By , Maha Saddhamma Jotika Dhaja, Sithu Dr. Khin Maung Nyunt
MYANMAR month Pyatho [January] the 10th month of Myanmar Lunar Calendar of 12 months is the peak of Myanmar cold season winter [Heyman]. The north-east wind passing snowcapped regions bringing extremely cold, causing water freeze in high lands and on lofty mountains.
It is quite an appropriate time to hold such a strenuous display and games of equestrian Tourney[ မြင်းခင်းတော်နှင့် အဲဖောင်းလှဲရေး ပြိုင်ပွဲ].Myanmar traditional Land forces composed of four regiments – Elephantry, Cavalry, Chariotry and Infantry. Yearly tournament of their regiments was held on the grounds in front of the Golden Palace, within the walled and moated Palace City.
The three main objectives of this great event were (1). to display (2). to award and (3). to recruit. Myanmar Land force was displayed not only in the month of Pyatho, but also on the occasion of the state visit of Head of State / Government or foreign envoy.
Government or foreign envoy. It was on that occasion that men of outstanding achievement in military service and skill were awarded by their Majesties—cash, promotion, title, land and fields. Non-service men from the public also participated in the tourneys and outstandings are recruited into the regiments.
o the regiments. These displays and tourneys were fully recorded, in chronicles, history, poems and pictures on white parabites [folding papers]. The 37 Taya Chin Songs composed by Minister Maha Dhamma Thingyan of King Bagidaw [1819-1887, Sagaing Min] was well known. In his 37 Lutas Verses and 37 songs Maha Dhamma Thingyan described vividly 37 different modes of horseman ship, 37 different ways of playing with lances. They were also recorded in pictures on white parabites [ ပုရပိုက်ဖြူ] white folding papers. For easy memorization, he also rhymed them in Than Bauk [သံပေါက်] couplets.
Among the weapons of Myanmar land forces of the past, swords, spears, lancer, bows, arrows, muskets earners, lances throwing required extraordinary strength and skill. Long handle spear ''Lunces"" are called in Myanmar ''Eh-Maung" [အဲမောင်းလှံ]. At the tourneys, equestrian competitors at different speeds of their stallions had to throw, each his allotment of 20 lances, one by one at the target marked on the Circles were marked on the board. It the lance hit either the center or within the circles, he won the game. So this tourney is also called in Myanmar set dwin Pyit Pwe [စက်ကွင်းပစ်ပွဲ].
Next extraordinary tourney was ling special sword called ,ယိမ်းနွဲ့ဓား [yein new dal].It was made of special metal by special swords smith very thin and pliant. It was worn like a belt around the user's waiste. At high speed of his stallion, the equestrian pulled out his yein new dal and cut a long line of banana tree or a long necked water pots. Which all remained still and stable. Only when they were pushed, they fall down longnecks of water pots came down. But water in the pots was untouched.
There were also chariot fightings, combats on elephant or horseback, archery, wrestling, running, jumping acrobatics all kinds of manly activities and physical shows. This display tourney could take nearly a month. On the final day their Majesties in State appeared in public in the special gold pavilion to honour the outstanding winners. The King himself was it military uniform of his rank. In addition to the award of cash, promotion, title, Land and field, Thazin or Kwa Nyo flower was given as a token of the flower of the month. These flowers were brought to their Majesties on gold stand trays by beautiful selected young court ladies.
That glorious and splendid scene was vividly recorded in writing and paintings by foreign visitors and envoys. Based upon these records one song composer of national fame, a native of Mandalay Myo Ma Nyein [မြို့မငြိမ်း] composed a history Myin Khin Taw [မြင်းခင်းတော်] Display of Myanmar Land Fares and Equestrian Tourney. The following is that song in Burmese and a loose English translation by the writer.
မြင်းခင်းတော်
၁။ ငွေနှင်းမှုံရည်၊ ဝေစီစီ၊ မြောက်လေဆော်သွေး၊ အေးတဲ့လရာသီ၊ သမယအခါဆီ၊ ပြာသို၊ ခွာညို၊ ညှိစို၊ စိမ်းလဲ့လန်း၊ ရွှေနန်းတော်တွင်း၊ လဲ့ဝင်းမူယာပလီ, သူဇာဒေဝီ၊ တော်ဝင်ပန်းသို့၊ လှမ်းမလို့၊ပြင်ရှာပြီ၊ ဗျာဘာဆံကလေးချအရွယ်ညီ၊ ရွှေကြငန်း၊ ဆွေသဖန်း၊ အဆောင်ဆောင်တွေဆီ သံပြိုင်-လာချေပြီ၊ ပျိုတို့မောင်လဲ၊ သူလဲပါဝင်သည်၊ လာချေပြီ၊ မှုန်မှုန်မည်းမည်း၊ လူသူမသဲ တကွဲ၊ နှင့်ခဲပြာဝေရီမင်းညီမင်းသား၊ မှူးမတ်သားများ၊ ယောကျာ်းအာဇာနည်၊ နှလုံး ရည်၊ လက်ရုံးရည်၊ မြင်းကလဲ၊ မြင်းချော မန်ဖီ၊ ခါးပတ်တော်ရွှေချည်ငွေချည်၊ မောက်တို၊ မောက်ရှည်၊ ဗာလီကွေးနဲ့၊ အဲမောင်းလှံရေးပြိုင်ကြသည်၊ မြန်မာတံခွန်ထူချေပြီ၊ ခွာသံချင်းယက်၊ ဂေါက်ဂက်၊ ဂေါက်ဂက်၊ ဘယ်ညာသံပြိုင်ချီ၊
၂။ မရိုးစည်မောင်း၊ ချိန့်ချိန့်သောင်း၊ ကောင်းကင် တိုင်ဟီ၊ တံပိုးသံ၊ ခရာသံညံစည်၊ ဝဲလက်ယာ မင်းခန်းတော်စုံညီ၊ တော်ကြီးဘုရား၊ နှစ်ပါးထွက် ကာ စံပယ်တော်မူလေပြီ၊ မြင်းခင်းသဘင်ဆင် ယင်တော်မူလေပြီ၊ စနြားယှက်၊ ဝဲလက်လှံပျံချီ၊ သိကြားတန်ဆောင်တိုင်၊ အဲမောင်းတံခွန်မြိုင်မြိုင် ဝေဝေစီ၊ သံပြိုင်-------လာချေပြီ ------ ------ ဘယ်ညာမြိုင်မြိုင်ချီ
၃။ မန်းခွာညို၊ မန်းခွာညို ညာစိုစိမ်းလဲ့လဲ့ နွဲ့ မူယာပလီ၊ နန်းတွင်းသူဇာဒေဝီ၊ မခို့တရို့နဲ့၊ ကပို့ကရို့ဆင်ကာညီ လူဘဲလား၊ နတ်တမျှအညီ၊ ထင်ယောင်၊ မြင်ယောင်သည်၊ မြင်းခင်းသဘင် ဆင်တော်မူလေပြီ၊
သံပြိုင်-------လာချေပြီ ------ ------ ဘယ်ညာမြိုင်မြိုင်ချီ။
Loose translation by the writer
Stanza 1.
Silvery snow screen spreads the northerly breeze brings cold season
it is the month of Pyatho Green fresh Khwa Nyo [clematis crabiana] flower of the Pyatho month
In the Golden Palace are Dainty beautiful young court ladies with the uniform coiffeurs of hair style ''Byabazin" beautiful like Thuzar devi about to get hold of royal flowers. So busy in all buildings of the Golden Palace.
Chorus :
They're coming. Our sweet heart beaus are among them. They're coming in the dim light of the snow misty morning princes, junior and Senior Ministers, Soldiers, all male members of the country. They all are strong in brain and brawn. Their steeds are brown and strong With short and long helmets, and balikway gold and silver Covers on their shoulders They contest in lance-throwing competitions They are setting Myanmar standard flag. Listen! The galloping sounds of their horses gok-gat, gok-gat. Left right: left right uniformly.
Stanza 2
The sounds Mayoe drums and gongs reach high above the sky. Trumpets and horns blowing to gather The entire royal displays on both left and right sides are complete. Their majesties make public appearance Now begins the Equestrian Tourney. One technique of lance throwing called ''Sunday set" with both left and right hands create the scene of the lance flying in the air. Flags, standards, etc, are moving in the breeze in tune with the martial music of the royal band.
Chorus:
Stanza 3
The flower Khwa Nyo, green fresh The young court ladies beautiful like Thuza devi Daintily, modestly and gracefylly adorn Khwa Nyo flowers on their hair knots. Are they humans or are they angles? So, the Equestion Display and Tourney are held.
Chorus:
This song was sung by Gita Kyi Aye and recorded on disk.
