Hence King Narathu Is Known In
The Burmese History As The Kala-Kya Meng Or "King Slain By The Hindus."
He Was Building The Great Temple At Pagan Called Dhammayangyi, At The
Time Of His Death, Which Occurred About The Year 1171.
The great-grandson
of this king was Narathihapade (presumably Narasinha-pati), the king
reigning at the time of the Mongol invasion.
All these circumstances show tolerably close relations between Burma and
Bengal, and also that the dynasty then reigning in Burma was descended
from a Bengal stock. Sir Arthur Phayre, after noting these points,
remarks: "From all these circumstances, and from the conquests attributed
to Anaurahta, it is very probable that, after the conquest of Bengal by
the Mahomedans in the 13th century, the kings of Burma would assume the
title of Kings of Bengal. This is nowhere expressly stated in the
Burmese history, but the course of events renders it very probable. We
know that the claim to Bengal was asserted by the kings of Burma in long
after years. In the Journal of the Marquis of Hastings, under the date of
6th September, 1818, is the following passage: 'The king of Burma
favoured us early this year with the obliging requisition that we should
cede to him Moorshedabad and the provinces to the east of it, which he
deigned to say were all natural dependencies of his throne.' And at the
time of the disputes on the frontier of Arakan, in 1823-1824, which led to
the war of the two following years, the Governor of Arakan made a similar
demand. We may therefore reasonably conclude that at the close of the 13th
century of the Christian era the kings of Pagan called themselves kings of
Burma and of Bengala." (MS. Note by Sir Arthur Phayre; see also his
paper in J.A.S.B. vol. XXXVII. part I.)
NOTE 3. - It is very difficult to know what to make of the repeated
assertions of old writers as to the numbers of men carried by
war-elephants, or, if we could admit those numbers, to conceive how the
animal could have carried the enormous structure necessary to give them
space to use their weapons. The Third Book of Maccabees is the most
astounding in this way, alleging that a single elephant carried 32 stout
men, besides the Indian Mahaut. Bochart indeed supposes the number here
to be a clerical error for 12, but this would even be extravagant. Friar
Jordanus is, no doubt, building on the Maccabees rather than on his own
Oriental experience when he says that the elephant "carrieth easily more
than 30 men." Philostratus, in his Life of Apollonius, speaks of 10 to
15; Ibn Batuta of about 20; and a great elephant sent by Timur to the
Sultan of Egypt is said to have carried 20 drummers. Christopher Borri says
that in Cochin China the elephant did ordinarily carry 13 or 14 persons, 6
on each side in two tiers of 3 each, and 2 behind.
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