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By JACQUES P. LEIDER and Kyaw Minn Htin (January 2002)
Arakan is the name of a former Buddhist kingdom of Burma lying on the eastern Bay of Bengal. In 1785, it was conquered by the Burmese king Bodawphaya (1782–1819) and forty years later, it was one of the two provinces occupied by the troops of the British East India Company under the terms of the Treaty of Yandabo (1826) which brought to an end the First Anglo-Burmese War. It is now a state of the Union of Myanmar with approximately four million people and its name is variously spelt as Rakhaing, Rakhine or, according to the modern Burmese pronounciation, Yakhine. Indian poets writing in Persian or Bengali called the country Roshang, Sinhalese chroniclers knew it as Rakhangapura and the Siamese chroniclers as Yakhai.1 Arakan forms the major part of Burma’s northwestern coast and borders on modern Bangladesh’s Chittagong district. The Arakan Yoma range, running in a north-south direction, forms a natural barrier of steep mountains covered with dense jungle that separates Arakan’s coastal plains from the Irrawaddy valley. Among Arakan’s multi-ethnic population, the Arakanese are by far the biggest group. They are Tibeto-Burmans and speak a Burmese dialect. In many older writings, the Arakanese are called Magh, an injurious term of uncertain origin, used in Bengal to refer to the Arakanese pirates.
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