Naresuan movies 1 and 2

I have the opportunity to see the movie Naresuan again and also the 2^nd episode. This time the subtitle is in Myanmar so I understand more. I have read about King Naresuan, first from Myanmar history articles and then from the Glass Palace Chronicle. Later, during my visit to Thailand I got to many places associated with King Naresuan at Mae Sai, Phitsanulok and Ayutthaya. When I posted my Thailand visit photos, I read much about King Naresuan and the Myanmar Thai wars from the many Thai travel sites and Wikipedia on the web. The first time I watched the movie Naresuan was before my visit to Thailand. This second view of the film Naresuan is with a better understanding of Thai history and first hand knowledge of the historical places at Phitsanulok and Ayutthaya.

The movie series is in 3 parts. The films were made in a grand scale, and included much about King Bayint Naung and King Nanda with scenes of Hantharwaddy too (in studio of course) and the Hantharwaddy Thai wars.

What I noticed about the film is the presence of several Westerners in the list of those who made the movies and the similarity of the films to other war epics of the West and also similarity to the movie The Last Samurai in that it is under Western influence and that the local culture is lost. Similarly, Ang Lee’s Memoirs of a Geisha looks like a Chinese movie, not a Japanese one. I feel that the film Naresuan would be better if an all Thai production crew had made the film.

With that in mind, I am not surprised at the cultural and other errors which I noticed in the film regarding Myanmar. I cannot be sure if there are errors about Thai side, but believe there might be, as I know of some facts different from what I have been told by Thais and I have to write about the movie Naresuan which is presented from the Thai Western view and also about what has being recorded about the events in Myanmar history, from a Myanmar point of view.

One fact which I noticed is that a Siam Buddhist monk in Hantharwaddy taught prince Naresuan martial arts in Hantharwaddy! This is contrary to my knowledge about Myanmar culture and Theravada Buddhism. Ari monks in early Bagan period till king Anawratha’s time in the 11^th century A.D. practiced wrestling but I have not read about other martial arts being practiced by the Aris. After Theravada Buddhism was introduced, even wrestling was not practiced by monks in Myanmar. Even if Siam Buddhist monks practice martial arts, it is unlikely that they understand war strategy.

I remember a film made by Japanese about Myanmar_in it was portrayed a Myanmar monk playing a Myanmar harp / saung. It might be true of Japanese monks to play music (I do not know for sure) but music is definitely off limits to Myanmar monks and even to laymen who take the 8 percepts of sabath. In that Japanese movie about Myanmar, the Myanmar cast could not correct the wrong concept of the Japanese director and I feel that the Thai cast also could not correct this wrong idea (or maybe Thai monks actually practice and teach martial arts like the Shaolin monks).

It is written in Wikipedia that: Naret, along with other captive princes from other kingdoms, were educated in martial arts and war strategy of Burmese and Portuguese style.

Myanmar history mentioned that prince BhyaNarit / Naret was allowed military studies together with Myanmar princes, and that would be in court under generals and other military teachers, not monks, who traditionally teach only Buddhism, literature and etiquette to the royalty.

When I was in Thailand and noticed the many rooster statutes not only at Thai homes but also at king Naresuan monument in Phitsanulok (and later in Ayutthaya too) I asked the tuk-tuk-man about them and was told that king Naresuan liked cock fighting and that his fighting cocks were brought from Hantharwaddy! In the movie, it was portrayed that the untrained Siam fighting cock in Hantharwaddy, called captive cock because it was brought along by Thai captives, was superior to trained Myanmar fighting cocks, including that of prince San Kay of Hantharwaddy.

Another fact I noticed in the film is the armour of Myanmar and Thai kings and generals. I am not sure about Thai armour but armour wearing is not practiced by Myanmar troops both Bamar and Mon although Portugese mercernaries in the Hantharwaddy and Ayutthaya armies would wear them.

One helmet worn by an Ayutthaya general very much resembles that of the Samurai armour helmet. The use of identification flag behind the courier on horseback also resembles those in Japanese movies.

The movie mentioned about the battle near Thaton river and I was surprised as there is not one nearby. It must have been the Thanlwin / Salween river which is the biggest one on the route, or maybe the Sittaung river, the next largest.

Nann Phayarr နန္းဘုရား Myinkabar ျမင္းကပါ Bagan ပုဂံ

Nann Phayarr နန္းဘုရား at Myinkabar ျမင္းကပါ, Bagan ပုဂံ, near the Manuha pagoda မႏူဟာ ဘုရား is one of the 3 sandstone pagodas of Bagan. The others are the Shwesigone ေရႊစည္းခံု stupa and the KyauKuu OoMin ေက်ာက္ကူး/ဂူ ဥမင္ temple at Nyaung Oo.

The Nann Phayarr နန္းဘုရား is built on the site where the king Manuha မႏူဟာမင္း of Thaton သထံု lived while as prisoner in exile in Bagan after he was defeated by king Anawratha အေနာ္ရထာ / အႏုရုဒၶာ.

The temple is quite small and has barred windows and is dark inside. The place is protected by the archeological department and the iron door is usually locked. Tourists are shown of the temple as there are interesting sculptures inside.

There are sandstone pillars with finely sculptured images of floral design ပန္းဆြဲ, ogre eating flower garland ဘီလူးပန္းကီုက္ and Lord Vishnu ဗိသႏိုးနတ္မင္း and is much appreciated by tourists, although most Myanmars do not know about it. Myanmars usually visit the Manuha မႏူဟာ pagoda with its enormous Buddha image in a narrow temple, representing the restricted situation of the king Manuha မႏူဟာ and went on elsewhere on pilgrimage.

Shin Upagote ရွင္ဥပဂုတ္

Shin U Pa Gota, the “saint” of all waters. According to legend, Shin U Pa Gota grew up a troubled boy until the Buddha visited him and brought him instant enlightenment. From that moment, he spent his time meditating in the Irrawaddy.

He is the saint of boatmen, of fishermen, of anyone who relies on the river.

The bamboo rafts with Shin U Pa Gota images are floated down the rivers during the monsoon and wherever the raft comes to shore it is greeted with huge reverence and a ceremony will be held. This will sometimes be just a day or maybe stretch into days.

Then, the villagers will set the raft loose so it can continue down the river, bringing blessings to the next village that takes it in.

Another legend is that this “arahat” Uppagutta was a diciple of Lord Buddha and was always late to take his lunch before noon.That is why his statue is always shown with the alms bowl in his hand and looking up to the sun to see whether it has passed the meridien.

The Burmese believe that Shin Upagote still lives in a floating brazen [brass] palace in the southern ocean, and that he too can be invoked to come by a prayer of special formula, and that his mere invisible presence will prevent storms and floods. Some believe also that he can be invoked when danger in the form of some physical violence threatens.

Shin Upagote {rhin U.pa.goat} seems to have been an entire creation of Mahayana Buddhism, unless he was the same monk as Moggaliputta-Tissa, who presided over the Third Buddhist [{p133}] Council, as some scholars would maintain. Shin Upagote was believed to have tamed the arch enemy of Buddhism, the great God Mara himself. Asoka was preparing to hold a great festival in honour of the religion, and the monks, realizing that God Mara would do everything in his power to destroy the festival, sent for Upagote. Upagote, by his miraculous powers, not only defeated Mara in a great struggle, but also converted him to Buddhism.