Three Myanmar scholars arguable contributions to philosophy in their postgraduate theses of the 1920s and 1950s

World Philosophy Day 2024 was observed on 21 November. The United Nations Educational Scientific and Culture Organization (UNESCO) established the third Thursday of November as World Philosophy Day in 2002.

World Philosophy Day intends to encourage ‘philosophical discourse and critical thinking, … (and) to foster intercultural understanding’. Long before World Philosophy Day was formally established three Myanmar scholars in their postgraduate theses submitted to three Western Universities during the 1920s to 1950s contributed to philosophical issues (in the expansive sense of the word). These scholars’ contributions are in the fields of humanities and social sciences and can be considered to have intersected with philosophical issues. Since they are relatively not well-known instead of dealing with those famous philosophers of yore or indeed modern and contemporary times the writer will present glimpses of and briefly comment on the scholars’ contributions in gist.

William Blake: His Mysticism by Dr Ba Han: a doctoral thesis submitted to the University of Bordeaux, France, in 1924

Dr Ba Han (1890-13 May 1969) was a Myanmar scholar, jurist and lexicographer. Among many other achievements, he compiled a Burmese-English dictionary. On 24 June 1924, Maung Ba Han (Maung being an honorific for a young man or a junior person) submitted his thesis ‘William Blake His Mysticism’ to the University of Bordeaux in France. This writer purchased a rare limited edition of 150 copies of Dr Ba Han’s thesis published in 1973 in the year 2007 and read it within a few weeks.

William Blake (28 November 1757-12 August 1827) was a poet, painter, engraver and visionary. Can Blake be described as a mystical poet or a philosophical poet? Perhaps both. The very short poem ‘The Fly’ which yours truly came across in high school is indeed philosophical. Later, in my Rangoon University days, I first came across Blake’s poem ‘The Defiled Sanctuary’ in the opening pages of Volume II of The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (18 May 1872-2 February 1970). And of course, arguably Blake’s most famous ‘Tyger… Tyger burning bright’ poem. As I was unable to retrieve Dr Ba Han’s treatise I cannot now state whether all of the above three poems were discussed by Dr Ba Han in his thesis. What I do recall is that in the Preface the distinguished Myanmar scholar and jurist wrote that he was a traditional Christian and (again from what I recall) the implication was that Blake was perhaps a ‘non-traditional’ Christian. Dr Ba Han wrote his thesis in English. At the end of the thesis there were a few questions written in French by the examiners although the thesis did not contain the answers then-candidate Maung Ba Han gave to his examiners’ queries.

‘The Readjustment of Malaya to the Great Depression of the 1930s’ By Maung Tha Hto (MT Hto) a Master of Arts (Economics) thesis submitted to the University of California Berkeley in 1951

U (another honorific meaning ‘Mr’ or ‘Uncle’) Tha Hto (May 1920-4 February 2011) was a Professor of Economics at the Institute of Economics in Rangoon from 1964 to 1980. U Tha Hto studied at the University of Rangoon, in colonial Burma from about 1938 to 1942. He studied Economics at the University of California, Berkeley in the United States from 1947 to 1951. On 20 April 1951, Maung Tha Hto submitted his thesis ‘The Readjustment of Malaya to the Great Depression of the 1930s’ and it was deposited at the University of California, Berkeley (UC, Berkeley) library on 9 August 1951. Around July/August 2010 I paid US$45 to the UC (Berkeley) library and obtained U Tha Hto’s thesis. I presented the thesis to the Multimedia University library in Malacca, Malaysia, where I was teaching then. In September 2010, during my visit to Yangon, I presented U Tha Hto’s thesis to him to his great surprise and astonishment. He had a worn-out version of his own thesis and showed it to me. I presented a copy of his thesis to the Universities Central Library at Yangon.

Admittedly, U Tha Hto’s thesis mainly falls in the ‘genre’ of social sciences and in comparison, with Dr Ba Han’s thesis submitted over 27 years earlier cannot be described as ‘philosophical’. It is an analytical, empirical study of the economics and shall we say economic resiliency of Malaya in adjustment to the Great Depression of the 1930s which impacted many indeed almost all countries of the world. The very first sentence of Chapter I of U Tha Hto’s thesis states ‘Malaya has been and to this date (as of 1951) first and foremost an agricultural country’. In 2024, this description may no longer be fully correct. The economic progress that Malaya (from 16 September 1963, Malaysia) made in the past several decades (and of course, there were ups and downs in Malaysia’s economy in these decades) is on the whole impressive. A sort of ‘spill-over’ philosophical note based on economic development or indeed retrogression this writer wishes to make is that nothing is permanent. In 1992 at a seminar in Singapore, a late Singaporean scholar mentioned to the effect that the Philippines, Burma (now Myanmar) and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) were considered by some pundits in the late 1940s to have good prospects for economic development. Alas, starting from the mid-1960s, it was and is the Asian tigers of Japan, South Korea and Chinese Taipei whose economies advanced at times almost by leaps and bounds. Starting in the 1980s under the ‘guidance’ of then Prime Minister Mahathir Muhammad (born 10 July 1925) the ‘Look East’ policy of Malaysia tried to emulate the ‘Asian Tigers’.

In late 2024 it has been just over a century since Dr Ba Han submitted his thesis on the mysticism of William Blake and over 73 years since U Tha Hto submitted his thesis on ‘Readjustment of Malaya to the great depression of the 1930s’. There could have been dozens of postgraduate theses not to say books dealing with Blake’s mysticism and Malaya/Malaysia’s economic readjustments since 1924 and 1951 respectively. The two Myanmar scholars’ contributions to these topics albeit written decades ago are noted and appreciated by this writer.

‘Some philosophical problems in contemporary Burma: a study in the comparative philosophy of culture’ By Maung Khin Maung Win submitted to Yale University in 1958

Dr Khin Maung Win (7 October 1929-January 2011) was among others Professor of Philosophy at Rangoon Arts and Science University from 1964 to 1973. He became Minister of Education in the then Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma from March 1974 to 1980.

Maung Khin Maung Win submitted his thesis ‘Some Philosophical Problems in Contemporary Burma: A Study in the Comparative Philosophy of Culture’ in partial fulfilment towards the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to Yale University, in the United States in June 1958. Among the three theses ‘glimpsed’ in this article this thesis deals with ‘pucca’ philosophy, so to speak. In November 1981 I requested a microfilm of the thesis in an interlibrary loan through the University of Michigan Law School library. (I was studying then at Michigan Law School). I had a quick browse of it in about 2 ½ hours inside the library. Dr Khin Maung Win’s (hereafter DKMW) thesis.

A few points raised in DKMW’s thesis can be eclectically mentioned. I have mentioned above that the word Maung is an honorific used in part to denote young or younger people’s names. Hence Maung Ba Han, Maung Tha Hto and Maung Khin Maung Win are mentioned when the candidates submitted their theses to the respective Universities.

In his thesis, DKMW explained this usage of honorifics with a real-life person who had lived in Mandalay: a lawyer by the name of Khin-Maung-Myint-Kyi-Dwe (or Dway) (KMMKD). DKMW explained that when KMMKD was young he was known as Maung KMMKD a little older the honorific in front of his name became Ko (elder brother, or brother) KMMKD and when he became older and became a lawyer he was designated as U KMMKD. (Myanmar names are normally two or three words Khin-Maung-Myint-Kyi-Dwe is a very rare five-word Myanmar name)

DKMW also mentioned that the atoms (or the indivisible elements mentioned) in ancient Indian (Buddhist texts) are quite different from the atoms of Democritus (circa 470-270 Before the Current Era. One could briefly add that the ‘atoms’ of Democritus in concept and description and perhaps (physical?) reality as well are different from the atoms postulated by the chemist John Dalton (6 September 1766-27 July 1844). We will eschew post-1958 developments regarding (sub) atomic theory such as string theory and quarks etc ….

DKMW mentioned and praised (in 1958) what he called ‘Burma’s new democratic constitution’. Quoting Sir Henry Maine (3 August 1822-3 February 1888) DKMW averred that the then-new 1947 Burmese Constitution (it became defunct soon after the takeover of 1962) moved the nation from determining the citizens’ rights and duties from ‘status’ to (constitutional) contract.

DKMW was all praise for the United States political and educational system stating that many foreign students were impressed with how their teachers treated black, white, brown and yellow students (so to speak) fairly without discrimination. He also wrote that in the 1930s young Burmese were impressed by Abraham Lincoln who freed the slaves etc. But one could also add there were songs in the 1930s in colonial Burma which praised ‘dictator’ (in Burmese Ahna Shin) Hitler. The Red Dragon (Nagani) book club produces mainly leftist (rather than Western democratic-oriented) literature.

I first learned about the Yogacara school of Buddhism (from the Mahayana tradition) from DKMW’s thesis. And from my recall, there appears to be a slight slant in DKMW’s thesis towards Mahayana Buddhism. Perhaps it was necessary for a thesis dealing with the ‘comparative philosophy of culture’ as it reflects ‘the philosophical problem of contemporary Burma’ to discuss other traditions apart from the Theravada strands of Buddhism.

Billionaires need to be philosophical or the subjects of a billionaire need to be philosophical?

I have learned from all three theses which I have read in their entirety and which were written by three Myanmar scholars from the 1920s to 1950s. Since time has moved on and many developments in the subject of these theses have taken place they may well be ‘outdated’. But perhaps the necessity to ‘encourage philosophical and critical thinking’ in the words of the UNESCO declaration is of relevance and importance.

Another Burmese scholar who did not have a University degree but who was quite prolific and wrote well in both the Myanmar and English languages was U Aye Maung (2 February 1914-10 May 2002), an Associate Editor of the ‘World of Books’ (Sarpay Beikman) a government publication and information department for many years. In an article published around February 1970 in the now defunct The Guardian (Rangoon) newspaper U Aye Maung wrote that ‘even a millionaire (there were no billionaires in 1970) at times would find it necessary to be philosophical’. Personally, this writer is filled with despair that an uncouth billionaire who ofttimes, rants and raves (among many others) is on the cusp – again – of obtaining one of the most powerful positions on Earth. Ironically it may not be ‘billionaires’ but those who don’t like the billionaire – such as yours truly and I am sure a few million around the world – would need to be philosophical.

By Myint Zan

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