Myat Phaya Gyi
| Myat Phaya Gyi | |
|---|---|
| Princess of Burma | |
 | |
| Born | 5 September 1880 Royal Palace, Burma |
| Died | 3 June 1947 (aged 66) Ratnagiri, India |
| Spouse | Gopal Bhaurao Sawant |
| Issue | Tu Tu Sawant |
| Father | Thibaw Min |
| Mother | Supayalat |
| Religion | Theravada Buddhism |
Princess Myat Phaya Gyi (Burmese: မြတ်ဖုရားကြီး; 5 September 1880 – 3 June 1947) was a Burmese royal princess and most senior member of the Royal House of Konbaung. She was the eldest daughter of the last ruling king of Burma, King Thibaw, and his queen Supayalat.[1][2]
After marrying a palace servant, the princess embarrassed the royal family, gave up her royal princess insignia, and lived a life of great poverty and extreme loneliness until her death. Her story is still interesting in Burmese history, where she is seen as a love hero and tragic figure who fell from being a royal princess of the golden palace to a pauper because of her strong love.
Life
Life in the royal palace
Princess Myat Phaya Gyi was born on 5 September 1880, at the Royal Palace, Mandalay. She was King Thibaw's firstborn daughter by his chief queen, Supayalat. Several ceremonies were held after her birth to honor her royal rank, but the largest of all was the Dawthakarana (cradling) ceremony, in which she was placed in an emerald-studded cradle in front of the Bee Throne in the Glass Palace. Hundreds of magnificent gifts were brought to her, including valuable stones, pearls, jewelry, solid gold bowls, bolts of fine cloth, and so on. The Thonze Princess and the Taungzin Princess were chosen as her head nurse and second nurse, respectively, and numerous palace maids were appointed to assist them.
When she was five years old, King Thibaw was defeated in the Third Anglo-Burmese War and forced to abdicate by the British in 1885. On 25 November 1885, they were taken away in a covered carriage, leaving Mandalay Palace by the southern gate of the walled city, along the streets lined by British soldiers and their wailing subjects, to the river Irrawaddy where a steamboat called Thuriya (Sun) awaited. They were exiled to the remote coastal town of Ratnagiri in India, where they lived for over 30 years. She did not receive any formal education.[1]
Life in Ratnagiri
Myat Phaya Gyi fell in love with Gopal Bhaurao Sawant, an Indian palace gatekeeper, in 1906, when she was 26 years old, and had a child with him. At the time, he was already married. According to Hindu tradition, Gopal cannot marry her because he already has a legal wife. For the embarrassed royal family, she was the black sheep. Her father was furious since it was an unforgivable offense for a low-status palace servant to marry a royal princess. She was judged harshly by the conservative and rigid society of those days. A few years after the death of King Thibaw in 1916, the royal family was allowed to return to Burma. However, she was unwelcome because of her marriage to an Indian servant. Soon after returning to Burma, she gave birth to a stillborn son. The stillbirth made the other royal family members happy.[2]
A number of letters were written by Gopal begging the Princess to return to him. Despite the royal family's opposition, she signed a royal edict stripping her of all her titles, as well as royal decorations, and eventually returned to Ratnagiri with her daughter Tu Tu Sawant, but Gopal failed to keep his promise. He also wasted her royal pension, which she had received from the British government. Gopal used her money to buy a house for his legal wife, and more than 200 acres of land in Ratnagiri. He had abandoned the princess and his daughter in a small hut. The princess was too shy to go out and stayed in her room, waiting for Gopal to visit her (which he did for a few hours). She had no interaction with her royal relatives. A year before her death, when the Indian police came to demolish the hut she lived in as part of a government plan to demolish it, she apologized to remain, but in the end she stayed for three days next to the demolished hut. During the time she was following Gopal, she had to sleep on the ground and only had two chairs for furniture in her hut.
Prior to her death on the night of June 3, 1947, at the age of 67, the princess lived a life of terrible poverty and solitary confinement. Her body was carried from Ratnagiri's main road to the cemetery, attended by merchants and representatives of various organizations. The Ratnagiri police force presented a guard of honor, complete with a gun salute. The Indian government built a brick mausoleum for her at a cost of Rs 5,000 next to her father King Thibaw's mausoleum. Her urn was kept at the Ratnagiri Treasury until it was decided whether to send it back to Burma or bury it inside the tomb. However, the princess's urn was then misplaced.[1][2]
Her daughter, Tu Tu married an Indian driver, Shankar Powar, and lived in poverty. All her descendants became Indian citizens.[3]
References
- ^ a b c "In search of princess Phaya: Looking for Myanmar's forgotten royals in Ratnagiri". Hindustan Times. 2017-02-25. Retrieved 2023-02-18.
- ^ a b c Shah, Sudha (2012). The king in exile : the fall of the royal family of Burma. New Delhi. ISBN 978-93-5029-598-4. OCLC 962026050.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ KyawThu (2020-06-03). "On This Day | When the Daughter of Myanmar's Last King Died". The Irrawaddy. Retrieved 2023-02-18.