Dvaravati The first recorded kingdom attributed to the
Mon people is Dvaravati. Dvaravati culture was marked by moated urban settlements, with early and major centers including
U Thong (in present-day
Suphan Buri Province),
Nakhon Pathom,
Si Thep,
Khu Bua, and Si Mahosot. The name “Dvaravati” comes from
Sanskrit dvāravatī, meaning “that which has gates,” and appears on coins and inscriptions. A 6th-century inscription found at Wat Phra Ngam in
Nakhon Pathom province mentions Dvāravatī alongside two other cities, suggesting Nakhon Pathom may have been its central city. Traditional dating relied on Chinese records and art history, but excavations at
U Thong suggest Dvaravati culture may have begun as early as 200 CE. Its main period, however, was the 7th to 9th centuries. The earliest known inscription mentioning “Dvaravati” is the
Wat Chanthuek Inscription (K.1009), found in
Pak Chong,
Nakhon Ratchasima Province, dated to the 5th century CE. It records a queen of Dvaravati ordering her daughter to sponsor a Buddha image.
Thaton (400 BCE–1057) According to
colonial period scholarships, the Mon established small polities (or large city-states) in Lower Burma in the 9th century. Both the city of
Thaton and
Pegu (Bago) are believed to have been established in the 400 BCE. The states were important trading ports between Indian Ocean and mainland Southeast Asia. Still, according to traditional reconstruction, the early Mon city-states were conquered by the
Pagan Kingdom from the north in 1057, and that Thaton's literary and religious traditions helped to mould early Pagan civilisation. Between 1050 and about 1085, Mon craftsmen and artisans helped to build some two thousand monuments at Pagan, the remains of which today rival the splendors of
Angkor Wat. The
Mon script is considered to be the source of the
Burmese script, the earliest evidence of which was dated to 1058, a year after the Thaton conquest, by the colonial era scholarship. However, research from the 2000s—still a minority view—argues that Mon influence on the interior after Anawrahta's conquest is a greatly exaggerated post-Pagan legend, and that Lower Burma in fact lacked a substantial independent polity prior to Pagan's expansion. Possibly in this period, the delta sedimentation—which now extends the coastline by in a century—remained insufficient, and the sea still reached too far inland, to support a population even as large as the modest population of the late precolonial era. The earliest evidence of Burmese script is dated to 1035, and possibly as early as 984, both of which are earlier than the earliest evidence of the Burma Mon script (1093). Research from the 2000s argues that the
Pyu script was the source of the Burmese script. Though the size and importance of these states are still debated, all scholars accept that during the 11th century, Pagan established its authority in Lower Burma and this conquest facilitated growing cultural exchange, if not with local Mon, then with India and with Theravada stronghold Sri Lanka. From a geopolitical standpoint, Anawrahta's conquest of Thaton checked the Khmer advance in the
Tenasserim coast. ==Hanthawaddy (1287–1539, 1550–1552)==