Jacques P. Leider
EFEO, Chiang Mai, Thailand
In 1752, a Burmese headman revolted against Mon rulership in Central Burma. Bearing the title Alaungmintaya (“future dhammaraja”), he became the lord of a reunified Burmese kingdom only five years later. Undoubtedly a great king, Alaungmintaya took very soon his place among the heroic figures of the country as the founder of the last Burmese dynasty. While the representation of Alaungmintaya’s life by the chroniclers prominently displays his tremendous political and military career, the narrative is inseparable from a framework of concepts and beliefs that give substance and meaning to the Burmese understanding of Buddhist kingship. Considering both the life of the king and its narrativization, the paper will identify a religious subnarrative of actions and images that informed, supported, legitimized and localized the king’s political metamorphosis from an ordinary human condition to a cosmologically significant status.
(Presented in the International Conference – Buddhist Narrative in Asia and Beyond, 9-11 August 2010, Imperial Queen's Park Hotel, Bangkok, organized by Institute of Thai Studies, Chulalongkorn University with support from The Thailand Research Fund (TRF), in co-operation with Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Institute of Asian Studies, The Confucius Institute, Chulalongkorn University and l’École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO))