Konbaung Set Yazawin

Konbaung Set Yazawin

"Konbaung Set" Chronicle
Author	Maung Maung Tin
Original title	ကုန်းဘောင်ဆက် မဟာ ရာဇဝင်တော်ကြီး Konbaung Set Maha Yazawindawgyi
Country	Kingdom of Burma
Language	Burmese
Series	Burmese chronicles
Genre	Chronicle, History
Publication date	1905
Preceded by	Dutiya Yazawin

Konbaung Set Maha Yazawindawgyi (Burmese: ကုန်းဘောင်ဆက် ရာဇဝင်တော်ကြီး, pronounced [kóʊɴbàʊɴ zɛʔ məhà jàzəwɪ̀ɴdɔ̀dʑí]; lit. the "Chronicle of Konbaung Dynasty") is the last and unofficial royal chronicle of Burma (Myanmar), covering the Konbaung Dynasty (1752–1885). Its author, Maung Maung Tin, a British colonial official and a son of Konbaung royalty, took Konbaung period portions of the two previous official chronicles, Hmannan Yazawin and Dutiya Yazawin, added the last years (1854–1885) of the dynasty, and packaged it as the single Konbaung era chronicle. It was first published in 1905, and later updated in 1921 to include the death of King Thibaw in 1916 as a postscript.

The author of the chronicle, Maung Maung Tin (also known as Mandalay U Tin) was a British colonial official as well as a son of Konbaung royalty. Tin updated the chronicle to 1885, to the fall of the monarchy, relying mainly on the court records obtained from several members of the royal library and also on the papers seized by the British and kept in libraries. Because almost all the records of the Konbaung Dynasty had gone up in flames as drunken British soldiers burned down the royal library soon after King Thibaw's surrender in 1885, Tin had to begin the collection effort of the surviving source materials still in possession of many court members. (His collection, which continued until the Second World War, eventually grew to over 4000 palace manuscripts, including records, drawings, plays, etc. His lifelong collection stored at his Mandalay home would however be destroyed in 1942 during the Japanese invasion of Burma. The house was burned by the retreating Chinese forces of the Allied forces.)

For the compilation of Konbaung Set, he used the surviving materials as well as several interviews with the surviving members of the court. The main consultants to Tin were: