Monywa: Insanely Stubborn, and Proud of it!
Long ago known as Thanlawadi (သာလာဝတီ), there are a few stories as to how Monywa got its name. The most common, an old Burmese legend, tells of a king who fell in love with a cake seller from a small village and made her his queen. From that time on, her village became known as mon ywa (မုုန္႔ ရြာ), “cake village.” In fact, some have postulated that the original name was a bit more of a mouthful: Monthemaywa (မုုန္႔သည္မရြာ), “woman cake seller village.” Enriquez gives a slight variation on this story, suggesting the name “cake village” derived from back when it was just a small collection of huts by the Chindwin River, and boatmen commonly stopped here to buy bread. The final story comes from even longer ago, back 6,000 years, when a meditative hermit lived under a Mon Pin Gyi tree.
“The first time when I was in Monywa I thought it was the city with most people practicing meditation, as everybody who I spoke to seemed to practice one kind of vipassanā or the other.”
Yesterday, some protesters in Monywa unfurled a curious sign that has many in the online community trying to find a way to accurately translate. It is no easy task, as the creative slang utilized on this sign has left many scratching their head as they try to render a fitting translation. As one Burmese commentator suggested, “I think English language can’t handle “စောက်ကြောတင်း”
First, some background. Monywa is a rough, seldom-visited, brutally hot region which has always been on the outskirts and periphery of the Burmese capital. Still, there is much to celebrate in this far outpost, as it is the birthplace of the great Ledi Sayadaw and the site where his forest monastery would flourish and plant the seeds of the later worldwide mindfulness revolution. As discussed in my conversation last year with Zaw Win Htet (and again, with my later follow up with him), Monywa has also had a longstanding reputation as being a hard place to live, and so it was a region where only the rugged would venture to go, and where only the confident survived. For this reason, it’s no surprise that historically, Monywa was not only a place where many of the King’s military recruits came from, but also a place where the more independent monks went to pursue their own intensive meditations practice, away from the traditions and orthodoxy of the royal court and senior Sangha.
Here is further information from my meditator’s guidebook:
Michael Charney, in his 2006 book, Powerful Learning, notes that this area was “one of Burma’s political and cultural frontiers.” Here, isolated Kachin and Naga clans kept mainly to themselves, and parts of the Chin Hills west of the river were never under the dominion of a Bamar king. For a time, the Shan established themselves north of the river, and the Indian kingdom of Manipur controlled parts of the upper west bank. So, historically speaking, the area has long hosted a diversity of peoples and cultures…just not the Bamar, who did not arrive until the mid-18th century when, because of war and turmoil throughout the country, a migration brought large numbers from southern and central parts of the country northward towards the Mu and Chindwin valleys. Yet, overall, from a social and political perspective, Monywa remained a fairly small, provincial town until the British moved in, when they declared it their headquarters of the lower Chindwin district in 1886.
As for the Sangha, the first monks came to this valley nearly a millennium ago, during the Bagan Era. At that time, there was widespread, dense forest, a welcome refuge for paṭipatti-minded monastics who wished to put some distance between themselves and the royal capital. In Charney’s words, the “harshness of the Chindwin environment and its relatively low population base may have dissuaded all but the hardiest monks.” As greater civilization came to settle in this area, the competition between city and forest monks (gāmavāsī and araññavāsī, respectively) eventually became so fierce that on at least one occasion things even spilled over into violence. Much later, when the Thudhamma movement arose from the lower Chindwin region, monks posited that their order originated from these forest-dwelling renunciates, an argument which strengthened their claim of authenticity. Then, more monks began to stream in during the aforementioned 18th century immigration of Bamar settlers to this area.
More recently, Monywa has been at the receiving end of unspeakable brutality and cruelty on the part of the junta. Day after day, and night after night, security forces raid, bomb, kidnap, rape, and kill here. And yet far from beating them into submission, Monywa protesters just keep turning out day after day.
All this has given rise to the mysterious banner. The first few attempts at translations had suggestions such as the following, and forgive the necessary vulgarity:
The Undaunted Monywa
Bad-ass Monywa
Damn strong Monywa!
Monywa: the town with f**king nerves of steel
Monywa doesn’t give a sh*t.
So even while we haven’t come at an exact definition of what this term means, the foreign reader should at least be getting a rough idea as to what these protesters are trying to express. Anyway, let’s break it down further. “Kyaw Tin Sauk” literally means that tendons are being tensed, which often is used to infer someone is being stubborn. But not just in a casual sense, more like “insanely, ridiculously stubborn,” often to the extent of being enraged. So this expression has the implication as meaning that one will simply never be told what to do under any circumstance.
So with this in mind, one candidate for translation would be as follows: “You Can’t Tell Monywa What To Do!”
And there is certainly truth to that, as the Tatmadaw is finding out.