{"id":7534,"date":"2026-09-04T06:42:36","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T06:42:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/?p=7534"},"modified":"2026-09-04T06:42:38","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T06:42:38","slug":"thoughts-prompted-by-hatin-tayi-and-the-pasis-thousand-and-one-night-tales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/2026\/09\/04\/thoughts-prompted-by-hatin-tayi-and-the-pasis-thousand-and-one-night-tales\/","title":{"rendered":"“Thoughts Prompted by Hatin Tayi and The Pasi’s Thousand-and-One-Night Tales”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Facebook post by KoWin Ko, added to the album “Memorable Books” (Odyssey)<\/em> Translated, lightly edited for English readability, and fact-checked, with reference notes added<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Re-reading the books written by Burmese Muslim authors in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, one notices something striking: Islamic literary material is presented through the vocabulary, prose style, and jataka<\/em>-style narrative conventions that were already familiar to Burmese readers of classical literature \u2014 the two traditions woven together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I became more aware of this while reading Dr. Shaikh Abdur Rahman’s The Great Tale of the Pasi, Told over a Thousand and One Nights<\/em> (\u1010\u1011\u1031\u102c\u1004\u1037\u103a\u1010\u1005\u103a\u100a \u1015\u101e\u102e\u1015\u102f\u1036\u1015\u103c\u1004\u103a\u1000\u103c\u102e\u1038), published by Khin Cho Tun Sarpay. The volume also reproduces an essay by Thiripyanchi U Tha Myat titled “The Works of Our Great Burmese Muslims” (\u1010\u102d\u102f\u1037\u1017\u1019\u102c\u1019\u1030\u1005\u101c\u1004\u103a\u1000\u103c\u102e\u1038\u1019\u103b\u102c\u1038\u104f \u101c\u1000\u103a\u101b\u102c\u1019\u103b\u102c\u1038). [Fact-check: this essay is confirmed to exist and is attributed to U Tha Myat; one bibliographic citation found during fact-checking lists it as first published in the magazine<\/em> Shumawa (\u101b\u103e\u102f\u1019\u101d), February 1959, rather than<\/em> Myawaddy as stated in the original post \u2014 see note under References below.]<\/em> The essay was originally a magazine article, and it recovers translated works produced by major Burmese Muslim writers within the older Burmese literary tradition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In discussing the history of Burmese translated fiction, U Tha Myat notes that while U Hla Kyaw’s 1904 Maung Yin Maung Ma Me Ma<\/em> is well known, translated works by great Burmese Muslim writers had already appeared before it. He lists among these earlier translated works: The Great Story of Hatin Tayi<\/em> (1889), The Great Jataka-Style Tale of Prince and Princess Yusuf Zulaikha<\/em> (1904), and The Great Tale of the Pasi, Told over a Thousand and One Nights<\/em> (1896). [Fact-check: independently corroborated. A library catalogue of old Burmese novels held at the British Library lists<\/em> Hatin Tayi Wuthtudaw Gyi as printed in Rangoon in 1889 and<\/em> Pasi Pon Pyin Wuthtu as printed in Rangoon in 1896, matching the dates given here. Burmese-language Wikipedia’s article on early Burmese-language novels likewise records that<\/em> Maung Yin Maung Ma Me Ma (1904) is conventionally treated as the starting point of the “modern-era Burmese novel,” while noting these two earlier Muslim-authored translations predate it.]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking again at Hatin Tayi<\/em> on this list, it turns out to be a novel printed roughly fifteen years before Maung Yin Maung Ma Me Ma<\/em> (1904). But because it was a translation, it was never recorded in the canon of “modern-era” Burmese novels. I also came across a rather aggrieved blog post by a scholar on this very point. According to U Tha Myat’s account, the book runs to about 520 pages \u2014 the size of U Tun Nyein’s dictionary \u2014 and was set in movable type at the Hanthawaddy Press in Rangoon. A note at the end of the book records that typesetting was completed on 1 Nayon waning, 1251 ME, corresponding to 13 June 1889. [Fact-check: consistent with the 1889 print date corroborated above.]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reading the sample passage U Tha Myat quotes is genuinely interesting. Although this is a translated novel, it doesn’t read like one \u2014 nothing about it announces itself immediately as translated literature. U Tha Myat himself remarks that it is a pleasure to read because it is “so richly stocked with courtly, palace-register vocabulary.” The novel opens with the line “In the beginning of the world, as ordained by fate, in ancient times\u2026,” and goes on to tell of the Prophet Noah and the Prophet Muhammad using the same ornamented diction found in Burmese chronicles, court literature, and religious texts. Although the subject matter is an Islamic story, the manner of telling it sits close to the flavour of old Burmese scripture. Later, on seeing the cover of the original Hatin Tayi<\/em> volume that someone had posted on Facebook, I noticed it credited the translator as “Sitaing Hmwat Sayar U Ku, a master of polished verse.” (Credit for the image goes to that poster.) U Tha Myat’s own account does not mention this name. Checking further to see who else has documented this work of Sitaing Hmwat U Ku, I found it mentioned in Professor Aung Zaw’s History of Islamic Literature in Myanmar<\/em> and in Hla Thamein’s Biographies of Celebrated Literary Figures<\/em>, but not in Bo Thaung’s Biographies of Poets<\/em>. It’s a detail that should certainly be included if anyone ever compiles Sitaing Hmwat U Ku’s bibliography. [Fact-check \u2014 important discrepancy: a British Library catalogue list of old Burmese novels and Burmese Wikipedia’s article on Burmese-era fiction both credit the translator of<\/em> Hatin Tayi Wuthtudaw Gyi (1889) as “Hammat Shamsuddin,” also known as Maung Bo Khin \u2014 not “Sitaing Hmwat Sayar U Ku.” This is either two different names\/titles for the same person, an error in one tradition of sources, or a case where the FB-posted cover and the mainstream bibliographic record genuinely disagree. This is worth verifying against the original book cover or a physical\/scanned copy before treating either name as settled.]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same pattern appears on revisiting Dr. Shaikh Abdur Rahman’s 1896 Pasi Pon Pyin<\/em>. In translating the tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, the grandeur of the city of Persia is rendered using Burmese descriptions of royal cities \u2014 terms like pyi-oo<\/em> (city gate towers), tanzaung<\/em> (pavilions), kyaung-myaung<\/em> (moats), and yin-t\u00e0 tag\u00e0-taryoan<\/em> (breastwork gates and turrets). In the book’s opening pages, too, one finds vocabulary drawn from brahmavihara<\/em> (the four sublime states), apariha-niya<\/em> (conditions for non-decline), and mingyin-taya<\/em> (the duties of kings) \u2014 concepts chosen, it seems, to make the material accessible to readers of that era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the story of Aladdin as well, when Aladdin’s father admonishes his son, the text uses phrases such as “the seven-tiered golden palace of the heavens” and “the crow that rests atop the palace spire.” According to Maung Khin Min (Danuphyu), this phrasing echoes the passage admonishing the young man Hatthipala in Shin Mahayathathara’s Koe Gan Pyo<\/em> (“Nine-Chapter Verse”). [Fact-check: this attribution to Maung Khin Min (Danuphyu) and the specific stylistic parallel could not be independently verified through the sources consulted; it is presented here as the original author’s citation and should be checked against Maung Khin Min’s own writings if a precise reference is needed.]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dagon U Ba Din, Dr. Shaikh Abdur Rahman’s son, has written that his father was deeply fond of Burmese language and literature, having studied everything from palace dramas and Burmese chronicles to Shin Mahayathathara’s Koe Gan Pyo<\/em>, and that traces of this literary grounding can be seen in the 1896 Pasi Pon Pyin<\/em>. [Fact-check: a citation located during fact-checking \u2014 Dagon U Ba Din, “The First Author of the Pasi Pon Pyin Novel,” published in<\/em> Shumawa magazine, February 1959 \u2014 appears to correspond to this same claim, though it lists the venue as<\/em> Shumawa rather than<\/em> Myawaddy as stated in the original post. See References below.]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taking all this together, it becomes clear that late-19th-century Burmese Muslim literature did not exist as a separate world of its own, but was part of a shared literary culture in ongoing exchange with mainstream Burmese literature. The translators were not simply substituting Burmese words for the source text; they were reconstructing the original material using the literary language, idioms, jataka conventions, and religious vocabulary already familiar to readers of their own time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tracing this pattern back further still, one finds works such as the senior writer U Nu’s Sadaw U Tin Hlwa Sar<\/em> (“Petition Presented to the Throne”). This was a memorandum on religious affairs that U Nu submitted on behalf of the Islamic community when King Bodawpaya inquired into the various religions practised in his realm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sadaw U Tin Hlwa Sar<\/em> sets out, in plain Burmese prose, matters concerning the Creator, the attributes of God, the origin of humankind, the prophets, moral conduct, sharia, the Holy Qur’an, the Prophet Muhammad, and Islamic doctrine generally. A document of this kind is early evidence of how Islamic subject matter was rendered in prose that ordinary Burmese readers could follow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have also come across a further piece of evidence that makes the point even clearer: U Htun Kywe’s 1938 compendium Collected Islamic Scripture<\/em> (\u1021\u1005\u1039\u1005\u101c\u102c\u1019\u103a\u1015\u1031\u102b\u1004\u103a\u1038\u1001\u103b\u102f\u1015\u103a\u1000\u103b\u1019\u103a\u1038). I once had the chance to hold a copy \u2014 a memory I recall vividly, holding it upstairs in the ordination hall before the chandelier came down. In size and format it resembles the Hatin Tayi Ta Nya Pasi Pon Pyin<\/em> volume reissued by Khin Cho Tun Sarpay. It runs to more than 500 pages. Of the two volumes originally published, only the first came my way; I had it delivered to the Ledi Sayadaw’s monastery in Pathein about fifteen years ago, and I believe it is likely still there in the monastery library.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If such volumes as Collected Islamic Scripture<\/em> can be tracked down and read again, the subject becomes even more interesting. In the passage where the wealthy Muslim merchant instructs his son, the text uses admonitions that resemble in meaning those found in the Sigalovada Sutta<\/em>, and I also recall encountering phrasing echoing the Mangala Sutta<\/em>. It isn’t enough to read such books one at a time \u2014 bringing together the Burmese, Muslim, religious, and translated literature that emerged from a single era and examining it as a body of work would likely reveal much more clearly how the literary cultures of that period borrowed from and exchanged with one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For that reason, if books such as Hatin Tayi<\/em> and Pasi Pon Pyin<\/em> are read only as story collections, an important structural feature of literary history is missed. Within these books, one needs to study together how archaic Burmese vocabulary, jataka-style narrative conventions, the ornamented language of religious literature, and Islamic subject matter came to be combined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Odyssey)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fact-check summary<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The post is a personal literary-history essay\/reflection rather than a hard-news report, so most of it consists of the author’s reading and interpretation of older sources. The verifiable factual claims \u2014 book titles, translators, and publication dates for early Burmese-Muslim translated literature \u2014 largely check out against independent bibliographic sources (a British Library catalogue list and Burmese Wikipedia’s article on early Burmese novels):<\/p>\n\n\n\n