Society
During Konbaung rule, society was centred around the Konbaung king. The rulers of the Konbaung Dynasty took several wives and they were ranked, with half-sisters of the king holding the most powerful positions. The Konbaung kings fathered numerous children, creating a huge extended royal family which formed the power base of the dynasty and competed over influence at the royal court. It also posed problems of succession at the same time often resulting in royal massacres carried out in such a way that royal blood must not be shed.
Burmese society was highly stratified during Konbaung rule. Under the royal family, the nobility administered the government, led the armies, and governed large population centres. The Konbaung Dynasty kept a detailed lineage of Burmese nobility written on palm leaf manuscripts, peisa, that were later destroyed by British soldiers. At the local level, the myothugyi (မြို့သူကြီး), hereditary local elites, administered the townships controlled by the kingdom.
Konbaung society was divided into four general classes:
- Royals (မင်းမျိုး, min myo)
- Brahmins (ပုဏ္ဏားမျိုး, ponna myo)
- Merchants (သူဌေးမျိုး, thahtay myo)
- Commoners (ဆင်းရဲသားမျိုး, sinyetha myo)
Society also distinguished between the free and slaves (ကျွန်မျိုး, kyun myo), who were indebted persons or prisoners of war (including those brought back from military campaigns in Arakan, Ayuthaya, and Manipur), but could belong to one of the four classes. There was also distinction between taxpayers and non-taxpayers. Tax-paying commoners were called athi (အသည်), whereas non-taxpaying individuals, usually affiliated to the royal court or under government service, were called ahmudan (အမှုထမ်း).
Read more about this topic: Konbaung Dynasty
Famous quotes containing the word society:
“Jail sentences have many functions, but one is surely to send a message about what our society abhors and what it values. This week, the equation was twofold: female infidelity twice as bad as male abuse, the life of a woman half as valuable as that of a man. The killing of the woman taken in adultery has a long history and survives today in many cultures. One of those is our own.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“Books treating of etiquette ... are often written by dancing-masters and Turveydrops and others knowing little of the customs of the best society of any land.”
—Mrs. H. O. Ward (1824–1899)
“Society is held together by our need; we bind it together with legend, myth, coercion, fearing that without it we will be hurled into that void, within which, like the earth before the Word was spoken, the foundations of society are hidden.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)