NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Thaton

Thaton is a town in Mon State, in southern Myanmar on the Tenasserim plains. Mon State is an administrative division of Myanmar. ... Tanintharyi, better known by the old name Tenasserim, is a division of Myanmar, covering the long narrow southern part of the country on the Kra Isthmus. ...

History

Thaton was a center for a Mon kingdom which stretched from the Ayeyarwady delta region to as far east as Cambodia. This kingdom was called Suvannabhumi ("The Golden Land"), and it was to this kingdom that King Ashoka of India sent Buddhist missionaries in the 3rd century BC. Later, under the kingdom of Dvaravati, Thaton was an important seaport on the Gulf of Martaban, for trade with India and Sri Lanka. Shin Aran named Dhammadassi, a monk from Thaton, who was born in Thaton and bought up and educated in Nakhorn Pathom, an old capital of Mon kingdom of Dvaravadi,now in Thailand, took Theravada Buddhism north to the Burmese kingdom of Bagan. In 1057, King Anawrahta of Bagan conquered Thaton. The Irrawaddy (newer spelling Ayeyarwaddy) is a river that flows through the centre of Myanmar (formerly Burma). It is Myanmars most important commercial waterway. ... For other meanings, see Ashoka (disambiguation). ... A replica of an ancient statue found among the ruins of a temple at Sarnath Buddhism is a philosophy based on the teachings of the Buddha, SiddhÄrtha Gautama, a prince of the Shakyas, whose lifetime is traditionally given as 566 to 486 BCE. It had subsequently been accepted by... The Dvaravati kingdom of the Mon people existed from the 6th to the 11th centuries. ... Theravada (Pali; Sanskrit: Sthaviravada) is one of the eighteen (or twenty) Nikāya schools that formed early in the history of Buddhism. ... Temples in Pagan. ... Anawrahta (1044-1077), also known as Anoratha, was the first ruler of kingdom of Pagan, now part of Myanmar. ...

Geography

Silting has resulted in the coastline moving 16 km away from Thaton, which is now a sleepy town on the rail line from Bago to Mottama. Bago is a division of Burma. ... Mottama is a town in Mon State, in southern Myanmar, formerly known as Martaban. ...

External link

http://www.eumon.org/Script_kyanlyani.php

There is also a Thaton in Northern Thailand, in the province of Chiang Mai near FAng and Mae Ai

Categories: Myanmar geography stubs | Cities in Myanmar

Results from FactBites:

Karen Human Rights Group \| Oppression by proxy in Thaton District (5762 words)
	In Thaton District and other areas further south, however, the military is more firmly in control, fewer displaced communities are able to remain in hiding, and SPDC rule is facilitated by the presence of its ally the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA).
	Thaton District (Doo Tha Htoo in Karen), which the SPDC has taken increasing control of since the late 1990s, is comprised mostly of low-lying flood plains in which the local population predominantly engages in flat field rice cultivation.
	Given the entrenched barriers to education for villagers in Thaton, many have moved or sent their children to refugee camps in Thailand, where education is open to all and provided in Karen and villagers are free from the oppression and abuse of local DKBA and SPDC officers and soldiers.

Chapter II The Pre-Pagan Period: The Urban Age of the Mon and the Pyu (7658 words)
	Thaton is thought to have been founded by King Siharaja during the lifetime of the Buddha, which would place it in the fifth century BC.
	Thaton was once a flourishing port community that communicated with and transported goods from as far away as Southern India.
	Although the exact founding date of Thaton and the extent of its kingdom has yet to be discovered, it is known that Thaton fell under Burmese control during the 11th century when the first great King of Pagan, Anawrahta, sacked the city and returned to Pagan with Thatons King Manuha as his captive.

More results at FactBites »

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