Prelude to Ava

The immediate cause for the rise of Ava was the decline of the kingdom of Pagan. Yet, decline in this case only meant dis-integration as a kingdom—it only lost its integrative power. Neither the conceptual system and its principles, nor the human and material resources that had made it, disappeared. In fact, these components remained intact to provide the ideological and material wherewithal for the reconstituting of Ava. Hence, by the second half of the fourteenth century, the dis-integrated parts that had earlier made up Pagan were re-integrated as the kingdom of Ava. And because Pagan provided the “blue print” for Ava, it insured that the “classical tradition” continued for another two hundred years. That tradition was characterized by: an agrarian economy, a conceptual system comprised of indigenized Theravada Buddhism, a patron-client political and social structure, and a population led and dominated by Burmese speakers.