1253.
The early history of the Shans in Burma is very obscure. There is little doubt that a powerful Shan kingdom called Mong Mao Long grew up in the north in the neighbourhood of the Shweli river. The silence of Burman history with reference to this kingdom is strange and is only to be explained on the assumption that what they then knew as Tayoks were really the Shans and that the transference of the name centuries afterwards to the Chinese was accomplished without the recognition of the fact that they knew nothing of the real Chinese until the Shah kingdom of Nan-chao was overthrown. Tai chronicles indicate that the Mao Kingdom began in the seventh century of our era and maintained itself with varying degrees of prosperity until the rise of Anawra-hta, the King of Pagan, This, monarch gained ascendency in much of the plain country, which up till then the Shahs had held. It is for this reason that Mr. Parker looks upon Anawra-hta Mengsaw as the first definite King of Burmese history and thinks that his famous
visit to China, in quest of the Buddha’s Tooth, took him no further than the independent State of Nan-chao, then called the Tayok country.
On his return Anawra-hta married a daughter of the Mao Shah King. Ney Elias says that the Mong Mao chronicle states that that Chief “gave his daughter to the Pagan monarch, though it is also stated that he never went to the Pagan Court as a true vassal must have done.
Sam Long Hpa, became Sawbwa of Mogaung, where he built a new city and established a new line of powerful princes tributary to Mong Mao, five years before Hso Hkan Hpa succeeded to the throne of the Mao Shans in 1225. Four campaigns were undertaken and the dominion of the Mao Shans was enormously extended. The suzerainty of Hso Hkan Hpa was caused to be acknowledged as far south as Moulmein and to Keng Hung on the east. His dominions were extended Westwards by the over-running of Arakan, the destruction of its capital, and the invasion of Manipur.
Assam was subjugated in 1229 AD. and passed under the rule of the Shans, who were henceforth styled Ahom in that country. It is claimed that even the Tai Kingdom of Ta-li [it may be noted that the name of Nan-chao is quite unknown to the Shan chroniclers. It is a purely Chinese term and means Southern Prince] acknowledged allegiance to the Mao King before its fall under the attack of Kublai Khan in 1253 AD. In fact it may have been the aggressiveness of the Mao Shahs which brought down the Mongolian army. Dr. Cushing thinks it more likely, however, that the relation of Ta-li was one of alliance rather than subordination. For nearly thirty years after the conquest of Yumnan by the Mongol-
Chinese army, the Chinese hung about the frontier, and then in 1284 AD. a Mongolian force, we are told, swept down on Pagan and overthrew the Burman monarchy.
The inference seems all the more certain when we find the Shans immediately afterwards partitioning Burma among them on the death of Kyawzwa, the last King of the Anawra-hta dynasty. It may be parenthetically added that the three Shan brothers who divided the empire seem to be alluded to in the history of On Bawng Hsi Paw. Sir Arthur Phayre says they came from the small Shan State of Binnaka, which has always been rather a problem. These chronicles, now first translated, seem to prove that Binnaka is Peng Naga, a man, and not a small State, and that his three sons, or more probably descendants, were the rulers of Sagaing, Panya, and Myinzaing.
Up to this period there is a considerable correspondence in the details of the various Shan chronicles. From this time on the diverge and become more local and parochial. The prosperity of the Mao Kingdom, we are told, “began to wane soon after it had attained its greatest area of territory.” About the same time the Kingdom of Nan-chao fell. The opinion may therefore be hazarded that all refer to the original independent Shan kingdom and that Nan-chao, Kawsampi, and the Kingdom of Pông are the same place. Probably all the Shan Sawbwas rendered tribute to a dominant Sawbwa at Ta-li. When he was overthrown the race split up into a number of unconnected principalities and has remained disunited ever since.
Whether this is the case or not there is no doubt as to the steady decadence. The Siamese and Lao dependencies became a separate kingdom under the suzerainty of Ayuthia, the old capital
of Siam. Wars with Burma and China were frequent and the invasions of the Chinese caused great loss. On one occasion a king, who may be either of the brothers Sao Ngan Hpa of Mong Mao, or Sao Kawn Hpa of Mogaung, fled to Ava, was pursued by the Chinese, and took poison and died there. This was in 1445 AD, and the circumstance that the Chinese dried his body and carried it back to their own country with them enables us to compare systems of transliteration as well as to settle dates. This unlucky monarch is the Thohan-bwa of Burmese history, the Sungampha of Manipur, and. the Sz-jen-fah of Chinese annals. His gruesome end makes him a landmark and gives him a celebrity that nothing else connected with his history would seem to warrant.
It seems most probable that there was no central Shun power, but, if there were, constant wars weakened it, and the various principalities gained a semi- independence. Of these, Mong Kawng (Mogaung) was the farthest from China and seems to have been the most powerful. Ney Elias’ Mong Mao chronicle alleges that Sao Hom Hpa, the last Mao Sawbwa, reigned for eighty-eight years and died in 1604 AD. and that his kingdom attained a prosperity never before realized. This is obviously the mere desire for a happy ending which characterizes healthy storytellers, for it is certain that Bayinnaung,
the ambitious and successful King of Pegu, conquered the Mao territory in AD. 1562. Subsequent Chinese invasions in AD. 1582 and in 1604 put a final end to the Mao Shan dynasty. Although Mong Kawng maintained a semi independence until its final conquest by Alaungpaya a century and a half later, it may be said that from 1604 AD. Shun history merges in Burmese history and the Shan principalities, though they were always restive and given
to frequent rebellions and intestine wars, never threw off the yoke of the Burmans.