Arakan [အာရကန္]

The land that is known as Arakan

by the foreigners is called
‘Rakhaing-pray’ [ရခုိင္ျပည္] by its
own peoples, Rakhaing-thars
(Arakanese) [ရခုိင္သား]. The word
“Arakan” was a derivation of the
ancient word “Arakha-de-sha”
[အာရက ေဒသွ်] (the land of
Arakan) which is found in line
forty of Anandachandra
inscriptions of Shitethaung pillar.

Rakhapura [ရကပူရ]

Rakhapura [ရကပူရ] is the former name of Rakhaing-pray [ရခုိင္ျပည္].

Arakanese people today do not use the term 'Rakhapura' to mention their
land. But, every Arakanese love the word “Rakhapura” [ရကပူရ] as they
assume that it is a unique word for only Arakanese in this universe. It can
also be found in both classical and modern Arakanese plays, poetry and
songs.

Both Rakhapura and Rakhaing-pay means the land that is owned and
inhabited by the Arakanese.

Rakhaing [ရခုိင္]

According to the Arakanese chronicles, the word ‘Rakhaing’ [ရခုိင္] was

originated from Rakhapura [ရကပူရ] and it means the original inhabitants of
Rakhapura [ရကပူရ].

Arakhadesha [အာရကေဒသွ်] > Rakhasa [ရကသွ်] > Rakkha [ရက] > Rakkhaing [ရကၡိဳင္] > Rakhaing
[ရခုိင္]

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In Pali [ရပါဠိ] the word ‘Rakhaing’ [ရခုိင္] is used to honour the people who
love their nation, and preserve their national heritage, and their traditional
ethics or morality [သီလ].

History

The
Arakanese
history
records
the early
Arakanese
to migrate
in Arakan and settled down in their true land since time immemorial. The
independent and sovereign Buddhist Kingdom of Arakan had been splendidly
flourishing from 3325 B.C. till the Burman invaders occupied it in 1784.

The history of Arakan can be divided in to four major period throughout its
thousand-years-long history. They are:

- Dhannyawaddy Period

• The 1st Dhannyawaddy Period (King Marayu, BC. 3325 – BC. 1483)
• The 2nd Dhannyawaddy Period (King Kanrazagree, BC. 1483 – BC. 580)
• The 3rd Dhannyawaddy Period (King Chandra Surya, BC. 580 - AD.
326)

- Vesali Period (King Dvan Chandra, AD. 327 – AD. 1018)

- Laemro Period (King Nga Tone Munn, AD. 1018 – AD.1406)

- Mrauk-U Period (King Munn Saw Mwan, AD.1430 – 1784)

Dhannyawaddy Era [ဓည၀တီေခတ္]

The 1st Dhannyawaddy Period (BC. 3325 – BC. 1483)

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According to the legend, Dhanyawadi [ဓည၀တီႏုိင္ငံေတာ္] (the first independent
Arakan kingdom) was established in 3325 B.C by King Maryu [မာရယု] (the
Arakanese legendary hero-ancestor). It is said that King Rarayu [မာရယု] had
married the daughter of the chief of Mro [ၿမဳိ] tribe and had founded
Dhanyawadi [ဓည၀တီႏုိင္ငံေတာ္] after defeating the bilus [ရခုိင္] (demon-like
creatures) who arrived earlier in the area.

Religion

Buddhism was introduced into Arakan during the lifetime of Buddha himself.
According to Arakanese chronicles, Lord Buddha, accompanied by his five
hundred disciples, visited the city of Dhannyawadi (Grain blessed) in 554 B.C.
King Chandra Suriya (Sun and Moon) and all the people converted to
Buddhism and became Buddhists since then. The king requested Lord Buddha
to leave the image of Himself to commemorate the event before he left
Arakan and Lord Buddha consented it. This was the famous Mahamuni (Great
Sage) image, known throughout the Buddhist world and desired by kings who
sought to conquer the country in order to carry away this powerful prize. The
history of this image is entwined with that of Arakan. After casting the Great
Image Mahamuni, Lord Buddha breathed upon it which resembled the exact
likeness of the Blessed One.

The tradition of the origin of the Mahamuni image can be interpreted as an

allegorical account of the introduction of Buddhism to Arakan. The first
evidence we have of Buddhism is in the early sculpture of the Mahamuni
shrine at Dhanyawadi.

Arakanese, to show their utmost respect to King Chandra Suriya who had
donated Mahamuni Shrine and introduced Buddhism into Arakan, have been
using the signs of Sun and Moon as the most sacred symbols throughout the
history until today.

These symbols can be found in all ancient coins of Arakan, as well as present-
day flag and seal of Rakhaing state under Burma.

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The Lost of Chittagong and Twelve Bengal Districts

Even though Arakan had reached zenith of power in the Bay when it was
under the rule of the skilled and powerful kings, the country's glory and fame
has steadily declined when it was succeeded and ruled by the unqualified
kings. Chittagong and other districts of Bengal were invaded and occupied by
the Moghal in 1666 AD.

The Lost of Arakan Kingdom, its nation and national identity

After the Moghal invaded and annexed part of the Arakanese territories,
internal instability and dethroning of kings had happened very often in Arakan
Court. Taking opportunity in the overall weakness inside the country, the
Burmese King U Wine violated the good-friendly neighbour's ethics and
dispatched his invading forces into Arakan in mid-November, 1784 and
occupied it by the end of 1784.

The national independence of Arakan and sovereignty of the Arakan Kingdom

were lost on 31 December 1784 (7 waxing day of Pratho 1146 AE.) when it
was invaded and subjugated by the Burman King Maung Wyne. The people of
Arakan became enslaved. The national flag hoisted in honour of the nation on
the top of the Royal Assembly Hall was dropped. The dignity, the honour and
the prestige of the Rakhine as
a FREE NATION had
terminated immediately after
loss of independence.

Area of Arakan

Arakan is situated among India

in the North, Burma in the
East and People's Republic of
Bangladesh in the West. To
the south, it extends up to
Haigri Islands and is bounded

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on the southwest by the Bay of Bengal.

The area of Arakan was more than 20,000 sq. ml. till the British period. But,
Burmese ruler, without the consent of Arakanese people, split up a north
western Arakan Hill Tracts area bordering India and a southern most part of
Arakan (from Kyauk Chaung River to Cape Negaris) from the Arakan
mainland. Due to these partitions, the present day total area of Arakan was
reduced to 18, 500 sq. ml and it comprise less than half of historic Arakan
territory.

The Rakhine State of Burma

The Rakhine state, consisting 17 townships was created by the then Burmese
Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) government led by General Ne Win after
granting Arakan region the state status. But it was done by the Burmese for
administrative purposes.

Today area of Arakan is located between Lat. 16' 00" N- Lat. 21' 20" N and
Long. 92' 20" E- Long. 95' 20" E. Arakan is known as one of the poorest
states under so called Union of Burma ruled by military junta called SPDC
(State Peace and Development Council) with its official name, Rakhine State.

Arakanese, however, use the term "Arakan" to mean the area which was
historically and traditionally known as Arakan before the 1784 Burmese
invasion. Despite over 200 years of Burmese occupation of Arakan, the
Arakanese peoples refuse to be conquered and subjugated by the Burmese.
Arakan independent movement started just after it lost independent and is
carrying on until now.

http://www.rakhapura.com/arakan/